RedHanded - Episode 233 - Peter Kürten: The Vampire of Düsseldorf

Episode Date: February 17, 2022

In the world of true crime, the media is often accused of inaccuracy, dramatisation, and sensational headline writing, but there's an exception to every rule. Never has a killer fitted their moniker more than Peter Kürten, 'The Vampire of Düsseldorf'... Kürten may well have had a reflection and he may not have hung from the ceiling like a bat, but in one very key aspect, he was every bit Deutschland's Dracula. May 27th London Live Show Tickets: Tickets through DICE! Become a patron: Patreon Order a copy of the book here (US & Canada): Order on Wellesley Books Order on Amazon.com Order a copy of the book here (UK, Ireland, Europe, NZ, Aus): Order on Amazon.co.uk Order on Foyles Follow us on social media: Instagram Twitter Visit our website: Website Contact us: Contact Sources: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5153176-the-sadist https://allthatsinteresting.com/peter-kurten https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1gDWZz7oi0See 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. 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. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah.

I'm Saruti. And I hope you haven't eaten anything in the last week because this is disgusting. I just ate a big ratatouille which was the worst thing what a colorful meal to be throwing up later oh no this is one of the stories that ended up on the cutting room floor from the book and so we decided that it would be smart to repurpose it oh yes because it is quite the story it is quite the story one that it would be smart to repurpose it. Oh, yes, because it is quite the story. It is quite the story. One that deserves to be told.

Yeah. However, I can't say that revisiting it has been my favourite week of my life. No, it's gross. He's gross. Yep, he's gross. He's gross. And I'm going to kill everyone in this office, especially you, cocky jumper. Don't look at me.

Don't look at me. Don't look at me with my rainbow blanket, you bastard. Don't look at us in our glass office where we're like, why is it so loud? It's fine, guys. This is, Hannah, the actual last episode of Red Handed that is going to be recorded under distress in this office. Oh, she's bad. Shut up. Oh, my God. distress in this office oh she's bad shut up oh my god can this woman just go away right so here you go things that nearly made it into the book mark two i think we've done we did

that before he nearly made it in thrill killers are something that's spoken about a lot in the true crime scape but they are reasonably easily misunderstood even though from the outside it seems easy i actually think quite a lot of serial killers are misattributed as being thrill killers i think they're actually rarer than people think and we definitely said this in the book the kind of hollywood archetype of a serial killer is always a serial killer that hears voices that's being told to do it by God or the devil. And that obviously happens. Incredibly rare. Incredibly rare. That's what a lot of people seem to think it is. Not you dear listeners though, because you are, of course, far more

intelligent than that. So the definition of a thrill killer is they kill because they like it. That's the simplest explanation. It's the act of the killing they like. They're not that bothered about the dead body afterwards. It's all about how they get there. And when it comes to thrill killers, there is none more textbook than blood-drinking, child-stabbing serial murderer Peter Curtin. Get in, loser. We're going vampire hunting. Known as the Vampire of Dusseldorf, Curtin's motivations for murder were clear. He experienced a sexual thrill from the act of killing itself. But actually, in the case of Peter Curtin particularly, even saying the thrill of killing is kind of not hitting it on the head, it's the stabbing. It's the stabbing itself and the rush of blood that he likes. And often when you stab things, they die. And we warned you that this was going to be

gross and it's super gross because it's all sexually motivated consensual sex that did not involve gushing blood slit throat strangulation and stabbing no thank you says peter curtain no it would be arguably quite difficult to find someone to consent to being stabbed to death yes an argument we've had many times so our sexualities start to take shape a lot earlier than some of us might actually think. And they're influenced by all types of things. When sexual desire is connected to something atypical, even something dangerous perhaps, then it's no longer categorised as a sexual preference. It's a paraphilia. We're not really entering into kink shaming territory, which sometimes gets confused here It's a paraphilia. We're not really entering into kink shaming territory,

which sometimes gets confused here. Where the paraphilia line gets drawn is when you are harming other people. Or yourself. Or yourself. It's the danger and the violence part of it. Yeah, it's causing, I think the official definition, as in the DSM-5, is I believe that your sexual proclivities cause distress, harm or danger to others or to yourself. And that's when it crosses the line into a paraphilia. So for example, someone can be into masochism or into sadism. But if it's consensual and it's all above board, then that's not a paraphilia, it's a sexual preference. The minute that sadism crosses the line into the level of extreme behavior that needs to take place for you to get the thrill, and you can no longer find somebody who's willing to consent to being in that level of pain, that is now a paraphilia and a crime.

So now that we've got that clear, let's talk about Peter Curtin's specific set of paraphilia. And specific it is. Very. Because it was all to do with stabbing, hammering, blood explosions, and the thrill of general sexual, violent, bloody chaos creation. He is very much the archetypical process killer. He killed because he loved it. The act of killing is what got him off, and specifically the blood spraying all over his face. And again, if you go do pick up the book, there is an entire chapter in there about sexual sadism. Yeah, it's a lot. It's heavy. So like all of us, Peter Curtin's sexual preferences, or should we say in his case,

perversions, started to take shape when he was just a kid. Curtin grew up in Malheim, a district of Cologne in Germany in the 1890s, as one of the staggering 13 children. Yeah, probably should have forewarned you. If you don't know who Peter Curtin is, it's olden times. Yeah, olden times and gross. Yeah, which is why he was going to go in the book and not on the show, but here we are.

