Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 245 - Karl Denke, the Cannibal of Ziębice

Episode Date: May 24, 2021

Heard of this guy before? If you haven't, I'm with you. I hadn't either. And then once I got into this story, I wondered HOW had I never heard of him? This story is insane. Karl Denke killed, it seems, at least 30 people in Ziębice, Poland (formerly Münsterberg, Weimar Republic aka Germany). And he ate them. And he sold some of their meat to others. Probably many, MANY others. And he made suspenders out of their skin and shoelaces out of their hair and on and on and on. And he did that out of his apartment, surrounded by neighbors, for over two decades. How? Partially - due to hyperinflation. Yes, hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic led to so much economic chaos that people were a lot more worried about surviving than they were about what their neighbors were up to. And why haven't more of us heard about Karl? Because of another killer operating nearby at the same time who was even more disturbing - Fritz Haarmann. We'll go over some of his crimes as well. True crime, the economic chaos of German's Interwar Years and more on an outlandish edition of Timesuck. Thanks for helping Bad Magic Productions donate $13,800 this month to The Ocular Melanoma Foundation, in honor of Timesucker Alex Roach. To find out more, go to http://www.ocularmelanoma.org/ Watch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/oIvZy2JwlHs Merch - https://badmagicmerch.com/ Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89v Want to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever current page hasn't been put in FB Jail :) For all merch related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste) Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast Wanna become a Space Lizard? We're over 10,000 strong! Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast Sign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits.

November 1923, you're a working class German carrying a bag full of cash to buy a few meals because hyperinflation has made your money worthless and you stumble across a man selling boneless pickled pork. Sounds weird, maybe kind of disgusting, but you're happy to have finally found some meat you can actually afford. When you approach the man's meat stand, you notice he's also selling leather goods for a really good price. You can't believe your luck. Quickly buy as much meat as you can afford and a pair of leather suspenders to go along with it. Papa Denki, the butcher, thanks you for your business and tells you to enjoy the meat.

And then a little over a year later, when his story breaks, you start to vomit. That was not pork you ate. That was not leather you bought. Carl Denki, lovingly nicknamed Papa by the citizens of Munsterberg, was a cannibal serial killer who murdered for over two decades, a butcher who ate pieces of his victims and sold their meat to strangers, a monster who kept victims' bones and fashioned their skin and hair into random pieces of apparel. Denke was a quiet man who kept to himself and began killing as early as 1903 and who killed all the way until 1924. The true number of his victims is unknown. Estimates range anywhere from at least 30 to somewhere around 40. And almost no one had

a clue what he was up to for over 20 years. Carl was so far off the police's radar for over two decades that they didn't even believe the person who finally reported him until they discovered his sickening butcher's workshop inside his apartment. How did he get away with what he got away with for so long? As we'll learn today, Germany's interwar economic troubles helped him out immensely and sent victims literally to his door. How is he not more well-known? Until the 1980s, Karl's story was almost completely lost to history. As crazy as his crimes were, others were committing even crazier crimes at the same time, and his dark acts did not grab that many headlines in Germany or elsewhere.

But we will learn all about his forgotten deeds today. Who was the mysterious Carl Denke? Why did he feel the need to not only kill, but eat his victims as well, and maybe sell their meat to unsuspecting customers at the local market? and by maybe, I mean almost certainly, what other German serial killer stole his spotlight? All this and more on a historical true crime. Maybe don't eat any meat while you listen to this edition of Time Suck. This is Michael McDonald, and you're listening to Time Suck. Hail Nimrod, begone, Lucifina. JK, get back over here.

Praise Bojangles and turn it up to 11, Triple M. Not sure how many more birthday wishes I've gotten recently. Still recording back before my birthday. I'm still just 21. Thanks to all of you who have downloaded free subgroup social packs from the download section of the badmagicmerch.com store. Fuck the zuck. You can also follow us on Instagram and Facebook, at Timestuck Podcast for updates about things like these. So glad to see more subgroups out there populating across Facebook,

more communities building, more friendships being made. Sweet new dad watch tee in the store at badmagicmerch.com. Dad watch. Dads are disappearing where all the corpses hide. If we can keep better eyes on all of our dads, there will be no more murders. A quick reminder that thanks to your time suck and scared to death Patreon donations, we were able to donate $13,800. There we go, to the Ocular Melanoma Foundation. Go to ocularmelanoma.org to find out more.

And have you got your tickets yet for thursday june 10th is we dumb live and uncensored hosted at loopedlive.com virtual doors open at 6 p.m pacific time show starts at 6 30 you can get your tickets at badmagicmerch.com it's going to be wild and weird so much fun and that's it i tried to get through the announcements extra quick today and i think I accomplished it. Now we're off to explore the twisted deeds of Carl Denke, a German cannibal serial killer lost for so many years to history. Such a disturbing ghoul of a man who murdered and ate

and in all likelihood sold the meat of at least 30 people in his little town from 1903 to almost 1925. He reminds me of a monster from an old dark children's fairy tale, like a real life Baba Yaga boogeyman. I can hear parents using him to scare their children into behaving after his story broke. Eat your dinner or Denki will eat you. He'll clean your bones and pickle your flesh. Hurry home from school or Denki will cut you up and throw your meat on the stove. Children who don't listen to their parents get sent away to Denki's bloody home and they never come back. They'll wear your skin, rip out your teeth,

and turn what's left of you into a stew. How did the cannibal of Zambitza sneak under the radar for so long? You are about to find out. Summer 1999. What were you doing then? Working on summer break? Traveling with the Spice Girls? Working as a roadie for their Christmas and Spice World tour? Not even born yet, young meat sack? If you were Luzena Bialy, the Polish custodian of the Silesian Library of Poland's Wrocław University, you were coming across dark details of the life of one seriously fucked up serial killer. You're thinking, how have I never heard of this monster before?

In 1999, Lucena found records of a mysterious figure known as the cannibal of Zumbice, Carl Dinky. She wondered how neither she nor nearly anyone else she spoke to about Carl recalled ever hearing of him. Imagine finding records of Ted Bundy's crimes and no one you knew had heard of him. She dug through the records she found, began researching news articles from the 20s. She compiled everything she could on him and then sent her research to Poland's two most important and prestigious literary publications,

Mad Magazine and Penthouse. Only Poland's finest minds, its very best writers, are able to get published in Penthouse and Mad Magazine. JK. Sorry, been a while. So I took an unnecessary and undeserved shot at my wife's family's homeland. No, editor, oh my gosh, Tadeusz Dusz published her research in Bear With Me, Gazeta Verboaca, and Gazeta Ovarotska.

Hope I got those pronunciations right. I listened to some native speakers say those words on forvo.com and literally said out loud to myself, fucking what? All of the Polish words I've said so far look absolutely nothing like how they would be said with the same letters in English. A lot of Polish words in today suck. I always forget how tricky the language is. I played a game with myself during the research where I would take a guess, look at the word regarding how it sounds, say it out loud to myself, see how close to I was to the correct pronunciation on Forvo.

Not even remotely close, not even in the ballpark, a single time. Thank God for websites like Forvo and professors posts and lectures on YouTube. Both the publications I mentioned are daily Polish newspapers. And then in July and August 1999, in that little range, the Household Equipment Museum in Zumbice, the Southwest, now Polish, once was a German town of about 9,000 souls where Denke lived and hunted. It was called Munsterberg when he was there. They put together a small exhibit for Denke featuring photographs and some of his tools. Worst museum name ever, by the way, the Household Equipment Museum. No wonder they put in a serial killer exhibit.

I'm guessing attendance was a little light when it was just the Household Equipment Museum. Probably had 10 total visitors stop by, like in the history of that museum before Carl Denke's exhibit. Who the fuck is going to the Household Equipment Museum? How bored do you have to be for that to sound fun? Anyway, those who attended the exhibit were shocked. I bet they were. I am jaded as hell to true crime details after all the topics we've covered. for that to sound fun. Anyway, those who attended the exhibit were shocked. I bet they were. I am jaded as hell to true crime details after all the topics we've covered.

I was still shocked. Before this exhibit, almost no one outside of Poland or Germany knew about Karl Denke. Very few in Poland and Germany had either heard of Denke or at the very least, they hadn't thought about him in decades.

Had he committed the same crimes in say the US in recent years, Netflix and or HBO would have certainly already aired documentaries about him. Carl Denke was a monster, a serial killer and cannibal who murdered for an estimated 21 years, killing what seems to be a minimum of 30 people, 30 people whose murders he recorded in his journal. Didn't give a lot of details about him, but, you know, their names and dates were there. 30 people he also likely ate and probably sold a lot of their meat to others.

