Welcome to the first in a series of show notes for Eccentric Earth, where I will include the research for each episode (essentially my script), along with a number of photographs and documents.
Episode One - The Vampire of Dusselorf
Peter Kürten was born into a poverty-stricken, abusive family in Mülheim am Rhein, Germany on 26 May 1883, the third of thirteen children. Kürten's parents were both alcoholics who lived in a one-bedroom apartment, and although Kürten's father was an efficient workman who earned sufficient money to provide food, shelter and clothing for his family, the relationship between his parents was marred by the domestic violence Kürten's father would inflict upon both his wife and children, particularly when he was drunk.
When intoxicated, Kürten's father would often force his wife and children to assemble in one room before ordering his wife to strip naked and engage in intercourse with him as his children watched. He would be jailed for 15 months in 1894 for committing incest with his eldest daughter, who was aged 13. Shortly thereafter, Kürten's mother obtained a separation order, and later remarried and relocated to Düsseldorf.
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| The Kurten family. |
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
would often torture and kill the animals he caught, and Kürten soon
became an active and willing participant in torturing the animals
himself.
Being the eldest
surviving son, Kürten was the target of much of his father's
physical abuse. Although he was a good scholar, he would later
recollect his academic performance suffered due to the extensive
physical violence he endured from his father. He frequently refused
to return home from school. From an early age, Kürten frequently 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 would initially commit as a
means of feeding and clothing himself when living on the streets.
He 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 this boy's head underwater in order that both boys
drowned. Both deaths were ruled by authorities as being accidental.
At the age of 13,
Kürten formed a relationship with a girl his age who, although happy
to allow Kürten to undress and fondle her, would resist any attempts
he made to engage in intercourse. In response, Kürten resorted to
acts of bestiality with the sheep, pigs and goats in local stables to
achieve satisfaction, but later claimed he obtained his greatest
sense of elation if he actually stabbed these animals just prior to
his achieving orgasm. Thus, he began stabbing and slashing animals
with increasing frequency to achieve orgasm, although he was adamant
this behaviour ended when he was observed stabbing a pig. He is also
known to have attempted to rape the same sister his father had
earlier molested.
In 1897 at the
age of 14, Kürten left school. At his father's insistence, he
obtained employment as an apprentice molder. This apprenticeship
would last for two years before Kürten stole all the money he could
find in his household, plus approximately 300 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
whom he claimed willingly submitted to every form of sexual
perversion he demanded of her. He was apprehended just 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 the life of petty crime he
had lived before his arrest.
Kürten claimed
to have committed his first murder as an adult in November 1899.
Kürten said that he "picked up an 18-year-old girl at the
Alleestraße" and persuaded her to accompany him to the
Hofgarten, where he claimed to have engaged in sex with the girl
before strangling her to death with his bare hands.
No contemporary
records exist to corroborate Kürten's claims. If this attack did
indeed take place, the victim likely survived this assault.
Nonetheless, Kürten would later state that, via his committing this
act, he had proven to himself that the greatest heights of sexual
ecstasy could only be achieved in this manner.
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 the suburb
of Derendorf.
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| German infantry regiment during World War One. |
Released in the
summer of 1904, Kürten was drafted into the German Army; he was
deployed to the Alsatian city of Metz 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
estimate to police he had committed approximately 24 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
hopes of burning sleeping tramps alive.
As a result of
his desertion, Kürten was tried by the military system 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 imprisoned from 1905 to 1913. Kürten
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 would later claim that he derived the "sort of pleasures
from these visions that other people would get from thinking about a
naked woman", adding that he would occasionally spontaneously
ejaculate while preoccupied with such thoughts.
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| Christine Klein, Kurtens first confirmed victim. |
The first murder
Kürten is confirmed to have committed occurred on 25 May 1913.
During the course of a burglary at a tavern in the town of Mülheim
am Rhein, he encountered a 9-year-old girl named Christine Klein
asleep in her bed. He strangled the child, 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.
