Odinism

 

The Odinic Rite (OR) is a Reconstructionist religious organization named after the god Odin. It conceives itself as a "folkish" Heathen movement concerned with Germanic paganism, mythology, folklore, and runes. As a white supremacist organization, the Odinic Rite limits membership to white individuals, holding the belief in Heathenry as the ancestral religion of the Indo-European race.

Background

The Odinic Rite refers to their form of Heathenry as "Odinism", a term favored among Heathen white supremacists. In 1841, the term was used by the Scottish writer, historian, and philosopher, Thomas Carlyle in his book, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & the Heroic in History: "Odinism was Valor; Christianism was humility, a nobler kind of Valor." It was also used by Orestes Brownson in his 1848 Letter to Protestants.

Odinic Rite bent-hooks swastika

The term was re-introduced in the late 1930s by Alexander Rud Mills, an Australian fascist. Having formulated "his unique blend" of Ariosophy, Mills drew heavily on the writings of pioneering Austrian Ariosophist and Wotanist Guido von List. Much of Mills' ideology focused on what he conceived as the "British race", a group who he believed also inhabited not only Britain but other parts of the world colonized by the British Empire. That concept was particularly problematic given the ethnically and linguistically diverse nature of the British population during the early 20th century. Mills believed that while Christianity was alien to the "British race", Odinism was 'native' and thus could be better understood by them. He expressed the view that "our racial ideas and traditions (not those of others) are our best guide to health and national strength". He was critical of Christianity, believing it to be "unnatural" because – in his view – it encouraged the breaking down of racial barriers. In Mills' theology, the Norse gods were symbols of the divine rather than actual anthropomorphic entities, and he believed that each racial group had its symbolic system for interpreting and understanding divinity. For Mills, Odin represented an archetypal father figure, with other deities from Norse mythology, such as Thor and Frigg, having minor roles.

History

In 1973 John Gibbs-Bailey (known as "Hoskuld") and John Yeowell (known as "Stubba", 1918–2010) founded the Committee for the Restoration of the Odinic Rite or Odinist Committee in England. Yeowell had been a member of the British Union of Fascists in his youth and bodyguard to leader Oswald Mosley. In 1980 the organisation changed its name to The Odinic Rite after it was believed that it had gained enough significant interest in the restoration of the Odinic faith.

In 1989 Yeowell resigned as Director of the Odinic Rite's governing body, the Court of Gothar. The Court then unanimously elected Jeffrey Holley (known as "Heimgest") as its Director and he was officially installed in this position on 23 April 1989 at the White Horse Stone in Kent. He was professed by Freya Aswynn. Before his involvement with the Odinic Rite Heimgest had belonged to a small group known as the Heimdal League, a closed group that disbanded in the mid-1980s.

Beliefs

The Odinic Rite defines Odinism as the natural religion of the peoples of Northern Europe. It has been characterized as a white supremacist organization and describes itself as a "folkish" group, which it states centers on a stance that includes "racial preservation and promotion", and to "have as many healthy children as is practical". It asserts that "nationality is biological, not geographical", further stating that "It is hardly possible to overestimate the damage that the destruction of racial and national identity has caused, to both people and the environment."

They only allow white members and discourage mixed-race relationships, stating that while this was not a stance taken by heathens before Christianization; this is a necessary precaution in the modern age to maintain "racial integrity" and to prevent "crossed allegiances". The group further draws analogies between invasive species and immigrants, stating that the latter threaten the survival of the white population. It defines right and wrong as follows:

That which fulfills Nature, benefits the race as a servant of Nature, and benefits Odinism as a vehicle for the evolution of the race, is good; that which does not is bad. That which truly seeks and secures this good is right; that which does not is wrong.

The Odinic Rite encourages its members to live their lives according to the "Nine Noble Virtues" and the "Nine Charges". The list of noble virtues (Courage, Truth, Honour, Fidelity, Discipline, Hospitality, Self-Reliance, Industriousness, and Perseverance) is attributed to either John Yeowell (a.k.a. Stubba) or John Gibbs-Bailey (a.k.a. Hoskuld), members of Odinic Rite; alternatively to Stephen Flowers (writing as 'Edred Thorsson'), at the time member of the Asatru Free Assembly.

While the group nominally identifies as a religious organization that is not political, the worldviews held by the group have been identified as belonging to the extreme right based on their racial nationalism. It is noted, however, that this terminology wouldn't necessarily be used by members of the group.

National branches

The Odinic Rite expanded in the 1990s with national branches in Germany, France, and North America. The German chapter, Odinic Rite Deutschland (ORD), was formed in 1994. In its early history, the ORD was heavily influenced by Bernd Hicker who was its chairman for seven years. It collaborated with the group Yggdrasil-Kreis in the 1990s; this group professed a "European religion of nature" and sought to combine Germanic and Celtic paganism.

Due to concerns about connections between the British OR and far-right politics, expressed already in 1995 in the ORD's member magazine, as well as differing views of practice and organizing, the ORD was established as an independent organization in 2004. It changed its name to Verein für germanisches Heidentum (VfgH; lit. 'Association for Germanic paganism') in 2006.

In popular culture

In 1997 the Director of Gothar, Heimgest, chanted rune names on the Sol Invictus album The Blade.

Richard Kuklinkski

 

Richard Leonard Kuklinski (/kʊˈklɪnski/: April 11, 1935 – March 5, 2006), also known as the Iceman, was an American criminal and a convicted killer. He was engaged in criminal activities for most of his adult life; he ran a burglary ring and distributed pirated pornography. Kuklinski committed at least five murders between 1980 and 1984. Prosecutors described him as killing for profit. He was nicknamed the "Iceman" by authorities after they discovered that he had frozen the body of one of his victims in an attempt to disguise the time of death.

Kuklinski lived with his wife and children in the New Jersey suburb of Dumont. They knew him as a loving father and husband, although one who also had a violent temper. Kuklinski's family stated that they were unaware of his crimes. Kuklinski's modus operandi was to lure men to clandestine meetings with the promise of lucrative business deals then kill them and steal their money. He also killed two associates to prevent them from becoming informants. Eventually, Kuklinski came to the attention of law enforcement when an investigation into his burglary gang linked him to several murders since he was the last person to have seen five missing men alive. An 18-month-long undercover operation led to his arrest in December 1986. In 1988, he was convicted of four murders and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 2003, Kuklinski received an additional 30-year sentence after confessing to the 1980 murder of an NYPD detective.

After his murder convictions, Kuklinski gave interviews to writers, prosecutors, criminologists, and psychiatrists. He claimed to have murdered anywhere from 100 to 200 men, often in gruesome fashion. None of these additional murders have been corroborated. In 2020, ATF Special Agent Dominick Polifrone said, "I don't believe he killed 200 people. I don't believe he killed a hundred people. I'll go as high as 15, maybe." Kuklinski also claimed to have worked as a hitman for the Mafia. He said he participated in several famous Mafia killings, including the disappearance and presumed murder of Teamsters' president Jimmy Hoffa. Law enforcement and organized crime experts have expressed skepticism about Kuklinski's claimed Mafia ties. He was the subject of three HBO documentaries aired in 1992, 2001, and 2003; several biographies, and a 2012 feature film The Iceman.

Personal life

Richard Kuklinski was born on April 11, 1935, in his family's apartment on 4th Street in Jersey City, New Jersey, to Stanley Kuklinski (né Stanisław Kukliński; 1906–1977), a Polish immigrant from Karwacz, Masovian Voivodeship. His father worked as a brakeman on the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad. His mother was Anna Cecilia McNally (1911–1972) from Harsimus, a devoutly Catholic first-generation Irish American who worked in a meat-packing plant. He was the second of four children. According to Kuklinski, his father was a violent alcoholic who beat his children regularly and sometimes beat his wife. Stanley abandoned the family while Richard was still a child but came back periodically; usually drunk and his returns were often followed by more beatings for Richard. In 1940, Stanley's beatings caused the death of Kuklinski's older brother, seven-year-old Florian Kuklinski (1933–1941). Stanley and Anna hid the cause of the child's death from the authorities, saying he had fallen a flight of steps. Kuklinski's younger brother, Joseph Michael Kuklinski (1944–2003), was convicted in 1970 of raping 12-year-old Pamela Dial and murdering her by throwing her off the top of a five-story building. When asked about his brother's crimes, Kuklinski replied: "We come from the same father."