Many others. How could someone like that ever get lost to history? As we'll learn, when Denke was active, there was a lot of other nasty shit going on in the world, especially around where he was killing and that part of Europe, including two other serial killers prowling the streets of Germany. Peter Kürten, the vampire of Dusseldorf,

who will be sucking later this year, and Fritz Harman, the werewolf of Hanover, who will suck a bit on today, a monster whose sensational trial happened to wrap up just two days before Carl's death. To Carl's death, singular. An even bigger monster in many ways than Denki. And Peter and Fritz both talked about their evil deeds

in great length in their trials before being executed, talked to the press, each killed by guillotine. Denke, however, killed himself within hours of being arrested and never discussed his crimes. He didn't give journalists a lot to run with, no super fucked up quotes to print. The Precious had more to work with, more to report on with both Curtin and Harmon than they did with Denke. Also, real quick before we move on, I love all the nicknames these guys had. The Cannibal of Zambitza. The Vampire of Dusseldorf. The Werewolf of Hanover.

Sounds like a bunch of old-timey wrestlers, doesn't it? Reminds me of a previous serial killer suck subject, Albert Fish. Also active in the 1920s, just in America, not Germany, who was dubbed the Brooklyn Vampire and the Werewolf of Wisteria. Showbiz. That's how they do it in Hollywood. It'd be an epic wrestling match. Ladies and gentlemen, tonight we have an epic death match

featuring four old-timey creepy killers wearing trunks made out of his neighbor's skin. The cannibal in Ibiza takes on the hammer-wielding, bloodthirsty vampire of Dusseldorf, and they will both face the werewolf of Hanover, who just can't seem to keep his evil penis in his trunks. And the werewolf of Wisteria will undoubtedly try

and fill the room with fresh, piping hot peanut butter and whip any fat bottoms he can! And I'm back. Also, some of the records that existed on Dinky just ended up getting lost. Yeah, shit gets lost. Back before damn near everything was uploaded to the internet and archived, someone threw away

the wrong set of files. If the files were damaged in a flood or a fire, if, you know, they got put in the wrong box, mislabeled, well, they could just end up getting tossed out in the trash, be gone for good. The original records that were found were in German or Polish. Not everything was translated. Luckily, enough

details survived for us to tell a darkly fascinating story today. Enough dark details for you maybe not to want to eat pork chops or bacon while you listen to this one. I'm going to start off by going over what life was like in Germany when Denke was killing. In short, not good.

An economic collapse certainly contributed to his long killing spree. When you're continually worried about losing everything you have, starving, you tend to be less interested in what your neighbors are up to. Or so it seems in today's story. After going over part of Germany's interwar period, we'll then jump into a timeline of Carl's life and crimes, details up front.

If they seem a little scarce, the details up front. After he's arrested, we will go thoroughly over the investigation and the bloody apartment, if you're up for it. So more details on the back end. More details than some of you are probably going to want to hear or be able to stomach. Very reminiscent of what investigators found in former Suck subject Ed Gein's home when he was arrested. Then after the timeline, we'll examine some of the crimes of Fritz Harman,

the vampire of Hanover, since it was his sensational trial details that overshadowed Denke's butchery. Holy shit, was that dude a savage. They were both savages, and they were living in savage times. Let's head now to interwar Germany. Just as certain plants thrive only under particular circumstances of soil and climate, so certain crimes spring up and flourish only under certain special mixtures of conditions. That's a quote from a story, an article about Denke,

written in New York City's Daily News on Sunday, June 17th, 1945. What special mixture of conditions allowed Denke to flourish? The story of Carl Denke involves to some degree how much exactly we'll never know principles of scarcity and demand. At the time Denke killed, there was a high demand for meat in Germany,

and meat was scarce. Any meat that people could find and could afford to eat, they were willing to pay as much as they could afford to get some sweet meat to feed themselves and their families. After World War I in Germany, many, many people were hungry and disorganized, according to that same Daily News article. They couldn't afford many basic necessities like food and clothing. Any kind of food was hard to get ahold of and meat was the hardest, right? It was a luxury. Dire economic conditions led to families unraveling

to widespread homelessness, to young boys and men drifting around Germany, away from their families and alone, often not telling anyone where they were heading in the days before cell phones. Men like these made perfect targets for Carl Denke. They literally wandered up to his door in many cases. Almost no one would ever know that his victims had ever met him.

It made it real hard for him to ever become a suspect. And since he disposed of the bodies, butchered them, hid the remains he didn't eat or sell, no one even knew for sure that his victims had died in most cases, if not all the cases. Many didn't know that his victims had ever traveled to the Polish town of Zumbica, known in those days as the German town of Munsterberg. The desperate for men work that comprised the majority of Denke's victims just disappeared.

And their disappearances were not investigated. No one knew where to look. And also back then in Germany's interwar period, people disappeared all the time. They made it to a new country. They died of various ailments. They just stopped writing letters home. They didn't know where to send the letters because their relatives were also moving around looking for work, etc. No one was really looking for missing persons. Why were the times so tough in Germany? Well, for starters, a lot of Germans died

or were injured in the First World War. Over 1.9 million German soldiers died fighting. Over 4.2 million additional soldiers had been wounded. Over 1.1 million had been taken by other nations as prisoners of war. Germany had over 7.3 million casualties. Well over 50% of the 13 million soldiers Germany mobilized for that war. And roughly half a million German civilians died in World War I since there was so much fighting on German soil. An untold number of others were wounded, uh, many disabled after world war one ended Germany, like any nation following that much death and destruction, it needed to heal. Germany had spent tens of billions of dollars on its military during the war, suffered tens of billions of dollars in property damage during the war that a lot of wounded disabled out of work veterans to take care of that a lot of shit

to deal with, but they wouldn't be able to deal with shit because they were given a huge bill for the war after the war was over, thanks to being the war's primary aggressor and thanks to losing the war. Really big bill. They were given a bill most economists of the day said would be literally impossible for them to pay back.

When the war was over, they owed tens of billions in reparations, the majority of which was to go to France and Great Britain. Germany owed 132 billion gold marks, over $400 billion in today's money. They actually would pay this off. I found that fascinating in 2010. They never stopped paying it off. They finally paid it off in 2010. It took them almost an entire century. I find that very impressive. The Treaty of Versailles that ended the war signed by the combatants on June 28th, 1919 was what gave them that bill. It was written entirely by the winning team of the allies

and it demanded quote compensation by germany for all damage done to the civilian population of the allies and their property by the aggression of germany by land by sea and from the air a lot of valuable german land around 10 of their empire was given to other nations following the war, further weakening Germany. Germany known primarily prior to the war as the German Empire, Imperial Germany, or the Second Reich, additionally lost all of its vast overseas colonial and highly profitable holdings in China, the Pacific, and Africa. It was given a bill, and then it had its ability to pay that bill anytime soon, completely destroyed. It's like demanding that a frozen yogurt place you've invested in pay back a huge loan. And then after making that demand, you destroy its yogurt machines and freezers.

Germany's territories were taken over by Britain, France, Japan, other allied nations. The allied powers punished Germany severely after World War I with the Treaty of Versailles. And then making things even worse, following the war, no countries were willing to loan money to Germany to help pay back the reparations with. Those other nations were either also broke or they were nations that Germany had just recently fucked with, so not likely to lend them money. So Germany's central bank threw a Hail Mary. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and their desperate measure was to start printing money like it was fucking Monopoly money to pay their debts off. They began printing lots and lots of money, loaning it to the German government, and it was a huge mistake to do this. Turns out,

you just can't suddenly print billions and billions of additional dollars or marks or whatever and not suffer severe economic consequences. Not usually. Hyperinflation set in. Hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic, as Germany was known from 1918 to 1933, completely ruined the already almost completely destroyed economy. So why does printing money cause inflation? Well, economists don't totally agree on this, actually. Printing money or more money

doesn't always lead to inflation, but it often does. And the most basic reasoning for it causing inflation is too much money chasing too few goods. Flushed out a bit more, in order to have an economy, there has to be some kind of relationship between an economy's money value and the cost of goods in that same economy. Some kind of stable relationship to have a stable economy. Otherwise, you don't have an economy, you just have anarchy. Think about it this way. If sandwiches are $5 each in an economy

with a billion total dollars floating around in it, and then that same country prints another $4 billion, the relationship between the sandwich and the dollar has changed, right? Taking other complicating economic factors out, it makes sense that the sandwich would now be worth five times as much because you have five times as much money to spend on everything, including sandwiches. When there was $1 billion total dollars, there were $5 sandwiches. When there's $5 billion total dollars, there are now $25 sandwiches in order for the relationship between currency and the goods to remain constant. Does that make sense? There are many other factors and exceptions, et cetera. This is not some master's level economics lesson. This is a simple explanation from a

guy with a pretty simple understanding of economics. In my above example, the overall relationship between sandwich and total money hasn't changed. In both examples, if you spend all of the economy's money on sandwiches, you can buy 200 million sandwiches because a billion divided by five is 200 million and 5 billion divided by 25, also 200 million. But, and this helps explain what happened to Germany. What if an economy printed a fuck ton of extra money, but none of that money went to its people to buy sandwiches with, right? What if it was given to foreign nations? What if all of a sudden you're still making the same amount of money you were making before the extra money was printed. You still have the same amount of money

in the bank you had before the extra money was printed, but now shit's five times as expensive. That showcases the danger of inflation of hyperinflation. If you don't make enough money to keep up with the rapidly rising cost of goods due to the printing of far too much money, you are mother fucked. And this happened big time in the Weimar Republic. And a lot of people were fucked. Check this out to see how the value of the German mark fell through printing way too much money way too quickly as illustrated by comparing its value to the U.S. dollar over the same four-year period. This is mind-blowing. 1919, $1 worth 4.2 marks. Two years later, 1921, $1 worth 75 marks. 1922, $1 worth 400 marks. Now it really starts to ramp up. By January 1923, a dollar is worth 7,000 marks. A few months later in July, 160,000 marks.