So Curtin's alcoholic father would sexually assault his mother and his sisters in full view of Peter and the other children. And some sources say that Peter was molested as well. I wouldn't doubt it. Absolute horror show, his home life. And quite possibly because of this horror show, the young Peter Curtin frequently ran away, but also managed to hold down a variety of odd jobs in between his escape attempts. The oddest of these odd jobs was the time he spent as a dog catcher's assistant, which is the most chitty-chitty-bang-bang bullshit I've ever heard in my life. A dog catcher's assistant. In this case, it's an accomplice to bestiality and animal abuse.

Yes, because Curtin's dog catching boss taught him at a very young age how to masturbate. And he also taught him how to sexually abuse dogs. And sometimes they would both do the same, both at the same time. It's a bad time. It's a bad time to be around. Oh God, I hate it. And I think it's reasonably safe to assume that as a result of these torturous tutorials curtain became increasingly obsessed with bestiality and animal abuse which is not surprising because he watched his employer catch dogs kill them then defile their corpses and then butcher the dogs for meat that'll do it that will do it

and what else will do it is the dog catcher would sort of giggle along to himself while he was doing all of these things. What? I know. I don't want to go to there. I don't want to go to the olden days. I'm happy where I am. Germany, you really, really just cannot stop. Well, I mean, they've only just started. We're only in the 1890s. They've got a long way to go. No, I mean, mean in general we've seen we just see so many so many horrible horrible cases horrible horrible all right governor we also happen to know that possibly curtain's very first orgasm we don't know

but a very early one happened as he strangled a squirrel to death. Great. How are you catching a squirrel? They're fast. That's probably why he got so excited. Oh my God. And yeah, again, a lot of this case, like, it is super olden timey. You've got to remember that. So some stuff we just don't know.

So it's like, this is the best information that is available. So Curtin alleges that the first time he associated violence and sexual gratification can be a big danger point, especially if it's happening in the mind of somebody who has some psychopathic tendencies. the squirrel was when he broke into a pen full of sheep and tried to sexually assault one of the sheep the sheep wouldn't stand still long enough because uh they're fast oh yeah and they're strong and they can jump high they can jump high he caught it when it wouldn't stand still his decision on how to remedy that situation was that he stabbed it and when he did that much like with the fateful squirrel he came all in his pants yeah yeah and so after this curtain was spotted having sex with sheep on many an occasion and sometimes he'd be stabbing them at the same time not gonna win loads of friends even in 1890s germany i would argue if people are like oh that's peter he fucks sheep yeah i don't think that we as people have you know changed that

in that amount of time you know it's not like oh well you know that's just the way it is yeah it's very rural out here there's not much to do yeah like we're all at it what's peter just a wednesday night exactly so as evidenced by his interest in squirrels and sheep, Curtin didn't have a particular type of animal that he favoured. He's still figuring it out. He's still working his way through the bestiality food chain to see what does it for him. But at this point in his career, he literally would take anything that he came across. Like he would attack any sort of living animal that he could get access to. Again, very opportunistic, very typical of early serial killers, pre-human attacks.

He claimed that once he even came across a sleeping swan that he didn't want to pass up. A swan that would break your fucking arm. And he went for it. He got the swan. He stabbed it to death he cut its head off and drank the blood from its long swanny neck that is okay i'm gonna sound very sinister here but i'm gonna say and we can edit this out if we need to mammals yes you get it. I get it. To a next step. Stay with me.

But a bird? What? Yeah. It doesn't even look remotely like anything. No, but it further proves the point. That doesn't matter what the thing looks like. It's the blood he wants. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And swan blood looks just like cow blood.

True that. All right, we're fine. Welcome to 2003. Look, it's a pastor case. I'm going back to pastor as I can. Okay. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart.

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Apple Podcasts or Spotify And with the swan, as Hannah said the blood looked exactly the same so the sight and the sound of the gushing swan blood was enough to yet again make peter curtain come all in his pants he's doing a lot of laundry one would hope yeah i hope that image on its own is enough to make you lose your lunch but given the atrocities curtain would go on to commit to him an afternoon of sheep stabbing and sheep shagging probably felt as boring as missionary do you know why it's called missionary i learned this recently

apparently and i'm probably wrong but fuck the police so true that when missionaries white missionaries would go to the new world all of the indigenous people laughed at the way they had sex because they were like that's so weird because it's the very protestant like this is for procreation why i'm not having a good time i am not enjoying this at all so the indigenous peoples made fun of them and they called it missionary and that's why it's called that well that's very funny apparently of course not everyone very important to say, not everyone who is sexually abused as a child goes on to abuse others when they grow up.

And not everyone who is sexually abused develop what could be considered a deviant sexual practice. It really is not that straightforward at all. However, we do know that there are certain circumstances that can cause paraphilias to form, and Curtin was exposed to every single one of the widely accepted causes of the development of paraphilia. Yeah, he kind of like, I don't want to take away the blame from him, but he kind of doesn't really have a chance. He doesn't have the best start. No. And when someone who, as you alluded to,

probably, almost definitely, was already quite psychopathically inclined when they are exposed to circumstances such as that, it makes it much setting myself up for the opportunity to not get hit, especially because I also now have a predisposition towards having a fucked up ankle. So, perfect analogy, most likely I'm going to get hit by a car. Okay, well, not for 10 years, please. So let's run over the circumstances that Curtin has been exposed to in childhood that are likely to set someone up to develop a deviant paraphilia. The dog catcher introduced him to deviant sexual behaviors at a very young age and when that happens the standard pattern of arousal can be replaced and repeated.

