The Hannibal Lecter of Estonia

Johannes-Andreas Hanni went down in criminal history worldwide as the Hannibal Lecter of Estonia. He was born on March 24, 1957, in Valga, the son of a Baptist pastor. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Kahtla-Järve. Hanni enjoyed a strictly religious upbringing. When he violated the Bible, he was punished with the rod by his hated father, Jaan Hanni. Hanni went astray at an early age and committed several thefts, which earned him several years in juvenile detention centers. Hanni realized early on that he was bisexual. He loved to walk around in women’s underwear and only fell asleep dressed in a women’s nightgown. Wearing a bra particularly stimulated his sexual desire during sex. Hanni finally married tram driver Pille Toomla, whom he had known since he was 13, on December 11, 1981. From then on, they lived together in an apartment in Estonia’s capital, Tallinn, where Hanni worked in the restaurant of the Palace Hotel. Hanni and his wife had an open relationship, in which Hanni regularly had affairs with both men and women. On March 5, 1982, just four months after his marriage to Pille, he committed his first murder in the Tallinn district of Nõmme on Valdeku Street, killing sailor Eimar Vibo. He first stabbed him in the chest and then in the back with a knife, then cut his throat before gouging out one of his eyes and finally cutting a brick-sized piece out of his thigh. He stabbed him a total of seven times. In addition to the piece of flesh, he took his shoes, wallet, watch, and ring. When he got home, Hanni presented his wife with the stolen items and the flesh souvenir, which he immediately fried in a pan and then ate with relish. Hanni was delighted with the sweet taste of the flesh, which his wife did not want to try. Hanni also confessed his crime to her. But Pille did nothing. After the murder of the sailor, there were persistent rumors in Tallinn that a man was hunting people and that a cannibal was selling sausages made from human flesh at Tallinn’s markets. Fear was widespread in Tallinn. Having clearly acquired a taste for murder, Hanni committed his second murder just two months later. On May 22, 1982, he broke into a house in Jõhvi. Since no one was home, he went into the garden. There was a sauna in the garden, where 75-year-old Belarusian pensioner Ivan Sivitsky was sitting. Hanni killed him with four knife stabs and then cut off his genitals, which Hanni and his wife used as sex toys. The militia initially suspected the pensioner’s son-in-law, who was an alcoholic with a criminal past and had often argued with his father-in-law, of being the murderer. During a search of the house, a bloody shirt and several knives were found. However, the son-in-law had been drinking with friends on the evening of the murder. They confirmed his statement. Thus, the son-in-law had an alibi and could not be considered the perpetrator. Hanni, on the other hand, was already thinking about his next murder. At the end of July 1982, he encountered Russian vagrant Yevgenia Koltsova picking raspberries in a forest not far from Saue. He raped her and then killed her with three knife wounds. He then stole several items of clothing, money, and a bus ticket from her and returned home. There, Hanni told his wife about his crime. Suspecting that she might report him to the police, he planned his next murder together with her. He was determined to kill a small child. But this seemed too complicated, so a taxi driver was to be the next murder victim. Armed with knives, they stopped a taxi at a bus stop in the Nõmme district on September 2, 1982. But when the taxi driver smelled alcohol on their breath, he drove on. Finally, taxi driver Alari Kivi, a father of three, took them both in his taxi and seated them in the back. He was supposed to drive them to a friend’s house. But when he arrived at his destination, there was no house there, only forest as far as the eye could see. Hanni’s wife got out of the car and Hanni himself rammed a knife into the taxi driver’s throat. However, the driver fought back fiercely and pulled the blade out of the wound. Hanni panicked and yelled at his wife to strike. But she was in a state of shock and couldn’t move. The taxi driver fled from the car and managed to escape into a house, despite Hanni chasing him. Hanni then returned to the taxi. His wife had regained her senses and sat down at the wheel while Hanni got in. They drove off and stopped a short time later. They took the money along with Alari’s jacket. The taxi driver was taken to the hospital and survived the attack. From then on, the couple lived in fear of being caught by the militia. So Pille typed up her confession on a typewriter at work, intending to hand it over to the militia. But after she had written her confession, she lost her nerve. She hid it in her locker, but forgot to lock it. As luck would have it, the piece of paper took flight and landed on the floor, where a colleague found it. After reading the confession, he alerted the police. They searched the couple’s apartment and found items that belonged to the murder victims. The couple was arrested. Before the verdict was handed down, Johannes-Andreas Hanni hanged himself in his cell on November 6, 1982, leaving behind several suicide notes. These revealed that he was afraid of being sentenced to death. That is why he took his own life at the age of only 25. He blamed his parents’ upbringing for his murders, saying that their fanatical beliefs had turned him into a monster. They also refused to bury Johannes-Andreas Hanni. His wife Pille was found guilty of aiding and abetting on February 28, 1983, and sentenced to 12 years in prison, which was reduced to 10 years and four months by President Lennart Meri’s pardon. She served her sentence in Harku Prison, where she worked in the laundry. She was released in 1993, but had to change her name due to numerous death threats and eventually emigrated to Finland with her daughter. In 2008, she published her book “I Loved a Predator,” which was heavily criticized by the public and psychiatrist Anti Liiv because she presented herself exclusively as a victim in the book. The story of Johannes-Andreas and Pille Hanni also inspired Serbian-Finnish composer Jovanka Trbojevic to write the opera libretto “Heart in a Plastic Bag.”