RedHanded - Episode 171 - Halloween Special Part 2: Black Magic Saliva & A Toilet Full of Guts

Episode Date: October 29, 2020

If there's a spiritualist spit hoover and a child's hand boiling away on the stove, it can only be part two of RedHanded's traditional Halloween story swap. This round, Hannah tells us about a murderous Indonesian sorcerer, while Suruthi racks up our air miles with a trip back to Germany to meet a barbaric Bavarian butcher. 72 FLASH SALE on all Spooky Bitch merch! For 20% off all Spooky Bitch items from 29 Oct until midnight on Halloween use promo code: spooky20off at www.redhandedshop.com Tuam: https://www.thejournal.ie/mother-and-baby-home-records-5242858-Oct2020/ References: https://redhandedpodcast.com/   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. So, get this. The Ontario Liberals elected Bonnie Crombie as their new leader. Bonnie who? I just sent you her profile. Her first act as leader, asking donors for a million bucks for her salary. That's excessive. She's a big carbon tax supporter. Oh yeah. Check out her record as mayor. Oh, get out of here. She even increased taxes carbon tax supporter. Oh yeah, check out her record as mayor. Oh, get out of here.

She even increased taxes in this economy. Yeah, higher taxes, carbon taxes. She sounds expensive. Bonnie Crombie and the Ontario Liberals. They just don't get it. That'll cost you. A message from the Ontario PC Party. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah. I'm Saruti. And we didn't really know which one was going to go first then. We both did a little, like, chicken head movement towards the mic. And welcome to Red Handed. Welcome. Welcome to Red Handed. Welcome to Halloween Part 2. As you seasoned spooky bitches will know, this is how we celebrate Halloween.

It's also Saruti's birthday today. It is. If you're listening on Thursday. The 29th of October. It's my birthday. Oh, my God. I'm 31 years young, let's say. Exactly.

And, you know, homeowner, renovator. Renovator. Media sensation. Ugh. Tick, tick, tick. Right? Yeah, no, it's good. I think we've got to the age now where we start saying years young instead of years old, because that's how we feel now. I don't know. I feel like this whole year has been lost. Maybe I can just stay 30 until next

year. Will you allow it, people? Let's deal with it. We're dealing with it. We're adults. Yeah, we're aging gracefully. Aging so gracefully. I've shoved retinol all over my face. It's gonna happen, but I'm not gonna let it happen too quickly. So that's the plan. Yeah, right. But we do have to accept that neither one of us will ever be on a 30 under 30 list. That's sad. And then I was a real like, kick in the gut yesterday. Well, not really, I don't really care. But I thought it was quite funny where they were like, they're doing the challenger trial for COVID vaccines here in the UK. We're the first country to be doing it because other countries are like this is so unethical and I'm like unethical mate there are thousands of people dying we've

got to fucking do something let's do it let's fucking infect these people it's basically where they're just like instead of doing the normal way of doing the final phase of testing where you just let people out into the public and see if they get sick they're like going to purposefully infect people and then see if the vaccine works or not and they were like it's okay though we're only going to use the extremely young between 18 and 30 and i was like ah ouch sick burn sick burn a stab in my old old chest but anyway thank you in advance for your lovely birthday wishes but other than that we've got some fun things merch merch merch is there so if you are listening in a timely manner you have until halloween day so until the 31st of october to get your spooky bitch merch this is not a drill

guys if you want it get it because i don't know when spooky bitch will come back so go get your hands on that and then if you haven't seen yet why the hell not we've got two brand new bits of merch which i actually i love i fucking love them i'm like wearing them all the time i'm wearing it right now i love both of them with my whole heart i just can't quite bring myself to wear a jumper with my own face on it precisely because one of them is the one you guys have been asking for for a long time it's the not in this economy merch we've got sweatshirts so not hoodies this time like really nice little cozy sweatshirts they've got like a really like delightful fleecy lining which i really really enjoy and we've also got the t-shirts we've got the fitted t-shirts which do look pretty fucking sexy i do have to say and then we've also got the one that hannah is feeling a bit coy about

wearing which is what we're calling the faces design. It's a piece of fan art that we got. If you haven't seen it, come follow us on Instagram at Red Handed The Pod. It's just really cool. It's mine and Hannah's face. It's very like graphic style. We're just looking murdery. Got a phone, got a knife.

Check it out. It's cool. Again, on a sweatshirt with a fleece lining. No one's going anywhere. Just buy it and wear it with your pajama trousers like I'm doing right now. And you look really cool when the postman comes exactly other than that before we sort of launch into our halloween episode if you remember episode 96 which we called the tomb 796 it's actually the spooky bitch episode it is the spooky bitch episode yeah we promised you an update on

the mother and baby homes investigation in Ireland if you don't know what I'm talking about please go back and listen to the episode it's one of the ones I'm most proud of actually so essentially it's just the scandal of mother and baby homes in Ireland over the past century the conditions were awful one in four children were dying because the conditions were so bad. And in Tum, it was discovered that basically there's remains of children, babies buried in a septic tank underneath this old mother and baby home. This was discovered a few years ago. And there's an incredible woman called Catherine Corliss, who like is not a professional historian, just had an interest in local history.

It started to dig into it and figured out that something was extremely wrong. After Catherine Corliss brought it to the public's attention, the Irish Taoiseach and the government pledged to do an investigation into mother and baby homes in Ireland and the atrocities that happened. That investigation inquiry has now been completed, but its findings have been sealed for 30 years which is an absolute disgrace so when we're in our 60s we'll be able to find out why it's absolutely appalling it's like we'll do this investigation and then we're going to put it into a time capsule that we can revisit in 30 years why is this happened well it's because it's fucking horrific that's why like there's no other reason like because if it was not that bad yeah they would have been like oh have a little look have a gander no one minds absolutely it exonerates

the church here you go it's not that bad it wasn't their fault well obviously i think we can take by the omission of them showing it to us that it's fucking even worse than we even thought and what we thought is that there are hundreds of dead babies in a septic tank. Fuck. It's awful. Exactly. So I'll link the TUME episode below so you can listen to that. And I will also link an article that I found about what the fuck is going on. And also thank you to loads of people who tweeted us about it and flagged it and the people on the Facebook group who've been posting about it. I think it is important to keep discussing. On a lighter note, we've got something else happening this week.

In the news? What are we talking about in the news i'll say that we did this update because a lot of this information came out after we recorded our in the news episodes if you don't know what in the news is we do it over on patreon for all five dollar and up patrons like they get under the duvet every single week after the main episode you get in the news every month and it's basically a roundup or a summary from us about exactly what it sounds like what's going on in the news every month and it's basically a roundup or a summary from us about exactly what it sounds like what's going on in the world of true crime at that point and it's cases that you know wouldn't make it into a main feed episode for quite a while because they're just now

sort of unraveling if you will we got a real good one this week well not a good one it's awful we got a couple of amish brothers did some not so great things to their little sister it's very like top of the lakey check that out and then we also talk about the twitter killer from japan who have finally fucking pleaded guilty this month we also talked about peter madsen so another blast from the past if you guys have listened to our kim val episode the submarine and snuff films one that piece of shit tried to escape from prison we talk a bit about that because he's a real he's a real something elon musk but without well i don't know just elon musk just danish just danish so yeah that is coming out this friday so if you want to head on over to patreon.com slash red handed and check it out there so yeah i think that's all of our housekeeping

shall we crack on i think it's my turn to go first, actually. It is. I'm excited. I'd take a seat, but I still don't have a stool. Hashtag stools for Sorrentis. One day. Maybe now I'm 31, I'll be mature enough to do it. I can bring myself to do it.

