The Age , 22.03.2004 :

Murder tale of the gas oven "beast" shocks nation /

By Tony Paterson, Berlin

The grisly tale of a neo-Nazi who tried to incinerate the remains of one of his murder victims in a gas oven has shocked Germany.

The details have emerged in the closing stage of the trial of Till-Hauke Heldt, 32, whose father was a member of the Hitler Youth.

Heldt has been nicknamed "the Intelligent Beast" by the press for his alleged role in the murders of an Indian asylum-seeker and a German businessman, and the murder of a prostitute.

In the 1990s, Heldt led a neo-Nazi skinhead gang that attacked foreigners in the town of Guetersloh.

In evidence, he complained that as a child he was brutalised by his father, who beat him regularly.

The trial of Heldt, a failed entrepreneur, and his alleged accomplice, Tim Schuler - each blames the other - is expected to conclude this week, and if convicted both face life sentences.

But it is the account of Heldt's third victim that has gripped Germany during the new trial in Bremen. She was a prostitute, for whose death he has already been convicted.

His undoing was his decision to return the malfunctioning oven to the engineer who had built it - and who, suspicious of the stench of burnt flesh, tipped off the police.

His victim, Yvonne Polzin, 31, worked in a brothel set up by Heldt in the late 1990s, and often had sex with him. When his wife found out, he was apparently so ashamed that he decided to get rid of his mistress.

He approached an engineer, known throughout the trial as "Frank M", and asked him to make a steel oven, 1.5 metres long and shaped like a tube, saying that one of his relatives wanted to use it for cooking.

In September, 2001, Heldt lured Ms Polzin to a holiday home on the German Baltic coast. The couple travelled in a rented van, with the portable crematorium in pieces in the back.

Ms Polzin decorated the bed with an array of sweets, laid out in the shape of a heart - only to be attacked and strangled there.

Heldt's first attempt to get his portable crematorium working failed when the oven refused to light, and he spent much of the evening making phone calls to Frank M seeking his advice.

The engineer suggested buying and installing a new gas jet. Even this was to no avail, and it took further calls to Frank M. Adjustments to the gas and air supplies, and improvements to its insulation got it working.

At this point Heldt and Schuler began cremating Ms Polzin's body - only for the oven to begin belching black smoke and then going out again.

The pair finally hacked the remains of Ms Polzin's body into pieces, minced them up and buried them before driving back to Dusseldorf to ask Frank M to help them break the oven up.

Suspicious of the pungent smell, the engineer told the police.

It was a straightforward matter to assemble the evidence and convict them, and Heldt is already serving one life sentence for that crime.

Police have reopened their files on two other unsolved murders - they suspect the two men are linked to the deaths of Sanjib Kumar Shrestha, an Indian asylum-seeker, in 1995 and Reinhard Wojciechowski, a German businessman, the year after.

mholmes@f2network.com.au