SERIAL KILLER: "The Vampire of Dusseldorf" Peter Kurten Pt. 2

By 1929, Peter Kürten had murdered at least eleven people across Düsseldorf, Germany, targeting women and children to satisfy a compulsion to see, hear, and taste blood. His reign of terror only ended when a surviving victim led police to his door, and his own wife delivered him to justice. This episode concludes the story of one of history's most disturbing serial killers, from his arrest and confession to his execution by guillotine in 1931. If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Serial Killers & Murderous Minds to never miss a case! Want all 2 parts of every case all at once? Join Crime House+ and get both parts of each case dropped together on Monday ad-free. Join at crimehouseplus.com http://crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. Serial Killers & Murderous Minds is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios. 🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of Reddit, Murder True Crime Stories, Crime House 24/7, and more wherever you get your podcasts! Follow me on Social Instagram: @Crimehouse https://www.instagram.com/crimehouse/TikTok: @Crimehouse https://www.tiktok.com/@crimehouseFacebook: @crimehousestudios https://www.facebook.com/crimehousestudiosYouTube: @crimehousestudios https://www.youtube.com/@crimehousestudios

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Vanessa Richardson?

  Hi, everyone. Before today's episode, there's another show I want to tell you about. It's called What the Fact with Connor Tomlinson from Netflix's Love on the Spectrum and Carter Roy. Every week, they take three unbelievable true facts from history and tell you the full story behind them. Plus Connor's infectious energy that'll make you realize history is the most fascinating thing on earth. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  This is Crime House.

• 0:41Vanessa Richardson?

  We all know what it's like to be obsessed with something, whether it's a song we play on repeat, a coworker who maybe gets under our skin, or even a crooked picture frame we have to straighten. We know the feeling of focusing so intensely on something that it's hard to think about anything else. Most obsessions are harmless and easy to tame if we try. But Peter Kurten was obsessed with blood, how it looked, how it sounded, and how it tasted. And he'd stop at nothing to feed that obsession, even if it meant killing innocent children.

• 1:35Vanessa Richardson?

  The human mind is powerful. It shapes how we think, feel, love, and hate. But sometimes it drives people to commit the unthinkable. This is Serial Killers and Murderous Minds, a Crime House original. I'm Vanessa Richardson.

• 1:50Tristin Engels?

  And I'm forensic psychologist Dr. Tristan Ingles. Every Monday and Thursday, we uncover the darkest minds in history, analyzing what makes a killer.

• 2:00Vanessa Richardson?

  Crime House exists because of listeners like you. Want even more? Join Crime House Plus and get both parts of every story dropped on the same Monday, completely ad-free. No waiting three days for part two, plus Crime House bonus episodes every month. To join, go to crimehouseplus.com. Or if you listen on Apple Podcasts, tap Try Free at the top of the Serial Killers and Murderous Minds page. Before we get started, be advised that this episode contains discussion of rape, murder, hematomania, mutilation, and the killing of children. So please, listen with care. Today, we conclude our deep dive into Peter Kurten, the man known as the Vampire of Dusseldorf. In the early 20th century,

• 2:45Vanessa Richardson?

  he terrorized Germany, targeting mostly women and children so he could see, hear, and eventually drink their blood.

• 2:53Tristin Engels?

  And as Vanessa goes through the story, I'll be talking about things like how brutal killers actually view their victims, why serial killers enter berserker mode, and what happens to a killer's psyche once he confesses to his crimes.

• 3:07Vanessa Richardson?

  And as always, we'll be asking the question, what makes a killer?

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• 5:00Vanessa Richardson?

  By February of 1929, 45-year-old Peter Curtin had killed three children and brutally attacked 16 women who survived, mostly in Dusseldorf, Germany. And it was all in service of his need to see or hear blood to achieve sexual gratification. But he was about to take that need for blood to an even worse place. On February 8, 1929, a little after 6:00 PM, Peter encountered an eight-year-old girl named Rosa Olegar on a dark path near a construction site. He asked Rosa where she was headed, and she said, "Home." So Peter took her hand and told her he would take her there. They didn't walk very far

• 5:44Vanessa Richardson?

  before Peter grabbed Rosa by the neck and yanked her off the path. He quickly checked to make sure he was alone, then strangled her, set her body down on the ground, and pulled out his scissors. He stabbed Rosa 13 times in the chest and torso, then once in her left temple, killing her. And as the blood gushed from Rosa's head, Peter put his mouth to the wound and sucked her blood. Once he was finished, Peter rolled Rosa's body under a nearby hedge, then checked himself for bloodstains. He was surprised to find that he was clean. And just like that, it was as if the whole thing had never happened. Peter remembered he had a free movie ticket in his pocket,

• 6:27Vanessa Richardson?

  so he figured, why not catch a flick? After the movie, Peter went home as if he hadn't murdered a child just hours earlier. But he knew Rosa's body was still lying out there. So he filled a bottle with petroleum from one of the lamps in his apartment and went back to the construction site. But there were too many people around, so he went home and waited. At 6 o'clock the next morning, he told his wife August he was running to the bathroom, but instead, he went back to the crime scene just two minutes from his apartment. He doused Rosa's body in the petroleum, lit a match, and dropped it. Then Peter ran from the scene before anyone could see him near the flames.

• 7:09Vanessa Richardson?