The next month, a million marks. Now it really ramps up. By the end of 1923, one dollar is worth 4.2 trillion marks, which means that that money is essentially completely worthless. It's insane. How did hyperinflation get that bad? Unless you have already studied economics extensively, you'll have to study economics for a lot longer

than this entire episode will last to understand it. Best of luck. No need to do that here since it's not the focus of the episode. The only really important thing to know is that it did happen. And then it led to really, really shitty times for the Weimar Republic.

Hyperinflation got so bad, people had to carry loads of cash just to buy basic necessities. Photos from the time show people carrying wheelbarrows of money just to buy a loaf of bread. At one point, it cost a million marks to send a letter. A million! For a time, money became so worthless, Germans used it as wallpaper. The overall German population went from being relatively prosperous before World War I

to a nation full of homeless people, widows, and injured veterans, unable to work and provide for their families after the war. People lined up all the way down the block waiting to buy whatever meat anyone was selling, no matter how tasty or not tasty it was, no matter what kind of meat it was. The homeless men and women's shelters were full every single night. There were pictures of children posed next to stacks of money they used to build forts and towers. German babies grew up playing with money because their parents couldn't buy them any toys. What an insane and terrifying situation. To fix it, Germany had to issue a new form of currency and phase out the old, now worthless one.

Now, if you owned a lot of land and or goods in this situation, you were actually okay oftentimes. Your money kept dropping in value, but you could also charge more for the goods and or for the rent. Some workers also did okay. They just kept renegotiating their wages, sometimes on a daily basis at the height of hyperinflation. Some businessmen and landowners were now able to pay back their loans easily thanks to hyperinflation. Farmers also managed fairly well because they could raise their prices to match the demand. Some other people weathered the storm by turning to a barter economy. They traded for goods and services.

Some benefited, got land, other valuable assets for food. But a lot of people just got fucked. Most people. If you didn't own much, you were unemployed when this hit. Even if you had a lot of cash in the bank, this hyperinflation absolutely financially devastated and destroyed you. Can you imagine if that happened now?

Imagine how disheartening it would be. It's how psychologically devastating it would be to find that all the money you worked so hard for suddenly lost all of its value. It's hard for me to fathom. People who had not carefully put money aside, or I'm sorry, people who had carefully put money aside in banks for years suddenly had nothing. And this is a lesson in diversifying your savings. Don't just have it all in cash. Veterans had pensions from the war that were suddenly worthless. German artist, George Grosch, popular in the 1920s, was quoted as saying about all of this. Shopping had to be done immediately. Even an additional minute meant an increase in price.

One had to buy quickly because a rabbit, for example, might cost 2 million marks more by the time it took to walk to the store. A few million marks meant nothing really. It was just that it meant more lugging. The packages of money needed to buy the smallest item had long since become too heavy for trouser pockets. They weighed many pounds. People had to start carting their money around

in wagons and knapsacks. One woman claimed, to understand the conditions in Germany, one only has to look and listen in a fourth-class car. Tired, worn, angry faces. And what rags, what talk, how one has to slave to earn nothing at all, all those millions by nothing. Bread is 600 billion. What an insane experience to live through. The anxiety, the fear, the constant state of panic, never knowing if you'll have enough money to buy bread the next day,

never knowing how much worse it could get. Fucking chaos. And during this inflation crisis, Denke was at the height of his butchery, leading some to think that his cannibalism was probably influenced and maybe even primarily motivated by this economic crisis.

I'm not so sure. Partially motivated, maybe. But I wonder if economic conditions just gave him a kind of maybe but not really good excuse to do something he wanted to do for other, much more disturbing non-economic reasons. Now with the backdrop for his murders established, let's meet this monster in today's Time Suck Timeline, right after today's sponsor break. Thank you for listening. Now let's head back to 1870 and learn what we can about the crazy life of Carl Denke. Strap on those boots, soldier.

We're marching down a time suck timeline. August 12th, 1870. Karl Denke was born in a small village in Germany called Oberkunstendorf, part of Lower Silesia, just three miles from the town of Munsterberg, now known as Zumbitza. So many dual names in this area because it bounced back and forth between falling under the jurisdiction of Poland and Germany for centuries. Now it's part of Poland.

And in 1870, it was also part of Poland. But from 1871 to 1945, the entirety of Denke's life, minus the first few months, it would fall under German control. First the German Empire, then after World War I, the Weimar Republic. Also, if you're familiar with this dirtbag, or you look into him, you'll see that some sources, like Wikipedia, will list his birth as 1860. Others list 1866. Some go with 1870. From what we can tell, the most reliable seeming sources, some of the original German sources and various American newspaper entries from the early 20th century list his birth date as 1870. So we're going to stick with that today. There is not a lot of information about Carl's early life. Very little, actually.

He was a son of a wealthy farmer, described as being pedantic. And pedantic can mean anything from really particular, sometimes a positive connotation, to really fussy, obviously more of a negative connotation. Generally, I think it's negative. That's how I think of it.

Everything had to be just so, possibly with pedantic young Denki, exactly how he wanted it, or he threw a kind of fit, you know, type of deal. And we'll find out later he was very particular. Highly organized in a very macabre way. Definitely had his own specific way of doing things. Carl

seems to have had just two siblings, both older brothers, but their names and the names of the parents not known. At least they weren't translated from what we can tell. We can't find them. A lot of records about him and his family seem to have been lost. I kind of mentioned that. Or at least they, you know, again, haven't been translated and published anywhere online. They may exist in that little Polish museum that has, or at least had a display on him. What we do know is that he had a poor relationship

with his parents and his brothers. His family owned a successful farm in their village and are described in sources anywhere from middle-class to somewhat wealthy, usually like upper middle class, somewhat wealthy. Remember when times got really economically bad in Germany between World War I and World War II, landowners, farmers did a lot better than most. And I guess his birth was previous to World War I, so a lot of people were doing a lot better. Some sources say his parents ran a nursery. Others say they owned a restaurant, possible they owned multiple businesses. Most sources just cite a family farm, the overwhelming majority of sources. So I'll go with that. His parents don't seem to have been abusive.

At least there are no reports of abuse. Seems like Carl did not experience any extremely traumatic childhood events. According to a 1938 Knoxville Journal article about Denke, he came from a reputable family untainted by insanity. As a child, in addition to being pedantic, Carl was described as dull. He didn't begin speaking until age six or seven and had difficulty learning in school. If he learned any material at all, it was at a very slow rate. He was far behind his peers academically.

Teachers called him an idiot, said he would never accomplish anything. So, you know, that's pretty cool. Oh, the good old days when teachers would just tell kids they were fucking idiots. Kidding. Kind of, uh, not going to advocate. We totally returned to that system, but you know, some kids could probably benefit from being called out for acting like it is. Carl often received punishments for refusing to do his work. His teachers noted he's very obstinate and lacks respect for teachers. When he did start speaking, his voice was soft and quiet. He would only say a few words at a time for the rest of his life. He would never be much of a talker. When he would speak, the words were slow, slurred, and he stretched out the syllables. I wonder, based on some of

the details that we'll cover about Carl Dinkie, if he was on the autism spectrum. And I'm not the only one to think this. A few historians have theorized he might have had autism spectrum disorder. He was super awkward socially, very odd in many ways, odd affect, but in some ways, you know, smart enough to pull off what he pulled off for so long. Very unemotional, very methodical about a lot of the things he did. He moved slowly, moved as little as possible. If someone tried to shake his hand, you know, he barely lifts his arms to greet them. According to one source, yeah, he was just an odd child, but not a violent child as far as we can tell. Numerous sources, basically all the sources consistently paint him as a weird loner for pretty much his entire life.

He was withdrawn and isolated from others. Not sure exactly why he was a loner as a child, but I do get why he was isolated for the last couple of decades of his adult life. Hard to have a lot of friends when you're killing people all the time and your home is full of their blood and body parts. You have their body parts on the stove. I want to talk more about his insanity right now,

but I'll save it for when we dig into what investigators would find in his apartment. After he began speaking around the age of seven, Carl did start to improve a bit in school,

which makes sense. A little easier to get your grades up if you can speak. His social skills did not improve so much, though. He never seemed to make any friends,

didn't seem to pile around with other kids at school. He really didn't like school. Sometimes his two older brothers would literally carry him to class because he threw tantrums and refused to go to school. He was a chronic bedwetter.