I'm actually going to go to Ikea next Saturday if I'm allowed to. Oh my God, fun. I know. Is there one near you? I think the nearest one is like maybe Wembley. So like not that close, but it's fine. It's a day trip. It's a day out.

Fucking love Ikea. I can't wait. I know. Where am I? I'm in Indonesia. I've moved. I'm joking. I'm taking you all on a magical journey to Indonesia for my story this Halloween special.

Yes. I love Indonesia. Let's go. We're going to Sumatra. You've been there, haven't you? I did. I went to Sumatra. And then I recently watched a Geographics done by the ever beautiful Simon Whistler.

Your boyfriend. My boyfriend who doesn't know he's my boyfriend. About a place I actually went to in Indonesia called Lake Toba, which is like the biggest like volcanic lake within a crater or something like that in the world. I didn't realize it was a fucking super volcano. Simon was like, if that blows, humanity possibly done depending on which way the wind's blowing.

Really? And I was like, I sat there and ate the best pancakes I've ever eaten in my life and the best coffee I've ever had was in Sumatra. Beautiful place. Loved it. Wow. So this is quite reminiscent of Mona Fanday if you haven't. We're really throwing them back. If you can't be a pop star definitely be a witch right Hannah? Yeah exactly. I think it might have even been definitely definitely be a witch. Be a witch. I was in so much pain when we recorded that episode that loads of people tweeted us being that Hannah sounds really drunk and I'm like no I just am in so much pain

What was wrong with you then? I can't remember It's when I had rolled over in my sleep and trapped a nerve in my neck Oh I remember Ouch. I just woke up to this like crunching sound of like So only me would injure myself in my sleep. I wish I had a fun story but I don't

I couldn't move my head it was awful. Anyway we're all fine now I mean we're not. I've never really been the same, but I don't. I couldn't move my head. It was awful. Anyway, we're all fine now. I mean, we're not. I've never really been the same, but, you know, we move. So Mona Fanday is, of course, Malaysia, which borders Indonesia, but we're not in Malaysia today. We're staying in Indonesia, but just similar Black Magic vibes because we're going to be talking about mystical healers,

specifically the crimes of a guy called Ahmad Suraji, I believe, is how you do not say his name. But that is how we're going to say it. That sounds right. Yeah? Yeah. He's also known as Nasib Kelawang, Datuk Meringi, and Dakun A.S. Any of them sound familiar? I mean, I learned very little of the Indonesian language while I was out there.

So little that I think I'm confusing it with what I learnt in Myanmar. And I'm not going to say it. I'm just going to stop talking now. Because you will be cancelled immediately. Well, we all should know who he is because he is quite likely to be the 17th most prolific serial killer of the last century globally. What? I have never heard of him before. Well, worry not. We're all going to be super informed. 17th most prolific because it is believed that he has the blood of at least 42 dead women and girls on his hands.

Or maybe I should say the saliva of 42 dead women in his mouth. Why would you say that? That's horrible. Well, we'll get there. We'll get there. I read on, I read, I'm lying. I saw a TikTok. Apparently.

So I don't, obviously this is probably not true because it's from TikTok. But if you kiss someone, their DNA stays in your mouth for six months. Six months? Yeah, it's gross, isn't it? Oh my God. Yeah. But if you kiss someone, their DNA stays in your mouth for six months. Six months? Yeah, it's gross, isn't it? Oh my God. Yeah. I don't know if it's true or not, but like, when has TikTok ever been wrong?

Never, obviously. Not even once. Oh God. Okay, admittedly, this guy, I have been flippant, but I didn't really know much about him. He has been on my list for quite some time, but I didn't really dig into it until this episode. So just like in the Mona Fanday episode, we already know that lots of countries have their own forms of black magic, shamanism, mystic healers and stuff like that. But Indonesia specifically, it's super duper commonplace and even mainstream. Indonesians fully believe in black magic which is even more mind-boggling when you think that Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world and Islam is very very anti-black magic that is interesting I think it was like when I went to Indonesia the overwhelming feeling I got from that was like the people are very like still in touch with their indigenous cultures and belief

systems because each island has like a different religion and like some of them are very muslim some of them very hindu some of them very like christian and they're like we've allowed the catholic church or you know islam to become the prolific religion here but we still do what we want to with regards to like the old school indigenous native cultures and religions and if they ever tried to stop us, then we would stop being that religion. And because they want to keep the numbers up, they just kind of allow it. It's a really interesting kind of microcosm there. So that is really interesting.

And I think a lot of people don't know that Indonesia has the biggest Muslim population in the world. So that's really interesting. So apparently, my research has led me to believe that some Muslims in Indonesia will happily go to a mystic healer or sorcerer for problems relating to anything from health, finances, relationships, sex, business and even politics, just like we saw in the Mona Fanday episode. So any problem you have, you can find a sorcerer and that's his specific vibe. And of course, it is pretty big business. There are multi-millionaire celebrity shamans. Imagine being a celebrity shaman. I mean, shit's on Mystic Meg, doesn't it? She just got a fucking column.

A really obnoxious girl I went to university with has called herself a shaman now. It's embarrassing. Oh, for Christ's sake. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, so I found one particular multi-millionaire celebrity shaman called Joko Bodo, and he lives in a fuck-off mansion and drives a Mercedes, which it doesn't really fit with sorcerer in my mind. But maybe I'm being white about it. I don't know. I mean, I just feel like it doesn't scream spiritualist. No, like, kind of seems like you're more materialistic than anything else, possibly. But I don't know. Maybe that's what God wants him to have. I don't know. Possibly. But what Joko wants you to have for the bargain price of just one billion rupiah, which is about $100,000, he can bring his magical powers for

that very small price to your construction site and decapitate a water buffalo and bury its head under the fountain of your new apartment block to ward off evil spirits. Who doesn't want that? Well, that's a thing, apparently. In 2009, the president of Indonesia publicly complained that his political rivals were using black magic against him. So this is commonplace stuff. I mean, what are the odds, though, that by the time this episode goes out, Trump also claims the same thing about the Democrats? Honestly, I would put a grand on it now. I'd put, what was it, one billion rupiah on it.

There you go. Fucking hell. And then in 2011, a security guard in Bali lost his job after he dropkicked a female student who was dressed up as a ghost. And when that happened, thousands of ordinary Indonesians leapt to his defence. There was even a petition set up online arguing that this security guard And when that happened, thousands of ordinary Indonesians leapt to his defence. There was even a petition set up online arguing that this security guard was just doing his job by kicking a ghost. Wow. I didn't know ghosts were so kickable.