The following
day, Kürten specifically returned to Köln to drink in a tavern
located directly opposite that in which he had murdered Christine
Klein, in order that he could listen to the locals' reactions to the
child's murder. He would later recollect to investigators he derived
an extreme sense of gratification from the general disgust and
outrage he had heard in the patrons' conversations. Moreover, in the
weeks following Klein's funeral, he would occasionally travel to
Mülheim am Rhein to visit the child's grave, adding that when he
handled the soil covering her grave, he would spontaneously
ejaculate.
Two months
later—again in the course of committing a burglary with the aid of
a skeleton key—Kürten broke into a home in Loscheckes. Discovering
a 17-year-old girl named Gertrud Franken, Kürten manually strangled
the girl, ejaculating at the sight of blood spouting from her mouth.
Kürten managed to escape from the scene of both this murder and that
of Klein undetected.
Just days after
the murder of Gertrud 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.
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 fantasising 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 his wife to Düsseldorf, where he soon began affairs
with a servant girl named Tiede, and a housemaid named Mech. 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 him an eight-month prison sentence for
seduction and threatening behaviour. Kürten served six months of
this sentence, with his early release being upon the condition he
relocated to Düsseldorf.
On 3 February
1929, Kürten stalked an elderly 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
wounds he inflicted were so deep they impacted her bones, Kühn
survived her injuries.
On 8 February he
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 and inserting his semen into her vagina with his
fingers. He 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.
On 13 February,
he murdered a 45-year-old mechanic named Rudolf Scheer in the suburb
of Flingen Nord, stabbing him 20 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, then repeatedly stabbed a young woman named Maria
Hahn.
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| Maria Hahn, killed by Kurten on 11 August. |
Kürten had first
encountered Hahn on 8 August, and had arranged to take her on a date
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. 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 Maria Hahn, he posted an anonymous letter
to the police in which he confessed to Hahn's murder, adding that her
remains had been buried in a field. In this letter, Kürten also drew
a crude map describing the location of her remains. This letter would
prove sufficiently detailed to enable investigators to locate Hahn's
remains on 15 November.
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| Letter sent to the police by Kurten, detailing Hahns location. |
Following the
murder of Maria Hahn, 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 spate of assaults and
murders. In the early morning of 21 August, Kürten 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 would
state to police their assailant had not spoken a word to them before
he had attacked them.
Three days later,
at a fairground he observed two foster sisters (aged five 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 money in
return for the favour, 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.
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.
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, 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".
11 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, with view to a walk alongside the Kleine
Düssel river, where 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 at 6:30 a.m the following morning, although she would die from
her injuries the following day, without awakening from the coma in
which she was discovered. On 25 October, Kürten attacked two women
with a hammer; both survived, although in the second instance, this
was only because Kürten's hammer broke in the attack.
On 7 November
1929, Kürten encountered a five-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 he did so. Kürten stabbed the
child 34 further times in the temple and chest, before leaving her
body in a pile of nettles against a factory wall.
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 background 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.
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| Newspaper illustration depicting the killer. |
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 would be
interviewed, 2,650 other clues painstakingly pursued and a list
of 900,000 different names would be compiled upon an official
potential suspect list.
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 letter Kürten had thus far sent to newspapers and police
describing his exploits and threatening further assaults and murders
was examined by a graphologist, who confirmed the same individual had
written each letter, thus leading the Chief Inspector of the Berlin
Police, Ernst Gennat, to conclude that one man was responsible for
most or all of the spate of assaults and murders.
The murder of
Gertrude Albermann would prove 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 10
victims in these assaults. All recipients survived and many were able
to describe their attacker to police.
On 14 May 1930,
an unknown man approached a 20-year-old woman named Maria Budlick at
Düsseldorf station. Discovering Budlick had travelled to Düsseldorf
from Köln in search of lodgings and employment, this individual
offered to direct her towards a local hostel. Budlick agreed to
follow this individual, although she became apprehensive when this
man attempted to lead her through a scarcely populated park. The pair
began to argue, whereupon another man approached the duo, asking
whether Budlick was being pestered by her companion. When Budlick
nodded, the individual with whom she had been arguing simply walked
away. The man who came to her 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 deduced there was a slim chance Budlick's assailant might
be the Düsseldorf murderer.
