How much of a killer’s evil is born with them, & how much is due to the world around them? It’s a question that has been asked for centuries in literature & art. In my reading of history, I keep coming across figures that prompt me to consider it - like Jasper Hanebuth. THREAD 1/
Jasper Hanebuth was born near Hannover, Germany in 1607, and grew up as the Thirty Years War began. This was a conflict on an unprecedented scale between Catholic & Protestant interests that had a horrific impact on Europe for generations. 2/ 
It’s estimated by historians that perhaps up to 40% of the German peoples were lost in the conflict - some in battle, some in pillaging, the vast bulk due to starvation and disease. For long stretches of the conflict, law and order were non-existent and atrocities were common. 3/
During the war, as a young man, Hanebuth learned to shoot, to disguise himself and to lay traps. He fought for the Swedish forces heading southwards as a mercenary and saw first-hand some of the war’s most brutal fighting. 4/
To give you an example of the horrors of the war, Magdeburg in central Germany lost perhaps 20,000 inhabitants during the sack of the city in May 1631 - all in the space of 24hrs. To this present, it is remembered as one of the worst single atrocities in human conflict. 5/
Come the end of the conflict, Jasper Hanebuth was released from service. Yet something within couldn't settle. He needed to keep going, on his own warped way. So, he retreated to the Ellenriede, a forest outside the city of Hannover. 6/
There, he began life as a murderer. Taking position in the trees, he’d fire on a traveller without working out whether they had coin to rob. Part of it, for Hanebuth, it would seem, was the hunt. 7/
It’s worth pausing here to note that firearms in the 1650s weren't the firearms we use today. Less firepower meant that lead musket balls would puncture the skin & ricochet through the body, causing invariably fatal injuries. 8/
Jasper Hanebuth took down 19 poor souls this way, throwing the bodies down a hold to be eaten by pigs. Not even his wife was safe - she ended up down there too. Their money would be spent on horses, in a kind of laundering operation - this part would prove his downfall. 9/
It was when Hanebuth tried stealing a horse from a trader that he was betrayed to the authorities. That certainly says something about the lawlessness of the post-war period - nobody had been able to find him in the Ellenriede. 10/
After a year rotting in prison, Hanebuth was taken to one of the gates in Hannover on the 4th of February 1653 and broken on the wheel. This was a very slow, horrific means of execution that involved breaking every limb. 11/
Hanebuth has lived on in the name of Hannover streets, any number of ghost stories and a sculpture near his place of execution called 'Hanebuth’s last victim’. It is meant to resemble the man himself. /12
So how much of Hanebuth’s evil came from within, and how much was born of the horrors of the Thirty Years War? We’ll perhaps never know - he was illiterate, and any accounts of his words must be viewed as a coerced confession. 13/
I welcome your ideas, however. Was he 'stuck’ in the mindset of the soldier? Was he simply an opportunist? Was there something in the killing that was his motivation? 14/
You can learn more about Jasper Hanebuth and his crimes here. /15 executedtoday.com/2014/02/04/165…
I hope you enjoyed that little digression into the horrors of the past and the human mind. Plenty more where that came from. If you liked it, let me know and spread the word! /FIN
