People have different dreams from birth. Someone wants to fly to the moon, someone wants to learn to draw, someone wants to heal people. But a resident of the suburb of Cologne, Peter Kurten, neither more nor less wanted to become "the most famous criminal in history." And he almost succeeded …
Dusseldorf maniac Peter Kürten, after his arrest, was charged with nine murders and seven attempted murders. But the offender did not agree with this accusation - he claimed that 69 victims had the blood on his conscience. And nothing less.
It is likely that Peter knew more about his atrocities than others.
Violence is my credo
Peter Kürten was born in May 1883 in the suburb of Cologne - Mülheim. The family was not distinguished by strong moral foundations. So, the father suffered from a chronic form of alcoholism, had a craving for sexual perversion, and raped his wife and his own daughters. All children (and Peter was the eldest) were constantly punished by their parents.
My father was soon arrested and sentenced to three years. And the mother got married a second time and did not take care of the children. These events traumatized the child's psyche, and he followed in his father's footsteps - Peter began to rape his younger sisters. In addition, the boy ran away from home from an early age. He later claimed to have committed his first murder at the age of nine - drowning two of his young friends while riding a raft on the Rhine. But the court recognized the fact of death from an accident, although young Peter himself confessed to committing a double murder.
By the age of 12, Peter had completely degraded as a person, and after a year or two he committed acts of bestiality with pigs, sheep, goats. He felt particular pleasure when he killed animals in the process of intercourse with them. In addition, he led a riotous lifestyle, stealing, robbing women, setting fire to houses and sheds - this gave him pleasure. At the age of 15, Peter, as an experienced thief, was arrested and sent to an adult prison. Several times raped by inmates, he did not stop desperately resisting. The constant conflicts associated with him caused the anger of the prison administration. He was transferred away from sin to solitary confinement. In total, over 48 years of his life, Kurten spent more than half of the time behind bars. After being released from prison at the age of 17, he began to carry out his black deeds - from the terrible torture and killing of animals and birds, Peter went on to attack people.
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The first "swallows"
It was in 1900 that Peter committed his first "real" murder (he did not consider the drowning of his comrades to be real). In Düsseldorf's Grafenberg park, he robbed and killed a young woman, and buried the body. The corpse was never found. In the same year, Peter was again arrested for major theft and sentenced to two years in prison.
Having freed himself, he continued to do his former business. And in 1905, Kyurten was sentenced to seven years in prison. In a prison hospital, he poisoned several prisoners, and in 1912, when he was released, he raped a girl. At the same time, in his own words, he realized that without murders he does not get the whole gamut of pleasure.
He committed his first (proven in court) murder on May 25, 1913. The maniac entered the house, where he raped and then cut the throat of 10-year-old girl Christine Klein. For this murder he was sentenced to eight years.
In 1921, Peter was released, moved to Altenburg, where he married, threatening the girl with murder if he refused to become his wife. Four years later, the sadistic maniac returned to Dusseldorf, where he committed a series of crimes. He was again caught and sentenced to several years in prison.
In the period from 1925 to 1929, 46 very similar murders were recorded in this German city. But it is still unknown how many of them were performed by Peter Kürten.
A series of terrible bloody crimes began on February 3, 1929 in the southern part of Dusseldorf. There a maniac attacked a woman. She stubbornly resisted, received 24 stab wounds, but survived.
The next victim was eight-year-old Rose Ohlinger - she was killed by 13 stabs in the chest and back. The criminal doused Rose's body with gasoline and set it on fire. And already on the 14th the murderer attacked the 45-year-old locksmith Shir, pushing the man off the platform. He strangled the victim and then stabbed him 20 times.
The inhabitants of the city were scared, everyone was discussing the bloody events. The police were not idle, they detained the suspicious. One of them turned out to be a certain Strausberg. He confessed to committing some crimes, although later it turned out that this was not true. Strausberg turned out to be schizophrenic and was soon sent to a psychiatric hospital. In late August, three adult men were attacked in the western part of the city. They tried to stab them right in the heart. Fortunately, the attempt failed. And on the evening of August 23, two half-sisters were attacked: 14-year-old Louise Lenzen and five-year-old Gertrude Hamacher (it was she who was found under a tree with her throat cut).
At the end of September of the same year, Ida Reuters was raped. The offender finished off the victim with a cobblestone.
Soon, he brutally dealt with Elizabeth Dorrier - he killed the victim with a stone, and finished off with a hammer.
On October 25, the "Düsseldorf murderer" carried out two attacks on young women - Muhrer and Wanders. He beat them to death with a hammer. The entire city press was full of gloomy forecasts, and at that time the police did not even have a version yet.
And on November 7, Kurten killed five-year-old Gertrude Albermann, first strangling her with his scarf, and then inflicting 36 wounds on her with scissors. The completely unrelated victims and methods of murder led the police to the version that three or four maniacs were operating in the city. Many people fell under suspicion.
The city is dominated by a maniac
The police did their best to track down the killer. They interrogated about 1000 suspects, checked hundreds of versions, but it turned out to be very difficult to catch the maniac. Kurten confused the tracks. He even changed the murder weapons regularly. He used an ax, then a knife, then a brass knuckle, then a hammer, then clubs or cobblestones, sometimes strangled the victim with his hands. And the victims he chose were representatives of different sex, age and social groups. He killed the elderly, young, men, women, young children.
In addition, Kurten was not only a sadistic maniac, but also a vampire, since he drank the blood of his victims and at the same time experienced an orgasm.
It is not known how many more people would have died at the hands of a maniac if he had not decided to stop himself. Peter asked his wife to go to the police and testify against him.
On May 24, 1930, Kurten was arrested - he was taken to the church of St. Rochus. When four policemen surrounded him, he held out his hands to them and, smiling, said: "You have no need to be afraid of me!"
The monster was brought to trial in April 1931. During the trial, the secretary, listening to his stories, fainted twice. She even had to be replaced. At the trial, the offender said that the main motive for his actions was the desire to strike a blow to society. According to the maniac, his unfair device forced people like him to take up a knife and a hammer.
The killer maniac was guillotined on July 2, 1931 in the courtyard of the Klingelputz prison. He never repented of anything. Scientists have tried to study the disorders of the brain activity of Kurten, wanting to explain his behavior and personality. The head of the criminal was dismembered and mummified on display at the Wisconsin Dells Museum.
So Peter Kürten eventually gained worldwide fame. Even if not himself, then his head.
Victor VOLYNSKY