Curtin was also physically, emotionally and sexually abused by his parents. Anxiety and emotional trauma can also cause some children, not all but some, to deviate from usual psychosexual development. We also know that Peter Curtin's dad was convicted of incest and went to prison for it. And little Peter Curtin followed in the family criminality footsteps and he was found guilty of a lot of crimes when he was just a child. Mainly just petty stuff like stealing and setting stuff on fire. But what that meant is that he was in and out of jails and prisons and detention centres a lot as a very young man, just like Karl Panzram. People love making that comparison between Curtin and Panzram. I don't think it's an ill-advised one. I think Karl Panzram had a lot more anger. I think Peter Curtin was just completely living in a different world

i would agree because pansram he had some good quotes oh yeah oh yeah had some good quotes i don't think peter curtain had a instagrammable who is instagramming carl pansram because they need to go to prison no way let me look up that carl panzeram quote because again i'm just making myself sound like a terrible person i'm like i understand this bestiality i'm like someone instagram me someone embroidered me a carl panzeram quote he had a lot of quotes i am only sorry for two things these two things are i'm sorry that i've mistreated some few animals in my lifetime and i'm sorry that i'm unable to murder the whole damned human race. He's angry. Yeah. It's a nice little quote though. Anyway, moving on.

But I would agree with you. I would agree with you that Karl Panzram is very driven by rage and we haven't covered Karl Panzram and maybe one day we will, but he had a fucking horrible time of it in those juvenile delinquent prisons that he went to. And I'm assuming Peter Curtin in, you know, early 1900s. Oh, yeah. It's the one thing he would never talk about. That's it. That's when you know that something terrible happened there.

And again, you know, not everyone who has something terrible happen to them goes on to do this, but he had the proclivity for it. Oh, and also the crimes that he's committing at an early age, the starting fires, the petty crime, the theft. Again, very classic boundary pushing behaviors of a child that is showing a tendency towards future criminality, unfortunately. And so, predictably, given this trajectory that young Peter Curtin was on, you'll be unsurprised to hear that before long, it was rumoured that he had committed his first murder

in 1892, when Curtin was just nine years old. Again, that is shocking to young. If it's true. If it's true. Apparently, he'd gone on a rafting trip with two other little boys on the Rhine, and little Curtin either pushed one of these boys

or he'd fallen off the raft. Curtin just watched on as the other little boy jumped into the river trying to save the one that had fallen in. When he realised there was no hope, he attempted to get back onto the raft, but nine-year-old Curtin just held the head of the second boy underwater until he drowned. Somehow Curtin managed to get the raft back to shore solo, and when the police questioned him about what had happened, he told them that the other two boys had just fallen off. Again, remember, this is in 1892. How true this story is, we just don't know. But Curtin claimed

in later years that this was the moment he realised that he could get away with anything as long as he faked the emotions that those around him were expecting to see. Which, classic. Is a classic, but I think he's giving himself a little bit too much credit. Yeah, I mean, it looks like an accident. Yeah, he's not H.H. Holmes. Like, he doesn't have some grand scheme. He kills because he literally cannot control himself,

and Germany's such a fucking mess, no one can catch him. Yeah, and it also feels like if he is in some sort of detention center at this point for children because you know he's been doing his anti-social behaviors then um is this just a ploy by that institution to get rid of kids who's letting nine-year-olds go rafting on their own down a fucking river i guess people in 1892 germany i guess so. Curtin's most significant stint in prison came after he set fire to loads of barns. He got eight years for that. And while he was on the inside, he spent his whole time wishing that he could murder the whole world. Also, he said...

Bit Carl Panzerhammer. Bit Carl Panzerhammer. I just don't think it's true. Like, I think he comes up with it much later on to like, obviously, there's a... We'll get onto it later. But there's a lot of political upheaval in germany at this time he blamed authority for all of his issues which to be honest in germany at this period in history was a pretty common feeling everyone felt like they were being oppressed and that there was no point if they could never you know have an army

and as i alluded to earlier his time in prison was so awful, he never spoke about it. He has absolutely no problem describing all of the excruciating details of the gruesome murders he goes on to commit. But the only time Peter Curtin ever twitched with an emotion that wasn't glee was when he was pressed to answer questions about his time in prison. So let's leave the nine-year-olds on the raft where they are. Let's leave them drowned at the bottom of the Rhine and move on. Yeah, that sounds fucking horrible, but well, that's where they are. So let's talk instead about the first murder that we know Peter Curtin definitely did. And for that story, we have to hop on over

to Cologne, 1913. Curtin had been bumming around stealing things from taverns all over the region, and on the 25th of May, he set his sights on a score in the city. He was quite an experienced thief at this stage in the game, and easily broke into the pub. As he went up the first floor, he spotted a 10-year-old girl tucked into bed sleeping. He immediately grabbed her by the neck and strangled her. Next, he digitally penetrated her and slit her throat with the knife that he was carrying in his pocket. Then Curtin left her dead on her bed, her blood spattered across the walls.

