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Peter Kurten
In what must surely be a world record, the police investigated over 900,000 suspects in this, the curious case of the Vampire of Dusseldorf. This alarming number could possibly have comprised the entire male population of 1925 Dusseldorf and the police must have had their hands full. It also does not speak too well of the innate natures of the good citizens of Dusseldorf; or perhaps the paranoia and hysteria that obviously pitted man against man was just a hold over from the defeat sustained by Germany at the end of World War I.
The Vampire’s assaults, furthermore, never developed a recognizable pattern and they ranged from aggravated sexual harassment to brutal murder. The best example of the Vampire at his most deranged must be the murder and mutilation of five year old Rosa Ohliger - he strangled her and then went on to stab her 36 times. In a Ripper-like move, he then sent the police a map indicating the exact place where he had dumped her body. The police found her but still had no clue as to his identity.
The Vampire’s reign of terror lasted from 1925 until early 1930, with men, women and children all falling prey to this vicious and bloodthirsty killer. His antics apparently caused such a wide spread panic in Dusseldorf that the situation was compared to that experienced in London in 1888 following the spate of Ripper attacks. Investigators also thought that he drank the blood of his victims and, when the press got hold of this juicy piece of information, he was immortalized in print as the Vampire of Dusseldorf.
In November 1929 the Vampire accosted a woman named Maria Budlick but he did not kill her. Instead, he took her to his home and then to Grafenberger Woods, where he, somewhat politely, raped her and then let her go. He thought that, as she was new to Dusseldorf, she would never be able to find her way back to his apartments. He was wrong and she did, and she brought the police with her. Hiding in the shadows to the last, the Vampire dodged the police but then confessed the Budlick incident to his wife and asked her to inform the police of his wrongdoings so that she could claim the reward for turning him in. This rather curious act foreshadowed serial poisoner Fred Shipman’s suicide seventy four years later so that his wife could receive his pension and also Albert DeSalvo’s confessing to being the Boston Strangler so that his family could benefit from media deals.
After they arrested the Vampire on May 24th 1930, he confessed to 79 offences including 9 murders and 7 attempted murders. He was charged with both the murders and attempted murders and then, in a stunning reversal, decided to plead not guilty. Once the reality of his situation sank in - possibly assisted by the fact that he was confined in a specially built cage in the courtroom for the duration of his trial - he changed his plea to guilty and was eventually sentenced to death nine times over. Interviewed while on death row, he admitted that his methods of killing his victims differed as it had taken him differing amounts of time to achieve orgasm each time he killed. Watching blood gushing from wounds and, sometimes, drinking it, was, for him, an erotic stimulus and, thus, truly can he be said to have been a vampire. This is in stark contrast to John George Haigh, the so-called Vampire of London, who was strongly suspected of having invented his tales of vampiric intent in order the support his insanity plea.
In true vampiric form, Kurten was beheaded but it is not recorded whether or not his mouth was stuffed with garlic before he died. Probably not, as his lasts words were audible and were “Tell me, after my head has been 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,” he continued, “be the pleasure to end all pleasures.”
