Forbidden History - The S-Bahn Murderer: A Serial Killer in Nazi Berlin

Episode Date: October 26, 2022

It’s 1940 and there’s a serial killer on the streets of Berlin looking for his next victim. Elfreda Franka is travelling home on the late train after work. Sitting alone in the dark carriage she stares out of the window as the train pulls into a station.    Another passenger gets onboard.    Curious but unable to make out their features, Elfrieda continues to stare out into the pitch black as the train departs. The stranger quietly approaches Elfrieda and before she can sense danger, she feels a cold, hard and heavy object strike her. She was not the first and wouldn’t be the last victim of the S-Bahn murderer.  This is a true story about the crimes of a mass murderer, who assaulted and fatally attacked women on a killing spree that lasted nine months. In this episode we follow the work the Criminal Politici and their lead investigator Police Commissioner Wilhelm Ludtke, as he and his team of detectives worked tirelessly to track down this illusive killer.  However, as the body count mounted the detectives not only had to track down this violent phantom but had to do so against the ever-growing interferences and limitations of Nazi High Command. This is the story of a hunt for truth in a political landscape where the “truth” was whatever Hitler deemed it to be.   Despite a thorough investigation, how did the killer avert the police for so long? Why did Nazi High command want to keep it a secret? And how did they finally catch the illusive killer?     Cast List:   David Thomas  The Author of historical crime thrillers such as “Ostland” and an award-winning journalist, with twenty-five years of experience working for Fleet Street newspapers.  Roger Moorhouse  A historian and author of many books on the second World War, including ‘Killing Hitler’. He is a specialist in modern German history with particular focus on Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich.  Dr Linda Papadopoulos  The Reader in Psychology at London Metropolitan University, with a 17-year career working as a research scientist and practicing psychologist.  Dr Jens Dobler  The official historian for the Berlin Police Department. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This program is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It contains mature adult themes. Listener discretion is advised. It's 1940, and there's a serial killer on the streets of Berlin, looking for his next victim. Alfreda Franca is traveling home on the late train after work. Sitting alone in the dark carriage, she stares out of the window, as the train pulls into a station.

Another passenger gets on board. Curious, but unable to make out their features, Alfrida continues to stare out at pitch black as the train departs. The stranger quietly approaches Elfrida, and before she can sense danger, she feels a cold, hard, and heavy objects strike her. She was not the first,

and wouldn't be the last victim. of the S. Bon murderer. This is a true story about the crimes of a mass murderer who assaulted and fatally attacked women on a killing spree that lasted nine months. Despite a thorough investigation, how did the killer evade the police for so long? Why did the Nazi High Command want to keep it a secret?

And how did they finally catch him? In any serial killing, one murder happens after and up. The police are bound to be under tremendous pressure. When it's happening in the capital of the Third Reich, you're under pressure from people who can have you killed, who can make you disappear. He had, of course, been interviewed before by the police. He was someone who they considered to be very much the backbone of Nazi Germany.

When the skulls were revealed, it would have been a confrontation with the physicality of what he was. done. What they were trying to do is to kind of say, we have you. You're listening to Forbidden History. The podcast series that explores the past darkest corners sheds light on the lives of intriguing individuals and uncovers the truth buried deep in history's most controversial legacies. I'm Janine Haroni, and this is the S. Bond murderer, a serial killer in Nazi Berlin. In this episode, we investigate a criminal case which baffled detectives in 1940s Berlin when a string of violent attacks against women took place in and around the city's latest train network.

Under the new Nazi government, construction of the Berlin-Espon commenced in 34. The last phase of the project was finally completed in 1939. one month after the start of the Second World War. Roger Morehouse is a historian and author. The S-Bahn, the S comes from Schnell meaning fast, it's basically an overground suburban railway. There's a network of S-Bahn lines that runs right across Berlin, still does. It goes right out into the suburbs and runs till very late at night. The S-Bahn was vital to the German war effort, transporting workers to and from the factories around

Berlin. But as the war progressed and more and more German men left for the front line, it was up to the women of Berlin to continue the fight on the home front. So women are being called into industrial work for the first time. So there's a greater proportion of women riding the Espan on a daily basis. But with its factories, infrastructure and prominent position within the Reich, Berlin was an obvious target for the Allies. And its location was well within striking distance of the British RAF bombers. When war broke out in September 1939, a blackout order was given. And while it served to hinder the accuracy of aerial bombers,

it also created an environment in which crime was able to thrive. There is an upsurge in crime, robbery, prostitution, all of that stuff. And there's a massive spike in accidental death. Car accidents, people falling on train tracks, people falling in front of trams. On average, in the winter of 1940, there is one person being killed every night in Berlin, thanks to accidents in the blackout. So you have a huge amount of deaths for the police to sift through. But in early December of 1940, Dr. Waldemar Weiman, a renowned forensic person,

pathologist was called to the scene of a body found by the tracks of the Espan. The woman was identified as Elfrida Franca, and at first glance it seemed possible that she'd accidentally fallen from a moving train. But on closer examination, he noticed her head wounds were inconsistent with the theory of accidental death. She had an impression break on the roof of the skull, and Dr. Vyazen Simon concluded this was likely to be the result of an object or weapon. He didn't have to wait long to confirm his suspicions.