  For Peter, lighting Rosa's body on fire wasn't sexual, but the destruction excited him in other ways, as did the feeling of superiority, knowing he could do something like this and no one could stop him.

• 7:23Tristin Engels?

  I think this fits into the criminal spin we left off with in episode one. Peter had three failed attacks, followed by the urgency in years of back-to-back arson, and then the attack on Apollonia, where he stabbed her repeatedly, 24 times, but had to leave before he could really experience the aftermath the way he had in earlier offenses and the way he is here. He didn't know whether she died. He didn't get that prolonged interaction, and he didn't get to stay with the blood or the suffering in the way that had been gratifying for him before. So then he sees Rosa, and he targets her. She's a child. Her vulnerability makes her easier to control and more likely to trust an adult,

• 8:06Tristin Engels?

  and certainly not capable of physically resisting him. He hasn't been fully sated by any of the crimes he's been committing for years. So choosing a child that vulnerable reduces the chance that he loses control of the situation again and ensures success for him. And then look at what he does. He takes it to a whole new level. He drinks her blood, and then he sets her on fire. These are not random additions, in my mind. He's combining two things that he has been engaging in for the last several years. There's no room for partial gratification for Peter anymore. He appears less able or willing to tolerate frustration, less willing to delay any gratification he needs,

• 8:50Tristin Engels?

  and he's needing to fully control his victim and incorporate everything that has become reinforcing for him.

• 8:58Vanessa Richardson?

  My gosh. I mean, he also went to watch a movie after this. What does Peter's casual ability to do this tell us about how he views other human beings?

• 9:08Tristin Engels?

  Yeah, it's clearly dehumanization. He doesn't view them as individuals with their own autonomy, their own fear, pain, or lives. When someone can do what he just did, then go watch a movie without any internal conflict about that whatsoever, then finish the movie, go home, and then resume goal-directed behavior around evidence concealment of that crime. That's also callousness. It's lack of empathy, lack of remorse, and compartmentalization as well. Peter has not once thought about anyone or anything other than his own gratification and his own needs.

• 9:46Vanessa Richardson?

  Peter wasn't just excited by killing Rosa and setting her body on fire. He was also excited by the chaos he knew was about to come. After setting the fire, Peter went home. About three hours later, when he knew workers would be arriving at the site, he returned and hid nearby to watch the discovery unfold. Peter felt giddy watching the workers discover Rosa's body, and then the police arrive on the scene. He was enjoying it all so much, he decided to take things one step further. Peter came out of hiding and approached one of the officers on scene. He asked what had happened and could barely contain his excitement as the officer unknowingly walked Peter through his own crime. Peter was riding high.

• 10:31Vanessa Richardson?

  He knew he needed to kill again, immediately. Only this time, he was going to switch things up. On February 12th, just four days after he killed Rosa Olegar, Peter went out around 8:00 PM looking for a victim. And three hours later, he found one. Peter crossed paths with a drunk man named Rudolph Sheer. He took a beat. He'd rarely attacked men before, but then he realized the man's drunkenness was a weakness, one he could easily overpower. Peter got too close, though, and Rudolph shoved him back, demanding to know what he wanted. Peter quickly checked to see if Rudolph was armed, and when he saw he wasn't, he hit him in the head with his bare hand.

• 11:14Vanessa Richardson?

  Once Rudolph was off balance, Peter attacked with his real weapon, the scissors. He stabbed Rudolph 16 times in the neck, three in the back, and once in the temple. And when he saw the blood pour from Rudolph's temple and pool around his lifeless body, he ejaculated. When it was over, Peter grabbed Rudolph by the feet and dragged him into a ditch. He started to walk away, then remembered he had one more thing to do. He went back and wiped the man's boots clean of any fingerprints he might have left.

• 11:47Tristin Engels?

  It's a common misconception that serial offenders only target one gender. Though it's less common for them to target both men and women or boys and girls, it does happen. Sometimes that's circumstantial. Other times like this, it's opportunistic. And this was opportunistic. Peter had the urge to strike again. And as we've been discussing, his behavior has become more urgent and more difficult to satisfy with arson alone. He also seemed unwilling to fail again. When he targeted Rosa, he exploited her vulnerability, and he was successful. So there may have been some learning there. And now, he encounters Rudolph, who is also vulnerable.

• 12:30Tristin Engels?

  He's intoxicated, he's alone, and Peter actually checks to see whether he's armed before attacking more. That tells me Peter was assessing risk. He knows this is not an equal fight. He still stacked this situation with Rudolph in his favor. Maybe there is some kind of psychological payoff if he can overpower a male victim without the vulnerability of it being an equal confrontation. But truly, this is opportunistic. He didn't seek out Rudolph. He just happened upon him, and he was vulnerable.

• 13:06Vanessa Richardson?

  Peter had switched up his victim profile, but it didn't matter. When the medical examiner performed Rudolph's autopsy, he noticed an unusual stab wound on the temple. It was similar to the wound he'd found on Rosa Olegar's temple less than a week earlier, despite the horrendous condition her body had been in. Investigators had no clue who could have killed these two people, but there were similarities between the cases they couldn't ignore. Both attacks had taken place in isolated areas at dusk. Both victims were stabbed, and the wounds had clearly been inflicted in the same manner, quickly and forcefully. They may not have had their smoking gun, but they could at least determine that the two murders were likely committed by the same person.

• 13:49Vanessa Richardson?