Poor young Carl had a lot of shit going on, a lot of shit to deal with. Fear of being teased for all that may have helped lead him to a life of being a loner. After he was done with elementary school, he was done with school entirely, stopped going, his formal education was over. Fear of being teased for all that may have helped lead him to a life of being a loner.

After he was done with elementary school, he was done with school entirely. He stopped going. His formal education was over. Never having made any friends, his social life was now reduced only to his family. And from what we can determine, he didn't care for them, and they didn't care for him either. He didn't go to local dances or any popular social outings. Extreme loner. He liked to walk through the woods alone.

Wonder what he was thinking about on those walks. Killing people? Eating people? Making belts out of people? We'll never know for sure. Guessing he was thinking about girls and not in a loving way. In a couple of old articles, it said that Carl was known

for frequently making misogynistic comments. He strongly disliked women, but never seemed to give a reason why. Maybe too many girls in school have been mean to young Carl. Maybe mama was mean to him. We don't know a lot about mama, almost nothing. For whatever reason, he never seemed to express any romantic interest in girls growing up or ever.

No credible rumors that he was gay and romantically interested in boys either or interested in them platonically. He didn't seem to be interested in anyone. Another one of the few details we know about Carl's childhood is that he ran away a lot. So, you know, he didn't like others and didn't like his family. A dude was troubled. Most of the time the police brought him back, but not every time. One time he ran away, no age assigned to this, but he had to have been younger than 12 based on upcoming timeline details. And he was gone for nine months, gone for nine months before the age of 12. When he returned, he told his family that he'd been working in a quarry,

then construction. And then apparently he never told his family that he'd been working in a quarry then construction and apparently he never told his family why he left or why he came back just continued on as if nothing happened that's the way it's written what the hell is going on in this family I wonder if his parents were just glad he was gone when he ran away just mother, father, Carl's run away

yes, woo, finally our prayers have been answered at long last a quiet creeper's son is gone we can now hope that the wolves eat him he gets lost in the forest and never returns Woo! Finally, our prayers have been answered at long last. A quiet creeper's son is gone. We can now hope that the wolves eat him. He gets lost in the forest and never returns. I don't know. I just picture his parents and two older brothers embracing in a big group hug,

you know, crying tears of joy. Carl is gone! Carl is gone! In 1882, at the age of 12, Carl runs away from home again, works as a gardener's apprentice. Love that title. What does a gardener's apprentice do? I picture them doing nothing but pulling weeds, right? Like the gardener does everything else.

Gardener handles the watering, the seeding, the pruning. The gardener's apprentice just pulls weeds and throws the weeds away. That sounds like a job Carl could have handled. After running away this time, he never moves back in with his parents and his family doesn't seem to be upset by this. Maybe they truly didn't want him. Maybe this man who become a brutal and

disturbing serial killer was just also a really fucked up kid. We just don't have those details because the interviews that would have given us those details either got lost or never took place to begin with. And he was a monster. And if his family was happy to see him leave at 12, I don't think that necessarily means they're bad parents, right? I mean, I would be devastated if my kids ran away, but I have pretty good kids. What if I really had a bad seed, like a really bad seed? What if you had a monster at home? Your other kids are great, but one, ah, just consistently, just a piece of shit. You've raised them for 12 years and literally never enjoyed a minute of their company. Their siblings don't like them. They don't have any friends. Their teachers and

classmates don't like, no one likes them. What if in addition to being just really unlikable, they're violent? What if they assault their siblings? What if they break your stuff, hurt or kill the pets, start fires? How many bad and or dangerous things would a consistently shitty and unlikable kid have to do before you were finally like, you know what? Fuck my kid. Dear God, please run away, you monster. I promise we'll never come looking for you. I bet some people would still think a parent, you know, he did something like that, was just a monster, but not me. In very rare cases, I get it. I've studied too much about nature versus nurture to believe that the right amount of nature can always overcome an absolutely

terrible nature. Don't get me wrong. I think the overwhelming majority of parents who abandon their children are monsters, like 99.999999999%. But every once in a while, I do think someone just dealt a dinky. And then what the fuck are you supposed to do, right? Some of us are born blind. Some of us are born deaf. Some of us are born without lower torsos, your ability to walk, or with brain damage, or with a chronic illness that drastically reduces our life expectancy. And some of us are born bad, really bad, terrible moral compasses, born without the cognitive ability to empathize, right? To not be drawn towards hurt and mayhem. Maybe Denki was one of those people. Denki would work for this unnamed gardener for about a decade and seemingly fit in fine enough with all the other apprentices in the area. He didn't do anything too weird,

stick out from the others. I love that there was numerous Gardner's apprentices. Didn't necessarily make any friends, but it doesn't seem like anyone came forward after he died to say something like, oh yeah, I remember Carl. He was super fucked up. A lot of people he hung around went missing. I always seen him to have bloodstains on his clothes. Nothing like that. He was just quiet.

He just kept to himself. When he rented rooms in his teenage and adult years in the area. He often never spoke to other tenants. He also preferred to stay in the back of houses or the basements. Maybe some of that's about him being shy, but I think a lot of that was probably also based on him not wanting to have his neighbors hear all the murder details. You know, hear bodies hitting the floor,

him stomping around all night doing butchering. In 1895, when Carl was 25, his father died and he didn't seem to care. Apparently, he would not be outwardly shaken up by the death of either parent. It said he felt indifferent toward their deaths. This is why some people think he was on the autism spectrum or sociopath or both. He'd be both. He showed no emotion at their funerals. When his father died, his two older brothers took over the family farm while Carl inherited some money to buy some land. Good thing he

inherited that money long before inflation hit. Hyperinflation. Also nice that his parents, who he clearly didn't have a good relationship with, still left him in their will. Initially, after his father's death, his brothers gave him a job working for them on the farm. Didn't work out well. They'd later report he was lazy, didn't do a good job, wouldn't show up for days at a time. They'd find him wandering alone to the didn't do a good job, wouldn't show up for days at a time. They'd find him wandering alone to the forest instead of working. Autism or asshole or both,

it just sounds like he was just a real pain in the ass. I find it interesting that while you can't find a lot of details about his younger years, all the details you can find are negative. Literally can't find a single example of someone from his early years thinking Carl was just a good kid or a good guy. Fun to be around.

Hard worker. Nothing like that. He did apparently manage to work as a gardener's apprentice from the age of 12 to around the age of 22 and not get fired. And that seemed to be like the most decent thing he was able to pull off, possibly in his whole life. To not lose a gardener's apprenticeship. When his folks died, Carl used his inheritance to buy some land for himself. Okay, now he's done at least one smart thing. Maybe. Karl Denke then became, and I

love how this is written in the source, an unsuccessful farmer. And eventually he sells his land and purchases a house in the town of Munsterberg, which is again now the Polish town of Zumbica. Now maybe he's done at least one smart thing, or maybe not. The house he bought still stands on Stawawa Street. Karl lived there. It had three units and he rented out two of them to

tenants. So that's nice. Uh, that inheritance allowed him to set things up for himself. So he wouldn't have to work on a farm or really anywhere. He could now make some of that landlord money, not have to rely on what seems to be a nearly non-existent work ethic to pay the bills. Carl's own personal room was just 13 feet by 13 feet. Man, the rooms people lived in back then. And there was a shed in the yard that he also used to kind of expand his living quarters. Living that shed life.

The former gardener's apprentice is now living that shed life. I get the shed life. I spent two years of high school living in basically what was a carpeted shed with some windows. Carl built a little pond in that shed or next to that shed. Nice little calm body of water. He could maybe sit around and reflect.

Reflect on his most recent murder or something. Maybe enjoy some tasty pickled man meat as he stared into that calm water. That wasn't a random reference, as you'll learn later. Dude loved to pickle people. Maybe he stared at that pond water and reflected on how he could have bought three houses for the money he paid for this one house. Remember when I said that buying this house was a smart thing he did? Not exactly. He paid three times what he should have when he bought this house. He got scammed. His two brothers were worried enough about him getting scammed again and about him losing what little he had left of his inheritance that they pushed for legal guardianship of Carl after this purchase. Not sure if that decision really came from any kind of a real genuine concern for Carl or from worry that if he lost everything, they'd have to help take care of him. And that would create family problems for them. His brothers only didn't get guardianship because a doctor they spoke with regarding Carl's ability to take care of himself, Carl's doctor, told him that Carl could easily become violent if he was no longer in control of his life. No idea how the

doctor came to that conclusion. At this point, as far as we know from all the source documents we can find, Carl had never been aggressive towards anyone in his life, never had any outbursts, but this doctor knew that he could be violent. The doctor, you know, would of course be right about Carl. He would soon begin to exhibit some real violent tendencies that once discovered would shock the people of Munsterberg.