That same evening, he received another corpse into the morgue. Nothing unusual for wartime Berlin, except this lady was found close by and bore a similar head wound. Two women found dead on the same day, in the same place, and with the same injury, this was the moment Dr. Weiman realized they were victims of the same perpetrator. And he reported it to the police. Author David Thomas. The first time it all starts coming together is in the double killing.

And the reason that's important is that one of the killings has taken place on a street by the railway lines, but on a street. And the other one, the woman has clearly been thrown from the S-Bahn. and they're only a few hundred meters apart. And so the picture starts beginning to come together. The second body was identified as 19-year-old Ermgard-Fries. She'd been walking home alone at night and close to the Berlin-Carlshorst railway station. It had been no more than 30 minutes since the killer had last struck.

But this was only the beginning. Roger Morehouse. two murders in a single day, one on the train and one next to the train tracks. And at that point, the police realized that they have a serial killer on their hands. A crime of this nature was a serious concern to the Nazi party, because they didn't want to cause a public panic and risk disrupting the war effort. So the case was quickly picked up by the German criminal police force, known, as the Creepo.

Creepo is short for Criminal Politsai, or the Criminal Police. They were the old-fashioned police detective investigation branch, and leading the investigation was revered police commissioner, Wilhelm Ludke, of the Serious Crimes Unit in Berlin. A promising young student, Lidka climbed the ranks in the police force until his political beliefs got in the way of his career. He was an alleged German Democratic Party voter,

which, amongst other things, sought to protect the rights of Jews and ethnic minorities. But, in 1939, it's claimed he was forced to abandon his principles and become a Nazi party member to secure his promotion. The party knew, regardless of politics, Lidka's credentials made him the right man for the job. job. David Thomas again. He had solved more murders than any other serving detective. So you have to think of Ludke as being like one of the top detectives in Germany,

a really experienced, hard-nosed professional. Accomplished and respected, Lydka led the murder squad dedicated to launching the biggest manhunt Berlin had ever seen. They wanted to make a public appeal for. for witnesses to come forward, but also make sure that women traveling on the Espan remained vigilant while the murderer was still at large. However, the Reich Minister of Propaganda,

Joseph Goebbels wanted an altogether different approach. Roger Morehouse. The normal reaction would be that the press would get onto the story, it would be splashed across the newspapers and on television, and that would not only inform the public that there was a risk out there, it would also potentially bring new leads of inquiry into the investigation. Things didn't work like that in Nazi Germany.

Goebbels controlled the media through his daily press conference. And on this subject, there was a news blackout. But with a murderer at large, in the midst of World War II, why would the Nazi party choose to keep it a secret? David Thomas again. For reasons of propaganda, The authorities didn't want the population to get frightened or to feel that the authorities were not in control of the situation.

Hindered by the constraints of having to keep the investigation as quiet as possible. Detective Ludke decided to search the records for similar cases to see if the killer had struck before. He was able to link six previous attacks to the killer, all of them having taken place, taken place on either the Esbon itself or in a small part of Berlin known as the garden area. There is a clear escalation. So initially the early assaults are almost comical.

They are jumping out and shining a torch in a woman's eyes at night, for example, which then graduates to sexual assault, to physical assault, and then of course to rape and murder. So what emboldened the assailant to advance his attacks? Psychologist Dr. Linda Papadopoulos explains the psyche of a serial killer. One of the things that you see is actually quite common amongst this type of psychopathology and it's this sort of escalation that it's closer and closer approximations to the behavior that you ultimately want. So you don't kill right away, but you violate, you harm, you show sadistic behavior. Oftentimes, as we see this sort of combined with sort of sexual gratification.

Until now, the Berlin police had failed to link the crimes to one single perpetrator, primarily because there did not seem to be a consistent pattern to the attacks. This allowed the killer to build up his murders by learning from his mistakes and honing his craft. Dr. Linda Papadopoulos again. When a serial killer begins to kill, you look at the methods employed, You look at whether there's like a temporal rhythm to it, how often they're doing it. You look if there's a certain type of person that they're targeting in a certain location. And one of the things that we know was happening in this case is that there wasn't as many patterns as you'd expect.

