Casefile True Crime - Case 181: The Vampire of Nuremberg

Episode Date: June 26, 2021

During the early ’70s, cemeteries and mortuaries throughout Germany were targeted by a particularly disturbing grave robber. Not only did he steal the personal belongings of the dead, but he also exhumed, mutilated, molested, and gnawed upon the bodies... --- Narration – Anonymous Host Research & writing – Milly Raso Creative direction – Milly Raso Production and music – Mike Migas For all credits and sources please visit casefilepodcast.com/case-181-the-vampire-of-nuremberg

Our episodes deal with serious and often distressing incidents. If you feel at any time you need support, please contact your local crisis centre. For suggested phone numbers for confidential support, please see the show notes for this episode on your app or on our website. In late April 1972, a serious matter was unravelling at the West Friedhoff mortuary in Nuremberg, Germany. Several relatives of the recently deceased had noticed a jewellery missing from their loved one's bodies.

The cadavers had been stored in the facility's crematorium prior to burial, where at some point the jewellery would vanish. The bereaved expressed their concerns to the mortuary's night watchman, 47-year-old Georg Varmut. Complaints like these weren't unusual. The missing items would usually be found at the home of the deceased, having never been on their body in the first place. Other times, mortuary staff would remove the high-value items and store them in a small

chest for safe keeping. It was only a matter of time before they reappeared. This time, however, Georg was beginning to suspect something was amiss. Upon entering the mortuary's waiting room one day, Georg found a money box displaced on a table. It had been forced open and emptied. During no evidence of a break-in, Georg believed that the culprit was likely someone who worked at the mortuary or the adjoining Nuremberg West Cemetery.

To avoid causing tension amongst his colleagues or tarnishing the reputation of his workplace, Georg kept his suspicions to himself. He began investigating the matter discreetly, with the intention to confront the perpetrator once he had identified them. A six-foot-tall, burly war veteran, Georg felt more than capable of handling any ensuing conflict. The following days were uneventful. Then a storm rolled in on the night of May 5.

Georg Varmut took shelter at his home next to the mortuary. He was watching television and thinking over the recent spate of thefts when the phone rang. On the other line was one of his neighbours, a woman who lived opposite the cemetery. She reported seeing a dark figure moving quickly between the graves. Suspecting it was the thief, Georg rushed to the mortuary. He hid patiently in the darkness on the mezzanine floor, waiting for the thief to appear. When they failed to do so, Georg sought them out.

His search led him to the crematorium. Georg turned out the lights and waited in the shadows. He heard the door creak open. A slim, short-statured man with the jet-black hair entered the secure area and slowly made his way to a nearby coffin. It contained the body of a 15-year-old girl who had arrived the previous day. Georg watched as the intruder leant into the coffin and kissed the corpse on the lips. This was one of many disturbing incidents that had occurred at a German mortuary or

cemetery in recent times. A year earlier, on April 14, 1971, a staff member at the Ulstorff Cemetery in Hamburg entered the mortuary and stumbled across a horrific scene. The body of a girl had been removed from her coffin and posed so that she was leaning against it. She was naked and her lips and neck were bruised with visible bite marks. Placed beside her were two burnt-out candles. She was surrounded by the bodies of other corpses that had also been removed from their

coffins. They were sitting up, facing the girl. Three days later, 64 kilometers east of Hamburg, an undertaker was met by a similar scene when he walked into his parlour. The body of a recently deceased 40-year-old woman was sitting up outside of her coffin, surrounded by burnt-out candles. Then, on the island of Silt in the North Sea, a pastor headed over to his church. The body of a 52-year-old man was lying in a coffin inside, ready to be laid to rest.

The pastor had made sure the coffin was closed when he left the previous evening. But, as he entered the church that day, the lid was open. Worse still, protruding from the man's chest was a hunting knife. In May, a woman named Marion was walking through the Moulin Cemetery in the town of Flensborg. As she drew closer to her mother's burial plot, she noticed someone sitting on the adjoining gravesite. Marion was shocked to realize that the grave had been dug up.