This girl's name was Christine Klein, and her father, Peter Klein, who owned the tavern downstairs Discovered her dead body He also discovered the most old and timey clue in the history of ever A monogrammed handkerchief In his daughter's room And the initials on this handkerchief Were PK Which unfortunately for Peter Klein

Lands him in some trouble So these initials Stop giving fucking monogrammed handkerchiefs olden time people fuck yeah so these initials and a fallout with his brother otto over some money led to peter klein almost being convicted of the rape molestation and murder of his own daughter he escaped the gallows and was acquitted eventually, only to die on the Western Front just a few months later, which is probably why he was acquitted. Yeah, oh yeah. Why are we hanging you here? Get to the fucking Western Front as they kicked Peter Cline down the road. The day after the murder of Christine Cline, Curtin returned to the scene of the crime. A killer returning to the scene of the crime a killer returning to the scene of the crime might sound

cliche to us in the now times but curtain could not get enough and to be fair it probably wasn't considered a trope back then when everyone was quite busy dying in the trenches yeah absolutely and even though it's considered a trope now it's a trope because it's true they fucking love it they really do i mean even if you look at the murder of sarah everard i mean when we saw all of the information come out in the trial that took place last year, that fucking piece of shit, like, gone and had a picnic where he'd murdered her

with his family the next week. So, tropes are tropes for a reason. So, before Peter Curtin got his very own taste of war, he kept on with his violent attacks, switching up his instrument of choice. He's still very much in a self-discovery mode. Oh yeah, he's trying out all sorts. Yeah, he's like a typical adolescent.

He's figuring out what he likes. What he likes just happens to be stabbing people and then coming in his pants. So Curtin actually carried a hatchet round with him wherever he went, which, like, I'm surprised because not the most, like, pocket-friendly weapon is a hatchet. And on one occasion, he spotted a 20-year-old girl

wandering into a deserted structure all alone. He followed her and struck her on the head with the blunt end of his axe. She fell to the ground immediately, and he just left her there. The next month, Peter Curtin resolved to this time use the sharp end and as we've seen before Curtin is very much an opportunist. In later life he claimed that he only chose quote-unquote worthy victims, no sex workers for example, but really he would attack anyone that he could get his hands on just like we saw with the animals and it's interesting here because he has quite a different slant on things,

a different skew on things, because typically we see, if you're looking at the type of killer as like a mission-orientated killer, they'll pick people that they're, you know, they're deeming to rid the world of the filth of, insert, you know, group here. But he very much feels like, or says that he's looking for people that are quote unquote worthy of him, not people that are less than deserving of being killed, which is interesting.

Again, how much thought's gone into that? Or is it just all retrospective? It's all retrospective. There's no thought. Like he just, fuck it. It's whoever is walking alone. And we can see this with his next attack because this time Peter Curtin hit a man

with the sharp end of his hatchet and watched from a bush as this person bled to death and as he was hiding reveling in all the chaos that he'd caused guess what he did he came all in his pants he came all in his pants and i think this the fact that he attacks a man and crosses that boundary that typically killers don't they typically tend to go after people that they're sexually attracted to you're seeing i'm not saying he couldn't have been sexually attracted to men and women but again i think that that probably just reaffirms the fact that he is purely an opportunist yeah yeah after this hiding in the bush edition of peter curtain comes in his pants he went quiet for a while. Actually, quite a long while. Curtin

was conscripted and sent away to fight for Kaiser Wilhelm in World War I, where in a turn of events to surprise absolutely nobody, he defected. He deserted. He ran away. He was caught very quickly and he spent the entirety of the war in a military prison, which was a better deal than the trenches. And when he got out, three years after the peace treaty was signed, he went to go and live with his sister. But by 1925, he was back in his beloved Dusseldorf. And back up to his old tricks. In no time at all, Curtin had non-fatally stabbed and strangled four women and conducted 42 arsons. Arsons? Act of arsons? Some arsonage? I don't know what the word is. 42 arsons.

We know what you mean. I know what you mean. He went to the arsonage and did some arson. He did lots of arsoning, actually. Everything from a small garden shed to a forest. That's the other thing with Curtin, isn't it? We've said this before already, but it's the chaos that he likes. Yes, he loves it. And I think just even watching people be in panic that there is a fire is also going to do it for him.

That's absolutely spot on. He loved to hide away in a secret little hidey hole and watch frantic panic that he knows he has caused and no doubt coming in his pants about it. On the 3rd of February 1929, Curtin attempted to abduct a woman who was walking home on her own. Frau Kuhn would escape, but not before he had stabbed her 24 times with a pair of scissors.

Amazingly, she survived. Curtin returned to the site of his bloody assault twice. He masturbated there both times, reliving the thrill of the attack on Frau Kuhn. Not long after Frau Kuhn survived Peter Curtin, on the 9th of February, sadly, eight-year-old Rosa Ohlinger would not. Her body was discovered under a hedgerow by Dusseldorf police.

Rosa's body had been stabbed 13 times and doused in petrol during an unsuccessful attempt to dispose of her remains. Peter Curtin had tried to burn the body, but there were just too many people around, and he didn't want to draw attention to himself. That trait, however, wouldn't last very long at all. The autopsy of Rosa's body revealed that she had sustained stab wounds to her vagina and also there was semen inside her as well.

Sorry, but there was. It was also determined that there was no way the perpetrator could have penetrated the child with his penis, so he must have deposited his semen inside her using his fingers. Curtin later claimed that he had become aroused when he was stabbing the girl and that he had ejaculated when he had stabbed her with scissors. Reportedly, he felt no sexual arousal when he penetrated her with his fingers, which disappointed him greatly.

So he stabbed Rosa in the temple fingers, which disappointed him greatly. So he stabbed Rosa in the temple and sucked blood from the wound. And after he'd finished with Rosa's body, he took himself off to the pictures, because he had a token in his pocket that he'd forgotten about. And he was like, oh, now I'm finished now. I can just go and watch a film. Have a nice little relaxing trip to the cinema. So as hideous as the murder of little eight-year-old Rosa was, I'm afraid we are only just getting started. Just three days later, Curtin spotted Rudolf Schreier stumbling out of a pub in Dusseldorf. Curtin followed him and stabbed him 20 times, including in the temple, which is...