  And six weeks later, their mystery suspect seemingly struck again. The only problem was, it wasn't Peter. On the night of April 2nd, 1929, a 16-year-old girl named Erna Penning was walking home when a man attacked her from behind, throwing a noose over her head and pulling it tight. She survived, but when the police asked her to describe her attacker, she couldn't. She hadn't gotten a good enough look at him. Then, the very next night, a woman named Frau Flake was attacked in a similar manner. She survived too, but like Erna, she never got a good look at the man. Fortunately, a bystander had seen the attacker running from the scene

• 14:31Vanessa Richardson?

  and identified him as 20-year-old Johan Strasberg, a local man with an intellectual disability. When police questioned Strasberg about his attacks on Erna Penning and Frau Flake, he walked them through what he did. But then, he did something no one expected. He volunteered that he had also killed Rosa Olegar and Rudolph Sheer. The police were struck by the details Strasberg seemed to know about Rosa and Rudolph's murders. They knew he couldn't have read those details in the newspapers. He was illiterate. So they took Strasberg's confession at face value, but he was never prosecuted. Because of his disability, he was committed to an asylum instead of prison.

• 15:15Vanessa Richardson?

  And the police patted themselves on the back for ridding the streets of a dangerous predator.

• 15:21Tristin Engels?

  False confessions happen for a lot of different reasons. They could be trying to protect someone they know, trying to get out of a coercive interrogation. Some are seeking notoriety, and in some cases, feel they have something they can gain by falsely confessing. But this is a man with intellectual disabilities, and as a result, is more susceptible to suggestion, influence, compliance, and even exploitation. Which makes me wonder about the reliability of this confession and the conditions in which it was elicited. Because him being illiterate just establishes that he didn't learn the facts of these crimes from reading about them. It doesn't establish that he didn't learn about them from hearing about it.

• 16:06Tristin Engels?

  For example, an investigator can unintentionally, or intentionally, disclose information through the questions they ask. How they correct an answer can be telling. How they ask questions, like are they asking leading questions, can be telling. If they reject incorrect answers, that can give information to someone. It doesn't have to be verbal. Nonverbal behavior is language too, especially for individuals who have adaptive coping mechanisms. Anyone, even a vulnerable person, can piece together an accurate-sounding account using information that they got from an interview itself. That's known as confession contamination.

• 16:49Tristin Engels?

  And investigators eager to solve a case like this one could very easily contaminate a vulnerable suspect while trying to get a confession.

• 17:01Vanessa Richardson?

  With Johan locked away, all of Dusseldorf let out a sigh of relief. Everyone believed the vicious attacks were finally over. But they were wrong. The man who'd actually been doing the killing was still free, and he had no intention of stopping. On August 8th, 1929, Peter chatted up a 20-year-old woman named Maria Hahn while taking a walk near the zoo. They made a date for that Sunday. Then, on August 11th, Peter took Maria to a beer garden for drinks and dinner. Afterwards, they took a walk by the river and had sex on the bank. According to Peter, it was consensual, but given what came next, there's no way to know.

• 17:43Vanessa Richardson?

  After leaving the riverbank, Peter led Maria to a nearby meadow. At around 9:30 PM, he grabbed her throat and squeezed. Maria briefly lost consciousness, then came to. When she did, Peter pulled out his scissors and stabbed her in the throat, then drank the blood that poured from her neck. And even as he drank, he kept stabbing again and again in her head and her breast. Then, Peter rolled Maria's lifeless body into a ditch and tossed a few branches over it. He returned home to his wife and slipped into bed beside her. The next morning, August confronted him about the blood she'd found on his clothes. Peter brushed her off and scolded her

• 18:27Vanessa Richardson?

  for being so suspicious of him over nothing. But the confrontation spooked him. He decided he needed to hide Maria's body better, so he returned to the scene with a shovel. He found a spot in the corner of the woods and dug a deep hole. Then, he carried Maria's body to the hole and lowered her in. He filled it with dirt and hid the shovel near the river. There was no telling when he might need it again. But even as he hid Maria's body, something shifted in Peter. He realized he actually wanted people to know what he was doing. He wanted all of Dusseldorf living in fear, knowing a vicious, bloodthirsty killer was walking among them.

• 19:10Vanessa Richardson?

  And to do that, he'd have to kill a lot more people.

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• 19:51Tristin Engels?

  The police closed my sister's case in 2019.

• 19:54Speaker 05

  Last month, her killer commented on my post.

• 19:57Speaker 06

  On Reddit, true crime doesn't come from journalists. It comes from the victims, the witnesses, and sometimes the suspects themselves.

• 20:05Speaker 05

  People post the things they'd never say out loud, anonymous, unfiltered, and completely real.

• 20:11Speaker 06

  And every Tuesday on Crimes of Reddit, we read them out loud.

• 20:15Speaker 05

  I'm Sabrina Deanna-Roga from Two Girls, One Ghost.

• 20:18Speaker 06

  And I'm Alexis Linkletter from The First Degree.

• 20:20Speaker 05

  Each week, one of us brings the most unhinged true crime stories the internet has to offer.

• 20:26Speaker 06

  And the other goes in completely blind. No prep, no spoilers, reacting in real time, same as you, and then we swap.

• 20:33Speaker 05

  And we pull every thread until the whole twisted picture comes into view.

• 20:37Speaker 06

  It's dark, it's messy, and the scariest part is that these are real stories posted by real people.