Anna reportedly was often abusive too. She would beat Richard with broom handles (sometimes breaking the handle on his body during the assaults) and other household objects. He recalled an incident during his pre-teen years when his mother attempted to kill his father with a kitchen knife. Anna was a zealous Catholic and believed that stern discipline should be accompanied by a strict religious upbringing so Richard was raised in the Roman Catholic Church and served as an altar boy. Kuklinski later rejected Catholicism and regarded his mother as a "cancer" who destroyed everything she touched. Kuklinski and his first wife, Linda, had two sons, Richard Jr. and David. While working for a trucking company, he met Barbara Pedrici, a secretary at the same firm. Richard and Linda divorced, and he married Barbara in September 1961 and had two daughters, Merrick and Christin, and a son, Dwayne.

Kuklinski's family and Dumont, New Jersey neighbors were unaware of his criminal activities and instead believed he was a successful businessman. Barbara described him as a "wholesale distributor" and said he employed an accountant. She did suspect that some of his income was from illegal activities due to their lifestyle and the large amounts of cash he often possessed. However, given his volatility, she never expressed these worries to him instead maintaining a "don't ask questions" philosophy when it came to his business life or associates. If Richard suddenly left the house in the middle of the night, Barbara would never ask where he was going. The Kuklinskis divorced in 1993 when Richard was in prison. Barbara said the divorce was for "money reasons." She continued to visit him in prison but only about once a year. On June 6, 1984, Kuklinski filed for personal bankruptcy listing debts of $160,697, and assets of only $300.

Personality

Barbara Kuklinkski described her husband's behavior as alternating between "good Richie" and "bad Richie." "Good Richie" was a hard-working provider and an affectionate father and loving husband, who enjoyed time with his family. Barbara remembered that when Merrick became seriously ill soon after she was born, Richard stayed up night after night to care for her.

In contrast, "bad Richie" – who would appear at irregular intervals, sometimes one day after another other times not appearing for months – was prone to unpredictable fits of rage, smashing furniture, and being violent to his family. During these periods, he was physically abusive to his wife, breaking her nose three times and once trying to run her over with his car. His abuse also caused her to have several miscarriages. He was emotionally abusive towards his children but according to Barbara, never laid a hand on them because she threatened to kill him if he did. Merrick said that he once killed her dog right in front of her to punish her for coming home late.

Barbara said that she had once told Richard she wanted to see other people. He responded by silently jabbing her from behind with a hunting knife so sharp she did not even feel the blade go in. He told her that she belonged to him and that if she tried to leave, he would kill her entire family. When Barbara began screaming at him in anger, he choked her into unconsciousness. Merrick also remembered several road rage incidents involving her father.

Criminal history

Early crimes

In the mid-1960s, Kuklinski worked at a Manhattan film lab. At the lab, he accessed master copies of popular films and made bootleg copies of Disney animated movies to sell. Kuklinski also discovered a lucrative market for tapes of pornographic films, making copies and distributing pornography a regular source of income. Through the pornography business, Kuklinski became associated with members of the Gambino crime family, including Roy DeMeo. He was once arrested for passing a bad check, the only crime he was charged with before his arrest for murder. He was photographed and fingerprinted but the charges were dropped after he agreed to pay back the money owed. Several of his known murder victims were men he met through trafficking pornography and drugs. He also headed a burglary group with associates Gary Smith, Barbara Deppner, Daniel Deppner, and Percy House.

George Malliband

On January 30, 1980, Kuklinski killed 42-year-old George Malliband during a meeting to sell him tapes. Malliband was reportedly carrying $27,000 at the time. Malliband's body was discovered a week later on February 5, 1980, after Kuklinski had placed it in a 55-gallon drum and left it near the Chemitex chemical plant in Jersey City. He cut the tendons of Malliband's leg to fit the corpse into the barrel. This was the first murder linked to Kuklinski. Malliband's brother told police officers that Malliband was meeting Kuklinski the day he disappeared. After a plea bargain, Kuklinski admitted to shooting Malliband five times, saying, "It was due to business."

Paul Hoffman

On April 29, 1982, Kuklinski met Paul Hoffman, a 51-year-old pharmacist who occasionally browsed "the store" in Paterson, New Jersey, a storefront with a back room holding a wide variety of stolen items for sale. Hoffman hoped to make a big profit by purchasing stolen Tagamet, a popular drug to treat peptic ulcers, to re-sell through his pharmacy. He believed Kuklinski could supply the drugs and badgered him to make a deal. Hoffman was last seen on his way to meet Kuklinski with $25,000 to buy prescription drugs from Kuklinski. After a plea bargain, Kuklinski admitted to killing Hoffman. He stated that he lured Hoffman into a rented garage and tried to shoot him, but the gun jammed. Instead, he beat Hoffman to death with a tire iron. He said he then stuffed the body into a 55-gallon drum and left it outside a motel in Little Ferry. One day, Kuklinski noticed that the drum had disappeared but never learned what had happened to it. Hoffman's body was never recovered.

Gary Smith

By the early 1980s, Kuklinski's burglary gang was under investigation by law enforcement. In December 1982, Percy House, a member of the gang, was arrested. House agreed to inform Kuklinski and was placed in protective custody. Warrants were also issued for the arrest of two other gang members, 37-year-old Gary Smith and Daniel Deppner. Kuklinski urged them to lay low and rented them a room at the York Motel in North Bergen, New Jersey. Smith left the motel to visit his daughter. Kuklinski feared that Smith after he discussed going straight, might become an informant.

According to the testimony of Barbara Deppner, Kuklinski, Daniel Deppner, and House (who was in jail at the time) decided that Smith had to be killed. Kuklinski fed Smith a hamburger laced with cyanide, but when this was slow to work, Daniel Deppner also strangled Smith with a lamp cord. According to forensic pathologist Michael Baden, Smith's death would probably have been attributed to something non-homicidal in nature, such as a drug overdose, if Kuklinski had relied solely on the poison. However, the ligature mark around Smith's neck, and the fact that the body had been deliberately hidden, proved to investigators that he was murdered.

After Barbara Deppner did not return with a car to move Smith's body, Kuklinski and Daniel Deppner placed it in between the mattress and box spring. Over the next four days, several patrons rented the room, and although they thought the smell in the room was odd, most of them did not think to look between the mattress and the box spring. Finally, on December 27, 1982, after more complaints from guests about the smell, the motel manager investigated and discovered the decomposing corpse.

Daniel Deppner

After Smith's murder, Kuklinski had 34-year-old Daniel Deppner move to an apartment in Bergenfield, New Jersey that belonged to Rich Patterson, then-fiancé of Kuklinski's daughter, Merrick. Patterson was away at the time, but Kuklinski possessed keys to the apartment. Between February and May 1983, Deppner was killed by Kuklinski. Investigators deduced he was murdered in Patterson's apartment after discovering a bloody carpet. Kuklinski enlisted Patterson's help to dispose of Deppner's body, telling Patterson the victim was a friend in trouble with law enforcement and someone had broken in and killed him over the weekend. He added it was best to dump the body to avoid trouble with the police, and then forget about the incident. Kuklinski made a mistake when he informed an associate that he had killed Deppner.

Deppner's corpse was discovered on May 14, 1983, after a bicyclist riding Clinton Road in a wooded area of West Milford, New Jersey, spotted the corpse surrounded by vultures. Kuklinski had wrapped the corpse inside green garbage bags before dumping it. Medical examiners listed Deppner's cause of death as "undetermined," although they noted pinkish spots on his skin, a possible sign of cyanide poisoning. Deppner was also strangled. Investigators guessed that Deppner had already been incapacitated, such as by poison, because the partially eaten corpse had no defensive wounds, and healthy adult men are rarely killed by strangulation.

The medical examiner found Deppner's stomach full of undigested food, indicating that he had died shortly after or during a meal. The beans that Deppner had eaten were burned so they reasoned the meal was home-cooked since most restaurants would not get away with serving burned food to customers. Investigating officers discovered the corpse just three miles (5 kilometers) away from the ranch where Kuklinski's family often went horseback riding. Deppner was the third Kuklinski associate to be found dead.

