His mild manners and soft spoken courteousness placed him above suspicion, and to most people he appeared totally harmless.
Yet his bourgeois exterior concealed one of the most brutal sadists of modern times...
As night fell across the city that had lived through a year of terror, the streets rapidly emptied. People hurried through the narrow lanes to their homes. Children were plucked from playgrounds and sent to bed. Doors were bolted and curtains drawn. The people were in dread of a creature —a vampire —which had no face, no name, no shape. Already, it had committed 46 violent crimes, displaying every kind of perversion. Five bodies had been taken to the mortuary. But still it remained little more than a spectre.
As the lights went out on the night of August 23, 1929, the people of Dusseldorf, in the German Rhineland, felt almost inured to horror. Nothing more, they thought, could shock them now. As they slept fitfully, they little foresaw that the next few hours would demonstrate the full bestiality of the man they had labelled The Dusseldorf Vampire.
A shadow
There was one bright and cheerful patch of light that evening. In the suburb of Flehe, hundreds of people were enjoying the annual fair. Old-fashioned merry-go-rounds revolved to the heavy rhythm of German march tunes, stalls dispensed beer and wurst, there was a comforting feeling of safety and warmth in the closely-packed crowd.
At around 10.30, two foster sisters, 5-year-old Gertrude Hamacher and 14-year-old Louise Lenzen, left the fair and started walking through the adjoining allotments to their home. As they did so a shadow broke away from among the beansticks and followed them along a footpath. Louise stopped and turned as a gentle voice said:
“Oh dear, I’ve forgotten to buy some cigarettes. Look, would you be very kind and go to one of the booths and get some for me? I'll look after the little girl."
Louise took the man's money and ran back towards the fairground. Quietly, the man picked up Gertrude in his arms and carried her behind the beanpoles. There was no sound as he strangled her and then slowly cut her throat with a Bavarian clasp knife. Louise returned a few moments later and handed over the cigarettes. The man seized her in a stranglehold and started dragging her off the footpath. Louise managed to break away and screamed “Mama! Mama!" The man grabbed her again, strangled her and cut her throat. Then he vanished.
Twelve hours later, Gertrude Schulte, a 26-year-old servant girl, was stopped by a man who offered to take her to the fair at the neighbouring town of Neuss. Foolishly, she agreed. The man introduced himself as Fritz Baumgart and suggested they take a stroll through the woods. Suddenly, he stopped and roughly attempted sexual intercourse. Terrified, Gertrude Schulte pushed him away and screamed, “I'd rather die!"
The man cried “Well, die then!" and began stabbing her frenziedly with a knife. She felt searing pains in her neck and shoulder and a terrific thrust in her back. “Now you can die!" said the man and hurled her away with such force that the knife broke and the blade was left sticking in her back. But Gertrude Schulte didn't die. A passer-by heard her screams and called the police and an ambulance. By then, the attacker had disappeared.
In barely more than half a day, the Dusseldorf maniac had killed two children and attempted to rape and kill another woman. The citizens were stunned as they read their morning papers. Day by day, the attacks continued. Their increasing frequency and ferocity convinced medical experts that the Vampire had lost all control of his sadistic impulses.
In one half-hour, he attacked and wounded a girl of 18, a man of 30, and a woman of 37. The Bavarian dagger gave way to a sharper, thinner blade and then to some kind of blunt instrument. It was the bludgeon that hammered to death two more servant girls, Ida Reuter and Elisabeth Dorrier; the thin blade that killed five-year-old Gertrude Albermann, her body shredded with 36 wounds.
Twenty miles away, in the cathedral city of Cologne, a 21-year-old “domestic” named Maria Budlick read the anguished headlines and said to a friend: “Isn't it shocking? Thank goodness we're not in Dusseldorf"
A few weeks later, Maria Budlick lost her job. On May 14, she set out to look for work and boarded a train for Dusseldorf... and an unwitting rendezvous with the Vampire.
On the platform at Dusseldorf station, she was accosted by a man who offered to show her the way to a girls' hostel. They followed the brightly-lit streets for a while, but when he started leading her towards the dark trees of the Volksgarten Park she suddenly remembered the stories of the Monster, and refused to go any farther. The man insisted and it was while they were arguing that a second man appeared, as if from nowhere, and inquired softly: “Is everything all right?” The man from the railway station slunk away and Maria Budlick was left alone with her rescuer.
Walk in the woods
Tired and hungry, she agreed to accompany him to his one-room flat in Mettmannerstrasse, where she had a glass of milk and a ham sandwich. The man offered to take her to the hostel, but after a tram ride to the north eastern edge of the city, she realized they were walking deeper and deeper into the Grafenburg Woods. Her companion stopped suddenly and said:
“Do you know now where you are? I can tell you! You are alone with me in the middle of the woods. Now you can scream as much as you like and nobody will hear you!"
The man lunged forward, seized her by the throat and tried to have sexual intercourse up against a tree. Maria Budlick struggled violently and was about to lose consciousness when she felt the man's grip relax. “Do you remember where I live?” he asked. “In case you’re ever in need and want my help?” “No,” gasped Maria, and in one word saved her own life and signed the death warrant of the Dusseldorf Vampire. The man let her go and showed her out of the woods.
Misdirected letter
But Maria Budlick had remembered the address. She vividly recalled the nameplate “Mettmannerstrasse” under the flickering gaslight. And in a letter to a friend the next day, she told of her terrifying experience in the Grafenburg Woods with the quiet, soft-spoken man. The letter never reached her friend. It was misdirected and opened by a Frau Brugman, who took one look at the contents and called the police.
Twenty-four hours later, accompanied by plainclothes detectives, Maria Budlick was walking up and down Mettmannerstrasse trying to pinpoint the quiet man’s house. She stopped at No. 71. It looked familiar and she asked the landlady if “a fair-haired, rather sedate man” lived there. The woman took her up to the fourth floor and unlocked a room. It was the same one in which she had drunk her milk and eaten her sandwich two nights earlier.
She turned round to face even more conclusive proof. The quiet man was coming up the stairs towards her. He looked startled, but carried on to his room and shut the door behind him. A few moments later, he left the house with his hat pulled down over his eyes, passed the two plainclothes men standing in the street and disappeared round a corner.
Maria Budlick ran out and told the officers: “That’s the man who assaulted me in the woods. His name is Peter Kurten.” So far, nothing linked Kurten with the Vampire. His only crime was suspected rape. But he knew there was no longer any hope of concealing his identity. Early the following morning —after meeting his wife as usual at the restaurant where she worked late —he confessed: “I am the Monster of Dusseldorf.”
On May 24, 1930, Frau Kurten told the story to the police, adding that she had arranged to meet her husband outside St. Rochus Church at three o’clock that afternoon. By that time the whole area was surrounded by armed police. The moment Peter Kurten appeared, four officers rushed forward with loaded revolvers. The man smiled and offered no resistance. “There is no need to be afraid,” he said.
The above is an extract from Infamous True Crimes and Trials - Volume #1