The person sitting was the body of the man who'd been buried there. He had been decapitated, and his head was missing. Months later, on November 6th, a man was visiting a cemetery in Foyt to pay his respects to a deceased relative. While walking through the grounds, he spotted a grave that had been dug up. The coffin within had been prized open, and the naked body of a young girl was sitting upright on the mound of dirt. When Vestfriedorf mortuary night watchman Georg Varmut came across the intruder kissing

the corpse, he immediately leapt into action. The perpetrator, realizing he'd been caught in the act, made a break for the exit. Georg chased after him, grabbing him by the collar as he reached the door. He pulled the man into a nearby elevator where the diffused light illuminated the man's face. He was a strange-looking individual aged in his 30s with spectacles and a bulbous nose. He didn't utter a word. A loud bang interrupted the pair's altercation as Georg was hit by a painful blow.

Blood seeped from his upper abdomen into his shirt. He let go of the intruder, who was holding a smoking 7.65mm pistol, and fell to the ground. The gunman grinned at the wounded Georg before taking off. Georg crawled on all fours to the telephone in his office. He called emergency services, then dragged himself to the bathroom to tend to his injury. The bullet had damaged his small and large intestines as well as his bladder. But Georg survived. Police arrived and sealed off the mortuary, but the gunman was long gone.

Georg was able to provide a detailed description of his assailant. By the following day, 50 detectives were chasing up the alibis of known gravediggers, robbers, thieves and other criminals in the area. All of them were accounted for. When 24-year-old Marcus Adler met 19-year-old Ruth Lissy, it was love at first sight. The pair met three years earlier in Yugoslavia and had been inseparable since. Marcus and his mother ran a freight business in Ulberhausen, while Ruth was employed as a salesperson more than 470km away in Nuremberg.

Every chance that he got, Marcus drove the long journey in his light grey Mercedes to visit Ruth. On May 6, Marcus set out for the home where Ruth lived with her parents. After he arrived, the two decided to go for a drive together. They farewelled Ruth's mother at 6pm and left in Marcus's car. The young couple headed to a forest east of Nuremberg, a short drive from Ruth's home. After finding a scenic spot to park, the two dozed off, with Marcus in the front seat and Ruth lying in the back.

Nearby, a short, bespectacled man drove through the forest on his red moped. It was the perfect place for him to lay low until the heat of the vest-free-dough mortuary shooting dissipated. He had spent the day exploring the wilderness where he carried out target practice. This particular forest was popular with hunters, so the sound of his shooting at traffic signs, trees and the occasional deer didn't attract any unwanted attention. The man was still there at dusk, riding around aimlessly when he spotted the light grey Mercedes with the sleeping couple inside.

He pulled over and cautiously approached the car. He reached over and opened the driver's side door. The noise woke Marcus, prompting the man to pull out his 7.65mm pistol. He shot Marcus in the head, causing Ruth to sit up abruptly. The man shifted his attention to her, shooting her in the left side of her chest. He then leaned into the car and shot both of them execution-style, to make certain they were dead. Overwhelmed with impulse, the man climbed into the car and pressed his lips to Marcus' wounds,

sucking the blood from them. Once he'd had enough, he clambered into the backseat. He tore Ruth's sweater off, pushed up her bra, then licked the blood from her chest wound. After 10 minutes, he was overcome with a calming sense of satisfaction. He felt stronger than before. The man pulled off Ruth's engagement ring and rummaged through her purse. He found Marcus' wallet in the glove compartment. As he examined its contents, he noticed someone approaching the car.