Why are you stabbing people in the head? I just... I hate that. Yuck. And just like he had done with Rosa, Curtin then hid until the next morning and watched from another secret hidey hole as the police recovered Rudolph's body. And maybe something happened to him, hidden away.

Maybe he had a change of heart. Maybe he fell in love. Maybe he felt like his luck was about to run out. Whatever it was, Peter Curtin calmed down a bit after this and took the summer off from his stabbing and his strangling. We often see with serial killers, as you guys will know, that they do have cooling off periods. And it can be, you know, just because they've got what they needed for that moment.

Maybe they feel like they're too close to getting caught. Whatever it is, this isn't unusual to take this kind of break. But just because Peter Curtin was taking a break didn't mean that Dusseldorf was getting a break. Because meanwhile, there was another maniac running around. And this guy's name was Hans Strasberg. And he was busy running up behind people, walking on their own at night,

and slipping a noose around their neck. Strasberg was quickly tracked down by police and he confessed not only to his own new stranglings but to all of Peter Curtin's murders and assaults as well. So Strasbourg was sent immediately to a mental institution for the rest of his days and Curtin, no doubt a bit miffed that Strasbourg had taken all the credit for all his handiwork, made a reappearance. It was obviously quite embarrassing for the Dusseldorf police when they claimed to have captured the terror of Dusseldorf and then murders continued to happen. But happen they did. Curtin's most infamous killing was the murder of Maria Hahn in 1929. She was last seen in a beer garden on a date with Peter Curtin.

Oh God, how did they get to that stage? She was last seen in a beer garden on a date with Peter Curtin. Oh, God. How did they get to that stage? Well, he got chatting to her as he was walking through the zoo, no doubt aroused by swan necks. But you will hear in, not naming names, but in true crime podcasts that have covered this, they'll say about Peter Curtin that he was well-dressed, that I don't doubt.

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sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up, and 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 Plus. He was not attractive. I don't care what anyone says. He looks like a toad man. I'm going to have a look. You have to. Even by Weimar Republic standards, I don't think he's a looker. Do you know what it is? It's the eyes. He's got just very, very, very, like, empty eyes.

They're so pale. I don't know, it's his skin for me. It just sort of, like, flaps. And I know this isn't his nickname. I know it's the nickname for Albert Fish, but the grey man. Yeah, yep, yep, yep. And it's not just because the photos are all black and white. Like, it's scary.

Yeah, it's not great. It's not good stuff. So after Maria Hahn was spotted with Peter Curtin in this beer garden, her body was discovered three months later. And here's what happened. After the pair left the beer garden, they went off to a field to have sex. Presumably there was nowhere else to do it, but Curtin was not into it. So he started to strangle Maria, and when that wasn't enough to get him going, he started to stab her. When Maria's body was found, it had 10 chest wounds, 7 neck wounds, and 3 stabs into her temple. This savage murder, even though he's been drinking blood for years, this is the one that earned Peter Curtin

the moniker that would go down in history, the Vampire of Dusseldorf. Well, you've got to put in the work. Yeah, yeah, and he earned that name in exactly the way you think he did. No, he was not an immortal reincarnation of Vlad the Impaler come to rule again. Instead, Peter Curtin drank Maria's blood from her throat as she died. He drank so much, in fact, that he vomited. But, despite all of the various other body fluids going on, he also managed to orgasm. For a second time. Because the first one had happened, while he'd been stabbing Maria to death.

When he was sure that Maria was dead, Peter Curtin rolled her lifeless body into a ditch and covered it up with some branches. Then he went home, for the first time, with blood-stained clothes. And this made Peter Curtin pause for thought. Usually he managed to get away with clean garments, but this time he feared that he may have made too much of a spectacle of himself. So he returned to the body of Maria Hahn with a shovel and dug a deep grave. A few weeks later,

he returned once again. His intention was to nail Maria's body, crucifixion style, to a tree. But he couldn't lift her corpse on his own. Yeah, Google him. Weedy little guy. Yeah, he is quite slim. In the absence of a 1930s murder-based task rabbit force, he decided instead that he would write to the press to tell them exactly where to find her. And of course to make the point that the vampire was back in full force in his own words so we're not putting words in his mouth these words came out of his mouth quote it was not my intention to get satisfaction

by normal sexual intercourse but by killing when the victim struggled she merely stimulated my lust and this is the thing he is you know he's like tiptoeing around we're not tiptoeing he's also a sadist like i think we can say that and i think it's what we were talking about in the book with dr lee meller's triangle of sexual sadism which is the idea of like he has such an interesting podcast that this name i've forgotten but i will leave it in the link to this episode but you could just google it and find it and in that he talks about when you are with somebody sexually or you're thinking about what turns you want it's not just what you're doing it's what you're doing and the reaction you're eliciting from that person that's turning

you on it's not just somebody lying there still and silent while you do things although that could be also something that turns some people on but again that's the reaction of that person that's all the lack thereof that's turning you on and peter curtain is explaining that really really well here and curtain continued to attempt to satiate his bloodlust which is a term that has never been more appropriate by committing a series of non-fatal stabbings all over dusseldorf he managed this so often that the people of dusseldorf were convinced that they had their very own Jack the Ripper on their hands, which bang in the middle of the Weimar Republic was arguably the least of their worries. You all thought you were going to get through this episode without a red-handed rundown. You are wrong! The Weimar Republic

