Peter Kurten
Peter had relished the taste of blood since childhood. When he was nine, he would decapitate swans and drink the blood from their necks. It is said that he became a murderer at the age of ten when he drowned a friend in the Rhine River.
Kurten got his sexual kicks from atrocities. His father was an alcoholic who took any opportunity to beat one of his children. He had 13 kids. He would often rape his wife in front of them and commit incest with his daughters.
When almost an adult, Peter was arrested for theft and sentenced to two years in jail. He started to resent German society and thought of depraved sexual fantasies. He broke prison rules on purpose to get solitary confinement because it gave him peace and quiet to use his perverted imagination.
He told the court later on of his imaginations:
"I thought of myself causing accidents affecting thousands of people and invented a number of crazy fantasies such as smashing bridges and boring holes in bridge piers. Then I spun a number of fantasies with regard to bacilli which I might be able to introduce into the drinking water and so cause a great calamity. I imagined myself using schools or orphanages for the purpose, where I could carry out murders by giving away chocolate samples containing arsenic which I could have obtained through housebreaking. I derived the sort of pleasure from these visions that other people would get from thinking about a naked woman."
Kurten finally decided to murder a woman. It was a failure and the woman would go home beaten and bruised. She was to terrified to tell the police. The police found out when Kurten himself told them later.
On May 25, 1913, eight-year-old Christine Klein was found in her bed with her throat cut. She had been raped.
Kurten then spent the whole of World War I in jail for deserting the army. He was released in 1921 and tried to create a new image for himself. He got a shop-floor job in a factory and became a respected trades unionist. In 1925, he married a prostitute and moved to an apartment in the center of Dusseldorf.
Over the years, a string of mistresses, prostitutes, and strangers were murdered with a knife or scissors. Kurten heightened the experience by sucking the blood from a young girls head.
By 1929, detectives knew a deviant serial killer was prowling the streets. Their files suggested 46 crimes of deviancy were the work of the same man. Parents began to keep their children at home, elderly people never left home, and beliefs that a vampire was walking around Dusseldorf were taken seriously.
On August 23, Kurten killed five-year-old Gertrude Hamacher and 14-year-old Louise Lenzen. He lured them onto allotments near the Flehe district were he strangled them, molested them, and cut their throats.
But, despite police efforts, he could still not be caught. He started using hammers, cudgels, his stilleto-like blade, or his Bavarian dagger. The only thing that the police had was that the killings were done in a frenzy and orgiastic in nature. One little girl had 36 different wounds on her body.
Wealthier citizens of Dusseldorf left for country homes, advised by their husbands not to return until the vampire was caught. Poorer people had no such option. One girl named Maria Budlick arrived in Dusseldorf in search of work, not knowing of the vampires atrocities.
On May 14, 1930, she stepped off of the train and met a kindly-looking man who offered to show her the nearest woman's hostel. She went with him but became frightened by him. Another man offered to take her. She went with him. She agreed to go with him to his home and have a sandwich and a glass of milk. Maria had walked right into Kurten's home. After they had the snack, Kurten offered to take her to the nearest hostel. While they strolled through the woods, he grabbed her and tried to rape her. When she fell unconscious, she remembered him saying, "Do you remember where I live, in case you ever need help again?" She told him she didn't remember where he lived and he gave her mercy.
Maria did not tell the police but wrote to a friend in Koln (Cologne in English). The letter never got to her friend and was opened by the post office. Within a few days they found Maria. She showed them his house, No. 71, Mettmannerstrasse, and pointed Kurten out.
Kurten saw the police and knew it was over. Instead of fleeing he confessed to his wife. He took her to a favorite restaurant and calmly said, "I am the man sought by the police. I am the monster of Dusseldorf."
On May 24, 1930, Frau Kurten went to the police and told them of the information on her husband. When the police arrived at his home he said with a smiling face, "Come, there is no need to be afraid."
On his first day of trail, April 13, 1931, thousands gathered to catch a glimpse of the Vampire of Dusseldorf. It was unbelievable that this clean cut, dapper amn was the killer. He confessed to 68 murders. He was charged of nine and sentenced to death.
When he walked to the guillotine, he said, "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 be the pleasure to end all pleasures."