Actually, he would change the way he killed. He would use different means. And I think that would have been very difficult for the detectives on the case. Now that he had a taste for it, Lidka knew that it was only a matter of time until the killer would kill again. But now they had a vital new piece of evidence. Dr. Jens Dobler is the official historian for the Berlin Police Department. He's gone to the Landisakiv in Berlin to take a look at the original case files. During the course of the investigation of the first case,

which was considered attempted murder at the time, they found the weapon, a thick cable made of lead, with several colored wires in the middle. The piece of two inch thick lead-in-case telephone cable was the kind you could have found at any industrial construction site across Berlin. But Lidka ordered the Creepo detectives to painstakingly scour every cable fabrication company in Germany, until they found its manufacturer.

From the shipping records, they were able to determine that the cable used as a weapon in the attack had been destined for use on the Esban. The police were now certain that the murderer was an employee of the railway. But this conclusion would not sit well with the Nazi High Command. Author David Thomas again. Although they had a very clear idea quite early on, that it almost certainly was an employee of the Esban.

Because Nazi ideology said, no, no, no, it must be a Jew, it must be a foreign worker, it must be an unter mensch, there were pressures on them, as it were, to look somewhere else, to look among foreign workers, to look among Jews, even though Jews weren't allowed on the railway. Word on Berlin streets that there was a serial killer at large had begun to spread. The decision was made to inform the public. But to keep the regime happy, Ludga had to shift his focus from Esban workers and instead publicly investigate the possibility that the killer was not a German citizen. Roger Morehouse.

There's appeals for information. There's leafleting. They put posters up around foreign laborer work camps, which there are a few in the area. They seem to be convinced that it must be a foreigner who's committing these murders. So they try to appeal for information from those places. Now with the news in the public domain,

surely someone would come forward with new information and provide Lodka with the break. through he needed. Dr. Jens Dobler. Tests that ensued in response to what the public deemed an extremely slow response during the investigations put the police force in a bit of a tight spot. More and more women felt increasingly unsafe and refused to take the trains. The pressure from the public was growing.

The investigation was on borrowed time. Women refusing to travel the espon to work would have significantly significantly impacted production for the German war effort, something that Ludka knew could have potentially fatal consequences, even for himself, David Thomas. In any serial killing, one murder happens after another. The police are bound to be under tremendous pressure. When it's happening in the capital of the Third Reich,

the kind of pressure you're under is of a completely different order. order. You're under pressure from people who can have you killed, who can make you disappear. Despite pressure from the regime to investigate foreigners for the crimes, Lutka returned his attention to pursuing evidence that the killer was an employee of the railways. They were extremely thorough, interviewing 3,000 employees of the Espon. The detectives also came up with a plan to plant people on the train in a bid to catch the murderer, drafting in officers from the women's branch of the Creepo to act as the bait. While on night patrol one evening, a female officer, disguised as a member of the public, watched as a figure appeared out of the darkness of the carriage and made

his way towards her. But to the killer, something about this potential victim seemed different. It seems to have become spooked, and when the train pulled into the station ran off. She chased after him, other police chased after him, he ran off the tracks, and they lost him in the darkness. I mean, they came this close to getting the killer. Unfortunately, their efforts did not deter the killer. His next victim soon followed. Her name was Elizabeth Bungerner, and she was discovered by a railway worker on the tracks near Ronsdorf station. Over the next three months, a further four women would also be attacked and murdered on the espon.

With the body count rising, Ludka was in desperate need of a breakthrough, but the killer had gone to ground. Nearly five months would pass before he would strike again. This time, his victim, Frida Kasyol, was raped and bludgeoned to death. Roger Morehouse This is the eighth victim, a 35-year-old woman, and in the subsequent investigation, it's discovered that a bootprint has been left at the scene. Dr. Jens Dobler, at the Landis Akiv in Berlin,

reads the official police file. A police sketch artist produced a drawing of the crime scene and surrounding area after every murder. These drawings showed the local. location of the body, as well as traces and pieces of evidence that were found. The surroundings were also noted down, so anyone could follow the investigation process at any point down the line. You can see them clearly here in this drawing.

The prints in the ground have been recorded. The footprint was the break the police had been hoping for, and Ludke had quickly ordered his detectives to get to work tracking down the men. tracking down the man who had been standing by the body. At the time, Berlin had rationing, and so coupons had to be exchanged for items, including shoes. Therefore, they were able to make a match to a Mr. W. Hyman, a carpenter who lived less than 300 meters from the crime scene.