But female students wearing ghost costumes are. It kind of defeats the purpose of being a fucking ghost anyway so considering all of those things it's not a massive shock that in 2013 the indonesian government faced quite a huge backlash when they tried introducing laws that would make it illegal for anyone to declare quote the possession of mysterious powers so they wanted to make it punishable by up to five years jail time or a thirty thousand dollar fine but no one was having any of it so it never got passed. Wow. But even though sorcery seems to be pretty run-of-the-mill not everyone likes these sorcerers. In 1998 in East Java there was a small local population who were convinced that they were being targeted by black magic sorcerers so they went on an old old school witch hunt between February and October.

And this is in 1998, remember? And that year they killed 300 sorcerers. Between February and October? Mm-hmm. Which then you consider that only about 25 people were killed in the Salem witch trials. It's quite a lot of people. That is crazy.

That's like in eight months. Wow. Yeah. And this isn't funny, but it also is quite funny. This massacre is remembered as the ninja killings because the mob dressed up like ninjas. Oh my God. In 1998, this was happening. Yes. Wow. Dressing up like a ninja, going to find yourself some sorcerers. Well, there you go. The horrors never end? Yes. Wow. Dressing up like a ninja, going to find yourself some sorcerers. Well, there you go. The horrors never end. Yes, exactly. Anyway, now we have a little bit of background of black magic in Indonesia,

let's get back to the case of our man Ahmad Siraji, who is possibly the most famous sorcerer of them all in the land, in the kingdom. He was born on the 10th of January in 1949 in a village in Sumatra called Amman Damai. His mother was a devout Muslim and his father was by day a cattle herder and by night a sorcerer. Gotta pay them bills. Magic man, cow dad.

Absolutely. Siraji and his three brothers grew up watching their dad perform black magic for local villages who loved and revered him as a great dacoon which is the word for sorcerer unfortunately his dad cared way more about being a good sorcerer than being nice to his children when he did notice them he was extremely abusive so a neglected suraji would often spend a lot of time on his own as not only did his parents neglect him,

but he was also pretty bad at making friends and spent much of his childhood being bullied. It's all sounding very familiar, isn't it? I feel like I've said those sentences many, many times. Unsurprisingly, his grades weren't good and his performance at school was pretty poor and he began not going to school and going on the rob when he was quite young. Eventually, his stealing habit landed him in prison for 10 years in 1968 when he was quite young. Eventually, his stealing habit landed him

in prison for 10 years in 1968 when he was just 19. After he'd served that time, Siraji decided he was going to settle down and get married. You'll all know because you're all intelligent people that in many Islamic countries and cultures, marrying multiple women is totally fine as long as you can look after them. That's the law, I believe. But Siraji felt like having multiple wives wasn't really enough. So he decided that he was going to marry three sisters. That's weird. Yeah, I don't like that at all. That feels even weirder for some reason. Yeah, it really, really does. His mum was not too impressed with this. And she claimed that the three sister wives union was blasphemous. I think's you know one of the many things it probably is but siraj you really didn't give a shit and he went

on to father nine children with his three sister wives delightful but even that was not enough he didn't like that everyone looked at him as a criminal and let's be honest a pervert yeah i can't imagine any society in which they're like oh three sister wives no problem mate see you in the pub in our muslim country in our muslim pub let's go yeah in our muslim pub so he tried to figure out how he was going to fix his image for want of a better term and he thought about how his dad was so revered by everyone in the village for all of the magic he did so he decided that he was going to follow in his family footsteps and become a sorcerer as well and as it turned out because he was faking it obviously siraji was a natural and pretty soon he was making quite a lot of money

and his business was booming people knew who he was word spread really quickly and everyone from sex workers to housewives to businessmen even government officials came to him for all sorts of help. Locals believed that Siraji could move the clouds and heal the sick. He had really turned his life around and now he had money, three wives, nine kids and most importantly, the admiration and respect of those around him. Until the 27th of April 1997, when a young farmer was walking along a sugar cane field in the village where Siraji lived, and he noticed a weird shaped mound. Curious, he poked at it with a stick, and as he did so, as he disturbed the earth, the air filled with a putrid stench. Ah, so no joggers here. The farmers are finding them. No, the farmers, the sugar cane men. So this farmer immediately went to the head of the village for help and this head of the village

also happened to be Siraji's neighbour. The head of the village and the farmer who discovered the mound dug a little deeper into the ground and the smell got worse and worse. There was definitely something dead under there and they knew it. After a few hours, with the help of some other villagers, they managed to pull out the bloated, naked, putrefied body of a young woman. God. And sugar cane fields are just like so waterlogged. It's almost like you're growing it on like a bog so she would have just been so like bloated it would have been like someone had just been out at sea for however

long this person was in there well and isn't sugar what like causes food to go moldy yeah that's a good point i never thought of that oh my god yeah it's gonna be bad yeah she wouldn't have been in a good state at all and just the general general, like, temperature of Sumatra. That too. Chuck that in for fun. Yeah, it's a bit of a perfect storm for decomposition, really. By the time the body of the woman was pulled out of the ground, quite a large crowd had gathered, and some people were shouting that they recognised the body.

It was the body of a 21-year-old local woman named Sri Kamala Dewi, who had been missing for the last three days. But nobody could understand why anyone would want to kill her. And then, being in such a close community, people started to get quite paranoid. Maybe the killer was one of their own. News spread very quickly and a 15-year-old rickshaw driver called Andreas Sawitu came forward. He explained that three days earlier, late at night, he'd given Dewi a ride. He said that he noticed at first she was being very secretive about where she wanted to go and it was only after she made the rickshaw driver promise that he wouldn't tell anyone where she was going that she told him she needed to go

to Siraji's house. when Andreas asked why she just told him not to be nosy. I love the idea of getting into a ritual and like not telling him where you want to go. Yeah exactly you must be sworn to secrecy first otherwise I'm just going to sit here. When the head of the village heard this story he was shocked because Siraji was actually one of the people who had helped pull Doey's body out of the ground. And hadn't mentioned anything about her being at his house. Because why would you? How? How suspicious?

Why are you surprised by this, village chief? Obviously, when Siraji was questioned by police, he denied knowing anything about it. But the police found Dewi's purse, dress and bracelets inside Siraji's house. So after that he had absolutely no choice to tell them what happened. I think he's very much one of those people, obviously if you are a sorcerer and everyone thinks you're a sorcerer, you're going to be pretty sure that you can just tell anyone anything and they'll just believe you and that's definitely what we see here.

So Siraji changed his story and explained that Dewi's fiancee had left her after a falling out and she wanted Siraji to use his magic to bring him back. So Siraji told her that he knew of a ritual that could work but she had to trust him. Dewi agreed and Siraji led her to the sugar cane field next to his house in the dead of night. He said that Derry was scared and insisted Siraji's eldest wife Tamini came along for the ritual. When they arrived, Siraji explained that he needed to bury her waist deep in the ground and then he had Derry help him dig what would become her own grave. So once Derry was in the ground, Siraji wrapped electrical cord around her neck and he tightened it until he cut off

all of her blood circulation and airway. Dewi was obviously completely unable to fight back and after about 20 seconds, she was dead. And once Siraji was sure that Dewi was dead, he sucked as much saliva out as her mouth as he could and then he drank it. What? Yep.