• 20:44Speaker 05

  New episodes drop every Tuesday. Listen to and follow Crimes of Reddit, available now wherever you get your podcasts.

• 20:51Vanessa Richardson?

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• 22:11Vanessa Richardson?

  After a relatively inactive summer, 46-year-old Peter Curtin brutally stabbed and murdered Maria Hahn on August 11, 1929. He almost couldn't handle how good this stabbing and killing made him feel, so over the next few weeks, he went into full berserker mode. And on August 21, Peter attacked three people in one night. The first was a young woman named Anna Goldhausen. It was around 10:00 PM, right after he'd gotten off work for the night. He spotted Anna from across the street, and he could practically feel the dagger burning a hole in his pocket. He crossed over and closed the distance. Without a word, he pulled out the dagger and stabbed Anna in the left breast.

• 22:56Vanessa Richardson?

  The single wound was deep enough to slip between her ribs and puncture both her liver and her stomach. Anna fell to the ground and cried for help. Peter ran away, sexually excited but not satisfied, and he was already hunting for his next victim. Just a few hours later, he found her. Peter followed a woman named Frau Mantel down Ehrgratter Street in Dusseldorf. He approached her and asked if he could accompany her on her walk. Like nearly every woman getting unwanted attention from a strange man, Frau Mantel ignored Peter. She crossed the street to get away from him. But Peter wouldn't take silence for an answer.

• 23:37Vanessa Richardson?

  He came up close behind her and wordlessly stabbed her twice in the back. Frau Mantel fell to the ground, bleeding, but screaming so loudly that any chance of gratification was gone. Peter hurried off into the night. In under an hour, Peter came across a man named Heinrich Kornblum lying in a ditch, struggling to crawl out. The man was clearly hurt, which made him, in Peter's eyes, the perfect target. Peter climbed down into the ditch, and instead of offering him a hand, stabbed him in the back with his dagger. When he saw the blood soak through the man's shirt, Peter finally had the orgasm he'd been chasing all night.

• 24:20Tristin Engels?

  Peter's behavior is starting to look almost addiction-like. Not addiction in the diagnostic sense, but in terms of the reinforcement cycle. It's compulsive. His violence is so closely associated with sexual gratification that, once that cycle starts, he can't stop it before he gets the reward he's seeking, which is evident here again. He attacks Anna and becomes sexually aroused, but he doesn't reach completion. A few hours later, he attacks Frau Mantel, but her screaming forces him to leave. So again, he doesn't get the gratification he was seeking. And instead of those attacks reducing the urge, he continues looking for another victim.

• 25:04Tristin Engels?

  Less than an hour later, he finds Heinrich, stabs him, sees the blood, and finally has the orgasm he's been chasing all night. Psychologically, to him, this was like one prolonged pursuit of gratification. The first two attacks activated the reward system without completing the sexual response, and that may actually intensify his motivation to continue seeking the stimulus, which is the violence and blood. He's conditioned himself to associate with reward and completion. And this fits with the criminal spin that we've been discussing, too. The time between his offenses has been getting shorter and shorter, and now that acceleration is occurring within hours. He's not cooling off between victims.

• 25:49Tristin Engels?

  He keeps chasing his own version of a high.

• 25:53Vanessa Richardson?

  It is like an addiction. If Peter really is addicted to his own crimes, what is it in his life that most likely produced that addiction?

• 26:02Tristin Engels?

  That happened very early with a combination of that early conditioning and the years of reinforcement. Peter grew up seeing violence, sexuality, domination, and humiliation all paired together. As his own sexuality developed, he continued to pair arousal with blood, pain, and control. So by adulthood, these associations had been occurring and reinforced for years, and he's reinforcing it even more with new elements to his crimes and all that experimentation that he kept doing. The strangulation, the drinking of blood, and even the reinsertion after the crime itself.

• 26:44Vanessa Richardson?

  After stabbing three people in one night, Peter wasn't ready to go home. He hid near the ditch to watch the chaos unfold. Watching the panicked response to Heinrich's attack excited him, though in a different way. He imagined how angry and frightened people must be, knowing someone was terrorizing their city and couldn't be caught. That thought gave him a different kind of satisfaction. He could feed his darkest urges without consequence, and no one in Dusseldorf could stop him. And he certainly wasn't about to stop himself. His crimes were only about to get more twisted, sadistic, and heartbreaking. Three days later, on August 24, Peter headed out around 8:00 PM to look for more victims.

• 27:30Vanessa Richardson?

  He hung around a nearby festival, figuring people heading home from the festivities would make easy targets. At around 10:00 PM, he saw two girls heading home. Five-year-old Gertrude Homacher and her adopted sister, 14-year-old Luisa Lenson. He watched them start down a dark field path, and that's when he made his approach. Peter walked up to the girls and offered Luisa what would be about a dollar in today's money to go buy him four cigarettes from a nearby kiosk. As soon as the older girl ran off, Peter grabbed little Gertrude by the neck and pulled her off the path into a secluded part of the field. He strangled her until she went limp. Then he laid her on the ground and cut her throat. He immediately had an orgasm.

• 28:15Vanessa Richardson?