When investigators checked his records, they also discovered that he had previous convictions for sex crimes. Based on this evidence, Heimann was brought in for questioning. Ludka and his team were sure that they had found their killer. His previous convictions and footprint at the scene of the crime meant that the case they had so desperately wanted to solve was about to be closed with the conviction of Hyman as the murderer.

But as his interrogation progressed, Lidka began to realize that the case was far from over. Hyman was able to provide them with cast-iron alibis for the previous murders, and witnesses were also able to corroborate his story. So how had his footprint come to be found beside the body of Frida Kossio? It turned out it wasn't the killer. It was a peeping Tom who liked to kind of prowl in the neighborhood, seeing if he could see women undressing or couples at it, found what he thought was a sleeping woman.

lying there, then saw the wound in her head and then did a runner. They caught him, they found him, only to discover they'd got the wrong guy. The investigation was back to having no suspect. Frustrated, Ludka could no longer tow the official party line and ignore the possibility of the killer being an employee of the Espan. He ordered his detectives to go over the work rosters of all the Espan workers, and until they'd narrowed it down to the employees whose shift patterns potentially matched with the murder sprees. Roger Morehouse.

What they did at that point was to re-interview their list of suspects. And in that process, one name kept coming up, which was that of Paula Gortsov, who was a assistant signalman on the Esparan. Agorzov, a married father of two, had been employed on the railway. since 1934, working his way up to the position of assistant signalman, stationed near Caulhorst, where most of the crimes had taken place. His name kept coming up because he was renowned amongst his work colleagues for having very outspoken misogynist views. He was someone who, a number of his colleagues said frequently absconded in the middle

of his shift, jumped the fence and ran home. So he was someone who certainly acted in a... suspicious manner. Dr. Linda Papadopoulos again. One of the things that we know in Ogozzo's case is that he spoke about women with a lot of contempt. So this idea of seeing them as objects, of seeing them as things to be used. And I think this is certainly something that we see with sociopaths and also violent sexual

predators. But if Agatzorff was a vocal misogynist and had been known to act so suspiciously, then why had it taken the police so long to investigate him. He had, of course, been interviewed before by the police, and he was someone that, as far as the Kripo were concerned initially, was a fine upstanding German. He was a member of the Nazi party. He was a member of the SA, the Sturm Abtai Long.

He was someone who they considered to be very much the backbone of Nazi Germany. So the initial investigation was actually suspended against Ogorsoff because they considered that this was someone who was beyond reproach. But the police decided to do that. to sweep his home, and they discovered traces of blood on his uniform. With this evidence, he was brought in for questioning.

He told Ludke that the blood on his uniform was the result of having relations with his wife whilst she was menstruating. Initially, his wife agreed, but over the course of his six-day interrogation, she made it known to the police that this blood did not come from her. Finally, a breakthrough. Confident they had their man, Ludka knew he couldn't let Ogotsov get away again. So he set his plan in motion.

The man who actually arrested Paul Ogosov was a young detective called Georg Hoyser, who was a sort of young prodigy. He'd passed out top of the leader's school, which was the academy for detectives. And his reward for that had been to become Ludka's assistant. Lutka left it to his apprentice to conduct the interview, instructing him to make Agatsov feel comfortable. He was sent in effectively to play the good cop in the interrogation, to put an arm around Ogotsov and say,

come on, you know, you can tell me we're on the same side here, that sort of thing. Ludka recognized that his protege, Detective Georg Horzer, and the suspect, or Gatsov, were exactly the same age, born only months apart. He hoped their shared connection would coax Ogatsov into trusting Hoyser. And once they could see Ogatsov beginning to feel at ease, Ludka came in and took over. Ogotsov's first instinct is to say, I'm a good party man, because that is in fact his best defense. He joined the party in 31. So he says, you're a good party man. I'm a good party man. I I'm a party man, do us a favor. And then, again, to Ludka's credit, he says, I don't care.

You're a disgrace to the party. So now let's talk about your crimes. At a time when DNA was in its infancy, it was impossible to link Agatsov to the crimes, with samples taken from the victims. So in order to secure a conviction, Lutka would need to get Agatsov to confess. And to do that, he was going to have to get creative. He takes Ogatov out to the scenes of his first crimes in Friedrichsfield in the allotments and walks him through the allotments. As Agatsov walks through the crime scene, still professing his innocence to the detectives, he is suddenly startled by a ghost from his past.