Louis Masgay

On September 25, 1983, the body of 50-year-old Louis Masgay was discovered near a town park near Clausland Mountain Road in Orangetown, New York, with a bullet hole in the back of his head. Masgay had disappeared over two years earlier, on July 1, 1981, the day he was to meet Kuklinski at a New Jersey diner to purchase a large quantity of blank videocassette recorder tapes, for which Masgay had $95,000 in his van. After another plea bargain, Kuklinski admitted to shooting Masgay. His body had been stored in a freezer, and then disposed of in the park fifteen months later.

However, Kuklinski did not thaw the corpse before he dumped it. He also wrapped it in plastic garbage bags, which kept it insulated and partially frozen. The Rockland County medical examiner found ice crystals inside the body on a warm September day. If the body had thawed before discovery, the medical examiner stated he probably would never have noticed Kuklinski's trickery. Investigators realized Masgay was wearing the clothes his wife and son said he was wearing the day he disappeared. The discovery that Kuklinski froze Masgay's corpse encouraged law enforcement officers to nickname him "Iceman", a nickname frequently used in headlines.

Additional victims

In various interviews, Kuklinski claimed to have murdered around 200 people. He alleged he used multiple ways to kill people, including a crossbow, ice picks, a bomb attached to a remote-controlled toy, firearms, grenades, as well as cyanide solution spray he considered to be his favorite. He said he committed his first murder at 14 and murdered homeless people for practice. In 2006, Paul Smith, a member of the task force involved in arresting Kuklinski – and later a supervisor of the organized crime division of the New Jersey Attorney General's office – said: "I checked every one of the murders Kuklinski said he committed, and not one was true." He added, "Authorities throughout the country could not corroborate one case based on the tidbits Kuklinski gave." In 2020, Dominick Polifrone said, "I don't believe he killed two hundred people. I don't believe he killed a hundred people. I'll go as high as 15, maybe."

Kuklinski also alleged he was a Mafia contract killer independently working for all the Five Families of New York City, as well as the DeCavalcante family of New Jersey. He claimed he carried out dozens of murders on behalf of Gambino family soldier Roy DeMeo. He said he was one of the murderers of Bonanno family boss Carmine Galante in July 1979, and Gambino family boss Paul Castellano in December 1985. For the Castellano murder, Kuklinski said he was personally recruited by John Gotti's ally Sammy Gravano, who instructed him to kill Castellano's driver and bodyguard, Thomas Bilotti. He told Philip Carlo he was hired by John Gotti to kidnap, torture, and murder John Favara, the man who accidentally hit and killed Gotti's 12-year-old son Frank with his car.

Kuklinski's claimed involvement in Mafia hits has been disputed by other authorities. According to Jerry Capeci, "[Philip Carlo] claims the Iceman killed Paul Castellano, Carmine Galante, and Jimmy Hoffa, along with Roy DeMeo and about 200 others. C'mon, do you believe that? I don't know anyone who believes that. No one." Capeci labeled Kuklinski "the Forrest Gump of mob hits". After he became a government witness in 1990, Sammy Gravano admitted to planning the murder of Castellano and Bilotti, but said the shooters were all members of John Gotti's crew and were chosen by Gotti; he did not mention Kuklinski. Anthony Bruno felt Kuklinski's participation in the killing of Castellano was "highly unlikely". Bruno noted that in 1986 Anthony Indelicato was convicted of Galante's murder and Kuklinski was not mentioned during the trial. Kuklinski biographer Philip Carlo also acknowledged that Kuklinski's claim to have been involved in Galante's murder was untrue. Former Colombo family capo Michael Franzese called Kuklinski a "pathological liar" and said, "I spent 25 years in that life, on the street. I never heard his name mentioned once. Not once."

Kuklinski claimed he dumped bodies in caves in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and fed a victim to rats in the caves. However, in 2013, the Philadelphia Inquirer noted the caves have had a lot of visitors since Kuklinski's time, and no human remains have been discovered. Local cave enthusiast Richard Kranzel also queried the idea of flesh-eating rats, saying, "The only rats I encountered in caves are 'cave rats,' and they are reclusive and shy creatures, and not fierce as Kuklinski claims." Law enforcement officers also doubt he stored a corpse for two years in a Mister Softee truck.

Robert Prongay

In interviews and documentaries, Kuklinski says he killed 38-year-old Robert Prongay, a mentor to him. Prongay was murdered on August 10, 1984, shot multiple times in the head, and was subsequently discovered in his Mister Softee ice cream truck in a garage he rented in North Bergen, New Jersey. Robbery was not considered a motive at the time. Prongay had been about to go on trial for blowing up the front door of his ex-wife's house. Kuklinski says that Prongay taught him to use cyanide and other methods to kill, and it was Prongay who told him to freeze the body of Masgay. However, Kuklinski says he killed Prongay after he threatened his family. Law enforcement officials have considered Kuklinski a prime suspect in the murder since 1986, but the director of the New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice said no charges were sought because Kuklinski had been convicted of other murders. In 1993, in response to his claims, Hudson County Prosecutor said new charges against Kuklinski were possible since the Prongay murder was still an open investigation, and they would assess whether there was enough evidence to prosecute him. Ultimately, no charges were brought against Kuklinski for the Prongay murder.

Roy DeMeo

Kuklinski claimed he killed 42-year-old Gambino crime family soldier Roy DeMeo in an interview for the 1993 book The Iceman: The True Story of a Cold-Blooded Killer by Anthony Bruno. He described DeMeo as a mentor of his, but after he fell behind on a loan to distribute pornography, he received a beating. The two later became business partners. Kuklinski says DeMeo taught him how murder for hire could be a way to make money. However, author Jerry Capeci, who has written extensively about DeMeo and the Mafia, doubts Kuklinski killed DeMeo or had close ties to the DeMeo crew. Most sources indicate DeMeo was killed by members of his crew, with no suggestion that Kuklinski was involved. Kuklinski is not mentioned in Capeci and Gene Mustain's book about the DeMeo crew, Murder Machine, or Albert DeMeo's account of his father's life in the mob, For the Sins of My Father. Philip Carlo, whose biography of Kuklinski includes the claim that he killed DeMeo, acknowledged in the postscript to a later edition that this claim was probably untrue.

Peter Calabro

In his 2001 HBO interview, Kuklinski confessed to killing 36-year-old NYPD auto crimes detective Peter Calabro, who was ambushed and shot dead by an unknown gunman in Saddle River, New Jersey on March 14, 1980. Calabro was rumored to have mob connections and was investigated for selling confidential information to the Gambino family. His wife Carmella had drowned under mysterious circumstances three years earlier, and members of her family believed Calabro was responsible. At the time, his murder was thought by law enforcement officials to be revenge either carried out or arranged by his deceased wife's relatives. Her brothers were regarded as "key suspects," but the crime remained unsolved.

The Bergen County prosecutor believed Kuklinski's confession to be a fabrication, but his successor decided to proceed with the case. In February 2003, Kuklinski was charged with Calabro's murder and received another sentence of thirty years. This was considered a waste because it was during multiple life sentences, and he would not be eligible for parole until he was over 100 years old. Describing the murder, Kuklinski said he parked his van on the side of a narrow road, forcing other drivers to slow to pass. He lay in a snowbank behind his van until Calabro came by at 2 a.m., then stepped out and shot him in the head with a sawed-off shotgun, decapitating Calabro. He stated he was unaware that Calabro was a police officer but said he probably would have murdered him anyway.

Kuklinski claimed he was paid to kill Calabro by Gambino crime family soldier Sammy Gravano, and that Gravano provided the murder weapon. Gravano, serving a twenty-year sentence in Arizona for drugs, was also indicted for the murder. Kuklinski was set to testify against him. Gravano denied any involvement in Calabro's death and rejected a plea bargain, under which, he would receive no additional jail time if he confessed to the crime and informed all his accomplices. The charges against Gravano were dropped after Kuklinski died in 2006.