refers to the state of Germany from 1918 to 1933, although the official name was the German Reich. Weimar itself is a city in which the first constituent assembly of that state happened. The republic's formation was announced after Germany surrendered, bringing about the end of World War I. And you probably have heard of the Treaty of Versailles, which was integral both to the end of the war and for plunging Germany into turmoil. In what was later termed the war guilt clause, Germany was forced to agree that absolutely everything in World War I was their fault. They were forced to give up territory and to pay literally billions in reparations to the Allied forces and to disarm themselves as a nation, although they never really did that last one. Even though contemporary

economists warned global leaders at the time that keeping Germany in an economic and ideological chokehold was nothing less than a Carthaginian peace, but the Allies did it anyway. Yeah, it's a bad decision. It's a very bad decision. It's not going to end well. And it didn't, if you've heard of a little thing called World War II. So the Great Depression of 1929 meant that American creditors took all of their money and lines of credit out of Germany. And then the bankruptcy of the Austrian Kredenstalt Bank made everything worse. Unemployment shot to record highs and there was just no way to fix it. By the time the Nazis were voted into

the Reichstag in 1930, there were four million people without jobs. Political instability and hyperinflation followed. The government had spun totally out of control. And while Germany was in the midst of economic disaster, as usual, organised crime ran rampant, and Curtin quite liked the idea of being the Bavarian Jack the Ripper. At the height of his rampage, Curtin cast his gaze up to the sky and saw that it was red, just as it had been during the height of Jack's spree in London in 1888, during the Leather Apron, the Whitechapel murder situation. And in a slight overreaction, the vampire of Dusseldorf took this particular arrangement

of dust and moisture particles as an omen that murder was his destiny. Get a grip. I mean, it makes sense. It's poetic. It's poetic and it's very like, again, these killers want to feel like they are often speaking to a higher cause.

We know this. No one is a monster in their own story. They want to feel like there is a greater calling. There is something more than just them. That magical thinking, the narcissism. It fits. It fits perfectly. And he just loves the colour of red.

He does. He certainly does. Jack the Ripper might have been Curtin's idol. But Peter Curtin wouldn't be quite as lucky as his murderous mentor. Come May 1930, the Weimar Republic was shaking with instability and a mustachioed Machircho was sharpening up his long knives. And Curtin's crimes began catching up with him. After Maria Hahn, Curtin went on the rampage to end all rampages.

He had completely lost the ability to feel apprehensive, I think, like he just completely loses it. The very same week that he killed Maria Hahn, he approached a 26-year-old woman called Gertrude Schilter. He called out to her and told her that she was beautiful, and he followed up that classic opening line with one that never ever works, we should have sex. Gertrude said, I would rather die. And then Curtin replied as he ran towards her with a dagger, then you shall die.

Oh, God. It's like a bad hammy play. I mean, maybe it's better in German. Yes. Can somebody translate that to German? Because I can't. GCSE in German over here, that's all I've got. It did me

absolutely no good so then Peter Curtin stabbed her in the back so hard that the blade of his dagger broke but he still managed to stab her three times before he ran off in the other direction loves a run loves to just scamper off yeah yeah it's quite old and timey though isn't it i don't know why i think she's not gonna get on his hoverboard not like us to click out his heelys not like us modern kids so thankfully kurtrude survived this attack and perhaps spurred on by a near miss curtain kept going that same night he made three more non-fatal stabbing attacks. Dusseldorf was terrified. They clearly still had a maniac in their midst, and the police were stumped. The literal thousands of tip-offs they received from the public just didn't seem to help at all. You can see now Peter

Curtin has fully devolved. He is in absolute spree mode. He's completely lost it. And just a couple of days later, on the 23rd of August, Peter Curtin approached two children, 14-year-old Louise Linson and five-year-old Gertrude Hamacher, who were quietly minding their own business. Curtin told the older girl, Louise, to run off and buy him some cigarettes, while he looked after little Gertrude. As soon as Louise walked off, Curtin strangled five-year-old Gertrude and opened her throat with his pocket knife. Louise met the same fate when she returned, and Peter Curtin even chewed on the wound on her neck,

licking the inside of her throat. And then he had a little lie down. And after that, he just walked away, leaving the children's lifeless bodies out in the open. And he didn't stop. He went on to attack Sophie Rugal with a chisel and chased after multiple people, shooting a pistol only to steal away into the night just moments later.

He's literally just running straight at them, shooting a gun in the air, and then he just vanishes. And this is the thing. I think it can feel, like, hard to understand how nobody caught him all this time because he's just committing, like, rampant attacks around Dusseldorf. But the problem is he's doing what makes serial killer investigations hard. He's attacking people completely unconnected to him, completely out of the blue. There's no pattern to what he's doing. He's sort of traveling around doing this across the city. There is no way to connect him to any of these crimes apart from if they were to apprehend him there and then in the act. He went on to attack Ida Rauder, Elisabeth Dorier, Frau Wonders and Frau Murier, I think, with a hammer. So again, switching up his implement of choice.

One of these hammer blow attacks was so forceful that the handle of the hammer actually snapped and the hammerhead flew off and was lost forever, which he was quite upset about. I mean, you would be. Special hammer. I know it's been a rough one, but do not worry, dear friends, the end is in sight. Please hold on. Curtin's final victim was another five-year-old, and another Gertrude. This five-year-old Gertrude, Gertrude Alderman, was stabbed to death with scissors over 50 times. Curtin then raped her dead body and he yet again attempted to set the corpse of the five-year-old on fire but he didn't manage it. Instead he carried her to an abandoned factory and covered her body with debris that was just lying around. He marked this pile of rubbish with a cross and quickly sent a letter to the press

and to the police and like he had done many before, Peter Curtin then hid out of sight and waited for the police to uncover his handiwork. After this spectacle, he went quiet for three more months until his last attack, which would prove to be his undoing. In February 1930, Curtin approached a woman called Maria Budlik because she was being harassed by another man. That's how they get you. That's happened to me before where I've been walking home and someone else has come up behind me and be like, that guy's following you. And I was like, yeah, I know. And then he proved to be much more difficult.

