The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (53 page)

into a nearby field one afternoon, he promised to On April 23, 1962, 13-year-old Petra Griese was

“show her a rabbit” but produced obscene photos raped and killed at Rees, near Walsum, both buttocks instead, hoping the child might become sexually sliced off along with her left forearm and hand. The aroused. Instead, she was horrified, bolting for safety as Hunter was still stalking Walsum on June 4 when 13-Kroll made a grab for her throat, and he fled Grafenhausen the same day before police could begin asking troublesome questions.

On July 12, 1969, Kroll invaded the home of 61-year-old Maria Hettgen in Hueckeswagen, strangling her to death and raping her corpse in the front hall.

Reverting to children on May 21, 1970, he waylaid 13-year-old Jutta Ranh in Breitscheid, discarding her strangled body after he had satisfied his lust. In 1976, 10-year-old Karin Toepfer was raped and strangled on her way to school, in Dinslaken Voerde.

Kroll’s arrogance defeated him in July 1976 when he claimed his next victim in his own neighborhood of Laar, a Duisburg suburb. Four-year-old Marion Ketter was reported missing from a nearby playground, and police were asking questions door-to-door when they heard a curious story from one of Kroll’s neighbors.

According to their witness, Kroll had warned them that the upstairs toilet in their block of flats was clogged

“with guts.” A plumber quickly verified the statement, flushing a child’s lungs and other organs out of the pipe, and detectives went calling on Kroll. In his apartment they discovered plastic bags of human flesh stored in the freezer; on the stove, a tiny hand was boiling in a pot with carrots and potatoes.

Convinced that they had bagged the Hunter, officers were stunned by Kroll’s long-running litany of rape and murder. He remembered 14 victims, but he really couldn’t say if there were more, a circumstance that left detectives free to speculate upon his final body count.

With CAPITAL PUNISHMENT abolished in Germany after World War II, Kroll received the maximum possible Joachim Kroll, the “Ruhr Hunter” (Author’s collection) punishment of life in prison.

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KURTEN, Peter

KURTEN, Peter

Born in Koln-Mulheim, Germany, in 1883, Peter

Kurten was the product of a violent, abusive childhood.

Thirteen members of his family existed in a single room, the atmosphere heavily charged with sexual tension. Kurten’s father, a brutal alcoholic, frequently compelled his wife to strip for sex in front of the assembled children, and he later went to prison for attempting to rape his own daughter. Peter likewise molested his sisters on occasion, and he was further influenced by a sadistic dogcatcher who lived in the same building. As a child, Kurten frequently watched the man torture his dogs and was instructed in the art of masturbating animals for sport.

Kurten committed his first murders at age nine when he pushed a playmate from a raft on the banks of the Rhine. A second boy jumped in to help the first, and Kurten managed to push them both under the raft, where they drowned. As in the case of CARROLL

EDWARD COLE a half-century later, these youthful murders were dismissed by negligent authorities as “accidental” deaths.

About age 12, Kurten moved with his family to Dusseldorf. Already twisted in his view of sexuality, he masturbated compulsively, attempting intercourse with his sisters and various schoolgirls. From age 13 he also practiced bestiality with sheep, pigs, and goats, deriving Peter Kurten, the “Vampire of Dusseldorf” (Author’s collection) special satisfaction when he stabbed sheep to death during intercourse.

In his early teens Kurten ran away from home to live in hopes that sleeping tramps might be burned alive.

as a nomadic robber, choosing girls and women as his Sentenced to seven years on a theft charge in 1905, prey. Back home in Dusseldorf at age 16, he briefly Kurten later claimed to have poisoned several inmates worked as an apprentice molder, but his master proved in the prison hospital. On release in 1912, he raped a abusive, and Kurten absconded with cash from the till, servant girl and shortly after that was found accosting settling in Coblenz with a prostitute who thrived on women in a local restaurant. A waiter tried to intervene violence and perversion. Kurten logged his first arrest in and Kurten drove him off with pistol fire, earning Coblenz, one of 17 indictments that would land him in another year in prison for his trouble.

jail for a total of 27 years over the course of his life.