  This time, Peter took almost no time to collect himself. He hurried back to the spot where he'd first met the girls. Soon enough, Luisa returned with the cigarettes. Before she had a chance to ask where her sister was, Peter grabbed her by the neck and dragged her to the same spot where he'd left Gertrude. He thought Luisa had fallen unconscious, but suddenly she came to and started screaming. Peter took out his dagger, cut her throat, then stabbed her in the back four times. He had another orgasm, just minutes after his last. Then he wiped his dagger clean and quickly left the girls lying in the field. When the two of them didn't come home, their terrified parents gathered a search party,

• 28:58Vanessa Richardson?

  and at 6:00 the next morning, the search party found their bodies in the field, right where Peter had left them. When police came to investigate, they noticed a man's footprints leading from the path to the field and back. The footprints alone couldn't tell the officers who did this, but they could at least confirm the attacker was likely a man. Not that that was ever really in question. Even so, investigators didn't stop to consider that they might have sent the wrong man away when they committed Johan Stossberg. Instead, they assumed this was a different attacker. Johan's method was strangulation, and these were brutal stabbings. Whoever it was, they knew they'd have to catch this monster sooner rather than later, and they were right.

• 29:43Vanessa Richardson?

  Peter's obsession with killing had taken over completely, and his appetite was insatiable. The day after killing the two sisters, Peter headed out again. He was walking near an outdoor market when he saw a 26-year-old woman named Gertrude Schulter. He chatted her up, they browsed the market together, then Peter led her to a bench along the banks of the Rhine. Peter tried to force himself on Gertrude, but she refused, telling him she'd rather die than have sex with him. So Peter stabbed her in the throat and hissed, "Then you shall die." He stabbed her 12 more times, in the shoulder, head, and neck, and finally in the back,

• 30:26Vanessa Richardson?

  so hard that a piece of his blade broke off and lodged inside her. Gertrude screamed, then fell unconscious. People camping in a tent nearby heard her and yelled, "What's the matter?" Peter took off running. Once he reached a safe distance, he saw that the tip of his dagger had snapped off, so he tossed it. But instead of leaving the area immediately, he went back and sat on a nearby park bench to wait for the police to arrive so he could enjoy the show.

• 30:58Tristin Engels?

  Peter is becoming remarkably careless at this point. Everything that just happened here with Gertrude are moments that should increase caution. But instead of that, instead of leaving, he sits down on a bench and watches, which means that the gratification he gets from reinserting himself in the aftermath may be starting to compete with any instinct he has for self-preservation. He still understands the risk, or he wouldn't have run and he wouldn't have tossed his dagger, but the need to remain connected to what he has done is stronger. And repeated success may be feeding into that. Because every time he takes a life, or nearly takes a life, and he takes this risk and he still gets away with it,

• 31:41Tristin Engels?

  it can reinforce the belief that he can get away with this, which is why he's not behaving like someone who thinks he is vulnerable to being caught. He's behaving more like someone who sees himself as untouchable.

• 31:55Vanessa Richardson?

  In your experience with serial killers and violent offenders, is getting careless ever an indication that subconsciously maybe they want to get caught so they can stop?

• 32:04Tristin Engels?

  That's a really good question. I don't necessarily think that it's about them wanting someone to stop them. They enjoy what they're doing and they often go to great lengths to avoid getting caught. But for some offenders, I do think there can be another part of getting caught that is appealing, and that's the attention that comes with it. Like you said, Peter is like, I want all of Dusseldorf to fear me. I want them to know about me. They don't, he doesn't want them to know who he is, but he wants them to know about the Dusseldorf mass murderer. So when it comes to that, to those offenders who want people to know about them,

• 32:49Tristin Engels?

  they want that kind of attention. When they are caught, they finally don't have to hide this part of themselves anymore. Suddenly, people want to know everything about them, the true version of them. They get letters, they get visits, interviews, phone calls, media attention. People are embracing them for them. Even if the attention isn't all positive, there is some positive attention, but even if it's negative, they get to openly experience the notoriety. And I've seen that myself. I'll share one experience I had, obviously, this is heavily redacted, but the person was absolutely reveling in the amount of visits, letters, and interviews they were receiving. They didn't want to be stopped from doing what they were doing because they enjoyed doing it,

• 33:34Tristin Engels?

  but they enjoyed that they could finally be who they were and they enjoyed the attention they got for it. So with some, it felt like there was an element of, eventually, everyone is going to know who I am. And part of them actually did look forward to that day.

• 33:52Vanessa Richardson?

  When Peter sat on that bench, watching the police respond, he assumed Gertrude was dead. But he was wrong. Gertrude survived and woke up in the hospital. When police questioned her, she gave a detailed description of the attack, and more importantly, of the man behind it. It was the most valuable evidence investigators had gotten so far, and it brought them one step closer to Peter. But the people of Dusseldorf weren't safe yet. As summer turned to fall, Peter was still hunting. Only now, he traded his blades for a new weapon, a hammer. On September 29, 1929, Peter took a woman named Ida Reuter for a walk in a meadow near the Rhine.

• 34:36Vanessa Richardson?