Oh my God. Do you know what? Saliva. I think that's the thing for me. It's teeth for you. I can deal with blood. Saliva. It's gross.

It's really, really gross. So while he's sucking the saliva out of her mouth, she's half buried, so her top half is still sticking out. So after he sucks everything out of her mouth, Suraji undressed her and explained to his wife that this was completely necessary to make sure the decomposition would be faster. Oh, yeah, that's it.

The clothes are what's going to fucking stop her decomposing after you've murdered her. Exactly. Oh, my God. Would you like a fun fact to break this up? Still corpse related. Oh, God. Would you like a fun fact to break this up? Still corpse related. Oh, always. Love a corpse fact.

So you know that episode of The Simpsons where they get the flower that smells like death? Oh yeah. Yep, yep. That's real and it's native to Indonesia. It's called the corpse flower. And apparently it's not only gross, it's the world's biggest flower

and it can reach up to three meters high and two meters wide. Oh my God. And it's called the corpse flower because to attract its fly food, it smells like decomposing flesh and looks like an open wound. Wow. And I believe that it only flowers like very rarely, I think. Interesting. I don't know how true that is. And then it's like

carnivorous so it just eats the flies that land on it genius yes and i think if anyone has ever been to the world's most boring day out the eden center i think they have got one oh is it really bad i've never been i always kind of wanted to go oh it's just boring as shit like i just don't care about plants that much like i'm not gonna be impressed by a plant not a planty no not a planty girl a friend of mine will buy me a plant every year for my birthday because he knows i will have killed it by the time it's my next birthday absolutely outstanding right let's get back to saliva town so he doesn't really put up much of a fight he just immediately is just like oh yeah this is what happened this is what i did and on the 30th of april he and all three of his wives

were arrested over the next four days of interrogation siraji confessed that dewey wasn't his first victim and that he had killed around 16 women in a similar fashion over the last five years but when the police conducted a more thorough search of his home, they found personal items belonging to at least 25 different women. So Siraji changes his story again and told them that he had murdered around 42 different women over the last 11 years. And he claims that one night in 1986, his dead father came to him in a dream and told him that if he wanted to become an invincible sorcerer,

he needed to obtain the saliva of 70 dead women. Oh, because that's what will do it. What? Okay. That well-known magic-making ingredient, spit. It's so weird. So he goes on to say, this is a direct quote if you can believe it, My father did not

specifically advise me to kill people. So I was thinking it would take ages if I had to wait to get 70 women's saliva. And because I was trying to do it as fast as possible, I used my own initiative to kill. And that is why from 1986 until now I've killed 42 women. Excellent. I mean, you don't want to just wait around in case you can get the saliva of 72 women. You've got to be proactive. And also, maybe they would have just given it to you if you're so sorcery. Yeah.

Like, just like, please, may I have it? Precisely. They came to you for whatever weird shit they were asking you to do. Just get them to spit in a cup. Yeah, I mean, they make more of it. It's not a finite source. Sucking the saliva out of a dead person's mouth.

It's really like Drag Me to Hell-y, isn't it? Oh, yeah. When we rewatch Drag Me to Hell, like there's a lot of spitty acting in that film. There's a lot of drools. Yeah. So whilst this interrogation was going on, the military and locals continued digging

for more bodies in the sugar cane field and the land generally around Siraj's aura. And they found loads, absolutely loads more bodies ranging from 11 to 30 years old. Oh my God. to add in that once he'd sucked all of the saliva out of his victims, he would bury them and make sure that their heads were facing his house because he believed that made him more powerful and he could sort of like nick their spirits from them even more. Oh, outstanding. Around 80 families from the local area came forward with reports of missing women. But because of all of the reasons we described at the beginning,

quite a lot of the bodies were far too rotten to be identified and if you're wondering how he managed to get away with killing all of these women and no one knowing anything about it because quite a lot of the women who came to him were seeking magical help to like become more attractive or stop their partners from cheating or get revenge so it's all very secret stuff. It's not just like, I would like an A on my paper, please. So they're not telling anyone that they're going to see him. Even like we saw with Devi, the one that cracks it open.

She didn't even want to tell the rickshaw driver where she was going. So yeah. Exactly that. And the real kicker is that Siraji would also charge $200 to $400 for the privilege of being murdered by him. Oh my God.

Yeah. Excellent. excellent you know just the full list of being an absolute fucking the worst he continues to be the absolute worst because he showed absolutely no remorse towards his victims and was much more annoyed that he didn't manage to get to his target of 70 i mean it's good to have a goal and then if something does steer you off that goal it can be quite frustrating i think he he's probably like, well, if I'd got to 70, none of this would be happening because I would be so supremely powerful. I would be like the black genie in Aladdin. That's how powerful I would be. Precisely. I think he thought if he got to the 72 that he would just become so all powerful that he would never be held accountable for any of these horrible murders.

Exactly. So he went to trial town on the 11th of December 1997 and almost immediately his eldest wife withdrew her confession and claimed that it was coerced by the police. And she even accused the police of torturing her during the interrogation. So even though it seems like quite a straightforward case, the prosecution did have quite a job on their hands because quite a lot of the bodies, as we know, were so rotten,

we don't actually know if we can even link them to Siraji. It seems very likely, but it is quite circumstantial. The trial went on for seven months and Siraji reconfessed to all of it. So on the 28th of April 1998, he was convicted of 42 murders and sentenced to death. Tamini, the eldest wife who helped bury Derry's body, was also convicted of aiding and abetting and sentenced to death as well, which seems quite harsh. So 10 years later, Siraji was executed by firing squad, which was a far quicker death than all of his victims. And a forensic psychologist who analysed Siraji during his time in prison diagnosed him with severe antisocial personality disorder, but was adamant that Siraji was not insane.

He knew exactly what he was doing. He was just convinced that his dead dad told him in a dream and that was completely the right thing to do. And to be honest, even the killing, he admitted that that was his idea. He was like, my dead dad ghost wasn't like, go and murder all these people. I came up with that all by myself. And also, if Derry hadn't taken a rickshaw to his house, if she'd walked, he would have gone on for ages. ghost wasn't like go and murder all these people i came up with that all by myself and also if derry hadn't taken a rickshaw to his house if she'd walked he would have gone on for ages no

one's noticing any of these bodies this is the thing that's so weird it's like yeah they went off secretively but like how no one noticed well i guess even if they reported it like he's buried them everywhere so like there's no connection yeah oh fuck yeah you're right he would have just carried on until he got 72 he wasn't that far that far off. Wow. So there you go. That's my disgusting saliva story. Oh, it's the saliva. Oh, fucking hell. Yeah, it's really fucking gross. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in US history, presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud.

In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app

or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune,

and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get

your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years.

I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness. And inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained.

Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favourite podcasts. Thanks very much for that, Siraji and Hannah, for telling us. You're so welcome. Never eat again. No, thank you. We've forgot to tell people not to eat. I would just hope you assume that by this point, guys.