A hunter was combing the edge of the forest when he spotted the light grey Mercedes parked up ahead. The hunter was standing nearby, acting nervously. It was a small man wearing a leather hat and sunglasses. He then rushed to a red moped parked five metres away and sped off. The hunter reached the Mercedes and peered through its windows, finding the bodies of Marcus Adler and Ruth Lissie inside. Shocked by the grisly discovery, the hunter fired his shotgun into the air to alert nearby

hikers and farmers that help was needed. There was no response. Left with no other option, he was forced to trek one and a half kilometres to the nearest foam booth, where he contacted police. Post mortems revealed that Marcus and Ruth's wounds had been sucked clean of blood. The double homicide occurred less than 24 hours after the shooting of Georg Varmut and in the same city. Investigators wondered if the two incidents were related.

They compared the bullets retrieved from both crime scenes. They were a perfect match. The head of Nuremberg's homicide squad called the disturbed perpetrator a madman. We have to act fast, he asserted, otherwise there will be more deaths. A task force was swiftly formed to hunt down the killer, while a 6,000 Deutsche Mark reward was offered for his capture. His physical description was published in newspapers, along with an alert for the public to be on the lookout for his distinctive red moped.

Helmut Kostan was employed with a transit company based in Nuremberg. Four days after the Adler and Lissy slayings, Helmut picked up a copy of a local paper. The blood-sucking, gun-wielding madman terrorizing the city was still making headlines. Helmut was struck by the suspect's description. It reminded him of his colleague, 41-year-old Kuno Hoffman. Hoffman was a short-statured, black-haired man who wore spectacles and drove a red moped. Just a minute earlier, Hoffman had entered the manager's office and abruptly resigned from his job.

He no longer wanted to work the docks loading boxes into trucks, instead expressing a desire to go to Hamburg. Hoffman had just left when Helmut Kostan came across his description in the local paper in relation to the recent killings. Helmut rushed to a phone and called the police. Kuno Hoffman was a troubled individual. Following his birth in 1931, he was violently beaten by his alcoholic father. At age one, Kuno's father shoved him into a sack and threw him away.

On another occasion, young Kuno was hung from a wooden window frame and beaten. Kuno's mother claimed the brutal physical abuse had caused Kuno to become deaf and non-verbal. However, a doctor maintained that his permanent disabilities were the result of a middle-ear infection. Kuno's father remained an inconsistent presence throughout his childhood, often spending long stints in prison. He served time for burglary, child abuse, and the attempted murder of a woman he had raped.

When his father was home, Kuno isolated himself to avoid his wrath. His parents eventually divorced in 1940. Kuno moved to between eight different schools for deaf children before taking on a shoemaker's apprenticeship. He gave up on that in a fit of rage, then took up work on an agricultural estate in Nuremberg. Although considered a diligent worker, Kuno lost his job when he demanded a higher wage. With an IQ of 70 and the inability to communicate, options were limited for Kuno.

His life from there on out was interspersed with odd jobs and crime. His first charge came in 1949 following the theft of a bicycle. By the 1950s, he was committing burglaries and arson. The courts tried to help Hoffman. He was placed into various medical and nursing homes, but the silent man remained an enigma to physicians. In total, he spent nine years in nursing homes and another nine in prison. Sometimes he accepted treatment willingly, other times, not so much.

He exploited a lack of security measures in the homes where he was kept to escape on twelve occasions. By 1971, he had only spent five years of his adult life free of any type of incarceration. Hoffman went to live with his sister and brother in Nuremberg, where he picked up work. For the first time in a long time, Kuno Hoffman's life seemed to be on track. However, Hoffman was an unappealing man who was unable to form romantic relationships. He developed an addiction to pornography and took to visiting brothels in search of companionship. Yet, he felt the sex workers only aimed to get the job done and was left bitter by their

expressions of disgust whenever they were intimate with him. He desired to be loved tenderly and permanently. Over time, loneliness consumed him. At one stage, his sister told him to buy a rubber doll, but Hoffman was determined to find another way to improve his situation. Following the tip-off to police, six officers in four patrol cars quickly descended on Kuno Hoffman's workplace. Although he matched the description of the shooter wanted in relation to the Adler-Lissie

murders, his colleagues didn't actually believe Hoffman was responsible. He was, by their accounts, a harmless guy. When police came looking for him, they discovered Hoffman had since left the premises. A search commenced and, by chance, he was spotted hiding behind a truck. He took off, but was quickly apprehended. Police would come to discover that Kuno Hoffman was deaf and non-verbal and communicated using noiseless facial expressions and hand gestures. As such, an interpreter was summoned to facilitate communications between him and homicide detectives.

