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.