Peter Kürten (May 26, 1883-July 2, 1931) was a German serial killer dubbed The Vampire of Düsseldorf by the contemporary media. He committed a series of sex crimes, assaults and murders against adults and children, most notoriously from February to November 1929 in Düsseldorf.
Contents |
Early life
Kürten was born into a poverty-stricken, abusive family in Mülheim an der Ruhr, the third of 13 children. As a child, he witnessed his alcoholic father repeatedly sexually assault his mother and sister. He was a petty criminal from a young age, and often ran away from home. He later claimed to have committed his first murders at the age of five, drowning two young friends while swimming. He moved with his family to Düsseldorf in 1894 and received a number of short prison sentences for various crimes, including theft and arson. As a youth he was employed by the local dogcatcher, who taught him how to masturbate and torture dogs. He progressed from torturing animals to attacks on people. He committed his first provable murder in 1913, strangling a young girl during the course of a burglary. His crimes were then halted by World War I and an eight-year prison sentence. In 1921, he left prison and moved to Altenburg, where he married. In 1925, he returned to Düsseldorf, where he began the series of crimes that would last until his capture.
Murders
On February 8, 1929, he assaulted a woman and molested and murdered an eight-year-old girl. On February 13, he murdered a middle-aged mechanic, stabbing him 20 times. Kürten did not attack again until August, stabbing three people in separate attacks on the 21st; murdering two sisters, aged five and 14, on the 23rd; and stabbing another woman on the 24th. In September he committed a single rape and murder. In October he attacked two women with a hammer. On November 7, he killed a five-year-old girl and sent a map to a local newspaper disclosing her grave. The variety of victims and methods created among police the assumption that there was more than one killer at large; over 900,000 different names were given to the police as potential suspects. The November murder was Kürten's last, although there were a spate of non-fatal hammer attacks from February to March 1930. In May he accosted a young woman named Maria Budlick; he took her first to his home and then to the Grafenberger Woods, where he raped but did not kill her. Budlick led the police to Kürten's home. He avoided the police, but confessed to his wife and told her to inform the police. On May 24, he was located and arrested.
Trial and execution
Kürten confessed to 79 offenses, and was charged with nine murders and seven attempted murders. He went to trial in April 1931. He initially pleaded not guilty, but after some weeks changed his plea. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. As Kürten was awaiting execution, he was often interviewed by Dr. Karl Berg, whose interviews with and analysis of Kürten formed the basis of his book, The Sadist. Kürten gave his primary motive to Berg as being one entirely of sexual pleasure. The number of stab wounds differed due to the simple fact it sometimes took longer to achieve orgasm; the sight of blood was integral to his sexual stimulation. He was executed by guillotine in Cologne. His last words were: "Tell me, after my head has been chopped off, will I still be able to hear, at least for a moment, the sound of my own blood gushing from the stump of my neck?...that would be the pleasure to end all pleasures."
Analysis
The Kürten case was the first time profiling was used to determine the criminal viability of possible suspects. The process as used by German authorities ultimately suffered a fatal flaw when the police decided wrongly that the killer was insane; Kürten was, in fact, declared to be sane. Kürten said to the legal examiners that his primary motive was to "strike back at oppressive society". He did not deny that he had sexually molested his victims, but he always claimed during his trial that this was not his primary motive. In 1931, scientists attempted to examine irregularities in Kürten's brain in an attempt to explain his personality and behavior. His head was dissected and mummified and is currently on display at the Ripley's Believe It or Not! museum in Wisconsin Dells.
Cultural references
Fritz Lang's 1931 film M, in which a serial child killer terrorizes Berlin, is often said to have been based upon Kürten; Lang denied that Kürten was an influence, however. The 1975 novel Salem's Lot by Stephen King references Kürten (there spelled "Peter Kurtin") in chapter 13, in which the character Matt Burke discusses historical vampires. In 1981, the British noise band Whitehouse released an album entitled Dedicated to Peter Kürten. The American heavy metal band Macabre recorded a song called "Vampire of Dusseldorf" about Kurten. The film Copycat, a copycat serial killer uses Kürten's name as an alias
Further Reading
- by Margaret Seaton Wagner, 1932.
- The Sadist by Karl Berg, 1945.
References
Lane, Brian and Gregg, Wilfred [1992]. The Encyclopedia Of Serial Killers. Berkley Books
Fuchs, Christian [1996] (2002). Bad Blood. Creation Books.
Gilbert, Alexander The Vampire Of Dusseldorf(English) Crime Library Retrieved on 2007-10-03
