To residents of the quiet Leeds suburb of Rothwell, Andrzej Freda appeared to be the ideal neighbour.
Friendly and courteous, he had lived in the ageing terrace for 20 years without causing any trouble.
Although he spoke with a gentle eastern European accent, the 60-year-old had become part of the local community. He worked as a Polish translator nearby and was raising a family.
His imposing, Viking-like appearance was perhaps the only feature that made him stand out: years of kick-boxing had given him a powerful physique, while his long, greying hair was usually tied neatly in a bun.
That quiet image was shattered on September 26, 2022, when police descended on the estate, repeatedly buzzing intercoms before handcuffing Freda and taking him from his home.
Residents watched in disbelief from their windows as the dramatic operation unfolded and their neighbour was taken away for questioning.
They had no idea that the man they exchanged small talk with on the way to work each morning had been concealing a deeply disturbing secret.
Freda was not simply a middle-aged father of three. He was a convicted killer who had remained beyond the reach of the law for almost 30 years.
Pictured: Andrzej Freda seemingly on his way to work in Rothwell, Leeds, despite German judges concluding that there was ‘no reasonable doubt’ that he had repeatedly stabbed Mr Schönig with ‘absolute will’
Pictured: Freda in Leeds. He was extradited to Germany in January 2025
At a court in Bochum, western Germany, last April, judges heard that Freda stabbed father-of-two Reinhardt Schönig to death in 1996. He then fled to his native Poland before eventually beginning a new life in Britain.
By 2001, he had quietly established himself in suburban Yorkshire, where he raised a son and daughter with his wife.
Freda also attempted to pursue acting, using the name ‘Jack’. However, his profile on The Mandy Network, a global casting and audition platform, lists just one credit: a role as an extra in a low-budget film.
His hidden past finally began to unravel in 2022, after a major DNA breakthrough linked him to the weapon used to kill Mr Schönig.
When The Crime Desk visited Rothwell earlier this month, neighbours were cautious about discussing Freda. Some recalled the police raid, while one resident described him as ‘friendly’ and a ‘gentleman’. Most, however, declined to speak at all.
Their reluctance is perhaps understandable: Freda still lives next door.
Because of a legal loophole, he walked free from court ten months ago, despite judges concluding there was ‘no reasonable doubt’ that he had repeatedly stabbed Mr Schönig with ‘absolute will’.
When confronted at his home, Freda refused to answer questions about his violent past.
He opened the door of his dingy flat wearing scruffy shorts and a T-shirt and said: ‘I don’t want to talk about that,’ before slamming it shut.
About an hour later, Freda drove past the reporter. The karate black belt lowered his car window a few inches and stared her down. He was later photographed smirking as he walked towards his vehicle.
But Freda has reason to feel smug. Not only did he avoid a long prison sentence in Germany, a source said he also faces no risk of deportation for his crime as he was granted indefinite to leave to remain in the UK just months before his arrest in 2022.
Our pictures of the knifeman enjoying life as a free man would be agony for the detective who dedicated 21 years of his life to the hunt for Mr Schönig’s killer.
Pictured: The knife used to stab Opel car factory worker Reinhardt Schönig to death
Opel car factory worker Reinhardt Schönig (pictured) was left to die on the pavement after being stabbed in Bochum, Germany in March 1996
Axel Pütter is a former senior murder detective for Bochum Police, who launched the investigation into the crime and even worked on it after his retirement.
He tells us: ‘The verdict was an extremely deep and personal disappointment for me, something I had never experienced before as a murder investigator.
‘Particularly as the court was convinced of his responsibility for the crime.’
The cause of Mr Pütter’s immense disappointment is a quirk of the German legal system that allowed Freda to worm his way out of a long sentence in a prison cell. But more on that later.
The story of this devious and dangerous killer begins shortly after midnight on March 2, 1996.
Car factory worker Reinhardt Schönig was making his way home from a night at the pub in Germany’s industrial North Rhine-Westphalia region when he was suddenly attacked.
The 54-year-old screamed for help and tried to escape but the attacker held him by his jacket and continuously stabbed him with a folding knife.
The double-edged curved blade cut into his left shoulder five times, severing the bone in his shoulder blade.
The attacker then drove the knife repeatedly into his upper body. Blows struck his chest, torso and face, and one pierced his heart.
Looking from their windows, witnesses saw two male figures in the street. One ran, while the other – Mr Schönig – staggered a few steps and collapsed.
He was left to bleed to death on the pavement before medics could reach him.
Meanwhile, the killer fled, ripped the black wool hat off his head and put it in the inside pocket of his black waterproof jacket, he then stuffed the blood-stained coat inside a bin as well as the weapon used in the attack.
The crime perplexed German police: the victim, a popular worker at the local Opel car factory, had no enemies and there was no obvious motive for his killing.
Little did they know that the killer they would snare decades later didn’t just live in the same town – there was a good chance he knew his victim.
Pictured: Andrzej Freda (right) at his trial in Bochum, Germany
Andrzej Freda, a Polish national, had moved to Germany with his wife and their young son in the late eighties.
He leased a kiosk where Polish immigrants would gather to gossip and buy magazines and cigarettes. The shop was a cornerstone of the community and he was popular with customers.
While friends described him as ‘handsome, athletic and confident’.
Freda was proud of his athletic ability, especially his love of martial arts, and had a punch bag hanging in a side room in his kiosk.
He was also a lover of flash cars and drove a white Porsche while having a string of affairs behind his wife’s back, his trial heard.
