Friso Gentsch/dpa via AP

After spending years luring women to their home in Hoexter, Germany, under the guise of a false dating ad, a German couple now awaits trial for murder by omission and bodily harm.

According to the Associated Press, the couple — 46-year-old Wilfried W. and his wife Angelika, whose last names are withheld according to German privacy laws — used a dating ad to bring women to their home, and once the women arrived, the couple would torture them. The torturing that took place was allegedly so terrible that a local newspaper refers to the house as the "house of horror."

The couple reportedly wanted to lure women to their home so they could use them as slaves, according to the AP. Police have been investigating activity around the home since April 2016, after Wilifried and Angelika tried to drive Suzanne, a 41-year-old woman who’d come to the house, back to her own home. According to the BBC, their car broke down on the drive back to her home, and while waiting for a cab, the woman’s health deteriorated to the point that they were required to call an ambulance. She was reportedly suffering from life-threatening injuries that resulted from weeks of torture at the hands of the couple in their home.

Suzanne eventually died in the hospital. Her injuries — which included severe bruising, missing toenails, and infected flesh that indicated being left immobile for several weeks — raised suspicions and prompted the initial police investigation.

According to the Washington Post, when police eventually entered the house of horror, they found hundreds of slips of paper, on which victims of the couple had written that their injuries were all self-inflicted.

In a confession to police, Angelika said Suzanne wasn’t the only woman to die as a result of their torture. Another woman, Anika, died in 2014 after trying to escape and hitting her head. The couple then allegedly cut the body into pieces and stored it in a freezer. To make matters even worse and more disturbing, the couple kept Anika’s cell phone and maintained a texting relationship with her mother to keep her from looking into her daughter’s whereabouts, according to the Washington Post.

Police believe that eight people were tortured by Wilifried and Angelika in total. Their trial began Wednesday and is expected to continue into March 2017.

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Hannah Smothers Hannah writes about health, sex, and relationships for Cosmopolitan, and you can follow her on Twitter and Instagram

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