Jimmy Hoffa

In his 2001 HBO interview, Secrets of a Mafia Hitman, Kuklinski said he knew who killed 62-year-old former Teamsters union president Jimmy Hoffa. Kuklinski did not claim any personal involvement in Hoffa's disappearance and presumed murder and did not identify any culprit. However, he later claimed he killed Hoffa. In his account, Kuklinski was part of a four-man kidnap team. They grabbed Hoffa in Detroit. While they were in the car, Kuklinski killed Hoffa by stabbing him with a large hunting knife. He said he drove Hoffa's corpse from Detroit to a New Jersey junkyard. It was placed in a drum, set on fire, and then buried in the junkyard. Later, fearing an accomplice might snitch, the drum was dug up, placed in the trunk of a car, compacted into a cube, and sold to Japan as scrap metal along with hundreds of other compacted cars.

Deputy Chief Bob Buccino, who worked on the Kuklinski case, said: "They took a body from Detroit, where they have one of the biggest lakes in the world, and drove it back to New Jersey? Come on." Buccino added: "We didn't believe a lot of things he said." Former FBI Special Agent Robert Garrity stated that Kuklinski's admission to killing Hoffa was "a hoax," and that Kuklinski was never a suspect in Hoffa's disappearance, adding: "I never heard of him." Anthony Bruno said he investigated Kuklinski's alleged involvement in Hoffa's disappearance but felt "[his] story didn't check out." He opined Kuklinski confessed to "add extra value to his brand", and omitted the story from his biography of Kuklinski.

Investigation and arrest

Kuklinski came to the attention of Pat Kane, an officer with the New Jersey State Police when an informant helped Kane connect him to a gang carrying out burglaries in northern New Jersey. Kane built a file on Kuklinski. Eventually, five unsolved homicides—Hoffman, Smith, Deppner, Masgay, and Malliband—were linked to Kuklinski because he was the last person to see each of them alive. A joint task force of law enforcement officials titled "Operation Iceman" was created between the New Jersey Attorney General's office and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) dedicated to arresting and convicting Kuklinski. The ATF was involved due to Kuklinski's firearm sales.

ATF Special Agent Dominick Polifrone went undercover for eighteen months to apprehend Kuklinski. Starting in 1985, Kane and Polifrone worked with Phil Solimene, a close long-time friend of Kuklinski, to get Polifrone close to Kuklinski. Posing as a Mafia-connected criminal named Dominic Provenzano; Polifrone purchased a handgun-muffler combination from Kuklinski. In recordings, Kuklinski discussed a corpse he kept in a freezer for two and a half years. He told Polifrone he preferred poison, saying, "Why be messy? You do it nice and calm." He asked Polifrone if he could supply him with pure cyanide. Polifrone told Kuklinski he wanted to hire him to murder a wealthy Jewish cocaine dealer, and recorded Kuklinski speaking in detail about how he would do it. Kuklinski was also recorded boasting he killed a man by putting cyanide on his hamburger, and of his plans to kill "a couple of rats" (Barbara Deppner and Percy House).

On December 17, 1986, Kuklinski met Polifrone to get cyanide for a planned murder, which was to be an attempt on an undercover police officer. After the recorded conversation with Polifrone, Kuklinski went for a walk. He tested Polifrone's purported cyanide on a stray dog, using a hamburger as bait, and saw it was not poison. Suspicious, Kuklinski decided not to go through with the planned murder and went home instead. He was arrested at a roadblock two hours later. Kuklinski's wife was charged with interfering with her husband's arrest. Officers discovered a firearm in the vehicle, and she was charged with possession of a firearm because she was a passenger.

Trial and incarceration

Prosecutors charged Kuklinski with five murder counts and six weapons violations, as well as attempted murder, robbery, and attempted robbery. Law enforcement officials said Kuklinski had large sums of money in Swiss bank accounts and a reservation on a flight to that country. Kuklinski was held on a $2 million bail bond, and required to surrender his passport. After the arrest, Kuklinski told reporters, "This is unwarranted, unnecessary. These guys watch too many movies." At a press conference, New Jersey state Attorney General W. Cary Edwards characterized the motive for the murders as "profit" and said, ″He set individuals up for business deals, they disappeared, and the money ended up in his hands.″

At trial, Kuklinski's former associates, including Percy House and Barbara Deppner, gave evidence against him, as did ATF Special Agent Polifrone. The case was prosecuted by Deputy Attorney General Robert Carrol, and Kuklinski was represented by a public defender. Kuklinski's lawyer argued Kuklinski had no history of violence, and only projected a "tough image," including his statements to ATF Special Agent Polifrone. The defense theorized Deppner was responsible for the murder of Smith, and there was no cause of death determined for Deppner. Additionally, he argued the testimony of House and Barbara Deppner was unreliable because they lied to law enforcement officials, and House received immunity from prosecution. In March 1988, jurors found Kuklinski guilty of murdering Smith and Deppner but found the deaths were not proven to be by Kuklinski's conduct so that he would not face the death penalty. He was sentenced to a minimum of 60 years in prison.

After the trial, Kuklinski pleaded guilty to killing Masgay and Malliband and was sentenced to an additional two life sentences to be served consecutively. State prosecutors explained he would spend the rest of his life in prison even if he successfully appealed his previous convictions. Kuklinski also confessed to killing Hoffman, but prosecutors decided not to go to trial, as they had a weak case and additional life sentences would not have made any difference to Kuklinski's prison term. As part of the plea bargains, the firearm charge against his wife and an unrelated marijuana possession charge against his son were dismissed. Kuklinski was ineligible for parole until 2046 when he would have been 111 years old. He was incarcerated at Trenton State Prison.

During his incarceration, Kuklinski granted interviews to prosecutors, psychiatrists, criminologists, and writers. Several television producers also spoke to Kuklinski about his criminal career, upbringing, and personal life. These talks culminated in three televised documentaries known as The Iceman Tapes, broadcast on HBO in 1992, 2001, and 2003. According to his daughter, Merrick Kuklinski, her mother convinced Richard to do the interviews and she was paid "handsomely" for them. In the last installment, The Iceman and the Psychiatrist, Kuklinski was interviewed by forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz in 2002. Dietz stated he believed Kuklinski suffered from antisocial personality disorder plus paranoid personality disorder. Writers Anthony Bruno and Philip Carlo wrote biographies of Kuklinski. Kuklinski's wife, Barbara, received a share of the profits from the Bruno book.

Death

In October 2005, after nearly eighteen years in prison, Kuklinski was diagnosed with Kawasaki disease. He was transferred to a secure wing at St. Francis Medical Center in Trenton, New Jersey. Although he had asked doctors to make sure they revived him if he developed cardiopulmonary arrest, his former wife Barbara had signed a "do not resuscitate" order. A week before his death, the hospital called Barbara to ask if she wished to rescind the instruction but she declined. Kuklinski died at age 70 on March 5, 2006. At the request of Kuklinski's family, forensic pathologist Michael Baden reviewed his autopsy report. Baden confirmed that Kuklinski died of cardiac arrest and had been suffering from heart disease and phlebitis.

Peter Kurten Part II

 

Investigation

By the late summer of 1929, the murders committed by the individual the press had dubbed "The Vampire of Düsseldorf" were receiving considerable national and international attention. Due to the sheer savagery of the murders, the diverse backgrounds of the victims, and the differing methods in which they had been assaulted and/or murdered, both the police and the press theorized the spate of assaults and murders were the work of more than one perpetrator. By the end of 1929, Düsseldorf police had received more than 13,000 letters from the public. With assistance from surrounding police forces, each lead was painstakingly pursued. As a result of this collective investigation into the killings, more than 9,000 individuals were interviewed, 2,650 other clues painstakingly pursued and a list of 900,000 different names was compiled upon an official potential suspect list.

Correspondence

Two days after the murder of Gertrude Albermann, a local communist newspaper received a map revealing the location of the grave of Maria Hahn. In this drawing, Kürten also revealed precisely where he had left Albermann's body (which had been found earlier that day), describing the exact position of her corpse, which he stated could be found face-down among bricks and rubble. An analysis of the handwriting revealed the author was the same individual who had anonymously informed police in a letter dated 14 October that he had killed Hahn and buried her body "at the edge of the woods". Each of the three letters Kürten had thus far sent to newspapers and police describing his exploits and threatening further assaults and murders were examined by a graphologist, who confirmed the same individual had written each letter, thus leading Ernst Gennat, chief inspector of the Berlin Police, to conclude that one man was responsible for most or all of the spate of assaults and murders.