On May 25, 1913, Kurten broke into a pub in Koln-Released in 1899, he learned his parents had divorced Mulheim while the owners were away. Creeping up to and Kurten promptly moved in with another masochis-their quarters, he found their 13-year-old daughter, tic hooker twice his age.

Christine Klein, asleep in bed. He cut her throat and Kurten claimed his first adult murder in November raped her with his fingers, dropping a handkerchief 1899, strangling a girl during sex in the Grafenberger with his initials at the scene, but luck was with him.

Wald outside Dusseldorf, but no body was found and The victim’s father, Peter Klein, had recently quarreled his victim may have survived. He was jailed twice for with his brother Otto, the latter threatening to do fraud in 1900, then received another two years for something Klein “would remember all his life.” Otto attempting to shoot a girl with a rifle. Theft charges Klein was indicted and tried for the murder, finally kept him behind bars until 1904, where he occupied his cleared for lack of evidence, while Kurten followed the time with fantasies of violent sex and vengeance on proceedings with amusement.

society.

Stepping up his schedule, Kurten found another Drafted by the military on release from prison, sleeping victim but was frightened off by members of Kurten soon deserted. He had started setting fires by her family. In separate incidents he struck a man and that time, drawing sensual excitement from the flames.

woman with a hatchet, reaching climax at the sight of His targets normally were barns and hayricks, torched blood. He also torched another haystack and attempted
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KURTEN, Peter

strangulation of two women, prior to drawing eight attacks in Dusseldorf, but all survived. On August 24, more years in jail on unrelated charges.

two children—five-year-old Gertrude Hamacher and Freed in 1921, he moved to Altenburg, informing 14-year-old Louise Lenzen—were found dead near their new acquaintances that he had been a prisoner of war homes, both strangled, with their throats cut. One day in Russia. Kurten met his future wife in Altenburg, a later, Gertrude Schulte was accosted on her way to see woman who had served five years in jail for shooting the fair, at Neuss. Confronted with a crude demand for her fiancé. She initially rejected his proposals but agreed sex, she said that she would rather die. “Well, die, to marry Kurten when he threatened her with murder.

then,” Kurten answered, stabbing Gertrude several Settling down to a peculiar version of domestic bliss, times before he fled. She lived and gave police a fair Kurten endured a “normal” life for several years before description of her would-be rapist, but detectives still he had a relapse and was charged with sexually assault-rejected the suggestion of a single man behind their ing servant girls on two occasions. Moving back to Dus-recent crime wave.

seldorf in 1925, he was delighted by a blood-red sunset Kurten tried to strangle three more women in Sep-on the night of his arrival. Kurten took it as a sign. He tember, hurling one victim into the river for good mea-was preparing to launch his final reign of terror.

sure, but all survived. Ida Reuter was less fortunate, her Based upon his subsequent confessions, Kurten bore skull crushed with a hammer near the end of the month.

responsibility, by 1928, in four attempted strangula-Another hammer victim, Elizabeth Dirries, was killed at tions (all of women) and a rash of fires that claimed two Grafenbery on October 12. On the 25th, two more homes and 15 other targets. Still, he did not hit his women were bludgeoned in separate attacks, but both stride until the early weeks of 1929. On February 3 he recovered from their wounds.

stabbed a woman 24 times and left her lying in the Five-year-old Gertrude Alberman was reported miss-street, but she recovered after months of care. Ten days ing in Dusseldorf on November 7, her body recovered later, Kurten scored his first fatality of the new cam-two days later after Kurten sent directions to a local paign, stabbing a mechanic 20 times at Flingern.