The interview began at 6pm to enable more time for evidence gathering. The interpreter spoke on Hoffman's behalf and his answers were recorded. Throughout the 50-minute interrogation, Hoffman was caught lying and his version of events were contradictory. At one stage, police threatened Hoffman with a crowbar to get him to confess to the murders, yet he only admitted to things he wanted to. Meanwhile, Hoffman's room at the home he shared with his sister and brother was being searched.

His red moped was found at the address, along with Ruth Lissie's engagement ring. The human skull that had been cut from a corpse in Moulin Cemetery was also amongst Hoffman's possessions. Others were a set of duplicate keys to the vest-free-dove mortuary and other items stolen from the crematorium. However, the murder weapon was still missing. Shortly before 9pm, an officer examining Hoffman's washing machine began unscrewing the appliance piece by piece.

Hidden within, he discovered a 7.65mm pistol. He contacted the detectives interviewing Hoffman to inform them of the discovery. When Hoffman was told of the find, his face twitched and lips trembled. He then began to motion with his hands. Over the next 20 minutes, he provided investigators with a confession. Hoffman read extensively and in 1966 purchased a book titled The Black Magic by an occultist group in Hamburg. The text fostered what would become a lifelong fascination of the dark arts.

Hoffman read up on various occult subjects like Satanism and soon harboured an obsession to self-improve using their teachings. He became infatuated by two particularly taboo subgroups, vampirism and necrophilia, the sexual attraction to or sexual acts involving corpses. Between 1971 and 72, Hoffman forced entry into cemeteries and mortuaries throughout Germany. He stole and duplicated building keys so he could move in and out with ease. Under the cover of darkness, he dug up fresh graves or entered crematoriums and began violating the deceased.

He stabbed them with knives and razors and drank their blood. Occasionally, he chewed their flesh, cut off their heads, removed their hearts or examined their internal organs. Sometimes, he'd manipulate several bodies at a single scene, posing them around each other. He'd also sexually interfere with the bodies of women he found attractive. He travelled to each location on his red moped. By May 1972, Hoffman had desecrated the remains of 35 individuals.

Obituary notices published in newspapers helped him choose his victims. At one stage, his brother suspected he was up to something. He articulated to Hoffman, Say, are you crazy, Kuro? Why are you studying the obituaries in the papers? Why are you visiting the morgue for no reason? Do you want to enjoy the dead women? Hoffman did not respond, but the accusation made him increasingly cautious.

Hoffman believed that by carrying out his black magic rituals and consuming the blood of his victims, he would become handsome and strong. He also thought it would give him back his hearing and voice. Only then would he have power over women. In the meantime, he had to impose his will on others through other means. He developed a fascination with pistols and rifles, which led to the purchase of a 7.4 0.65mm pistol for 500 Deutsche Marks. Hoffman had made duplicate keys to the vest Friedhof mortuary and entered the premises

on four occasions to steal valuables from the bodies stored there. He intended to do so again on the night of May 5, 1972. However, once inside, his plans changed. He wanted a pretty girl whose blood he could drink. Hoffman was already in the morgue when Georg Varmut entered, but because he was deaf, Hoffman did not hear the night watchman approach. Startled, he rushed to the exit. Hoffman pulled out his pistol on the way and shot Georg to facilitate his escape.