1930

The murder of Gertrude Albermann proved to be Kürten's final fatal attack, although he did engage in a spate of non-fatal hammer attacks and attempted strangulations between February and May 1930, maiming ten victims in these assaults. All the victims survived and many were able to describe their attacker to the police.

On 14 May 1930, an unknown man approached a 20-year-old woman named Maria Budlick at Düsseldorf station. Discovering Budlick had traveled to Düsseldorf from Köln in search of lodgings and employment, he offered to direct her towards a local hostel. Budlick agreed to follow the man, although she became apprehensive when he attempted to lead her through a scarcely populated park. The pair began to argue, whereupon another man approached the two, asking whether Budlick was being pestered by her companion. When Budlick nodded, the man with whom she had been arguing simply walked away. The identity of the man who reportedly came to Budlick's aid was Peter Kürten.

Kürten invited the distressed young woman to his apartment on Mettmanner Straße to eat and drink before Budlick—correctly deducing the underlying motive for Kürten's hospitality—stated she was uninterested in engaging in sex with him. Kürten calmly agreed and offered to lead Budlick to a hotel, although he instead lured her into the Grafenburg Woods, where he seized her by the throat and attempted to strangle her as he raped her. When Budlick began to scream, Kürten released his grasp on her throat, before allowing her to leave.

Budlick did not report this assault to police, but described her ordeal in a letter to a friend, although she addressed the letter incorrectly. As such, the letter was opened at the post office by a clerk on 19 May. Upon reading the contents of the letter, this clerk forwarded the letter to the Düsseldorf police. This letter was read by Chief Inspector Gennat, who assumed there was a slim chance Budlick's assailant might be the Düsseldorf murderer. Gennat interviewed Budlick, who recounted her ordeal, further divulging one of the reasons Kürten had spared her was because she had falsely informed him she could not remember his address. She agreed to lead the police to Kürten's home, on Mettmanner Straße. When the landlady of the property let Budlick into the room of 71 Mettmanner Straße, Budlick confirmed to Gennat that this was the address of her assailant. The landlady confirmed to the chief inspector the tenant's name was Peter Kürten.

Arrest and confession

Although Kürten was not at home when Budlick and Gennat searched his property, he spotted the pair in the communal hallway and promptly left. Knowing that his identity was now known to the police and suspecting they may also have connected him to the crimes committed by the Vampire of Düsseldorf, Kürten confessed to his wife he had raped Budlick and that because of his previous convictions, he may receive fifteen years penal labour. With his wife's consent, he found lodgings in the Adlerstraße district of Düsseldorf, and did not return to his own home until 23 May. Upon returning home, Kürten confessed to his wife he was the Vampire of Düsseldorf. He urged his wife to collect the substantial reward offered for his capture. Auguste Kürten contacted the police the following day. In the information provided to detectives, Kürten's wife explained that although she had known her husband had been repeatedly imprisoned in the past, she was unaware of his culpability in any murders. She then added that her husband had confessed to her his culpability in the Düsseldorf murders and that he was willing to likewise confess to the police. Furthermore, he was to meet her outside St. Rochus church later that day. That afternoon, Kürten was arrested at gunpoint.

Kürten freely admitted his guilt in all the crimes police had attributed to the Vampire of Düsseldorf, and further confessed he had committed the unsolved murder of Christine Klein and the attempted murder of Gertrud Franken in 1913. In total, Kürten admitted to 68 crimes including nine murders and 31 attempted murders. He made no attempt to excuse his crimes but justified them on the basis of what he saw as the injustices he had endured throughout his life. Nonetheless, he was adamant he had not tortured any of his child victims. Kürten also admitted to both investigators and psychiatrists that the sight of his victim's blood was, on many occasions, sufficient to bring him to orgasm, and that, on occasion, if he experienced ejaculation in the act of strangling a woman, he would immediately become apologetic to his victim, proclaiming, "That's what love is all about". He further claimed to have drunk the blood from the throat of one victim, from the temple of another, and to have licked the blood from a third victim's hands. In the Hahn murder, he had drunk so much blood from the neck wound that he had vomited. Kürten also admitted to having decapitated a swan in the spring of 1930 in order that he could drink the blood from the animal's neck, achieving ejaculation in the process.

Psychological study

As Kürten awaited his trial, then later as he awaited his execution, he was extensively interviewed by Karl Berg. In these interviews, Kürten stated to Berg that his primary motive in committing any form of criminal activity was one of sexual pleasure, and that he had begun to associate sexual excitement with violent acts and the sight of blood via indulging in both day-dreams and masturbation fantasies — particularly when he had been isolated from human contact. The majority of his assaults and murders had been committed when his wife had been working evenings, and the number of stab or bludgeoning wounds Kürten inflicted upon each victim had varied depending upon the length of time it had taken him to achieve an orgasm. Furthermore, the sight of his victim's blood had been integral to his sexual stimulation. Kürten further elaborated to Berg that once he had committed an attack or murder, the feeling of tension he experienced before the commission of the crime would be superseded by one of relief.

In reference to the choice of weapon used in his attacks, Kürten stressed that although he had changed his method of attack to deceive investigators into believing they were seeking more than one perpetrator, the weapon he used was inconsequential to his ultimate objective of seeing his victim's blood. Elaborating, Kürten stated: "Whether I took a knife or a pair of scissors or a hammer in order to see blood was a matter of indifference to me or mere chance. Often after the hammer blows the bleeding victims moved and struggled, just as they did when they were throttled." Kürten further confided that although he had occasionally penetrated his female victims, he had only done so to feign the act of coitus as a motive for his crimes. He also confessed that many of his later strangulation victims had only survived his attacks because he had achieved an orgasm in the early throes of the assault.

However, Kürten contradicted these claims by proclaiming to both Berg and legal examiners that his primary motive in all his criminal activities was to both "strike back at [an] oppressive society" for what he considered the injustice of his being repeatedly incarcerated throughout his life, and as a form of revenge for the neglect and abuse he had endured as a child. These desires had fomented in his mind throughout the long periods he had been in solitary confinement for various forms of insubordination, and Kürten explained that he deliberately broke minor prison rules as a means of guaranteeing that he would be sentenced to solitary confinement in order that he could indulge in these psychosexual fantasies. To Berg and the legal examiners, Kürten did not deny that he had sexually molested his female victims, or to have stroked or digitally penetrated their genitals as he stabbed, slashed, strangled or bludgeoned their bodies, although throughout his trial Kürten consistently claimed the sexual assault of his victims was not his primary motive.

Both Berg and other psychologists concluded Kürten was not insane, was fully able to control his actions, and appreciated the criminality of his conduct. Each ruled Kürten was legally sane and competent to stand trial.

Trial

On 13 April 1931, Kürten stood trial in Düsseldorf. He was charged with nine counts of murder and seven of attempted murder, and was tried before Presiding Judge Rose. Kürten pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to each of the charges. Aside from when delivering testimony, Kürten would spend the duration of his trial surrounded by a heavily guarded shoulder-high iron cage specifically constructed to protect him from attack by the enraged relatives of his victims, and his feet were shackled whenever he was inside this cage.

Proceedings began with the prosecution formally reciting each of the charges against Kürten before they recited the formal confession he had provided to police following his arrest. When then asked by the presiding judge to describe why he had continued to commit acts of arson throughout 1929 and 1930, Kürten explained: "When my desire for injuring people awoke, the love of setting fire to things awoke as well. The sight of the flames excited me, but above all, it was the excitement of the attempts to extinguish the fire and the agitation of those who saw their property being destroyed."

"I have none. Never have I felt any misgiving in my soul; never did I think to myself that what I did was bad, even though human society condemns it. My blood and the blood of my victims must be on the heads of my torturers ... The punishments I have suffered have destroyed all my feelings as a human being. That was why I had no pity for my victims."

