Bennen was his second male victim. The court found Pleil's act as a manslaughter, as he was heavily intoxicated at the time. If he had been found guilty of murder, he would have received the death penalty. The remaining crimes remained unsolved, for which a superficial approach was shared by the police and judicial authorities. The fact that many of the victims were not from the area was also considered, as they were often people uprooted as a result of the war and post-war conditions. While in custody in Celle, Pleil finally confessed to further murders. In a memoir, he spread the gruesome details boastfully with the title "Mein Kampf". He claimed to have committed a total of 25 murders, and thus one more than Fritz Haarmann, being able to call himself the "greatest murderer" of all. Pleil and his accomplices were persecuted by the press, at home and abroad. Foreign newspapers sent reporters. Pleil caught the attention and tried to focus on it as much as possible. In his remarks in court he exaggerated shamelessly, which had corresponding press reports. The smiling Pleil confessed in the so-called "Brunswick trial" to the numerous murders of women, boasting to have allegedly committed a total of 40 murders. Pleil was depicted as a murderous beast, with he himself speculating this would classify him as mentally ill. Then he would not have been sentenced to imprisonment, but instead, sent to a psychiatry. This process did not work out though, and three weeks after the start of the trial, on November 17, 1950, Pleil and his two accomplices were each sentenced to life imprisonment for multiple murders. Pleil hanged himself on February 16, 1958 in his cell.