At the time, about 9,000 people lived there, same as today. It was said to be a close-knit town where everybody knew each other's business, at least they thought they did, but no one knew what Carl was doing there for over 20 years. When he first moved into town,

the farm was just a few miles outside of town. When he first moved into Munsterberg, he sold little wicker baskets and other crafty products, so random. His next business venture, even more random. Using the land around his home as a garden, he's going to put those gardener's apprenticeship skills to use. He tried his hand at rhubarb farming,

and he did really well. Before long, he was known as the Rhubarb King of Munsterberg before he began working as a butcher. And I wonder what exactly our source for that particular info, an article in the April 3rd, 1938 edition of the Knoxville Journal meant by the Rhubarb King. Like, did one resident of Munsterburg they interviewed say that? And only they and maybe two other people who knew Dinky thought he was the Rhubarb King. Did he give himself that nickname? Did he introduce himself as the Rhubarb King to people?

Did he truly have a gift when it came to growing rhubarb? And he really did grow a citywide rhubarb reputation. I have people always talking about his rhubarb. And he really did grow a citywide rhubarb reputation. I have people always talking about his rhubarb. So what do you think? Do you like it or not? I do like it. It's a fine strawberry rhubarb jam, Johan, but what? It's just that

I had some of Carl Denke's strawberry rhubarb jam yesterday. In fact, it's very good. No one beats the rhubarb king. I mean, the rhubarb he uses, it's so perfectly ripe. It's so sweet. I think I would eat it without the strawberries. And don't get me started on his pear rhubarb almond crisping he whipped out the other day and served hot with the cold scoop of vanilla bean ice cream on top. Just marvelous. And the week before, he made the craziest apricot rhubarb walnut bread that was like, I get it. He's the

rhubarb king. Sorry, that's probably get it! He's the rhubarb king! Sorry, that was probably just funny to me. I just never heard anyone referred to as the rhubarb king before because no one in the States, that I know of anyway, seems to give much of a shit about rhubarb. I also got lost in rhubarb for a moment because it reminded me of my great-grandma Stell, who really did make an awesome strawberry rhubarb jam that no one seemed to care as much about as me. I care a lot about rhubarb. Carl Danky probably would have killed me. The rhubarb king would have lured me to my death with that tart, semi-sweet fruit,

pink celery-looking, edible stock vegetable thing that's served as a fruit, even though I think it's a vegetable. He would have offered me some tasty jam, and a few years later, he'd be grilling my ass cheeks on his stove. Also not a random reference. Making rhubarb might have been the one really good choice Carl made, or maybe it was to become a stove. Also not a random reference. Making rhubarb might've been the one

really good choice Carl made, or maybe it was to become a butcher. The rhubarb king clearly didn't make that much money growing rhubarb because he soon left the root vegetable game for the meat game. Becoming a butcher, that would serve Carl well in a variety of ways. After the economic crisis began, butchers were some of the few people that still had jobs. No matter what the hyperinflation was, people still needed food, and meat was the scarcest food. And if you had a good supply of it, you were going to be okay.

And once he got to butchering, Carl did seem to always have a fresh supply of meat. It just wasn't always, it seems, the pork he was advertising. In addition to his butchery, Carl's brothers sent him a small amount of cash each month. Despite their poor relationship, they believed he was, quote, feeble-ble minded and they wanted to help him out. And maybe he was feeble minded.

Again, I think of serial killer Ed Gein. If you're not familiar with that old suck subject or just forgot, Ed, the butcher of Plainfield Gein, was a ghoul and a grave robber who killed two women, dug up at least nine other women's bodies from nearby cemeteries to make all sorts of shit out of their skin out in Wisconsin. Nipple belts, face masks, not COVID masks, like someone else's face is your face kind of mask, a shoebox full of vulvas. Ed Gein made himself a suit out of women's skin. He told investigators he made the suit so that he could become his mother to literally crawl into her skin. He would literally go out on his family's giant farm once he was the only one living there after his folks died and dance under the moonlight wearing a skin suit he had made from the bodies of middle-aged women after his mom died. Ed Gein, the inspiration for Norman Bates

from Hitchcock's film Psycho, Leatherface from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies, Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs. Remember that psycho dancing in the mirror? Would you fuck me? I'd fuck me. I'd fuck me hard. I'd fuck me so hard. And Ed Gein, although he wasn't quite thought to be feeble-minded exactly as he would have said back then, he also wasn't a real bright guy. He was socially awkward as fuck, didn't have any friends. Another weird loner.

Such a weird dude. He actually didn't really seem to want to hurt anyone. He just really, really wanted a skin suit so he could be mama. As crazy as that sounds, and it does sound crazy because Ed was literally insane. After being caught, he spent the rest of his life in a mental hospital. And Carl, he might have been like Ed in some ways.

He also might have been much more calculated and sadistic. But he might have just really wanted people's meat. And, you know, to get it, well, you know, he had to kill him. Still makes him a monster. Just a different kind of monster than, say, the Kansas City butcher, like, you know, to get it, well, you know, he had to kill him. Still makes him a monster, just a different kind of monster than, say, the Kansas City butcher, like, you know, Bob Berdella, who really wanted to rape and torture and hurt people as much as possible

before they died. Now that we're talking about serial killers, let's move on to this serial killer's first victim. It's likely that February 21st, 1903 was when Carl Denke killed for the first time when he was 33. His possible first victim was Ida Lawner. And we know almost nothing about her. Just based on a ledger entry, we'll go over his ledger later, that he very likely did kill her and did so on this date. We don't even know how he killed her. Based on what we'll learn about other crimes, I'm guessing he either swung an axe at her head when she wasn't looking or snuck up behind her and strangled her. Or maybe he got real aggressive with a stalk of rhubarb. Impossible to say for certain. Since we have no idea what this creep was doing for the next six years,

going to skip ahead six years now to his next known murder in 1909, based on another ledger entry. On December 21st, 1909, now 39-year-old Carl murders a 25-year-old woman named Emma Sonder. And then a very unlucky local man named Eddard Troutman is arrested for her murder. Her body isn't found, but she disappeared, assumed dead. And Eddard and Emma had gone on a date recently, and he was the last known man to have seen her.

And in 1911, this poor bastard is found guilty of her murder and sentenced to 15 years in Glatz prison for this crime. No one thought to blame Carl Denke at the time. He wasn't even a person of interest. No one would know that Carl was the real killer until right before Christmas, 1924, 15 years after her murder, over 13 years after Trotman goes to prison, after Carl's death, after he'd spent damn near his full 15 year sentence in prison for a murder he had nothing to do with. He was pardoned and released. God would suck I'm sure he wasn't mad or bitter at all

About that whole mix up Hey Edward got some great news for you buddy You don't have to wait until next week to get out of prison No sir Now you get to go home now Nice and early Why? Why are we releasing you early?

Because we know you're not doing anything What? Speak up you say We got the real guy. What? Speak up, you say. We caught the real guy. So sorry. Apologies. Sorry about the almost 15 years in prison,

but let's focus on the good news. For this whole mix-up, since it was our bad, you know what we're going to do? We're going to give you 50 billion marks. How's that, buddy? You can grab your bags of money at the front desk. We even have a wheelbarrow for you to haul it home with

oh you're rich and then I picture Edder like leaving the prison actually kind of happy about all of it now because now he's thinking he's wealthy he's going to buy the whole fucking town with that kind of money and then he realizes thanks to that hyperinflation he's just going to get like a fucking loaf of bread and maybe some of Denke's pickled people meat

back in 1918 now this year the building German economic crisis forces Carl to sell the house he had paid way too much fucking money for. He continues to live there, now renting the small apartment on the first floor from the people he sold it to, and he still gets to use that sweet shed in the backyard.

He apparently made a terrible sale, just like he'd made a terrible purchase, and soon he lost his entire inheritance, and he can barely pay rent. Despite his economic fall, the Weimar Republic, as it's now called following World War I, is such a shit show, he's still considered lower middle class. Because at least he has a job, he's working as a butcher, and he has a place to stay. That's how bad things were. If you had enough money to rent a studio apartment, 13 feet by 13 feet, with an accompanying shed, right, in the yard, in a small town. You still weren't thought of as poor.

You were middle class. Oh, my God, I picture some middle class kid, you know, being teased at school. Must be nice, yah him. Must be nice to be able to play in a big fancy shed. Wish my parents were that rich. We live in a chicken coop, and we're better off than the rest of our family. Most of my cousins live in dog houses. Carl's home is now owned by the Voight and Gabriel families,

who would later provide a few details about his life to investigators after he's arrested. 1918 to 1924, the final six years of Carl's life, he works at a homeless shelter. Seems nice at first, but I think he was scouting out future victims there. Figuring out how to, you know, how if they went missing, no one would probably look for him. I don't know, get a feel for that population. His tenants and locals, or the tenants, yeah, I'm sorry. The locals around town started calling him Papa Dinky around this time because they liked him so much.