Anyway, so he offers to walk Maria to a hostel because he thinks that she's an out of town and she won't know where she's going. He actually takes her to an apartment. But Maria had actually been to Dusseldorf before. And she was like, I know this is the wrong way. They end up at this apartment that he's renting. And there he asks Maria to have sex with him and she refused. And Curtin uncharacteristically lets her go. But that's because he thinks someone he knows has seen them together.

So he's like, I have been spotted with this woman by someone who definitely knows who I am. so it was a bit too close for him and again he thought she was an out-of-towner he thought he was fine maria absolutely not she was not having it she reported the incident to the police and led them straight to curtain's apartment building whilst he was inside she even took them up the stairs and Curtin just walked straight past them with his hat pulled down over his face. But even he knew that a low brim couldn't save him because he had made the fatal mistake of renting this secret sex pad in his own name. So he decided to tell his wife everything. You heard that correctly. Throughout all of his raping,

murdering and bloodsucking, Deutschland's very own Dracula had a wife. And her name was August Schaff. And she was somewhat of a murderer herself. It really isn't that mysterious. She was a murderer. Yeah, fully. She was definitely a murderer. She had shot and killed her fiancé for breaking off their engagement. She had even served prison time for it and then she'd married Curtin when she got out. There's a weird myth surrounding their relationship.

Loads of people say that Curtin was a disgusting heartless sadist to literally everyone but that he really loved his wife. Which I don't understand. I don't understand the theory behind it. Like why are you trying to humanize him? I don't mind the humanizing of like why are you trying to humanize him I don't mind the humanizing of a serial killer to look at them as a human my issue with this is this is weird romanticization this is like a high bristophiliac's wet dream this is like the title you wrote for the the subtitle you wrote for the book bad boys for life this is like the full thing of and we've all been there women being attracted to bad boys. Like, oh, he's horrible to everybody,

but he's really nice to me because I'm special. Yeah, that's true. And I don't know if Auguste is the one who's like propagating this lie, but I think us telling that lie, also, you know, crime historians telling that lie, it's just, it's uncomfortable making. Sometimes it's true

i'm not going to say that some killers aren't that way but curtain wasn't he was physically abusive towards august and he raped her regularly he often also threatened her with a knife if she refused to have sex with him still though it was august that he spilled the beans to and the police tracked her down and she dogged him in when he told her that he spilled the beans to. And the police tracked her down and she dopped him in. When he told her that he was guilty of everything, he explained that he just didn't know what had come over him. There's a weird theory that you really will see everywhere

that he was like, oh, I don't care about going to prison, I just care about not leaving Auguste destitute. So he told her everything so she could claim the reward for handing him in and be fine while he goes to prison and is killed. I don't believe it for a second. I think it's much more likely that he's probably like,

get that money, stash it away. I'm sure I won't get convicted because I'm a massive fucking narcissist, magical thinking, thinking the red sky. I'll get away with it because I'm actually Jack the Ripper, Dusseldorf style. And then we'll get that money together and then we'll run. We'll piss off. Or I'll kill you and take that money. It's something fucked up like that.

Yeah. Yeah. It's not because he was a nice guy under it all. It's not the altruism. No. So Frau Curtin admitted to the police that she was actually Frau Vampire. And she also told them all of the gory details about her blood-sucking child raping husband and then she told the police that Peter Curtin would be waiting for her outside a church at 3 p.m that very day. Police surrounded the church and Peter Curtin was arrested with a smile

on his face telling the police that they need not be afraid. I think they bloody should. You're a scary man Peter Curtin. Now you may be wondering how on earth we know all about the number of climaxes that peter curtain had his precise killing methods and also his motives remember this is a fucking pasto case well like a great deal of serial killers we know all this because peter curtain told us after his arrest curtain gave a full confession to Professor Carl Berg. This infamous piece of evidence is probably the only reason that we know Curtin's name at all these days. Curtin's blood-curdling, stomach-churning confession was even turned into a book, which became, unsurprisingly, an absolute bloody sensation sensation the pages of the sadist detail

curtain's account of at least 79 crimes and he explained to dr berg that his only motivation was sex he said quote i derived the sort of pleasure from these visions that other people would get from thinking about a naked woman and he he's spot on. He knows. He knows what's up. He's not like... Curtain's got insight. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he actually went on to give us a little bit more information than we need. He explained that he would feel a tension build up inside him before a crime

and then a release afterwards. Those who escaped his stabby clutches were extremely lucky that they lived to tell the tale. The victims that Curtain did kill, the ones whose eyes lost the light of life as he watched, he wasn't that interested in them once they'd stopped bleeding. A lot of process killers, arguably, will keep their victim alive for as long as possible because they like the torturing. He just doesn't have that much interest in it. He just likes the stabbing. He likes lots of blood and lots of blood equals dead people. And within sadists, you can