Ludka had arranged for one of Agatsov's previous victims who had survived the attack to meet them there and bravely identify her attack. attacker in person. Now they have corroborating evidence because they've got people who've seen him. Not necessarily for the murders, but at least they've got him on the assaults. Ludga was wearing his suspect down, but too much was riding on this case for him to not obtain a full confession. Back in the small interrogation room, under the light of a single bulb, he saved the best theatrics for last, enlisting the help of forensic pathologist, Dr. Weiman. Dr. Weiman, David Thomas again.

Lutka gets Viman to put together a box, and he puts the box closed in the interrogation room. Agatsov is left alone in the room to ponder the contents of the box, and what was in store for him next. Suddenly, Lidga burst back into the interrogation room. And then, you know, like the kind of magicians flourish. He opens the box and says, these are the women you killed. And in the box, there are skulls, battered skulls. And that's the

moment at which Orgasov cracks. Somehow it overwhelms him the reality of what he's done, becomes clear to him. He starts confessing, and they know they've got him. At the end of that confession, Paula Gotsov admitted to eight counts of murder, a further six counts of attempted murder and 31 counts of assault. More crimes than they had planned to charge him with. But why did he feel compelled to confess all? When the skulls were revealed,

it would have been a confrontation with the physicality of what he'd done. What they were trying to do with Agorzo is to kind of say, we have you. At his trial, O'Gatzov pleaded guilty to all charges. The Criminal Politsai report said that he was cold-blooded, that he was a sociopath, and he was someone that had no feeling for his victims whatsoever.

He was duly convicted and was sentenced to death. And two days later was executed by guillotine in Plurzenze prison in Berlin. Paula Gotsov, the Esban murderer, was no longer able to prey, attack and murder women. Paradoxically, the Nazi party officially stripped him of his membership, and he was declared an enemy of the people by the regime. David Thomas. One of the things that is bizarre about this case is the irony that here we are talking about a serial killer, who killed eight people in a city which is ruled by one of the greatest examples of institutional

serial killing the world has ever seen. At the period these crimes are happening is precisely when the Holocaust is being planned. So there's this terrible sin that is occurring at the same time as these murders. And the irony did not come bigger than in this particular case. For Wilhelm Ludke, he continued his career as a detective in the creepo, but after World War II, he was employed by the CIA to work in surveillance. Despite Lutka's sharp eye for detail, he was unable to detect or prevent the evil in his midst. It's a wretched fact that of the three men present in that interrogation room, it was not Paul Agatsov, who turned out to be the most prolific.

murderer, but his young apprentice and protege, Hoyser. David Thomas again. Georg Hoyser is the person who drew me to this story. He's a fascinating, troubling character. He was a brilliant young detective. He did something heroic. He was the guy who in the movie puts his hand on the collar and says, you're nicked. And he's nicking the murderer of women, a serial killer,

preying on women. So he's a good cop at this point. Later that year in 1941, he was called up as many policemen were to serve in the Einzatskrupen, which were mobile killing squads. Their task was essentially to round up Soviet civilians, predominantly Jews, anyone effectively that the Nazis didn't like, and they would be marched out of town, ditches would be dug, and they would be shot into Diels. So you had somebody who'd been a hero, an absolute hero, a guy who catches a serial killer, archetypal hero, becomes an SS mass murderer. He became Orgotsov on a much greater scale.

But like the serial killer he helped to convict, did Geyog Hoyser, a member of the paramilitary Nazi death squad, succumbed to the same fate and justice for his war crimes? He was finally caught up with in the 1950s and was taken to trial and was imprisoned as an accessory in 11,000 counts of murder. For the crimes that Gailor Coyzer committed, he was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment, of which he served six. But how did a police detective,

whose job it was to catch criminals, become a criminal himself? He's not your classic stereotypical psychopath in jackboots. He's not a fanatical believer in the final solution. He's just a copper doing his job, and he did his job when he was detecting, and he did his job when he was shooting. And yet, he was able to do it. And to me, the psychological study of how a person can do both those things intrigues me to this day, and of course raises the question, how would we have been any different?

any different. Next time on Forbidden History. The Hitler Dari's hoax was, without doubt, the single greatest scam ever pulled on a magazine and a collection of newspapers. We reveal how a small-time crook calm the world's most prestigious journalists to the tune of millions of dollars. He almost literally collapsed. One of our members did slump to the floor.

We had just perpetrated. An appalling fake. In The Hitler Diaries. Forbidden History was a Like a Shot entertainment production. Produced by Kara O'Brien. Executive producers Henry Scott, Steve Gillum, and Danny O'Brien. Edit and sound design by James McGee and Liam Clayton for Arafon Limited.