Mr Schönig meanwhile, lived with his wife Barbara and the couple had two children who had left home by the time of the stabbing; they also took in a foster daughter.
He spent his free time with his family and at events run by the Social Democratic Party of Germany.
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Detectives now believe the two men may have crossed paths as Mr Schönig, who was a heavy smoker, lived nearby and would have bought cigarettes from Freda’s kiosk.
After the stabbing, police formed a murder squad and launched an intensive hunt. Leaflets were distributed and the killing was reconstructed on the German TV equivalent of Crimewatch. A composite image of the suspected attacker was circulated – but no name emerged.
Mr Pütter, who was deputy head of the homicide department at Bochum Police Headquarters and a murder investigator for 21 years, says: ‘The investigation proved extremely difficult because no recognisable motive could be established. There were numerous lines of enquiry, but none of them could be substantiated.
‘The investigation into Freda only became concrete when the DNA match in Great Britain was reported.
‘To the best of my knowledge, we had not previously identified him [Freda] by name in the case files.’
Years went by and the case remained one of the country’s biggest cold cases.
Mr Pütter said: ‘I continued to work specifically on the murder of Mr Schönig until my retirement.
‘I always kept the case file in my office and repeatedly went through it, looking for investigative approaches.
‘Our investigation never came to a complete standstill because the case repeatedly attracted media coverage [in Germany], and information continued to come in over the years. These leads were investigated, unfortunately always without success.’
Then, in 2020, detectives were given the breakthrough they had been waiting for. But it wasn’t only thanks to diligent policework, in fact it was a gift from the killer himself.
A composite image of Reinhardt Schönig’s suspected attacker circulated by Bochum police
After getting arrested following a bar fight back in the UK, Freda’s DNA was inputted into a global database.
This meant that when German detectives investigating the case were looking through DNA labs they got an alert from colleagues in Britain.
The database found Freda’s DNA matched samples found on the clothing and the knife taken eight years before by cold case detectives for Bochum police.
British police officers arrested Freda in 2022 and he was brought before Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London and remanded in custody ahead of an extradition hearing.
German authorities wanted him returned to face a single charge of murder, carrying a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
Freda fought back – saying he had no knowledge of the stabbing and that he would struggle to reconstruct his movements from almost three decades earlier.
In November 2024, the High Court in London dismissed Freda’s final appeal against extradition and in January 2025, he was collected from British custody and flown to Dusseldorf.
He was transported to Bochum and served with a German arrest warrant for murder.
For the police and prosecutors, the breakthrough represented the end of an almost 30-year hunt.
On Facebook, Bochum Police were quick to celebrate their ‘successful resolution of a cold case’.
They wrote: ‘After nearly three decades of intensive investigation, the police and public prosecutor’s office have succeeded in solving a murder case that had been open since 1996.’
Interior minister Herbert Reul said: ‘No perpetrator should feel certain after such a heinous crime that we won’t catch them – not even after so much time.’
Yet there proved to be an extraordinary sting when Freda eventually stood trial at Bochum Regional Court on April 1, 2025.
The judges concluded that he had repeatedly stabbed Mr Schönig – but acquitted him of murder.
Freda even tried to launch a career as an actor, calling himself ‘Jack’, but his profile on The Mandy Network (pictured)
Pictured: The housing association block in Rothwell, Leeds, where Freda is still living
In Germany, prosecutors must prove that a specific aggravating feature is involved to classify a killing as a murder, such as greed, cruelty, treachery or an attempt to conceal another crime.
During the trial – where a police source told us Freda remained ‘relaxed’ throughout – the prosecution’s case depended on establishing treachery to classify the killing as murder.
But judges found this could not be proved because a medical professional said Schönig had been stabbed from the front rather than unsuspectingly from behind, as the prosecution had initially thought.
Instead, the court found Freda had killed Schönig but with no aggravating feature, and so, it was classified as Totschlag – an intentional homicide often translated as manslaughter.
‘Murder carries a mandatory life sentence. There is no exception,’ explained Professor Dr Liane Wörner, a criminal law expert based at the University of Konstanz in southern Germany.
‘Because the punishment is so severe, the law must necessarily be interpreted restrictively.’
She adds: ‘Totschlag is the basic offence of homicide. It punishes the intentional killing of a person. Intent means that the perpetrator acts with knowledge and will. The elements of the offence consist simply of killing someone, regardless of how, with knowledge and intent.’
However, while murder has no statute of limitations in Germany, Totschlag cannot be prosecuted more than 20 years after the event.
By the time Freda’s DNA was linked to the evidence that period had expired.
The judges were therefore unable to convict Freda, even though they found he had killed Mr Schönig.
‘The police investigation had established the murder characteristic of treachery. I therefore expected that a conviction for murder would be possible.
‘In the case of such a brutal crime, one must generally assume that the perpetrator should be considered dangerous,’ Mr Pütter said.
Almost three decades of forensic work, international police co-operation, extradition proceedings and courtroom argument had produced a conclusion – but no punishment.
Freda was able to return to his home in Leeds where he continues to work as a translator.
He lives with his wife and the mother of two of his children, who refused to comment when approached by The Crime Desk.
The one question that haunted investigators from the very beginning of the case still remains unanswered: Why?
Sadly, unless Andrzej Freda ever reveals the dark secrets behind his horrifying crime, Mr Schönig’s family and the detectives that finally snared him will never find out.
- Additional reporting by John Siddle
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