A convicted paedophile who allegedly raped and murdered a teenage girl before her lifeless body was found in a lake is said to have previously molested numerous young girls.

Jan-Heiko Pflur, 29, is in investigative custody over the murder of Ayleen Ambs and German daily Bild has suggested that he was “a ticking timebomb” and could have already been apprehended.

The 29-year-old security guard allegedly molested underage schoolgirls on repeated occasions in the months prior to Ayleen’s rape and murder, according to Bild, the Frankfurter Allgemeine, and other German media.

It has also been reported that Pflur allegedly wanted to rape an unnamed 11-year-old girl when he was just 14 years old and throttled her with a belt.

Pflur is also said to have allegedly harassed two sisters, who have not been named but who were 12 and 14, in March 2020, and grabbed the 14-year-old’s bottom.

A complaint for sexual assault was made against him in April 2020, according to Bild, when he allegedly grabbed a 14-year-old girl by the hip and pulled her towards him.

And in April 2022 he allegedly verbally harassed a 17-year-old girl who reported him to the police.

Judge Thorsten Schleif, 42, the author of the book “Wo unsere Justiz versagt” (‘Where our Justice Fails’), is quoted in Bild as saying: “Of course, the public prosecutor’s office could have applied for an arrest warrant due to the risk of recurrence if there was a strong suspicion of sexual assault of minors.”

The police had repeatedly summoned Pflur for questioning in the case of the 17-year-old girl but he was reportedly a no-show, according to Bild, who said that prosecutors seemed more interested in prosecuting him for other offences including theft and fare evasion.

A spokesman for the Wetzlar public prosecutor’s office said: “In view of the large number of his crimes, the accused was included in the programme for multiple and intensive offenders.”

Ayleen’s alleged killer was due in court on 8th August on charges of theft, driving without a licence and fraud.

Pflur spent 10 years in a psychiatric facility after trying to rape the 11-year-old girl before being released under supervision, but this was reportedly ended at the beginning of the year, which is when the attacks on minors allegedly began again, according to Bild.

Ayleen’s lifeless corpse was discovered in Teufelssee lake in Hesse, central Germany, last month, after the suspect allegedly groomed her online, according to the police.

A childhood friend of Pflur’s revealed how Pflur allegedly failed to take prescribed drugs that blunted his sexual drive. Patrick E., 31, told Bild: “Jan actually has to swallow pills so that he doesn’t get horny.”

Patrick E. told Bild that agreeing to be medicated was one of the requirements for Pflur to be released from the psychiatric ward.

But he said: “But he doesn’t take them because, according to him, it would cost money. He was also not allowed to drink alcohol. I think because of the sinking inhibition threshold.

“When I asked him about the girls he was harassing, he always said, ‘I didn’t do anything.”

Patrick E. added: “Jan will be a danger for life. He should be locked away forever. Jan should never have come out of the psychiatric ward, I said that back then.”

He also told the newspaper: “Even my father used to say ‘Someone like that doesn’t belong in humanity’.

“After Jan was released from the psychiatric ward, even his family did not leave him alone with his siblings’ children. When Jan looked after her, someone always had to be there.”

About 100 police officers, helicopters and sniffer dogs took part in a search for Ayleen after she went missing from her home in the village of Gottenheim, in the neighbouring state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, in south-western Germany, near the French border.

Her body was found in Teufelssee lake on Friday, 29th July, some 300 kilometres (186 miles) away.

Jan-Heiko Pflur was seized and questioned in Kassel a day before Ayleen’s body was found.

Her clothes were reportedly found in the suspect’s apartment.