Hermann Duft and Hans Wilhelm Bassenauer

Hermann Duft and Hans Wilhelm Bassenauer were a pair of German serial killers who murdered six people in Greece, within a short period in 1969. They were captured, tried, sentenced to death and executed by the Greek authorities.

Duft and Bassenauer arrived in Greece by car on 17 February 1969. Within the next few weeks, posing as tourists, they murdered six people, using a Winchester rifle and a knife. The reason for most of their murders was robbery. On the 5 March, they killed the night watchmen of a gas station near Thebes, a soldier who was present and heavily injured another one. On 13 March, they murdered a Greek-American stockbroker in Voula, on 7 April a taxi driver and on 9 April a gas station attendant near Athens. Finally, on 12 April, they murdered, on the road from Athens to Patras a Greek who was living in Germany and vacationing in his homeland. They abandoned their car and took the victim's to return to Athens.

The trial of Duft and Bassenauer was held shortly thereafter at the Appeals Court. They were found guilty and sentenced to death for each one of the murders. Their appeal was rejected by the Areopagus Supreme Court, as was their request to the Council of Pardons to reduce their sentence to life imprisonment. They were executed by firing squad on 15 December 1969, Bassenauer in Corfu and Duft in Aegina, in whose prisons they were respectively being held.

Duft was born in Harheim near Frankfurt and Bassenauer in Darmstadt, Germany, both in 1938. They were both plumbers. Duft was single, while Bassenauer was married, with three children. Duft had briefly served in the Foreign Legion during the war in Algeria.