Also during the period from 1918 to 1924, his killing frequency seemed to ramp up considerably. And authorities still had no idea he was a serial killer. Not until shortly after he died following his arrest at the end of 1924. Although he was well-liked, he was treated with suspicion by some, not because of his lonely life, but because of his sexual indifference. He was described as neither man nor woman in a source and was judged by the town for never taking a wife. He was known for being polite, humble, donating to charity, and letting the homeless stay for free at his apartment before he was found to be a murderer. He's doing that, you know, letting them stay at his apartment so he could

kill him, but they didn't know that at the time, but he wasn't liked by some because he didn't have a wife. Funny we can set off people's, you know, radars. Did the fact that you heard screams coming from his apartment bother you? No, not really. Did the blood you saw on his clothes on numerous occasions, did that upset you? Uh, no, not at all. Did the fact that you saw numerous men enter his apartment and never leave ever bother you? Uh, no, never thought a thing about it. So, so what did bother you about him? He was single. What kind of monster? He never asked anyone out. Look, we all get blood on us from time to time. We all have people disappear in in our homes We all have the occasional death cry

Blast out of our humble abodes But what kind of sick fuck stays single? Also around 1918 When Carl would have been 48 He cut off almost contact with his brothers I love the situation that led to this I love these weird details Apparently during all this time

In Munsterberg He'd been living in town like three miles away from his brother since 1895 for 23 years. Right? His brother is still living just outside of town on the family farm. And he hadn't accepted a single dinner invitation to either one of their homes. Things are tense in the family. Then he finally does, and it does not go well. It's the one and only time he'll have dinner with one of his brothers. As an adult, his brother gets furious with him for eating, quote, two pounds of meat in one sitting and calls him a glutton.

He ate too much meat. That ruined what was left of their relationship. After this infamous meat squabble, Carl never comes back to his house ever. Let's picture some curious neighbor talking to one of his brothers, you know, after this happens. Why don't you talk to your brother Carl anymore? Too much meat. He has too much damn meat. I mean, seriously, what kind of grown man eats two pounds of meat?

And one dinner as a guest. First, my wife gives him a half pound of meat, carefully weighed out in the kitchen on the meat scale, for use for our guests. We don't want to seem stingy. Don't want to seem cold. We make sure every guest gets half pound of meat, every guest, it's generous amount. The Schoenheits, ask anyone, they only give the guests a quarter pound of meat. The Rickenbackers, a half slice of bologna, old grey bologna. But our farm is doing well, we don't have time for many, so we go for a half pound of meat. Someone asks for seconds,

we will give them a second half pound of meat, we don't love it, but we don't make fuss. This is four times as much as the Scho love it, but we don't make fuss. This is four times as much as a show in heights. And they are not stingy. No one gives a guest as much meat as the Denkis. But Carl, fucking Carl, he's always been such a problem. He asks for thirds.

He asks for fourths. And then he doesn't say thank you for so much meat. Many families pray to have that much meat in a whole month and he gets it in one meal in one sitting. We shake our heads. We call him a glutton. Already we don't care for him so much.

He's also odd. And that is the last straw. That was the last steak, if you will. While his family may not have cared for him, now in the last years of his life,

when he was killing the most people, Carl's social life seems to have finally blossomed. Last couple years, in his early 50s, Carl was apparently well-liked and popular in Munsterburg. He was an organ player at the local church, carried crosses at funerals, as all good people do. That's how you know someone's a good person.

If they play the organ at church and, you know, they carry a cross at a funeral, well, you fucking trust them with your life. He had city permission to sell meat and clothes door-to-door, which is horrifying because he was almost certainly selling people meat for years. He had permission to sell meat and clothes door to door, which is horrifying because he was almost certainly selling people meat for years. He had permission to sell meat at a local market, now called the Rotswa Weekly Market. He sold leather suspenders, belts,

shoelaces as well, and I think they were likely made out of body parts. You'll see why soon. While he was no longer the rhubarb king, he did gain a reputation in his last years for selling some really tasty boneless pickled pork. That sounds so horrific. That was almost certainly pickled people. In addition to selling his probably, you know, pickled people meat, Carl often traveled to, you know, sell it locally. He also traveled to Breslau, a slightly larger town, 62 kilometers, 38 miles away,

to sell pickled people and or pork and human skin and or leather goods at their meat market. Carl's fucked up meat market stand was a popular spot for local shoppers. He was known for having fresh, cheap, tender, juicy meat. And it was probably human. Due to that inflation crisis, people were hungry. They had almost no money for food. Like we talked about, they were just happy to get their hands on some cheap, sweet meat. And Carl, because he was murdering his meat, not spending any money, you know, raising livestock, he was able to, you know, sell his meat for, you know, a good price. Good meat at a cheap price, bound to make any butcher popular in the Weimar Republic in the early 20s. Then his human meat slinging days suddenly come to an end on December 21st, 1924, when Carl Denke is arrested after being accused of murder.

And then just a few hours later, he commits suicide. The community is shocked. A lot of people found him odd, but almost no one thought he was a criminal of any kind. He played the organ. Come on. He's not a murderer. Here's how the night of his arrest went down in all likelihood. There are a few different accounts out there.

Most slightly different. This is the one I feel best about. A 35-year-old homeless man named Vincenz Oliver enters the city of Monsterburg on the 21st, looking for work like any other German. Well, like many Germans, I guess not any other, but you know what I mean. Uh, Vincenz classified an old newspaper accounts as a vagabond, one of many traveling artisans who wander from town to town, turning their hands to any bit of work that might earn them a meal and a bed. They were an ill fed, ill clothed lot. Many of them,

former soldiers, partially crippled by the war and regarded by more substantial citizens as little more than tramps. As a rule, they congregate at the cheapest inn in the poorest section of town, not being able to afford any better. That comes from an old newspaper account. Vincennes arrived in Munsterburg, goes to a local hangout spot known for vagabonds. Vincennes has just come from Strelin, a town 30 miles away, and he quickly hears stories about Papa Denki, a kind local man with a reputation for helping out those down on their luck. He'll give you a bowl of stew and a warm bed to sleep in.

Vincennes, desperate and hungry, needs a place to stay. After knocking on some other doors, following up on some other leads about other kind strangers, he arrives at Carl Denki's house. He knocks on Carl's door. Carl invites him in, asking, are you a stranger here?

Yes, sir, says Vincennes. I have just arrived. And then Denke asks him, a scale of one to ten, how tasty do you think you are? And Vincennes, thinking he must have

misheard him, is like, what? What did you just ask me? And then Denke is like, a scale of one to ten, with ten being butt steaks that will pass

for the finest filet mignon beef at Berlin's finest steakhouse. And one being, if you pickle me with enough light spices, doing some salt, some down on the luck, a struggling family would go, you know, not get too upset, choking

the mamita. How could you take a taste? No, he didn't say any of that. One of ten crazy scale shit. Of course not. What he really asked was, are you looking for work? I need someone to write a letter for me. This was apparently his scam. This comes up a few times. Eager for any money he could get, Vincennes responded, I'm sure I could do it to your satisfaction, sir. I'm no great penman, but the letters I write are legible. Carl offers to pay

him 20 fennig, equivalent to about 10 bucks, enough to buy some food at the time. Vincennes agrees to do the work for the offered price, steps into Carl's creepy-ass little apartment. Carl was cooking up some mystery meat stew when Vincennes walks in, comes in, sits down. He eats the meat stew. He eats people. His stew with people. Sits down at the table with Carl. He's so hungry, he even eats the fat and the gristles,

he would later say. Vincennes thanks Carl for the food. Carl asks him to start writing the letter. Vincennes sits down to write, you know, or I guess he's already sitting down. He starts to write. Carl gets up, paces around behind him, begins to dictate the letter. Dear Albert, you fat belly. I did not make up that weird opening to the letter. Apparently that's what he said that

Carl asked him to write to somebody. Dear Albert, you fat belly. And while his guest had his eyes focused down, was distracted, Carl grabs an ax. Vincennes takes a pause, turns around to ask if Carl wants to begin with a date instead of, you know, just opening with a greeting he turns his head and Carl is standing over him with the pickaxe swinging it down, he ducks as Carl is swinging the axe glances off his head, gets stuck in the table stunned but not knocked out, Vincennes and Carl now fight there's this big struggle, it's not totally certain how big Carl Denke was

but descriptions of him and the picture of his body make me think he was a bear of a dude broad shoulders, a barrel chest couldn't have been an easy fight after getting hit with an axe in the head especially how big Carl Denke was, but descriptions of him and the picture of his body make me think he was a bear of a dude. Broad shoulders, a barrel chest. Couldn't have been an easy fight after getting hit with an axe in the head, especially. Carl latches onto Vincent

and refuses to let him go. Vincent screams for help, continues to struggle, does manage to escape from Carl's grasp, continues calling for help as he runs out of the apartment. Massive amount of blood

poured out of an open wound on his head. Incredibly, his wound would later only require stitches and he'd be fine. No skull fracture, no major brain injuries. Turning his head at the last second saved his life and put an end to the long run of a serial killer. Another account claims that after Vincennes ran screaming into the street, some neighbors asked who injured him.

