A SERIAL killer known as the “The Dusseldorf Vampire” mercilessly slaughtered nine victims and tried to drink their blood.
Peter Kurten began his killing spree at the age of nine after a disturbing childhood that saw him mutilate animals for sexual pleasure.
Kurten tortured his victims, mostly children, over two decades, stabbing them with scissors, or bludgeoning them with a hammer to achieve a heightened sexual state.
He would then drink blood from their wounds sparking fear and panic among locals that a real-life vampire was on the loose.
The killer took pleasure in his depraved acts – visiting their graves to carry out sex acts.
Even talking to police at the scene of the crime wasn’t a step too far for Kurten, under the guise of a concerned citizen.
Between 1913 and 1929 he murdered nine people, had attempted to murder seven more and had a total of nearly 100 crimes when he was eventually caught in 1930.
After realising German cops were closing in and that a reward had been issued, he told his oblivious wife to turn him in and claim the money.
He expressed no remorse for his killing spree – instead blaming his abusive childhood and his time in prison for other petty crimes.
Speaking in court, Kurten said: “I had to kill. I did not kill either people I hated, or people I loved. I killed whoever crossed my path at the moment my urge for murder took hold of me.
He added: “Never have I felt any misgivings in my soul.”
During his trial, it took the jury just 90 minutes to reach a guilty verdict and he was handed nine death sentences and ordered to be executed by guillotine.
In his final moments on July 2, 1931, as his head lay on the block, the twisted killer said: “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.”
Kurten’s head was dissected and taken away for forensic analysis.
But scientists found no abnormalities in his brain – and it’s now on display in the Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum, Wisconsin.
The Dusseldorf Monster was born into a poverty-stricken family with an abusive and alcoholic father who often carried out horrendous beatings on his children.
He would order his wife to strip naked and have sex with him while forcing the 13 siblings to watch.
He was later jailed for raping his eldest daughter.
Eventually, his mother was able to escape and move the family to Dusseldorf where she later remarried.
Having been exposed to violence at a young age, Kurten resorted to bestiality and torturing and killing animals after working with a local dog warden.
He later claimed to have killed his first victim at the age of nine after pushing a young boy who couldn’t swim off a raft and holding another boy under the water.
He was never convicted for the deaths and they were ruled accidents by authorities.
After running away from home at age 16 and living a life of crime in and out of prison, Kurten murdered his first victim as an adult in May 1913.
During a burglary of a pub, he came across nine-year-old Christine Klein as she slept, slashing her throat and allegedly engaging in sex acts as she lay dying.
He returned to the scene of the crime the next day to drink in the tavern – and told cops he took great pleasure in hearing people’s horror reaction to the murder.
He then attempted to murder 17-year-old Gertrud Franken by strangling her before fleeing the scene.
Kurten was unable to carry on his crime streak after being drafted into the German army in 1914 before he was arrested for desertion and sent back to prison.
Upon his release in 1921, he married Auguste Scharf, a candy shop owner and sex worker who herself had been jailed for murdering her ex-fiance – but she had no idea of her new husband’s hidden desires.
But it was in 1929 that his killing spree reached a high, murdering seven and several victims escaping as he carried out sick sex acts and drank blood from the wounds.
Apollonia Kuhn was stabbed 24 times with a pair of scissors but survived.
Rosa Ohliger, 9, was stabbed to death with scissors before her body was molested and five days later he killed 45-year-old mechanic Rudolf Scheer.
In the same year, he raped, strangled and then stabbed Maria Hahn and told cops he had contemplated nailing her corpse to a tree to shock the public before burying the body.
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?
Peter Kurten
Next, he killed foster sisters Luise Lenzen and Gertrude Hamacher, 5 and 14, as they walked home from a fairground strangling, stabbing them and drinking their blood.
He then switched his murder weapon and used a hammer to kill Elizabeth Dorrier, raping her and leaving her to die days later in hospital.
In November 1929, he murdered his final victim, five-year-old Gertrude Albermann whom he stabbed 34 times after luring her into an allotment.
The bloodthirsty manic was eventually caught after a victim who survived wrote a letter to a friend about the horrific attack – however, the letter was sent to the wrong address.
It was passed on to the police who were closing in on Kurten and the sick murderer encouraged his wife to hand him in and pocket the reward money.
In total, he confessed to 79 crimes including nine killings, claiming they had been revenge attacks for the horrors inflicted on him in prison and throughout his childhood.
He pleaded no guilty by reason of insanity to each charge and he was surrounded by an iron cage to stop the families of his victims from attacking him.
After the jury found him guilty of all nine murders he was sentenced to death by guillotine at Klingelputz Prison in Cologne before his head was taken away to be studied.
It was later mummified and after the Second World War it was transported and displayed at Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum in Wisconsin.