Peter Kürten, responding to the presiding judge's question as to whether he possessed a conscience at his trial, 1931

Having first claimed that his initial confession had been simply to allow his wife to recoup the reward money offered for the capture of the Düsseldorf Vampire, several days into his trial, Kürten instructed his defence attorney that he wished to change his plea to one of guilty. Addressing the court, Kürten proclaimed: "I have no remorse. As to whether recollection of my deeds makes me feel ashamed, I will tell you [that] thinking back to all the details is not at all unpleasant. I rather enjoy it." Further pressed as to whether he considered himself to possess a conscience, Kürten stated he did not. Nonetheless, when pressed as to his motivation in confessing, Kürten reiterated: "Why don't you understand that I am fond of my wife, and that I am still fond of her? I have done many wrongs; have been unfaithful over and over again. My wife has never done any wrong. Even when she heard of the many prison sentences I have served, she said: 'I won't let you down; otherwise you'll be lost altogether.' I wanted to fix for my wife a carefree old age."

To counteract Kürten's insanity defence, the prosecution introduced five eminent doctors and psychiatrists to testify; each testified that Kürten was legally sane and had been in control of his actions and impulses at all times. Typical of the testimony delivered by these experts was that of Franz Sioli [de], who testified as to Kürten's motivation in his crimes being the desire to achieve the sexual gratification he demanded, and that this satisfaction could only be achieved by acts of brutality, violence and Kürten's knowledge of the pain and misery his actions caused to others. Berg testified that Kürten's motive in committing murder and attempted murder was 90 per cent sadism, and 10 per cent revenge relating to his perceived sense of injustice for both the neglect and abuse he had endured both as a child and the discipline he endured while incarcerated. Moreover, Berg stated that despite Kürten's admission to having embraced and digitally penetrated the corpse of Maria Hahn, and to have spontaneously ejaculated while holding the soil covering the coffin of Christine Klein, his conclusion was that Kürten was not a necrophiliac.

Further evidence of Kürten's awareness was referenced by the premeditated nature of his crimes; his ability to abandon an attack if he sensed a risk of being disturbed; and his acute memory of both his crimes and their chronological detail. Also disclosed in the first week of the trial were the deaths of the two boys whom Kürten had confessed to drowning at the age of nine, with the prosecution suggesting these deaths indicated Kürten had displayed a homicidal propensity dating much earlier than 1913. However, this view was disputed by medical witnesses, who suggested that although indicative of inherent depravity, these two deaths should not be compared to Kürten's later murders as to a child, the death of a friend can be seen as nothing more than an inconsequential passing.

Upon cross-examination, Kürten's defence attorney, Alex Wehner did challenge these experts' conclusions, arguing the sheer range of perversions his client had engaged in was tantamount to insanity. However, each doctor and psychiatrist remained adamant as to Kürten being legally sane and responsible for his actions.

In a further attempt to discredit the validity of many of the charges recited at the opening stages of the trial, Wehner also questioned whether the occasional physical inaccuracies of the crimes described in his client's confession equated to Kürten having fabricated at least some of the crimes, thus supporting his contention Kürten possessed a diseased mind. In response, Berg conceded that sections of Kürten's confessions were false, but argued that the knowledge he possessed of the murder scenes and the wounds inflicted upon the victims left him in no doubt as to his guilt, and that the minor embellishments in his confessions could be attributed to Kürten's narcissistic personality.

Conviction

The trial lasted ten days. On 22 April, the jury retired to consider their verdict. They deliberated for under two hours before reaching their verdict: Kürten was found guilty and sentenced to death on nine counts of murder. He was also found guilty of seven counts of attempted murder. Kürten displayed no emotion as the sentence was passed, although in his final address to the court, he stated that he now saw his crimes as being "so ghastly that [he did] not want to make any sort of excuse for them".

Kürten did not lodge an appeal of his conviction, although he submitted a petition for pardon to the Minister of Justice, who was a known opponent of capital punishment. The petition was formally rejected on 1 July. Kürten remained composed upon receipt of this news, and asked for permission to see his confessor, to write letters of apology to the relatives of his victims, and a final farewell letter to his wife. All of these requests were granted.

Execution

On the evening of 1 July 1931, Kürten received his last meal. He ordered Wiener schnitzel, a bottle of white wine, and fried potatoes. Kürten ate the entire meal before requesting a second helping. The prison staff decided to grant his request.

At 06:00 on 2 July, Kürten was beheaded via guillotine in the grounds of Klingelputz Prison, Cologne. His executioner was Carl Gröpler. He walked unassisted to the guillotine, flanked by the prison psychiatrist and a priest.

Shortly before his head was placed on the guillotine, Kürten turned to the prison psychiatrist and asked the question: "Tell me... after my head is chopped off, will I still be able to hear, at least for a moment, the sound of my own blood gushing from the stump of my neck? That would be the pleasure to end all pleasures." When asked whether he had any last words to say, Kürten simply smiled and replied, "No".

Aftermath

Following Kürten's 1931 execution, his head was bisected and mummified; the brain was removed and subjected to forensic analysis in an attempt to explain his personality and behaviour. The examinations of Kürten's brain revealed no abnormalities. The autopsy conducted upon Kürten's body revealed that, aside from his having an enlarged thymus gland, Kürten had not been suffering any physical abnormality.

The interviews Kürten granted to Karl Berg in 1930 and 1931 were the first psychological study of a sexual serial killer. The interviews formed the basis of Berg's book, The Sadist.

Shortly after the Second World War, Kürten's head was taken to the United States. It is currently on display at the Ripley's Believe It or Not! Museum in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin.

Media

Film

The first film to draw inspiration from the murders committed by Peter Kürten, M, was released in May 1931. Directed by Fritz Lang, M starred Peter Lorre as a fictional child killer named Hans Beckert. In addition to drawing inspiration from the case of Peter Kürten, M was also inspired by the then-recent and notorious crimes of Fritz Haarmann and Carl Großmann. An American remake of M was released in March 1951. Directly inspired by the 1931 film of the same name, this remake was directed by Joseph Losey, and stars David Wayne as the child killer, renamed Martin Harrow.

The 1965 thriller Le Vampire de Düsseldorf (The Vampire of Düsseldorf) is based on the case of Peter Kürten. Directed by Robert Hossein (who also cast himself as Peter Kürten), the film also stars Marie-France Pisier.

The 2009 film Normal is based on the crimes of Peter Kürten. Directed by Julius Ševčík, Normal is a film adaptation of playwright Anthony Neilson's Normal: The Düsseldorf Ripper. The film stars Milan Kňažko as Kürten, and is portrayed from the point of view of his defense lawyer.

Books

Berg, Karl (1938) The Sadist ISBN 978-9-333-35227-7

Berg, Karl; Godwin, George (1937) Monsters of Weimar: Kürten, the Vampire of Düsseldorf ISBN 1-897743-10-6

Cawthorne, Nigel; Tibballs, Geoffrey (1993) Killers: The Ruthless Exponents of Murder ISBN 0-7522-0850-0

Elder, Sace (2010) Murder Scenes: Normality, Deviance, and Criminal Violence in Weimar Berlin ISBN 978-0-472-11724-6

Godwin, George (1938) Peter Kürten: A Study in Sadism ASIN = B00191ENHA

Lane, Brian; Gregg, Wilfred (1992) The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers ISBN 978-0-747-23731-0

Nash, Jay Robert (2004) The Great Pictorial History of World Crime, Volume 2 ISBN 978-1-461-71215-2

Swinney, C.L. (2016) Monster: The True Story of Serial Killer Peter Kürten ISBN 978-1-987-90215-0

Wilson, Colin; Wilson, Damon (2006) The World's Most Evil Murderers: Real-Life Stories of Infamous Killers ISBN 978-1-405-48828-0

Wilson, Colin; Wilson, Damon; Wilson, Rowan (1993) The Giant Book of World Famous Murders ISBN 978-0-752-50122-2

Wynn, Douglas (1996) On Trial for Murder ISBN 978-0-3303-3947-6

Theater

Normal: The Düsseldorf Ripper is a play focusing on the case of Peter Kürten. Scripted by Anthony Neilson, the play was first performed at Edinburgh's Pleasance Theater in August 1991. Normal: The Düsseldorf Ripper has since become the inspiration for one film.

Television

The BBC commissioned a documentary on the murders committed by Peter Kürten. This documentary, Profiles of the Criminal Mind, largely focuses on the forensic profiling of Kürten's crimes, and was first broadcast in 2001.