He pointed to Carl, who was now standing in the doorway of his home, red face, twitching, shaking, grinding his teeth. The neighbors couldn't believe the nice old, but weird, but nice Papa Denki had just tried to randomly murder someone. And now they try to apprehend Vincennes thinking he must've tried to hurt Papa Denki and Papa Denki was defending himself. So Vincennes has to get away again. He does. He continues running, runs all the way to the police station. Once he makes it to the police station, he makes a formal complaint. And at first the police do not believe what he's telling them. That Papa Denki out of nowhere just attacked him with an axe. Then a doctor treats him, confirms the wounds

could have indeed, probably did, result from an axe wound. The police, led by Sergeant Melenz, are still reluctant to go talk to Denki. Vincennes is a vagabond. Papa Denki is a, you know, a local, fairly well-liked citizen. They warn Vincennes that Papa Denki is going to sue him for slander.

And they threatened to put him in jail for two weeks for making false accusations. And then they did hold him in jail for essentially being homeless, like these vagrancy laws. From his cell now, now he's arrested for being attacked. This poor bastard Vincennes, he refuses to recant his statements about Carl. The officers leave reluctantly to go talk to Carl. Once they make it to his apartment, he doesn't let them in. He comes outside to greet him.

He admits to attacking Vincennes and then they bring him down to the station to talk further. They still don't think it's his fault. He tells them he only attacked Vincennes because Vincennes had tried to rob him. He was trying to defend his property. The police now decide

to take Vincennes back to Denke's place to recreate this attack, see if they can find out more details. They tell Denke they're going to have to go inside his apartment and when they say that to Denke, he gets real quiet. Carl stops responding to their questions now, gets despondent. Of course he does. He knew what they were

going to find. He knew that his killing days were now over. Suddenly the officers think for the first time that maybe there is something to Vincent's story. Just a few hours later, before investigators even check out Denke's apartment, at 11.30 p.m., a sergeant peers into Denke's cell and finds him dead, hanged by his handkerchief. Carl had tied his handkerchief to a ring in the wall meant for chains. Then he laid down on the floor, pressed down with all of his weight until he choked to death. The handkerchief he used, if you're like, how the fuck did he do that with a handkerchief? It wasn't just a small square of fabric that many

of us normally think of with handkerchiefs today. Back then, German handkerchiefs were more like scarves, plenty long enough to turn into a noose. The photo of his body taken right after he committed suicide is the only confirmed picture of him we have. His final near victim, Vincenz Oliver, still in jail. He was actually sentenced to 10 days in jail for vagrancy. Then a couple of days later, December 24th, 1924, police go to Carl Denke's home after delivering his corpse to his family. According to one source, they still don't think Denke was a murderer. They feel bad for him.

They're really worried about who's going to pay for Carl's funeral. According to the same source, the police go to his apartment. You know, I mean, yeah, they're going to check things out, but mostly they're going to look for some money to pay for the funeral. A locksmith lets them into the apartment that Christmas Eve, and the police do not find money that's going to help pay for his funeral. They do find something more akin to the set of a Rob Zombie slasher flick. One of the first things they find, human flesh in jars with curing salt and various pots. in jars with curing salt and various pots.

Pickled people. Nice. They finally find, or I'm sorry, they also find bloody clothes from various victims in Carl's closet. They find literal piles

of human bones along with a bunch of cured meat, people meat. They determine based on the way it's stored that it was meat Denki had likely prepared

to sell at the meat stand. Ah, then they find his murder journal, his ledger, that ledger with the details of 30 people he'd murdered and eaten over the years. Well, I say details, names, dates, basically, mostly. It's clear now that their buddy Papa Denke is a killer. The pedantic particular child has been logging his murders just so. He was meticulous, and his meticulousness ended up biting him in the ass.

His ledger, well, I guess he's already dead. So what does he fucking care? His ledger indicates his victims are beggars, journeymen, and tramps for the most part. That's a weird word to me, tramps. Well, he's a vagrant. He's a tramp. He's a hobo. All people who probably didn't have anyone looking for them.

On the windowsill, they find several documents with discharge records of people released from prisons and hospitals right before Denke killed him. In the kitchen, they find two tubs of pick- oh, that's so fucking gross. Two tubs of pickled meat and various bones and pots of fat. Carl made sure to waste no parts of the bodies. They determined the amount of human bones and tissue equates to at least 30 victims mentioned in the ledger. Yeah. The only kind of good news they uncovered was that it didn't seem like any of his victims suffered much. He seems to have killed them before he butchered them. It doesn't seem like they were tortured. So why did he do it? The initial crime scene report declares that Carl lacked moral judgment and was not a sadistic killer. He was just often hungry

and broke and the victims were simply killed for food and money. Then when the police interview his family, his brothers, they theorize that part of his motivation for the murders came for his love of meat. It's written as his love of meat. Seriously, he'd apparently always loved meat way more than the average bear. Remember the whole two pounds of meat in one meal debacle

at the brother's house for that dinner? Carl's not the worst guy. He's not some sexual sadist or anything. God, he fucking loves meat. He just loves meat so much. That's all. He was addicted to the meat. And killing was the only way he could get it. Really loving meat does bring me

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Our vision creamy house recipe is made by myself every morning. So come on down to Kroll's Cafe. There's always mostly beef. I promise. Old sponsor there. Haven't had Kroll's Cafe buy ads in a while. It's nice to see them back. Lab testing would detect human proteins in a lot of the meat.

Investigators found it in his place. Doctors also analyzed Denke's stomach and detected human protein in some not fully digested meat there. He was for sure a cannibal. And I think he ate a lot of human meat. And the pic of him taken right after he died, he looks well-fed. Looks like a dude who threw down two pounds of meat in a single meal on the reg. After making it, you know, to this info for the first time, I started to wonder, how many pounds of human meat did this dude probably eat over the years?

More than anyone else in recent history? Hundreds of pounds worth? Over a thousand pounds worth? Let's do some math, just for funsies. They think he killed at least 30 people. And then he killed them for their meat, right? I did some more Googling, but I'm sure sent some more alerts to whatever federal agent is in charge of cyber surveillance on meat. And it appears that the average human has about 75 pounds of meat on him.

75 times 30. That's 2,250 pounds. This is like the most fucked up story problem. Kids, let's say he sold half. And then he ate the other half. How much human meat does that leave him with? No, that's over 1,100 pounds of people meat for him to eat. That's a lot of meat.

A 2018 study conducted by the USDA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, found that Americans ate a record amount of meat in 2018. The average American ate 222 pounds of meat and poultry. How much of each? Doesn't say. But I think it's safe to say that the average meat-eating person

eats more poultry than red meat. So let's say that the average American eats around, I don't know, 100 pounds of red meat a year. 400 quarter pound burgers. Now imagine eating 400 quarter pound burgers a year for over 11 years. And now imagine that every single one of those burgers did not come from a cow, but from a person. That's how much people meat. I think Denki could have easily eaten. He could have eaten more than that, right?

He's not the average meat eater. Not many are throwing down two pounds in a meal. And since Denke presented his people meat, not his beef, but his pork, check out these quick stats. According to 2020 stats, the average American eats just a tick over 66 pounds of pork a year.

A lot of bacon, a lot of sausage, a lot of pork chops. It would take someone almost 17 years eating over 66 pounds of pork a year to eat 100 pounds of pork and denke may have eaten more than that so much fucking mystery meat uh who were all the people he killed and ate uh you know they ranged in age from at least as young as 16 to at least as old as 76 they were mostly men and almost all people wandering through the area looking for work. On December 25th, 1924, Christmas day, local newspapers began writing articles about Denke bringing his horrifying story to the public. They discussed his double life of carrying crosses at funerals, helping beggars, donating to charity.

They wondered if he did all that just to make the community think he was a good guy, so it'd be easier for him to kill over and over again and just keep getting away with it. Then a week later, one local German paper writes that between Christmas and New Year's, I love this, the sale of local pork drastically declines. Yeah, I bet. That is not a good story for pork sales. How many people literally threw up after reading about Denke's secret meat source? Hundreds? Thousands? Bobby Wheeler picked and, and Bobby Willie! From a few weeks ago might have sold some trace amounts of human meat to the good people of Vancouver, British Columbia.