Mine is a particularly no- one as well i have to say and you know if you listen to last week's one you will have noticed that i gave you a taster the starter maybe we could call it an amuse bouche of cannibalism but i hope you're ready for the main course because that's what i'm doing today oh no yeah it's a lot so get ready no eating definitely so what do we think of when we think of the worst people in society? What comes to mind? You might think a rapist, a murderer, a necrophile, a paedophile. They're all up there, right? Allow me to introduce today, Joachim George Kroll. Joachim, surely? No, I checked this. Apparently that's not how the

Germans say it because we're going back to Germany. Oh. Because, sorry guys, you Germans just got some seriously freaky cases. And I checked and I checked and I checked how to pronounce it. And the way I have been told is that it's yo, as in rhymes with go or slow, and then cha, as in chair, and then im, as in him. And so that's what I've written down. So it's going to be Joachim Kroll is what I'm going to in him. And so that's what I've written down.

So it's going to be Joachim Kroll is what I'm going to call him. I'm already learning. So much to learn. Let's go for it. So yeah, this guy Joachim George Kroll was a raping, murdering, necrophiliac, pedophile cannibal. Enough for you? I thought so. Oh, and he also dabbled in the odd bit of bestiality. Oh, fantastic. So we got that too, for luck. So he was dubbed the Duisburg Maneater, the Roar Hunter, and the Roar Cannibal.

So with all these names, and they are very, like, granted. And if you're thinking that's a lot of names, it's because he was doing this for fucking two decades. And his 20-year reign of terror would come to an end, not due, unfortunately, to some genius detective work, but simply due to a blocked toilet. Just like Dennis Nilsen. Exactly. Very Dennis Nilsen-y. But put a pin in the blocked toilet for now because we'll come back to it. So Joachim Kroll was born on the 17th of April 1933, shortly after Hitler's rise to power in the city called Hindenburg in Germany. Now, being the eighth child in a family already in terrible poverty

definitely meant that food was scarce. Joachim would definitely often go to bed on an empty stomach. Having so many children to keep an eye on, his mother never really had much time to look after him. On the other hand, his father, who worked as a miner, always managed to find just enough time to belittle and humiliate Joachim at every chance he got. In between the severe beatings, that is. Again, classics. We've said these things before. You guys have heard these things before, you know where it's going. So his father would call a six-year-old Yochim a weak, pathetic loser and

taunt him relentlessly every time he wet the bed, which was a lot of times and something that would continue deep into Yochim Kroll's adult years. So still as shit as life was for him at home, it only got shitter when he started school. Here he was constantly the target of bullies due to his small size and his severe learning difficulties that he suffered from and Joachim Kroll only ended up spending actually about three years in formal education before he just dropped out completely. So now it would be an understatement to say that Kroll was relieved when his father left home to fight on the eastern front at around about this time. At the age of 10, if he thought, you know, great, that horrible bully of a man is now gone,

it wasn't really because at the age of 10, he enrolled into the Hitler Youth. Oh! Because, you know, that was all the rage back then. Here, his group leader swiftly picked up the role that Joachim's father had left off and started belittling and bullying poor little Kroll constantly. So yeah, he's not really escaped all the abuse from an older man. He's just being doled out by somebody else now in the fucking Hitler Youth. So an actual Nazi is now bullying him. A verified Nazi. A card-carrying Nazi. Exactly. As you can tell, it's not going well for Kroll, childhood-wise. And this just battered Kroll's already low self-esteem but at the same time we do have to say it kind of helped him develop a weird sort

of resilience and a sort of hardness to the rest of humanity. I'm not saying the hardness to humanity is a good thing like I feel like this kind of starts to make him a bit sociopathic because he's got no softness, he's got no kindness, he's got no nurturingness in his childhood. So after a few years had passed and the Third Reich fell, news arrived that his father had been captured as a POW by the Soviets and Kroll and his family never saw him again. Newly, presumably widowed, his mother decided to move what was left of the large Kroll family from place to place wherever she could find work. And eventually, in 1949, they moved to West Germany into a two-room apartment. And remember, there's nine siblings and the mother.

And so it was obviously less than ideal. And Kroll actually had to share a bedroom with six of his older sisters. Oh, my God. Yeah, it's pretty intense. So as the last remaining man in the house, though, a 16-year-old Kroll by this point had to begin work as a farmhand in a town or village called Osdorf to help his mother support the family. On the farm, Kroll's behaviour problems started to become more apparent, even to him. One day, Kroll simply walked up to a 35-year-old milkmaid he'd never spoken to previously

and just attempted to get off with her. As you can imagine, she wasn't too keen on reciprocating and told him to get lost. Kroll just couldn't figure out women. This is what he says, you know, he's quite the early incel prototype. He says he can't figure out women and this goes on to become a very serious source of frustration for Kroll and it would play on his mind constantly. Kroll did, however, during his time on the farm, begin to find some solace in a most unlikely place,

the slaughterhouse. And the experiences he would have here began moulding in Kroll a level of depravity I think that would have given Albert Fish a run for his money. Oh yes. So if you think slaughterhouses are bad today, and I'm sure they're not great places, well 70 years ago they were far, far worse. The distress and the pain of the animals would have been painfully obvious. And Kroll found himself enjoying this. And you guys know this because, again, you're all very intelligent people. We've talked about serial killer formation before, but this idea of like, in your adolescence, when he's 16, you can clearly see his sexual urges starting to develop. And at

this point, it's sort of being meshed together and mashed together with violence. And he's seeing this. And what he realizes is that he's getting off on it. And it was more than just sort of an enjoyment in watching a pig spasm and writhe in pain as it bled. What he found was it was actually sexually turning him on. This is the problem. So for the first time in his life, Kroll found himself experiencing intense sexual feelings, so much so that he would find himself beginning to sweat and a feeling of like tingling sensation would start in his stomach and his chest. He later described this as the first time he felt what he'd go on to call the strange feeling. And we see this again with a lot of serial killers. They kind of call it, you know, they call that thing almost like another entity they're talking

about or this thing that comes over them like the red haze or the darkness or something for him it's the strange feeling and Kroll said that he found himself masturbating to the memory of the slaughters when he was home alone so yeah we're really seeing that sort of connection being made in his brain between associating pain and suffering and mutilation and death with sexual pleasure. Just like Peter Curtin. It's like literally the same story. Exactly. Except Peter Curtin was shagging the animals as well. Oh, we get there.

We get there. Oh, no. He's building his way up there. Oh, no. I know. It's so Peter Curtin, who was the vampire of Dusseldorf. Yep. Yeah, that's the one.

Germany. Come on, guys. Sort it out. Come on, man, as Joe Biden would say. So yeah, basically, as he's masturbating at home, thinking about these animals that are being killed, he would later comment on how these feelings were at their peak intensity when he started to imagine that the animals were actually women. So we're getting into real danger territory here. It's bad things. Bad news bears right now.