  Then, without warning, he pulled the hammer from his pocket and struck her hard in the right temple. She collapsed limp, but she soon regained consciousness and begged Peter to leave her alone. He didn't. Peter kept hitting Ida with the hammer until she was dead. Then he left her body by the river. And in a final act of degradation, he took her underwear and used it to wash his hands in the Rhine. And Peter wasn't done with his new weapon. Roughly two weeks later, on the night of October 11, he attacked another woman, Elizabeth Durier, striking her in the right temple. When she collapsed, he raped her while she was unconscious. Then he hit her in the head over and over with the hammer,

• 35:21Vanessa Richardson?

  fracturing her skull and leaving her for dead. She was found the next morning, still alive, but in a coma. She died the following day without ever waking up. Around this same time, Peter decided to play a game with the police to prove how superior he was to them. He wrote them a letter revealing the exact location of 20-year-old Maria Hahn, the victim he'd stabbed and buried back in August. He reportedly signed it DMM for Dusseldorf Mass Murderer. Then he watched the news, waiting for word of her body's discovery, but it never came. So Peter went back to hunting.

• 36:02Vanessa Richardson?

  Two weeks after sending the letter, he attacked two women in a single night with his hammer. He approached the first, Frau Moira, and asked if she was afraid to be out alone, considering all the attacks that had been happening lately. Frau Moira didn't answer, and Peter responded to her silence by hitting her in the head with his hammer, then walking off. Just a couple of hours later, he encountered a sex worker named Frau Vonders. She propositioned Peter, and he was completely put off by it, but he played along to win her trust. They decided to go to a more secluded area to have sex. Once they reached a spot concealed by bushes, Peter pulled out his hammer and hit her in the head, knocking her unconscious.

• 36:44Vanessa Richardson?

  He hit her a few more times until, mid-swing, the head of the hammer flew off into the brush. Peter searched but couldn't find the missing piece, so he left Frau Vonders lying where she was and moved on, completely unsatisfied.

• 37:01Tristin Engels?

  Peter's reaction to Frau Vonders is interesting, but it's not surprising when you really think about it. Peter equates sex with violence. He doesn't respect women, I think we've established that. But when he is out hunting, he isn't seeking a consensual victim like Frau Vonders. Her willingness actually removes the elements that make sexuality exciting for him. There wouldn't have been resistance, fear, coercion, or control. For him, the violation is part of the sexual experience. And I think that's why, even after he killed her, he was left completely unsatisfied in this case.

• 37:44Vanessa Richardson?

  After that botched attack, Peter decided to abandon the hammer and go back to an old favorite, the scissors. Nearly two weeks after attacking Frau Vonders, on November 7, around 5:00 PM, Peter encountered a five-year-old girl named Gertrude Alberman on a street in Dusseldorf. He struck up a conversation and told little Gertrude he had something very special to show her. Excited to see the surprise, she went with him willingly to a secluded spot beside a house. There, he grabbed Gertrude by the throat and strangled her until she lost consciousness. Then he pulled out his scissors and stabbed her 34 times in the chest and twice more in the head.

• 38:27Vanessa Richardson?

  Then, some sources say he drank Gertrude's blood from the wound in her head. Once Peter was finished with Gertrude, he left her body lying near the house like discarded trash. The next day, Peter decided Dusseldorf wasn't nearly afraid enough of him. He'd heard nothing about police finding Maria Hahn's body or even looking for it. As far as he could tell, no one knew the full scope of his crimes, except the survivors and the families of the dead. So he wrote another letter, this time to a local newspaper, describing his murder of Gertrude Alberman and revealing the location of her body. In that same letter, he also revealed where Maria Hahn's body was buried.

• 39:11Vanessa Richardson?

  If the police weren't taking him seriously enough, maybe now the press would. Peter thought he was so smart. The way he saw it, he should be able to continue terrorizing Dusseldorf and taunting police and the press forever. But what he didn't realize was that he was only providing valuable clues that would eventually lead to his downfall.

• 39:41Vanessa Richardson?

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• 42:43Vanessa Richardson?

  By the end of 1929, 46-year-old Peter Kurten had murdered 11 people and attacked nearly 30 others who survived. After murdering 5-year-old Gertrude Alberman, he wrote to the press detailing his crime, along with the location of her body and that of an earlier victim, 20-year-old Maria Hahn. And just like the letter he'd sent police before, he reportedly signed it "DMM", for Dusseldorf Mass Murderer. Once Peter's letter hit the papers, all hell broke loose. The city was consumed by fear, and police finally understood the scale of what they were dealing with. They already had Gertrude. Searchers had found her body that same morning.

• 43:27Vanessa Richardson?

  But the map led them to Maria Hahn's grave, right where Peter said it would be. The letters didn't lead police straight to Peter, but they did provide a written record of two of his crimes, details that would later prove crucial. But first, they had to catch him. And so far, Peter had proven remarkably good at hiding in plain sight. After killing Gertrude Alberman in November of 1929, Peter put away his scissors and went back to strangling his victims. And between January and late April of 1930, he strangled at least six more women and attacked another with a hammer before finally crossing paths with the person who would bring him down.

• 44:11Vanessa Richardson?

  On May 14, 1930, Peter was near the Dusseldorf train station when he saw another man harass a young woman named Maria Bootlick. And he decided to try something new, playing the hero, rescuing a damsel in distress. Peter approached the two and asked Maria if the man was bothering her. Maria said he was, then moved to stand beside Peter, the man who seemed like the safer of the two. The man took off, and Peter and Maria started walking together. She admitted she was new in town, with no work and no place to stay. Then Peter broke another one of his own rules. Instead of keeping his target far from his home, he invited Maria back to his apartment to figure things out.

• 44:56Vanessa Richardson?

  His wife wasn't home, and once Maria was inside, she'd be at his mercy.

• 45:02Tristin Engels?

