Richard Klinkhammer is a Dutch crime writer who became famous when he wrote a book about 7 ways to murder your spouse. Around the same time, his wife went missing and Klinkhammer used to hint on TV and in magazines that he had killed her. Well it turns out he actually did.
Around a year after his wife, Hannelore went missing, Klinkhammer visited his publisher with a manuscript for a book. The subject matter of the novel was very peculiar given the fact his wife had recently gone missing with no trace. It was a book about 7 ways in which he could conceivably have murdered his wife. In one of these scenarios he passes her remains through a mincer and feeds the remains to pigeons.
After his wife went missing the police did actually arrest Klinkhammer and proceeded to grill him about his wife’s whereabouts. They searched his house and garden and even brought in sniffer dogs but they did not find anything that connected his wife’s disappearance with a murder. Without a body they could not take things further with the murder investigation.
Since her disappearance in 1991 Klinkhammer lived in the same house, drinking heavily and continuing to write. The book he wrote and showed to his publisher after his wife went missing never got commissioned due to its gruesome nature. Details of the book did however filter out from the publisher into the wider community and the Dutch underground press.
He became a bit of a minor celebrity being invited onto talk shows in which he would discuss his interesting and eccentric life. He eventually met a new girl and decided to sell his home. They both moved to Amsterdam together and his home was bought by a young family.
Shortly after the family bought the home, they wanted to do some conversions including getting rid of the garden shed. They hired a digger which they used to break up the concrete floor below the shed. It was during this process that they found a scull surrounded by clay buried a few feet under the concrete base. They called the police who come in and discovered the rest of the remains of a skeleton which turned out to be the remains of Hanny Klinkhammer.
According to sources, the early years of the Klinkhammer’s relationship was very happy times until Richard started to drink. When he was drunk he used to hit his wife Hanny but she was obsessed with him none the less.
Klinkhammers first book was entitles “Obedient as a Dog” and drew upon experiences he had in the Foreign Legion. He detailed how the first thing they teach you is how to kill someone. They then teach you how to dispose of the corpse.
After the remains of Hanny were found by the police, Richard Klinkhammer was arrested and admitted to everything. He has apparently beat his wife to death with a wooden object such as a bat before digging a hole under his shed and burying her in it. He then covered the hole with concrete and compost to mask any smells. Six days later, he reported her missing, claiming that he had found her red bicycle at a nearby train station.
With the high level case and the amazing story, the publisher changed his mind about the book an offered Kinkhammer the opportunity to publish it. With the prospect of a life sentence looming, he declined.