Peter Kurten Part I

 

Peter Kürten (German: [ˈpeːtɐ ˈkʏʁtn̩]; 26 May 1883 – 2 July 1931) was a German serial killer, known as The Vampire of Düsseldorf and the Düsseldorf Monster, who committed a series of murders and sexual assaults between February and November 1929 in the city of Düsseldorf. In the years before these assaults and murders, Kürten had amassed a lengthy criminal record for offenses including arson and attempted murder. He also confessed to the 1913 murder of a nine-year-old girl in Mülheim am Rhein and the attempted murder of a 17-year-old girl in Düsseldorf.

Described by Karl Berg [de] as "the king of the sexual perverts", Kürten was found guilty of nine counts of murder and seven counts of attempted murder for which he was sentenced to death by beheading in April 1931. He was executed via guillotine in July 1931, at age 48.

Kürten became known as the "Vampire of Düsseldorf" because he occasionally made attempts to drink the blood from his victims' wounds; and the "Düsseldorf Monster" both because the majority of his murders were committed in and around the city of Düsseldorf, and due to the savagery he inflicted upon his victims' bodies.

Early life

Childhood

Peter Kürten was born into a poverty-stricken, abusive family in Mülheim am Rhein on 26 May 1883, the oldest of thirteen children (two of whom died at an early age). Kürten's parents were both alcoholics who lived in a one-bedroom apartment, and Kürten's father frequently beat his wife and children, particularly when he was drunk. When intoxicated, Kürten's father often forced his wife and children to assemble before him before ordering his wife to strip naked and have sex with him as his children watched. He was jailed for eighteen months in 1897 for repeatedly raping his eldest daughter, who was aged 13. Shortly thereafter, Kürten's mother obtained a separation order, and later remarried and relocated to Düsseldorf.

In 1888, Kürten attempted to drown one of his playmates. Four years later, he befriended a local dog-catcher who lived in the same building as his family and began accompanying him on his rounds. This individual often tortured and killed the animals he caught, and Kürten soon became an active and willing participant in torturing the animals.

Being the eldest surviving son, Kürten was the target of much of his father's physical abuse and frequently refused to return home from school as a result. Although he was a good student, he later recollected his academic performance suffered due to the extensive physical violence he endured. From an early age, Kürten often ran away from home for periods of time ranging from days to weeks. Much of the time Kürten spent on the streets was in the company of petty criminals and social misfits. Via these acquaintances, Kürten was introduced to various forms of petty crime, which he initially committed as a means of feeding and clothing himself when living on the streets.

Kürten later claimed to have committed his first murders at the age of nine, when he pushed a school friend whom he knew was unable to swim off a log raft. When a second boy attempted to save the drowning youngster, Kürten held his head under the water, so that both boys drowned. Both deaths were ruled by authorities as being accidental.

Adolescence

At the age of 13, Kürten formed a relationship with a girl his age and, although she allowed Kürten to undress and fondle her, she would resist any attempts he made to engage in intercourse. To relieve his sexual urges, Kürten resorted to acts of bestiality with sheep, pigs and goats in local stables, but later claimed he obtained his greatest sense of elation if he stabbed the animals just before achieving orgasm. Thus, he began stabbing and slashing animals with increasing frequency to achieve orgasms, although he was adamant this behaviour ended when he was observed stabbing a pig. He also attempted to rape the same sister his father had earlier molested.

In 1897, Kürten left school. At his father's insistence, he obtained employment as an apprentice molder. This apprenticeship lasted for two years before Kürten stole all the money he could find in his household, plus approximately 300 gold marks from his employer, and ran away from home. He relocated to Koblenz, where he began a brief relationship with a prostitute two years his senior who, he claimed, willingly submitted to every form of sexual perversion he demanded of her. He was apprehended four weeks later and charged with both breaking and entering and theft, and subsequently sentenced to one month's imprisonment. He was released from prison in August 1899 and reverted to a life of petty crime.

First attempted murder

Kürten claimed to have committed his first murder in adulthood in November 1899. In his 1930 confessions to investigators, he claimed to have "picked up an 18-year-old girl at the Alleestraße" and persuaded her to accompany him to the Hofgarten. There, he claimed to have engaged in sex with the girl before strangling her into unconsciousness with his bare hands before leaving the scene, believing her to be dead.

No contemporaneous records exist to corroborate Kürten's claims. If this attack did take place, the victim likely survived this assault. Nonetheless, Kürten later stated that, via committing this act, he had proven to himself that the greatest heights of sexual ecstasy could only be achieved in this manner.

First convictions

Shortly thereafter, in 1900, Kürten was arrested for fraud. He would be rearrested later the same year on the same charge, although on this second occasion, charges pertaining to his 1899 Düsseldorf thefts, plus the attempted murder of a girl with a firearm, were added to the indictment. Consequently, Kürten was sentenced to four years' imprisonment in October 1900. He served this sentence in Derendorf, a borough of Düsseldorf.

Released in the summer of 1904, Kürten was drafted into the Imperial German Army; he was deployed to the city of Metz in Lorraine to serve in the 98th Infantry Regiment, although he soon deserted. That autumn, Kürten began committing acts of arson, which he would discreetly watch from a distance as emergency services attempted to extinguish the fires. The majority of these fires were in barns and haylofts, and Kürten would admit to police he had committed around twenty-four acts of arson upon his arrest that New Year's Eve. He also freely admitted these fires had been committed both for his sexual excitement and in the hope of burning sleeping tramps alive.

As a result of his desertion, Kürten was tried by the military court and convicted of desertion in addition to multiple counts of arson, robbery and attempted robbery (the latter charges pertaining to acts he had also committed that year), and was subsequently imprisoned from 1905 to 1913. He served his sentence in Münster, with much of his time spent in solitary confinement for repeated instances of insubordination. He would later claim to investigators and psychologists this period of incarceration was that in which he first encountered severe forms of discipline, and as such, the erotic fantasies he had earlier developed while incarcerated in Derendorf expanded to include graphic fantasies of his striking out at society and killing masses of people; these fantasies became ever more paramount and overbearing in his mind, and Kürten later claimed that he derived the "sort of pleasures from these visions that other people would get from thinking about a naked woman", adding that he occasionally spontaneously ejaculated while preoccupied with such thoughts.

"It was on 25 May 1913. I had been stealing, specializing in public bars or inns where the owners lived on the floor above. In a room above an inn at Köln-Mülheim, I discovered a child of about 10 asleep. Her head was facing the window. I seized it with my left hand and strangled her for about a minute and a half. The child woke up and struggled but lost consciousness ... I had a small but sharp pocketknife with me and I held the child's head and cut her throat. I heard the blood spurt and drip on the mat beside the bed. It spurted in an arch, right over my hand. The whole thing lasted about three minutes. Then I locked the door again and went back home to Düsseldorf."

Peter Kürten, recounting the murder of Christine Klein at his trial, 1931

Murders

First murder

Christine Klein

The first murder Kürten definitively committed occurred on 25 May 1913. During the course of a burglary at a tavern in Mülheim am Rhein, he encountered a nine-year-old girl named Christine Klein asleep in her bed. Kürten strangled the child, and then slashed her twice across the throat with a pocket knife, ejaculating as he heard the blood dripping from her wounds onto the floor by her bed and on his hand.

The following day, Kürten specifically returned to Köln to drink in a tavern located directly opposite that in which he had murdered Klein, so that he could listen to the locals' reactions to the child's murder. He later recollected to investigators that he derived an extreme sense of gratification from the general disgust, repulsion, and outrage he had heard in the patrons' conversations. Moreover, in the weeks following Klein's funeral, Kürten occasionally travelled to Mülheim am Rhein to visit the child's grave, adding that when he handled the soil covering the grave, he spontaneously ejaculated.

Two months later—again in the course of committing a burglary with the aid of a skeleton key—Kürten broke into a home in Düsseldorf. Discovering a 17-year-old girl named Gertrud Franken asleep in her bed, Kürten manually strangled the girl, ejaculating at the sight of blood spouting from her mouth, before leaving the crime scene. Kürten managed to escape from the scene of this attempted murder and the earlier murder of Klein undetected.