  This feels like another example of Peter experimenting. Earlier, he would often identify someone vulnerable, isolate them, and attack. Here, he's creating safety first. And it's a moment where he gets to be the lesser of two evils. And that gives him credibility. It allows her to lower her guard, and it lets him position himself as someone trustworthy. So he's learning how to make his next victim willingly move closer to him instead of having to force access and then attack. Inviting Maria back to his apartment is also something that's new. But it's a controlled environment, and that suggests increasing confidence.

• 45:48Tristin Engels?

  Bringing Maria into his own space, closer to his identity and his personal life, where he shares with August, is a much bigger risk. And although August is not home right now, he can't control when she does come home. She could have come home at any minute. And if he did anything to Maria there, he cannot be sure that he accounts for clearing all the evidence, just like he forgot in the past when August saw the blood before. So he's expanding his approach by experimenting again. He's continuing to seek greater and greater sensation and thrill.

• 46:24Vanessa Richardson?

  Peter's new tactic worked. He'd won Maria's trust, and she agreed to go home with him. But before long, Maria sensed that Peter was just like the man he'd rescued her from, and that he wanted something she didn't. She told Peter she wasn't going to have sex with him and asked if he could please help her find another place to stay. Surprisingly, Peter agreed, winning back her trust by doing what she asked. He took her to a nearby neighborhood to look for places. But when they got to a particularly dark corner of the neighborhood, Peter grabbed Maria by the neck and squeezed. Then he raped her against a wall. But this time, Peter didn't try to kill his victim. He let Maria go because he believed two things.

• 47:09Vanessa Richardson?

  One, he couldn't kill her, since the man he'd rescued her from had seen his face and could identify him. And two, since Maria was new in town, she'd probably never be able to find his apartment again or tell anyone where he lived. But Peter was very, very wrong on that second part. After Maria got away from Peter, she found a safe place to stay and wrote a letter to an acquaintance in Dusseldorf named Frau Brugmann, telling her what Peter had done to her. When Frau Brugmann read the letter, the hair on her arms stood up. She'd read about the Dusseldorf Mass Murderer in the newspapers, and it sounded to her like Maria had just narrowly escaped him.

• 47:52Vanessa Richardson?

  Frau Brugmann took Maria's letter to the Dusseldorf police. On May 21, 1930, they paid Maria a visit and asked if she could remember where the man lived. So much for Peter's assumption that she'd never find her way back. Maria led police right to his front door. But when the officers knocked, no one answered. At that very moment, Peter returned home and started up the stairs to his apartment. He locked eyes with Maria, then turned on his heel and ran out of the building. Rather than chase him down, the police went looking for the woman listed at the address, his wife, August. They found her at work and asked where he might be. August told them she had no idea, and she really didn't.

• 48:37Vanessa Richardson?

  But deep down, she knew she needed to confront her husband about what was going on. Meanwhile, Peter knew he had to get ahead of all this. That night, he picked up his wife at work and told her that there'd been a small incident with Maria Bootlick. He promised to explain everything soon, but for that night, he thought it best to rent a room and sleep elsewhere. The next morning, Peter returned to the apartment where August was waiting. She said, flat out, "You must have done something awful." And Peter simply replied, "I did it. I did everything."

• 49:14Vanessa Richardson?

  Then he suggested they get lunch later and walked out. At lunch later that day, Agust barely touched her food while Peter scarf down his meal, and then hers. All she wanted to know was what her husband meant by "I did everything." After they ate, they walked back and forth over the Rhine Bridge. Finally, Agust took a breath and asked Peter point blank. He stopped walking and turned to look at her. He asked her to promise she wouldn't tell a soul. She agreed. So Peter said, almost proudly, that he was the Dusseldorf mass murderer and had committed dozens of attacks and all of the murders she'd heard about lately, even the children.

• 49:59Vanessa Richardson?

  Agust was appalled. She told Peter she couldn't believe what he was telling her. She asked him why he did it. He said he didn't know, that the urge just came over him. Agust must have had a horrible look on her face because suddenly Peter got sheepish. He said that he shouldn't have told her, but Agust knew it was too late for that now.

• 50:23Tristin Engels?

  Yeah, it certainly seems as if he was confessing to her with pride, as if because she herself has shot someone in the past, that she would also share in this pride, like she would respond to this favorably, but she doesn't. And that said, part of the appeal in doing this may have been that he would be fully known by someone close to him. For years, he has been leading two lives, one as the husband that Agust knows and one as the Dusseldorf mass murderer. Now, he no longer has to hide the most important and extreme parts of himself from the one person closest to him, the one person he probably felt he could trust with his truest self.

• 51:07Tristin Engels?

  And at the same time, he's finally getting some recognition, which is gratifying to him. But he does not want the rejection that comes with truly being seen, which is why I think he immediately regret it. The rejection is a place of vulnerability and we know how Peter reacts when he feels vulnerable.

• 51:26Vanessa Richardson?

  Well, Agust knew she couldn't keep Peter's confession to herself. She went back to the police and when they pressed her, she told them everything, including that she was already due to meet Peter at the Rokas Church the following day, May 24. The next day, Peter showed up to meet Agust, only she wasn't alone. As Peter walked up to greet her, the officers stepped in and finally slapped handcuffs on the self-proclaimed Dusseldorf mass murderer. Police brought Peter to the station for questioning. They expected that if he cooperated, he'd walk them through his gruesome crimes from the past year.