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| Chief Inspector Ernst Gennat interviewed Budlick personally. |
Chief Inspector
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. When the landlady of
the property let Budlick into the house, Budlick confirmed to Chief
Inspector Gennat this was the address of her assailant. The landlady
confirmed to the chief inspector the tenant's name was Peter Kürten.
Although Kürten
was not at home when Budlick and Chief Inspector Gennat searched his
property, he spotted the pair in the communal hallway, and promptly
left the property. 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 15 years' penal labour. With his wife's
consent, he found lodgings elsewhere, 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.
Hurged 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 crimes as The Vampire
of Düsseldorf, and that he was willing to likewise confess to
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 murders of Christine Klein and Gertrud Franken in 1913. In
total, Kürten admitted to 68 crimes including 10 murders and 31
attempted murders.
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| Peter Kurten's mugshot following his arrest. |
He made no
attempt to excuse his crimes, but justified them upon 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 actual 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 one of these instances, he had drunk so much
blood from the neck wound he had inflicted upon victim Maria Hahn
that he 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.
On 13 April 1931,
Peter Kürten stood trial in Düsseldorf. He was charged with nine
counts of murder and seven of attempted murder, and was tried before
Presiding Judge Dr. 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 would be 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 elaborated: "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."
Having first
claimed that his initial confession had been delivered to simply
allow his wife to recoup the reward money offered for the Düsseldorf
Vampire's capture, 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 of the
most eminent doctors and psychiatrists in Germany to testify at the
trial; each testified that Kürten was legally sane and had been
perfectly in control of his actions and impulses at all times.
Typical of the testimony delivered by these experts was that of
Professor Franz Sioli, who testified as to Kürten's actual
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 would cause to others.
Dr. Karl Berg
would testify that Kürten's motive in committing murder and
attempted murder was 90 percent sadism, and 10 percent 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, Dr. 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 proof 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 an 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.
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| Kurten on trial beside his defence lawyer, Dr. Alex Wehner. |
Upon
cross-examination, Kürten's defence attorney, Dr. Alex Wehner, did challenge these experts' conclusions, arguing the sheer range of
perversions his client had engaged in was tantamount to insanity,
although each doctor and psychiatrists 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, one of these experts, Dr. Karl Berg,
conceded that sections of Kürten's confession 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.
The trial lasted
10 days. On 22 April, the jury retired to consider their verdict.
They would deliberate for less than 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 did state 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 his conviction, although he did submit a petition for
pardon to the Minister of Justice, who was known to be an opponent of
capital punishment; this 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 requests were granted.
As Kürten
awaited his trial, then later as he awaited his execution, he was
extensively interviewed by Dr. Karl Berg. In these interviews, Kürten
stated to Dr. 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 actual
sight of his victim's blood had been integral to his sexual
stimulation. Kürten further elaborated to Dr. Berg that once he had
committed an attack or murder, the feeling of tension he experienced
prior to the commission of the crime would be superseded by one of
relief.
In reference to
the actual choice of weapon used in his attacks, Kurten stressed that
although he had changed his actual method of attack to deceive
investigators into believing they were seeking more than one
perpetrator, the weapon he used was inconsequential in reference to
his ultimate objective of seeing his victim's blood. Elaborating,
Kurten 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."
Kurten 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.
 |
Berg would go on to use his interviews with
Kurten to publish his book, 'The Sadist'. |
However, Kürten
would contradict these claims by proclaiming to both Dr. 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
fermented in his mind throughout the long periods he had been
confined in solitary confinement for various forms of
insubordination, and Kürten explained that he would deliberately
break 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 Dr. 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.
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
devoured the entire meal before requesting a second helping. Prison
staff decided to grant his request.
At 6 o'clock on
the morning of 2 July Peter Kürten was beheaded by guillotine in the
grounds of Klingelputz Prison, Cologne. 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
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."
Following
Kürten's 1931 execution, his head was dissected 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 Dr. Karl Berg in 1930 and 1931 would prove to be
the first psychological study conducted upon a sexual serial killer.
These interviews would also form the basis of Berg's book, The
Sadist.
Shortly after the Second World War, Kürten's head was transported to
the United States. It is currently on display at the Ripley's Believe
It or Not! museum in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin.
 |
The mummified head of Peter Kurten on display at
Ripley's Believe It or Not museum.
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