Bad news bears. So according to a statement Kroll would later make reflecting on this, he said that he was particularly shocked by the idea of killing, slicing and gutting people. And he said that at this point he actually started to fear that he might later put it into practice. So as time went on and his sisters gradually got married and left the cramped apartment, it was finally down to just Kroll and his mother living alone together. And in early 1955, a 20-year-old Kroll had done what he thought was impossible. He'd convinced a human woman to go on a date with him i know i know and he took her out to the cinema and it was actually going really well so we're like at this point 22 year old crow all right you're a late bloomer you've had the weird sexual fantasies but you're out on a date with a woman

she likes you you're having a good time and although he was like unbelievably nervous he actually asked her if he wanted to come back to the apartment. Where now? Bear in mind, he's got his own room because it's just him and his mum. And she says yes. So it's all going great guns at this point, right? I mean, I suppose there's someone for everyone. There is.

This is the ultimate. I mean, this isn't the ultimate story because we'll see how it ends. But it's the ultimate beginning of a story. It could have gone either way. You're right though, Hannah. I genuinely think this night is the night that it could have gone either way quite possibly so he takes her home we don't know this lady's name she's just mystery lady a who was willing to like put up with crawl so they go back to his house and as we know crawl was totally sexually

inexperienced and as a result he prematurely ejaculated before he even got undressed. And there's no shame in that. It happens. That's the thing. And how his date responded is not the right way to respond. What she did is she laughed at him and then she left. Oh no. That's the worst. Don't do that. Bad news bears. That's bad news bears. Don't fucking do that. That's awful. That's so mean and it's so cruel. That's what she does and she leaves and this left Kroll utterly devastated and like I said I do think that this was a turning point in Kroll's sex life I think when this happened he kind of threw away all hopes of ever having like a sexually normal life I think he just sort of gives up on that he takes the red pill right at this point

if we're sticking to incel verbiage having completely run out of confidence in pursuing sexual contact with women anymore kroll turned to the next obvious alternative and he went and he raped a cow oh yep no and basically he talks about this later and he says that whilst working as a farmhand, he'd obviously seen bulls inseminating cows countless times. So he thought to himself, why can't I do that? So he did, quite a few times. And as he indulged his developing sexual paraphilia that year, his mother, quite possibly the only woman he was ever close to, and the only woman who had never judged him died and I think at that

moment something in his mind snapped and so three weeks after his mother's death a lonely yet oddly now liberated Kroll because now he's got this two-bedroom apartment all to himself ventured out on the hunt for some human interaction. He boarded a random train and got off at a random stop, where after walking for a bit, he found himself captivated by a 19-year-old girl called Ermgard Strell, whose flowing blonde hair and kind face apparently shone out to him. Kroll followed her as she turned to walk through a wooded area.

Now out of sight from prying eyes, he walked up to her and without saying a word, just like he had done with that milkmaid on that farm all those years ago, he tried to kiss Ermgard. Only this time when she rejected him, instead of feeling confused and upset, Kroll was immediately filled with rage. He pulled a knife from his pocket and plunged it into 19 year old Ermgard's neck four times. Grabbing the young woman by her bleeding neck, Kroll then strangled her until she stopped moving. But he wasn't done.

Now that she was dead, that strange feeling, that feeling that he had in the slaughterhouse as a teenager, was back. And so Kroll raped 19-year-old Irmgard Stoll's lifeless body, there on the floor in the woods. After he ejaculated, he pulled out his knife and cut open Ermgard's abdomen and spilled her guts onto the ground. Her body was discovered later that same day, lazily hidden in the snow behind some bushes. And this bit is really interesting and it comes up again and again. Basically, there is so much semen left at the scene of the crime

that it actually served as like a weird red herring in Kroll's favour. Because there was so much semen, the police thought that it was impossible that it was just one man. Oh my God. Yeah. So they were convinced that it was a group of men. And then that's who they start looking for. They start looking for a gang of men going out and raping and murdering women. And they're convinced it's not a loner like one man also you guys know and we know that dna

profiling wasn't a thing until 1985 so it wasn't like they could even test and see if it was the same seminal seminal that's not the same seminal sample so yeah he's just fucking spunking buckets oh my god spunking buckets is the name of my next album. It's a country one if you couldn't tell. Lovely. I love it. Maybe he's just so backed up after all the years of nothing. No.

I don't know. I know. I know. No. No. I don't know what's worse, the saliva or the semen. It's all bad. It's all bad.

None of it's good. Oh, the semen's much worse. God, it's bad. So yeah, this is what's worse, the saliva or the semen. It's all bad. It's all bad. None of it's good. Oh, the semen's much worse. God, it's bad. So yeah, this is what's happening. So the police, you know, they're doing their best. They questioned 62 known violent sex offenders in the area and shortlisted it down to 32. But obviously the problem is that Kroll wasn't one of these 32

because this was his first ever crime. Although the cows that he raped may disagree with you. I don't know. They're in cow court. They are not happy. So after this murder, Kroll managed to wait an entire year until he felt compelled to kill again.

And this time his victim was a child, a 12-year-old called Erika Schlutler. Kroll strangled and raped little Erica and yeah it's just like we see he's really like not bothered he's very opportunistic about who he goes for but as he sort of starts to devolve he goes for younger and younger victims because they're easier let's be honest like they're just easier to grab and therefore prime targets for opportunistic killers like him. So in 1957 Joachim Kroll relocated to Duisburg where he began working as a caretaker and rented an apartment in the quiet suburb of Laar. Longing

for a refuge and in his own words looking for like a way to play out his bizarre sexual fantasies without killing he actually got or made kind of life-size dolls of children and women that he would strangle and then masturbate over so like i don't want to give him the credit that he's trying not to kill i don't know it's just easier isn't it it's just easier to do this it's less messy yeah exactly and he later explained that he would hang these dolls by the neck with a cable and when asked why he responded quote i imagined I'd hung up a real girl and had broken her so yeah it doesn't really sound like he's trying to therapize his way out of this is it no I think it's just a way of getting off that isn't gonna put him in

prison precisely he's making his own amateur porn with a fucking doll I'm upset yep it's upsetting it's gonna get worse I'm sorry guys so, exercising what we see with Kroll as being like quite an erratic calling off period between kills, Kroll this time waited three more years until June 1959. Presumably the dolls kept him in business up until then. And at this point, he started looking for his next victim. Only this time his urge to kill had reached new levels of depravity. 24-year-old Clara Frieda Tesmer was walking in a meadow on the banks of the Rhine when, much like his first victim, her long blonde hair and pretty face caught the raw hunter's attention.

