Peter Kürten

Infobox Serial Killer
name=Peter Kürten


caption=Mugshot of Peter Kürten taken in 1930 or 1931
birthname=Peter Kürten
alias=The Vampire of Düsseldorf
birth=Birth date|1883|5|26
location=Mülheim an der Ruhr
death=Dda|1931|07|2|1883|05|26
deathplace =Cologne, Germany
cause=Decapitation by guillotine
penalty=Death
victims=Murders: 9
Attempted: 7
Sexual assaults: unknown
beginyear=1913
endyear=1930
country=Germany
states=
mo =
motive = sexual pleasure/to "strike back at oppressive society"
apprehended=May 24, 1930

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.

Early life

Kürten was born into a poverty-stricken, abusive family in Mülheim an der Ruhr, the third of eleven children. As a child, he witnessed his alcoholic father repeatedly sexually assault his mother and sisters. He followed his father's footsteps, and was soon sexually abusing his sisters at a young age. 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 nine, 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 to 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 twenty times. Kürten did not attack again until August, stabbing three people in separate attacks on the 21st; murdering two sisters, aged five and fourteen, on the 23rd; and stabbing another woman on the 24th. [ [http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/history/kurten/terror_2.html Peter Kürten: The Vampire of Dusseldorf ] ] In September he committed a single rape and murder, brutally beating the servant girl with a hammer in a wood that lay just outside of Dusseldorf. In October he attacked two women with a hammer. On November 7 he killed a five-year-old girl by strangling and stabbing her 36 times with scissors, and then sent a map to a local newspaper disclosing the location of 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 pled 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 on the 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." [http://www.angelfire.com/fl4/peterkurten/capture.html]

Analysis

German authorities wrongly determined Kürten to be insane when he 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.Fact|date=June 2008dubious

Cultural references

Fritz Lang's 1931 film "M", in which a serial child killer terrorizes Düsseldorf, is often said to have been based upon Kürten; Lang denied that Kürten was an influence, however.

Kürten is the subject of Randy Newman's song "In Germany Before the War" from the album "Little Criminals".

In the 1975 novel "Salem's Lot", Stephen King references Kürten (there spelled "Peter Kurtin") in Chapter 13, in which the character Matt Burke discusses historical vampires with priest Father Callahan.

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.
*" Peter Kurten: A Study In Sadism" by George Godwin 1938.

References

*Lane, Brian and Gregg, Wilfred (1992). "The Encyclopedia Of Serial Killers". Berkley Books.
*Fuchs, Christian [1996] (2002). "Bad Blood". Creation Books.
*Gilbert, Alexander [http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers%5Chistory%5Ckurten%5Cindex_1.html The Vampire Of Dusseldorf] (English) [http://www.crimelibrary.com/ Crime Library] Retrieved on 2007-10-03