Imprisonment and release

Just days after the attempted murder of Franken, on 14 July, Kürten was arrested for a series of arson attacks and burglaries. He was sentenced to six years imprisonment, although his repeated instances of insubordination, while imprisoned, saw his incarceration extended by a further two years. Kürten served this sentence in a military prison in the town of Brieg (then part of the German Empire).

Released in April 1921, Kürten relocated to Altenburg, where he initially lived with his sister. Through his sister, Kürten became acquainted with a woman three years his senior named Auguste Scharf, a sweet shop proprietor and former prostitute who had previously been convicted of shooting her fiancé to death, and to whom Kürten initially posed as a former prisoner of war. Two years later, Kürten and Scharf married, and although the couple regularly engaged in sex, Kürten later admitted he could consummate his marriage only by fantasizing about committing violence against another individual, and that, after their wedding night, he engaged in intercourse with his wife only at her invitation.

For the first time in his life, Kürten obtained regular employment, also becoming an active trades union official, although, with the exception of his wife, he formed no close friendships. In 1925, he returned with Scharf to Düsseldorf, where he soon began affairs with a servant girl named Tiede and a housemaid named Mech. Both women were frequently subjected to partial strangulation when they submitted to intercourse, with Tiede once being informed by Kürten, "That's what love means." When his wife discovered his infidelity, Tiede reported Kürten to police, claiming he had seduced her; Mech alleged Kürten had raped her. The more serious charge was later dropped, although Tiede's allegations were pursued, thus earning Kürten an eight-month prison sentence for attempted seduction and threatening behaviour. Kürten served six months of this sentence, with his early release being upon the condition he left Düsseldorf. He later successfully appealed the ruling that he relocate from the city.

1929

On 3 February 1929, Kürten stalked a middle-aged woman named Apollonia Kühn. Waiting until Kühn was shielded from the view of potential witnesses by bushes, Kürten pounced upon her, grabbing her by the lapels of her coat and shouting the words, "No row! Don't scream!" before dragging her into nearby undergrowth, where he proceeded to stab her 24 times with a sharpened pair of scissors. Although many of the blows were inflicted so deeply that the scissors struck her bones, Kühn survived her injuries.

On 8 February, Kürten strangled a nine-year-old girl named Rosa Ohliger into unconsciousness before stabbing her in the stomach, temple, genitals and heart with a pair of scissors, spontaneously ejaculating as he knifed the child. He then inserted his semen into her vagina with his fingers. Kürten then made a rudimentary effort to hide Ohliger's body by dragging it beneath a hedge before returning to the scene with a bottle of kerosene several hours later and setting the child's body alight, achieving an orgasm at the sight of the flames. Ohliger's body was found beneath a hedge the following day.

Five days later, on 13 February, Kürten murdered a 45-year-old mechanic named Rudolf Scheer in the suburb of Flingen Nord, stabbing him twenty times, particularly about the head, back and eyes. Following the discovery of Scheer's body, Kürten returned to the scene of the murder to converse with police, falsely informing one detective he had heard about the murder via telephone.

Despite the differences in age and sex of these three victims, the fact that all three crimes had been committed in the Flingern district of Düsseldorf at dusk, that each victim had received a multitude of stab wounds likely inflicted in rapid succession and invariably involving at least one wound to the temple, plus the absence of a common motive such as robbery, led investigators to conclude the same perpetrator had committed all three attacks. Furthermore, the seemingly random selection of these victims led criminologists to remark as to the abnormal nature of the perpetrator.

Although Kürten did attempt to strangle four women between March and July 1929, one of whom he claimed to have thrown into the Rhine River, he is not known to have killed any further victims until 11 August when he raped, strangled, and then repeatedly stabbed a young woman named Maria Hahn. Kürten had first encountered Hahn—whom he described as "a girl looking for marriage"—on 8 August, and had arranged to take her on a date to the Neandertal district of Düsseldorf the following Sunday. After several hours in Hahn's company, Kürten lured her into a meadow in order that he could kill her; he later admitted Hahn had repeatedly pleaded with him to spare her life as he alternately strangled her, stabbed her in the chest and head, or sat astride her body, waiting for her to die.

Maria Hahn

Hahn died approximately one hour after Kürten had begun attacking her. Fearful his wife might connect the bloodstains she had noted on his clothes with Hahn's murder, Kürten later buried her body in a cornfield, only to return to her body several weeks later with the intention of nailing her decomposing remains to a tree in a mock crucifixion to shock and disgust the public; however, Hahn's remains proved too heavy for Kürten to complete this act, and he simply returned her corpse to her grave before embracing and caressing the decomposing body as he lay beneath her remains. He then reburied Hahn's body. According to Kürten's later confession, both before and after he had attempted to impale Hahn's corpse to a tree, he "went to the grave many times and kept improving on it; and every time I thought of what was lying there and was filled with satisfaction."

Three months after Kürten had murdered Hahn, he posted an anonymous letter to the police in which he confessed to the murder, adding that her remains had been buried in a field. In this letter, Kürten also drew a crude map describing the location of the remains. This letter would prove sufficiently detailed to enable investigators to locate Hahn's remains on 15 November.

 

Following the Hahn murder, Kürten changed his choice of weapon from scissors to a knife in an apparent effort to convince police more than one perpetrator was responsible for the unfolding crime spree. In the early morning of 21 August, he randomly stabbed an 18-year-old girl, a 30-year-old man, and a 37-year-old woman in separate attacks. All three were seriously wounded, and all stated to police their assailant had not spoken a word to them before he had attacked them. Three days later, at a fairground in the suburb of Flehe, Kürten observed two foster sisters (aged 5 and 14) walking from the fairground, through adjoining allotments, en route to their home. Sending the older girl, Luise Lenzen, on an errand to purchase cigarettes for him upon the promise of being given 20 pfennig, Kürten lifted the younger child, Gertrude Hamacher, off the ground by her neck and strangled her into unconsciousness before cutting her throat and discarding her body in a patch of runner beans. When Lenzen returned to the scene, Kürten partially strangled her before stabbing her about the torso, with one wound piercing her aorta. He also bit and twice cut her throat before sucking blood from the wounds. Neither girl had been sexually assaulted, nor does the fact only Lenzen’s footprints were found within seven meters of her body suggest she may have attempted to flee from her attacker before collapsing.

The following day, Kürten accosted a 27-year-old housemaid named Gertrude Schulte, whom he openly asked to engage in sex with him. Upon being rebuffed, Kürten shouted, "Well, die then!" before repeatedly stabbing the woman in the head, neck, shoulder, and back. Schulte survived her injuries, although she was unable to provide investigators with a clear description of her assailant, beyond assuming his age to be around 40.

Kürten attempted to murder two further victims—one by strangulation; another by stabbing—in September, before opting to predominantly use a hammer in his murders.

Hammer attacks

Elizabeth Dörrier

On the evening of 30 September, Kürten encountered a 31-year-old servant girl named Ida Reuter at Düsseldorf station. He successfully persuaded Reuter to accompany him to a café, and then for a walk through the local Hofgarten close to the Rhine River. At this location, he repeatedly struck her about the head with a hammer both before and after he had raped her. At one stage in this assault, Reuter regained consciousness and began pleading with Kürten to spare her life. In response, Kürten simply "gave her other hammer blows on the head and misused her".

Eleven days later, on 11 October, he encountered a 22-year-old servant girl named Elizabeth Dörrier outside a theatre. As had been the case with Reuter, Dörrier agreed to accompany Kürten for a drink at a café before the pair took a train to Grafenberg, to walk alongside the Kleine Düssel River. Here she was struck once across her right temple with a hammer, then raped. Kürten struck her repeatedly about the head and both temples with his hammer and left her for dead. Dörrier was found in a coma at 6:30 a.m. the following morning; she died from her injuries the following day. On 25 October, Kürten attacked two women with a hammer; both survived, although in the second instance, this may have been because Kürten's hammer broke in the attack.

On 7 November 1929, Kürten encountered a 5-year-old girl named Gertrude Albermann in the Flingern district of Düsseldorf; he persuaded the child to accompany him to a section of deserted allotments, where he seized her by the throat and strangled her, stabbing her once in the left temple with a pair of scissors as per his modus operandi. When Albermann "collapsed to the ground without a sound", Kürten stabbed the child 34 further times in the temple and chest before placing her body in a pile of nettles close to a factory wall.