And literally, like, walking in a meadow on the banks of the River Rhine is like, it's so idyllic. This fucking sexual, paedophilic, rapist, murderer, cannibal, necrophile is watching her. Like, you couldn't make up how fucking terrifying this is. So as she's walking, Kroll walked up to Clara, grabbed her by the arm, and she immediately obviously pulled away. And once again, this rejection enraged him. He hit her on the head and began to choke her. In the struggle, they both fell down the embankment, where Kroll continued to throttle Clara. Once the life left her eyes,

he raped her dead body. And then he disemboweled her. And, you know, this is kind of what we've seen him do before, but this time he steps it up. And this time, he took out his knife and carved chunks of flesh from Clara's thighs and buttocks and took them home for dinner. So we're getting very Albert Fish now. That's where we're headed. Oh yeah yeah yeah. So the police were really having a tough time making sense of these killings because at the same time as Kroll is killing these people there was another serial killer in the area called Werner Boost, who was also out murdering people. So they're like, what the fuck's going on? There's just loads of people

turning up murdered. They don't know what's going on. So the police needed something. And so in their search for Clara's killer, they decided that the most likely suspect was a local mechanic, Heinrich Ott, who had some previous convictions for sexual deviancy. After they made these accusations and arrested Heinrich he actually ended up hanging himself in jail before his trial could like happen and this actually only of course served to prove his guilt in the eyes of the police and the public and we see this again and again and so basically after this happens the pressure's off Kroll they stopped looking for him and so emboldened by this, a little over a month later, Kroll decided to take the life of another victim. And this time, it was a 16-year-old girl called Manuel Nott. Like the others, he strangled and raped the young girl,

and then he carved out slices of flesh from her thighs and buttocks to eat later. But this time, perhaps no longer satisfied by his usual MO, Kroll also masturbated over her mutilated corpse. And again, like we saw after the first killing, he left such large amounts of ejaculate behind that the police were once again convinced that this was a gang of attackers. So they're not even on the radar for a single man doing it. Fuck. I know. But for whatever reason, six months later, 23-year-old Horst Otto, a local man, walked into a police station and falsely confessed to Manuela's murder. And we obviously know this, we've seen confessing toms before,

but it's a very savage murder of a 16-year-old who's been brutally mutilated to go confess to. And obviously we know it wasn't him. Maybe he just like heard about how much spunk there was and he was like yeah i want people to think that was me i see what you mean i'm on the same page got it so although this guy Horst Otto actually did go on to later withdraw his confession he was actually convicted of the murder and ended up serving eight years in prison. And this wouldn't actually be the last time that an innocent man would be blamed for one of Kroll's murders. During a carnival on Easter Monday in 1962, Kroll lured a 13-year-old girl named Petra Geese away from the bright lights and into the darkness of a nearby forest. Here, just like with

all of his other victims, he strangled her and then he raped her. When her body was found the following day, she was missing both buttocks and her entire left arm. And following Petra's murder, a 52-year-old minor named Vincenz Kuhn was falsely accused and convicted of Petra's brutal murder, despite there being absolutely no evidence. So again, Kroll gets away with it.

He's still on the loose, completely unsuspected. So two months later, Kroll murdered 12-year-old Monica Tafel just outside her hometown in Walsham, almost identically to how he had killed Petra. And if the local police had actually at this point made contact with the Duisburg Police Department, maybe they would have realised the link between the killings and they would have known that it couldn't have been that man that they had arrested, Vincent Kuhn, because he was in prison at this point. And they would have known that this killer was still on the loose, but they didn't do that.

Instead, they brought in another innocent man, a man named Walter Quicker, for questioning. And he denied it. He denied having any interest in little girls like they were accusing of and he said that because there'd been some allegations of him sort of like watching little girls and he said and this actually does turn out to be true that him and his wife just really wanted a daughter and that he was just sad that their kids had died and like it's just all really heartbreaking and just so savage and although their investigation was fruitless the problem was that the damage to Walter's reputation was already done he was arrested he was questioned mud sticks and it's really tragic because his wife actually leaves

him out of shame and the locals were all convinced that he was guilty and on the 5th of October that year Walter Quicker walked into the forest and hanged himself. Jesus Christ. Right where Monica's mutilated body had been discovered. And I'm like, Walter, that's not the right place because now everyone was like, see, it was him. Oh God, yeah, fuck, Walter. I know. But little did they know that the real Duisburg man-eater was still out there and he was hunting for his next victim.

So Kroll's only male victim came in 1965 apart from I guess all the suicides and the false imprisonments that he inadvertently caused. So it was summer and Kroll was lurking around a lake outside of Duisburg and this is like a spot known to be kind of like a lover's lane. It's where couples go sit in their car and like you know get up to whatever it is they're getting up to. And when Kroll was doing this, he noticed a Volkswagen where 25-year-old Herman Schmidt and his girlfriend, Marion Bean, were kissing. Kroll crept up and very like a Zodiac style, punctured one of the car's tires. When Herman got out to investigate, Kroll jumped out of the darkness and stabbed the much larger, much more athletic Herman

in the chest whilst his horrified girlfriend watched from in the car. Thinking quickly, and I thought this is like very, like, unbelievable that the girlfriend Marion does this, she jumps into the driver's seat and started the car and tried to ram it into Kroll. Like, that is some fucking quick thinking. That is quick thinking. So she tries to do this, but Kroll, like, manages to jump out of the way

and, like, she doesn't do much more than clip him. This is another thing that I thought Marion does very well. Top tips, guys. Write these down. She takes out her hair clip and she clasps it onto the steering wheel so that the horn just continuously blares. I love this woman. Marion is fucking all over it. So obviously when she does this, although it's pitch black and although Herman's been stabbed, it freaks Kroll out and he just runs off into the darkness. And Marion

obviously gets out to try and help Herman, but tragically he bled to death in her arms that night. And despite Marion's extremely detailed description of Kroll's appearance, the authorities were still stumped. So Kroll's next known crime was late in 1966 when he travelled to a town of Marl, just north of Duisburg. Here, he waited in the shadows of a local park. And this one is just, like, particularly sad. Not that they aren't all fucking horrendous. But he's hiding there and he's essentially looking for an unaccompanied woman.

And just down the road, 20-year-old Ursula Rowling was walking home from an ice cream parlor where she had been discussing their wedding plans with her fiancé, Adolf Schicknall. Adolf's not a name you see too much these days, is it? It's really aged, this script, for me. Bring it back! So that night, after this, you know, romantic ice cream wedding planning session, Ursula decided to take a shortcut through the park. Kroll spotted her. He grabbed her, dragged her into the bushes, where he strangled and raped Ursula.

But still unsatisfied, he then went home and masturbated whilst choking one of his dolls. So the police, of course, suspected Ursula's fiancé, Adolf. So they arrested him and questioned him. And they let him go eventually because they had no evidence. However, once again, the public were absolutely convinced that Adolf was guilty and that he had killed Ursula. So they chased him out of town. And the following year, so bear in mind Ursula's dead now,

the following year, Adolf Schickner drowned himself in the river. And this is in the 60s, right? Yeah, this is 66. And Adolf is a young man. So that is proof that his parents... Did not give any fucks. ...were vibing in the Third Reich. I mean, if she's 20, let's say he's about 25.

He would have been born in 1940. Not great, I'm not going to say. No. But yeah, also not great that Adolf drowned himself. So yeah, it's just like a fucking misery fest. this guy kroll is just destroying lives and murdering people left right and fucking center so as the years passed by and later in life kroll developed a vascular issue in his legs which actually prevented him from being able to travel very far like he had been doing previously so this forced him to have to look for victims much closer to home something

that he had been very careful not to do in the last two decades. And of course, this would be his downfall. One day, looking out of his apartment window, he spotted four-year-old Marion Kettler playing all by herself outside his apartment when that strange feeling returned. Little Marion vanished that afternoon and after searching everywhere, her scared mother informed the police and they started going door to door. During this time, Kroll's neighbour, with whom he shared a toilet, complained to him that the toilet was blocked up. We're back to the blocked toilet, guys. This is when it's happening. Oh, I forgot about the toilet.