Once outside, he scrambled over the wooden fence surrounding the cemetery and climbed onto his red moped that he had hidden in nearby shrubbery. He then took off home. At 9 the following morning, Hoffman rode his moped to the forest east of Nuremberg, where he hid for the duration of the day. That evening, he came across Markus Adler and Ruth Lissie. He killed the couple and consumed their blood, telling detectives that the pretty young girl had been much better than the women in the graveyards.

As the passerby had seen him and his distinct vehicle, Hoffman believed the police would track him down easily. He hid his pistol in his washing machine and promptly quit his job, hoping to flee the city before authorities caught up with him. Hoffman's former employers were shocked by his actions. They issued a statement that described Hoffman as a nice person and questioned how the unassuming man could be capable of carrying out such horrendous acts. Their character references were overwhelmingly positive, Hoffman hid his true nature well.

This indicated that he was capable of maintaining a double life and in complete control of his behaviour. Realising that his sanity would play a major role in his punishment, Hoffman changed tactics. He smashed the furniture in his cell and began writing bizarre letters. According to one addressed to the Homicide Squad, he claimed to have two times the amount of victims as Martin Rohack, a serial killer in the late 1500s. Rohack is believed to have the highest number of victims in the Czech lands, allegedly killing over 59 people in a four-year span.

Hoffman also claimed to be innocent like Vera Brunner, a woman famous throughout Germany as a victim of miscarriage of justice. He also claimed he was the nephew of the British Queen, a member of a West German far-left militant organisation Red Army faction, and penned a letter to the Pope requesting admission into the strictest order of the Catholic Church. He painted his cell walls with threats, including one that read, I will cut off the head of the judge and throw it in a dog bowl. He demanded his murder weapon be returned so he could use it to bring the dead back

to life. Hoffman first appeared in court in August 1974. The building was packed with onlookers as Hoffman, via sign language, tried to explain his motive. He detailed his extreme loneliness, alienation and isolation, and how that impacted his ability to have intimate relationships. These feelings then led him to commit the appalling acts. The defence argued that Hoffman was insane, but the prosecution thought differently.

It was the court's role to decide whether he should face trial for murder, or be judged unfit to plead, and face confinement in a mental health facility. Two psychiatrists who had studied Kurno Hoffman appeared in court. The first believed that the accused had lost touch with the world around him and was unfit to stand trial. His colleague disagreed, telling the court that Hoffman was responsible for his, quote, hysterical condition. The trial judge suspended court proceedings for two years as psychiatric experts debated

over Hoffman's sanity. During this time, Hoffman was moved between specialist clinics and psychiatric wards, where his psychosis was examined and treated. When he returned to court in July 1976, he appeared well, though his recollections of his crimes remained inconsistent. He claimed he acted in self-defense in both the Vestfriedhof mortuary and the Nuremberg Forest shootings. He alleged that Marcus Adler had surprised him while he was practicing shooting in the

woods and knocked the gun out of his hand. Following this assertion, questions were once again raised as to Hoffman's mental stability. Depending on the source, Kurno Hoffman's outcome varies. Some report that he never faced a full trial after being deemed criminally insane. This version ends with his indefinite detainment in a mental health facility. Adler, more reliable sources, state that he was ruled sane and faced court for at least the shooting attacks. They claim that Hoffman, described by the trial judge as a pitiful human being, was

sentenced to two life sentences for the murders of Marcus Adler and Ruth Lissie, with an additional 10 years for the attempted murder of Georg Varmut. While awaiting transfer to a federal penitentiary, he taunted jailers, requesting one final sip of a virgin's blood. There have also been reports that Hoffman was released in 2004 for reasons if true we couldn't ascertain. This ending has Hoffman returning to Nuremberg to live. These sources state that in 2008 the now 75-year-old was working on a memoir, though the status

of the work is unclear. Should you believe this to be the true ending to Kurno Hoffman's story, it is important to note that no one knows where he is today.