• 52:05Vanessa Richardson?

  What they didn't expect was a laundry list of 69 crimes, including assault, arson, rape, and murder dating back 31 years to 1899. And they certainly weren't ready to hear how he drunk the blood of some of his victims. It earned him a new name, the Vampire of Dusseldorf. And when he sat down with the prison physician, Dr. Carl Berg, a couple of weeks after his arrest, he confessed to even more atrocities, like raping animals and killing the two boys when he was just nine years old. He even admitted to Dr. Berg that simply talking about his crimes aroused him.

• 52:46Tristin Engels?

  Talking about the crimes seems to be another way for him to relive them, which is interesting because with the exception of Agust, he hasn't done that yet. He hasn't talked about them. Right now, he's reconstructing every crime, every detail, dating all the way back to when he was a child. His memory of these events are enough of a stimulus. We've seen that. When he thinks about them, when he fantasizes about them, that has been enough, but now talking about them also seems to be as well. And that fits with what we've been discussing about associative learning in Peter. He repeatedly paired violence and blood with sexual arousal over years, since he was a child.

• 53:28Tristin Engels?

  And now he has an audience and recognition to go with it. Before his arrest, he had to keep this identity hidden. And now police, physicians, and soon the public are going to be interested in him. He gets to take ownership of all of this now through his narrative, and that's exactly what he's doing.

• 53:48Vanessa Richardson?

  Psychologically, do you think confessing to a doctor or the police was different for Peter than confessing to his wife?

• 53:55Tristin Engels?

  Oh, yes, definitely. With Agust, the confession was personal. He was revealing his hidden identity to someone whose acceptance actually seemed to matter to him, which made her rejection an issue and why he reacted sheepishly, as he said, and why he actually believed that she wouldn't tell anybody. He wanted to be truly known by her, I think. And with police and Dr. Berg, that vulnerability was gone. Their acceptance did not matter to him. Instead, he had an audience. He just wanted to be heard and he wanted his version of it to be what they heard. He could relive the crimes, experience the arousal associated with remembering them, and receive attention for being the person behind them.

• 54:40Tristin Engels?

  And that's what mattered here for him.

• 54:43Vanessa Richardson?

  Peter spent a month giving both the police and then the prison doctor every last detail of all his crimes from his youth to the present day and loving every minute of it. But then, on June 24, 1930, he suddenly took it all back. He claimed he wasn't actually the Dusseldorf mass murderer, that he'd only confessed to his wife so she could turn him in and collect the reward money. But what Peter didn't realize was that the game was up long ago. The letters he'd written about the murders of Maria Hahn and Gertrude Alberman contained details only the killer could know, details that lined up exactly with each victim's injuries Peter had already told on himself.

• 55:27Vanessa Richardson?

  And when investigators asked Agust about the reward money claim, she said Peter had told her no such thing. It was all over for Peter Kurten. He was ultimately charged with nine counts of murder, every killing he'd committed, except the two boys he claimed to have drowned as a child, and seven counts of attempted murder, although it's unclear which of his many victims these specific charges were for. At his trial in April of 1931, Peter's lawyers argued that he was insane. It wasn't a hard sell. Peter spent the trial locked in a cage, visibly excited and aroused, as every sick detail of his crimes was read into the record. But none of it convinced the jury that Peter shouldn't pay for his crimes.

• 56:12Vanessa Richardson?

  They found him guilty on all counts and a judge sentenced him to death by guillotine. On the day of his execution in July of 1931, 48-year-old Peter was led up to the block. He turned to the psychiatrist accompanying him and asked if he'd still be able to hear after his head was chopped off. He said that to hear the blood gush from his neck would be "the pleasure to end all pleasures." And while it's possible that people can retain consciousness for a brief period after beheading, it's impossible to know what Peter actually felt or heard when the blade dropped onto his neck.

• 56:53Vanessa Richardson?

  If he did fully experience his own beheading, sound and all, then in a sad and sick way, it means, in his mind, Peter Kurten won. Either way, Peter Kurten was gone for good and the people of Dusseldorf could finally rest, knowing the monster who terrorized them would never hurt anyone again.

• 57:29Vanessa Richardson?

  Thanks so much for listening to our series on Peter Kurten.

• 57:33Tristin Engels?

  Serial Killers and Murderous Minds is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on all social media at @CrimeHouse. Don't forget to rate, review, and follow Serial Killers and Murderous Minds wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference.

• 57:57Vanessa Richardson?

  And to enhance your listening experience, join Crime House Plus and get both parts of every story dropped on the same Monday, completely ad-free. No waiting three days for part two, plus Crime House bonus episodes every month. To join, go to crimehouseplus.com, or if you listen on Apple Podcasts, tap "Try Free" at the top of the Serial Killers and Murderous Minds page. Serial Killers and Murderous Minds is hosted by me, Vanessa Richardson, and forensic psychologist Dr. Tristin Engels, and is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the Serial Killers and Murderous Minds team, Max Cutler,

• 58:39Vanessa Richardson?

  Ron Shapiro, Alex Benedon, Lori Marinelli, Natalie Pritzowski, Sarah Camp, Alyssa Fox, Mara De La Rosa, Claire Swartzlander, Sarah Bachelor, and Carrie Murphy. Thank you for listening.

• 59:00Speaker 01

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• 1:00:54Vanessa Richardson?

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