Take that pin out. So when the neighbour says, you know, what's going on with the toilet, it's all blocked up, Kroll replied to him, sorry, it's full of guts. Hmm. Yep. So shrugging it off as a weird joke, his neighbour went to see what was actually wrong with the toilet and the colour drained from his face when he saw a bright red crimson tint to the water. So he ran outside and he told the first policeman he saw, because remember the policemen are there because they're

going door to door for this little girl who's gone missing so he calls his first policeman in and he comes in to check the loos they unmounted the porcelain bowl and emptied it into a bucket and when they peered into this bucket they saw staring back at them a pair of small lungs a pair of kidneys a liver and a heart, surrounded by bits of flesh floating in a reddish puddle. It's not what you want to find at all. Unpleasant. Very. So they immediately knocked on Kroll's door, who to their surprise calmly opened it and welcomed them inside.

Entering the kitchen, the neighbour and the police officer found the remnants of little Marion's body chopped up on the kitchen counter and a stew simmering on the stove consisting of chopped vegetables and the secret ingredient. It was visible immediately and it was a child's tiny hand. No! Yep. So then they opened the fridge and they look inside and there they found portions of the little girl's flesh on multiple plates, like he was doing some sort of fucking meal prep.

And then when they checked the freezer, they found more stored away there in boxes. Oh my God. They arrested Kroll, who went with absolutely no protest or resistance. And this is the thing with Kroll, it's hard to know what's going on with him because he purposefully chooses victims who live far away like we said and he also covers up his crimes but in this instance he shows a real level of sort of like almost childlike naivety because

Kroll later revealed that the reason he went with the police so like willingly was because he seriously believed that he was just going to be given a surgical procedure that would quote make him normal and then he would be released like he doesn't think that he's gonna going to be given a surgical procedure that would, quote, make him normal, and then he would be released. Like, he doesn't think that he's going to be punished for the rest of his life, which I thought was quite strange. So once questioned by police, Kroll confessed to 20 to 30 killings, but unfortunately they only had evidence for around 12. And after 150 days of trial,

the court found Kroll not criminally liable due to his mental state so they basically say he's not guilty by reason of insanity which is the thing that I don't know because he does make attempts to cover it up and he specifically chooses victims and he goes out of his way to profile them far away from home etc so I don't know it's weird and the judge agreed with us and disagreed with this finding and actually found Kroll guilty of eight murders and one attempted and gave him a life sentence for each one. Now usually at this time people would have served their sentences concurrently which means all at the same time. In Germany that was the law at that particular time but they actually changed the law specifically

for Kroll. Wow. They were like, fuck this guy, he's not serving essentially what would be one life sentence for eight murders that they convict him of, knowing that there's maybe up to 30. So they changed the law specifically for him and he actually ended up serving his sentences consecutively and he spent the rest of his life in jail. And he actually died at the age of 58 in 1991.

So not that long ago. No, really not that long ago. And when he was asked why he chose to become a cannibal, which in and of itself I think is quite a stupid question to ask him, he said, and you know, who says the Germans don't have a sense of humour? Because he said, quote, to save money on my groceries due to the price of meat being so high. To which we say, who's got money for

a steak not in this economy because he definitely didn't say that i hope you're proud of yourself i am proud of myself thank you very much so that is the story of yokim prole guys oh wow very albert fishy that's what i'm gonna say semen and cannibalism. What else could you want? Semen, cannibalism, bestiality, paedophilia, necrophilia. He got it all. Wow. So, yeah, there you go. That is the end of the Halloween specials for 2020, guys. We tried to scare you, but nothing is scarier than the time we're currently living through.

So forgive us if you weren't scared enough. Just go read the news, I don't know, or come listen to In The News that we're going to be talking about this friday comes out for all patrons five dollars and up and uh if you would like to come listen to also under the duvet which is immediately after the show we are talking about the new deposition we're not new deposition is four years old but the deposition of galene maxwell that has been released this week there's all sorts of weird stuff in there we're talking about sweaty non Nonce Prince Andrew as well. So if you want to listen to that, come have a listen. And you can also reach Prince Andrew

at sweatynonce69 at gmail.com. We also talk about some other things like the murder hornets that are back in the news. We give ourselves some American names, a la Andrew Lincoln, because that's what we're trying to do now is break into america so come listen to that we will see you guys next week when we shall resume normal programming we should do some patreon names oh shit before we go that's the

thing i keep forgetting i'll kick off i'll kick off patreon thank yous to katherine stewart brooke gould jemma gordon kiara Ryan, Grace Tame, Cat Wells, Claudia Pinnard, Charmaine, Crazy Norseman, Lucy Plumley, Hannah Mabry, Mary B Hedgecoth, Corinne Couture, Athena, Athene possibly, Ahlan Ferdous, Katerina Lamarche, Mary Herrera, Cool. Barbara Knapp, Claire Riddle, Sophie Hare, Dizzy Puke, cool, Shelby Rose, Ariana James, Tanya Vora, Erin Miner, Hunter, Elise Pantino, Kerry Ouellette, Sarah Knowlton, Frankie, Katie's Magic, Sarah Readman, Jordan Wallace, Josephine Olsen, Laura Staple, Kirsten Elifritz, Jolene, Gina Gigi, R McLaughlin, Cole Dirks, Alex Reglin, Gina Jen Segrist, Paige Clark. Is that you Paige Lynn Clark who sent us the lovely bottles because they are so beautiful. Thank you so much. Jamie, Kim Schwab, Sean Herxowitz, Kirstie, Helen Dickinson, Amy Scott Spell.

I love that. Amy Scott Spell. What a great name. Alana Starwalt, Kia Graham, Emma Hayden, Olivia Clifford, Leah Kelly, Arlen O'Carroll, Emily Ash, Sean Sinbauer, Annika Namrita Balaji. Almost snaps. It's like you, meika Namrita Balaji. Almost snaps. It's like you, me and Siraji all together. Harriet Dorman, Heather Bell, Jess H,

Kiara or Ciara Weiss, Stephanie Juarez, Lilla Coy, Danielle Chrisholm, Katrin Davies, Sarah Cole, Charlotte Bear, Catherine Quinn, Laura Elizabeth Doug Kaplan, Lauren Ray, Kate Ocella, Janelle Bernstrom, Catherine Brooke, Alexander Chatterley, Alexandra Bolivia Brown, Rebecca Oralee Lyon, Francesca Olsup, Amy Lina Camacho Kim Palmer April Heather Art Darby McCracken That's a great surname.

Katie Cullen Bryony Catherine Rosso Caitlin Tab Evans Janina Kosinic Holly Patricia Scott Michelle Eligan Hal Hagelin I don't, how haggling. I don't know how to help you.

Russell Garvey Jr. Thank you so much. Happy Halloween. Yes. Happy Halloween and happy birthday to me. Bye. Oh, yeah. Bye. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding,

I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now, exclusively on Wondery+. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part,

Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me. And it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding. And this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Cone. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution.

I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom, but I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is the rise and fall of Diddy. Listen to the rise and fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery+.