break them down into kind of organized, disorganized and sophisticated and unsophisticated and usually the more sophisticated like the ones who will take somebody prisoner keep them alive for multiple years and in some sort of sex dungeon while they extract the pleasure they need from them that's the kind of person that's keeping a victim alive for a very long time peter curtain is absolutely unsophisticated he is just like blitz attack blood sprays on him he comes great move on to the next one so after peter curtain's initial confession he added a political angle to his biography claiming that his murderous rampages were actually a way of hitting back at a society that had mistreated him which is the whole vibe in germany at this time

right like that is what that's how the nazis get with a 19% of the vote into the Reichstag, because a majority of Germany are feeling hard done by by that. And again, that's why those economists were like, don't do this. Yes, exactly. Stop it. Don't salt the earth. Because we're going to get hit in the face with loads of salty horrible earth so peter curtain cited this as the reason that he had no conscience and that quote never have i felt any misgiving in my soul never did i think to myself that what i did was bad even though human

society condemns it the punishments i have suffered have destroyed all my feelings as a human being i think here you're getting into like a window into the mind of what probably happened to Peter Curtin during his time in prison as well. Like he, even when he says the punishments I have suffered have destroyed all my feelings as a human being, I think it's the shaping of a man who goes on to become a sexual sadist. Yeah. So this could be a red herring, a flailing attempt to preserve his infamy after his death, after his death sentence had been carried out. Because again, we know he's very drawn to the kind of legend,

the myth-making of Jack the Ripper. But it could also be a pertinent point worth considering. What do we expect to happen when we lock damaged people away to only get more angry yeah having said that i just don't know how i do believe he buys into this romantic vision of himself that he's actually a vigilante and like you know like the joaquin phoenix joker version where he's like well what do you expect yeah i think he plays into this idea very much of yeah myth making like there's something greater than him and it was because he was put upon by

something greater than him like society and he is so again it's the classic thing of like somebody one person's feeling small and insignificant and powerless and now suddenly he's much more than that yeah it's also very difficult to take almost anything he says seriously he doesn't really change the details of the crime so like i, I think that that is fairly solid, but like his stories do change. He confesses, he recants, and then he confesses again. It's difficult to know what's true and what's myth-making. In The Sadist, he lists all of his crimes to Dr. Carlberg

and even some that the police didn't know about. And then the police would track down those people and be like, did this happen to you? And they'd be like, yeah. So like he has a meticulous memory. And out of the 72 charges, he admitted to 68, all the while quite visibly aroused. Like, I know this is making your career, Dr. Berg, but that must have been quite uncomfortable. Yeah, again, I'm sure it stems from not just reliving a crime, but also we know that Peter Curtin very much likes to see panic responses, fear responses, probably responses of

disgust in the face of other people. And I'm sure he was getting that while he was confessing to all these things, which was probably turning him on again. Eventually, Curtin was charged with nine murders and seven attempted murders in a court of law. When it came to trial, the public feared him so intensely that he was kept in a specially constructed cage during the hearing. I bet he bloody... I think he could not get enough. It only took the jury 90 minutes to find Peter Curtin guilty on all counts, and the vampire of Dusseldorf was put to death by guillotine on the 2nd of July 1932. Before he was taken to the

courtyard of Klingelputz prison, he asked Professor Berg, probably the closest thing he had to a friend, quote, after my head has been chopped off, will I still be able to hear, at least for a moment, the sound of my own blood gushing from the stump of my neck? That would be the pleasure to end all pleasures. Kill me. It's very similar to what Albert Fish said. Shall I look up what Albert Fish said? I can't remember what it was, but it was very similar.

Apparently, Albert Fish's last words were, it'll be the supreme thrill, the only one I haven't tried. So yeah. Why did they cut his head off? They shouldn't have given him the blood. Yeah, I don't know what the protocol is. Maybe he gets to choose. Yeah, maybe. And just like that, with those words, Curtin earned himself a forever seat on every BuzzFeed list of creepiest last words. I know we do this for a living, but now I've read that sentence, I feel dirty. BuzzFeed have those lists. They're so horrible.

But that's not the only place that Peter Curtin remains immortal. immortal if you dear listener want to see inside of peter curtain's skull all you need to do is visit the ripley's believe it or not museum in wisconsin his head was bisected after his death the scientific mind on a physical level i presume that's what they were looking to have a look at they detected no abnormalities however however, in his brain. But you do have to wonder if they really knew what they were looking for. Yeah, like they're just like, well, there has to be. There has to be something in there that's visibly different. Yeah, I feel like at the time they would have done this,

so we're talking in the early, early 30s, they'd have cut it open and probably just thought that there was going to be like an upside down cross in there. Yeah, or like spiders. Yeah. So, I mean, you you know they're trying that's the only way that science can move forward yeah but we don't know and despite the numerous theories that we now have in the today times on the structural differences between psychopathic brains and neurotypical ones we'll never know any more about the murderous marbles curtain might have had rolling around in his skull we'll never know any more about the murderous marbles Curtin might have had rolling around in his skull.

We'll never know if he had a Phineas Gage-type brain injury or abnormality that skewed his sexual development. Even if Wisconsin would let us have his head, a PET scan of a dead brain would be totally useless. So we have to use what we do know, which is his childhood environment and early exposure to atypical sex practices, including animals and extreme violence. I think it's a safe bet to say that more than likely skewed his sexual development far beyond what could ever be considered typical. That is probably enough to do it. Yep, and that is enough for

me today. So we're going to leave behind the olden dayses and next week we will be in a studio, not wishing everyone around us was dead, hopefully. I cannot bloody wait. And once again, the ability to even do that, to move into a place that has a studio, is all in thanks to all of you lovely listeners.

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Bye. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudian Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media. To listen, subscribe to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts. odd. 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,

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