newspaper. The child had been strangled, then stabbed On March 9, eight-year-old Rose Ohliger was found 36 times. Following Kurten’s instructions, police also at a construction site in Dusseldorf; she had been raped, unearthed the remains of Maria Hahn, stabbed 20

stabbed 13 times, and efforts had been made to burn times, raped after death, and buried in mid-August.

the corpse with paraffin. Comparing notes, detectives Kurten’s luck ran out on May 14, 1930, when he found their last three victims had been marked by stab picked up Maria Budlick and took her home for a meal, wounds to the temples, but the choice of victims—first thereafter strolling through the woods with sex and a woman, then a man, and now a child—apparently strangulation on his mind. Maria fought him off, and ruled out a pattern in the case.

Kurten unaccountably released her after she assured him In April 1929, police picked up a simple-minded that she had forgotten his address. Police were sum-transient for assaulting local women, but they found no moned and, in custody, their suspect launched into a evidence connecting him with homicide, and he was marathon confession that would send him to his death.

sent to an asylum. Kurten rested from his labors, mean-Kurten’s trial opened on April 13, 1931, and ended while, dallying with servant girls at home and “play-eight days later. Jurors needed only 90 minutes to con-fully” attempting strangulation after sex. Returning vict him on nine counts of murder, sternly rejecting with a vengeance during August, Kurten later claimed Kurten’s INSANITY DEFENSE. Sentenced to death by that he had choked a woman by the name of “Ann”

beheading, Kurten informed a psychiatrist that his and dumped her body in the river, but no trace of her greatest thrill of all time would be hearing the blood was ever found. Before the month was out, three other spurt from his own severed neck. He went to the guillo-victims—one a man—were stabbed in hit-and-run

tine, all smiles, on July 2, 1931.

152

L

LAKE, Leonard, and NG, Charles Chitat

was caught stealing from classmates. A subsequent A native of San Francisco, Leonard Lake was born July shoplifting arrest drove him to California, where he 20, 1946. His mother sought to teach him pride in the joined the Marine Corps after a hit-and-run incident, human body by encouraging Lake to photograph nude falsely listing his birthplace as Bloomington, Indiana.

girls, including his sisters and cousins, but the “pride”

An expert martial artist and self-styled “ninja warrior,”

soon developed into a precocious obsession with Ng talked incessantly of violence to his fellow leather-pornography. In adolescence, Lake extorted sexual necks. In October 1979, he led two accomplices in favors from his sisters, in return for protection from the stealing $11,000 worth of automatic weapons from a violent outbursts of a younger brother, Donald. By his marine arsenal in Hawaii and found himself under teens, Leonard displayed a fascination with the concept arrest. During psychiatric evaluation, Ng boasted of of collecting “slaves.” Lake joined the Marine Corps in

“assassinating” someone in California, but he never got 1966 and served a noncombatant tour in Vietnam, as a around to naming the victim. He escaped from custody radar operator. He also underwent two years of psychi-before trial and was listed as a deserter when he atric therapy at Camp Pendleton for unspecified mental answered Lake’s ad in a war gamer’s magazine, in 1981.

problems before his ultimate discharge in 1971.

The two men hit it off at once, in spite of Lake’s Back in civilian life, Lake moved to San Jose and got racism, which seemed to encompass only African Amer-married, developing a local reputation as a gun buff, icans and Hispanics. They began collecting automatic

“survivalist,” and sex freak. His favorite high was film-weapons from illegal sources, and a team of federal ing bondage scenes, including female partners other agents raided the Ukiah ranch in April 1982, arresting than his wife, and he was soon divorced. In 1980, Lake Lake and Ng for firearms violations. Released on was charged with grand theft after looting building $6,000 bond, Lake promptly went into hiding, using a materials from a construction site, but he got off easy variety of pseudonyms as he drifted around northern with one year’s probation. Married a second time in California. His second wife divorced him after the August 1981, he moved with his wife to a communal arrest, but they remained on friendly terms. As a fugi-ranch at Ukiah, California, where a “Renaissance”