This motherfucker for sure sold a lot of human meat and not trace amounts to the people around Munsterberg, right? The surrounding areas. After this news comes out, pork sales in both Munsterberg and Breslau, his two main meat markets, declined significantly according to old sources, old papers. All of And both Munsterberg and Breslau, his two main meat markets, declined significantly,

according to old sources, old papers. All of lower Silesia was afraid to eat meat. Apparently, maybe this is being a little bit sensationalized, but one source said it led to a small localized additional economic crisis. Several meat canning and processing plants closed down temporarily. The whole region suffered from reported stomach

disorders after finding out that so many of them might've consumed so much human meat. Oh God, there was so much puke. Now let's jump ahead a year and change and go over the final results of a lot of analysis and investigation that was done in Denke's property. If you are eating, you should maybe stop before listening to this portion of the episode. If you thought that what I've gone over already is bad, this gets way worse. We really get into the nitty gritty details of what Denke was up to. In 1926, Friedrich Petruski, the acting head of the Institute of Legal Medicine in Breslau, wrote a full report on the Denke crime scene. The report was published in the German Journal for All of Forensic Medicine. The translation for the report

comes from German forensic biologist, Mark Benecke. This is some pretty disturbing stuff. And I think it deserves some pretty serious kind of atmospheric music behind it. So let me set the appropriate mood. Oh, and now, come on. No, that's not right.

I'm sorry. That's not right. That was terrible. That was, ha, that would have made it like a mockery. This is serious stuff. No, let me not right. I'm sorry. That's not right. That was terrible. That was, that would have made it like a mockery. This is serious stuff. No, let me, let me find,

I'm sorry about that. Let me find something a lot more soothing to read this report with. The first findings made in Denke's house during the search were bones and pieces of meat. The latter were in a salt solution found in a wooden drum. There were altogether 15 pieces of skin, two parts of

the breast which is strongly hairy. The torso is cut through the middle, three fingers above the navel. Its lateral limit is the front shoulder blade. In the piece of the anterior abdominal wall, the middle of the navel is visible. The remaining pieces belong to the side and back parts. The largest is about 40 by 20 centimeters large. Particularly striking was a very clean anus with large parts of both buttocks. Sorry, I know that did not set the right musical tone. It was probably a bit distracting. There's something wrong with me. When I first picked that out and I read that passage to Lindsay while working at home, I fucking cry left. It's just so preposterously tonally off.

It's so inappropriate. It's this random royalty-free game show music I found. Imagine if that music played at a funeral you were at. Just how odd that would make everything. How surreal. You know, just everyone's sad. This music is in the background. He was a good man.

He was a great husband, a provider, a father. He loved game shows. And in the end, that's what got him killed. When he tried to impress the producers of Wipeout by parachuting into the Grand Canyon. Okay, let's recircle now. I'm a fucking lunatic. With some crime details. One last one. I'm let's recircle now. I'm a fucking lunatic. With some crime details.

One last one. I'm sorry, on that last one. I'm so distracted by the music, I distracted myself. I want to recircle back to one of the last details of what I just read. Particularly striking

was a very clean anus with large parts of both buttocks. Are we sure he was not motivated by anything other than a powerful love of meat? Was he just eating those people or was he also a sexual sadist and necrophiliac? Why did he have a clean butthole laying

around? No wonder he lived alone, never dated. Hard to explain that. Five seconds after walking a woman into his apartment, he's like, oh god, you know what, you know what, can we go to your place instead? I'm sorry, I forgot how messy this place is. Apologies. I should have at least, out of respect, put away that clean

pickled butthole. The crime scene report continues without the music. The meat is brownish red. It does not feel as if the body would have lost much blood. On the back, some soft bluish discoloration is visible as well as liver mortis, which leads to the conclusion that the disassembly of the body took place several hours after death.

There was no evidence of vital reaction of the bodies to the cuts made, which means that the latter were not made while the victims were still alive. Nevertheless, some skin and muscles from the necks were missing, as well as extremities, arms and legs, head and sexual organs. Lesions could not be determined, nor the nature of death, nor the tool of crime. In three medium-sized pots filled with cream sauce, some cooked meat, of crime. In three medium-sized pots filled with cream sauce, some cooked meat, partially covered with skin and human hair, was

found. The meat was pink and soft. All pieces seemed to be cut from the gluteal area, buttocks. One pot had only half a portion. Denke must have eaten the other piece shortly before being arrested. Uh, did everyone just catch that

part about this dude having some cooked butt meat still having hairy skin attached on the stove? God! He didn't even bother to get rid of the butt hair. That shit is savage. Why do I feel like he and serial killer Albert Fish

and some other parallel universe would just be the best of friends and just have like a standing weekly dinner date. Happy to blow off the Bearcats and Bimbos tonight for some hairy butt steak. Thank you, my boy. Mind if I have them on the table and garnish them with some peanut butter?

Showbiz. That is how they do it in Hollywood. Listen to the Albert Fish episode of Time Suck if you really need to understand what just happened there. I feel like Denki's spice rack must have been pretty light. After hearing about the hair,

I don't feel like he was much of a cook. Despite people apparently liking his weird pickled shit, I just don't feel like Denki's spice rack must have been pretty light. After hearing about the hair, I don't feel like he was much of a cook. Despite people apparently liking his weird pickled shit, I just don't feel like he was mastering his culinary skills. If, you know, after two decades, he's still just happy to cook up some sloppy, hairy butt steaks. That's so fucking disgusting. The report continues, I should like to mention here that there is no evidence

that Denki has ever sold the meat of his victims. All evidence has obviously been eaten. However, it seems that his guests, that is the vagabonds, were offered to eat it. Interesting that they would write this. I wonder if they wrote this to maybe try and make the public feel better. Of course he was selling this. This dude sold meat all the time from door to door. He was a butcher.

When he died, there was cooked human flesh in the stove, more in his belly. He had prepared a bunch of meat, you know, to be either eaten or sold. He had butchered previous victims. Times were tough. Meat was sold easily. He wanted, you know, extra money. No fucking way. This dude didn't sell so much human meat. Back to the report. In the third pot, we found numerous pieces of human skin and parts of the aorta and a gelatinous mass. A bowl on the table in his room was filled with amber colored fat that appeared to be human. Biological tests gave a weak positive result for the presence of human protein. In the shed in which the meat pieces were found was also a barrel full of bones that were cleaned of tendons, muscles, etc. that most probably have been priorly cooked. The investigation initially

revealed the existence of six forearm bones, which means they belong to three people. At least other traces were found behind the shed. A part of the leg remained in the pond that Danky had dug many years before. And also skeletal pieces were uncovered in the local forest. Here is a full list of what has been sent to us for examination. Now, before we go forward, I know this next thing I'm going to do is terrible.

I know, but I can't help myself. I need to, I need to get this out of my head. Allow me to read this list, please, with the game show music underneath as if that we're reading what the winning contestant of a fucked up game show

is, you know, what they're taking home for their prize. Let's tell them what they've won! 16 femurs, of which one pair of remarkably strong ones, two pairs of very thin ones, six pairs and two left femurs. 15 medium-sized pieces remarkably strong ones, two pairs of very thin ones, six pairs and two left femurs. 15 medium-sized pieces of long bones. Four pairs of elbow bones.

Seven heads of radii. Nine lower parts of radii. Eight lower parts of the elbow. A pair of upper shin bone. A pair of lower elbows and radii, of which extremities still remain well-connected. A pair of upper arms and a pair of upper arm heads. A pair of collarbones. Two shoulder blades.

Eight heels and ankle bones. 120 toes. 65 feet and metacarpal bones. And five first ribs. And 150 pieces of ribs. And that's a wrap. Thanks for watching Who Did They Eat? Help control the pet population.

Have your pets spayed or neutered. Come on. Come on. That's at least a little funny, right? You know who'd find that really funny? My dad. That's interesting. Right?

Where the fuck was he when Denki was doing what he did? Hard to say. Back to the report. All bones, with the exception of a few very light, porous and fatless. In the municipal forest remained as well parts of a spine and four parts of a clean, dissected male pelvis, which on one side showed traces of saw cutting.

One piece of head bone was found. This is a piece of the inferior petrosal sinus area, jagged on the front side. It looks broken and bears visible signs of sharp sawing on its top. This piece of bone is cross-marked with ink. Headbone. You don't come across headbone

in a lot of forensic reports. That's got to be a weird translation, right? I mean, aren't you supposed to write skull there? It just makes it sound so weird in my head. Funny if he did actually write headbone. I feel like that would really take away from the legitimacy of a forensic report if the investigator kept saying stuff like head bone.

And I feel like when you say head bone, you probably also don't use proper terms for other stuff. This deserves some calliope music right now. Let's get some clown in this for a very odd forensic report. Oh, wait. Ha ha, just take, hey, that's the game show music there. I know buttons to push. Oh, wait. Ha ha ha. Just, hey, that's the game show music there. I know buttons to push.

You can see here that a little gun stood in the doohickey thing. Here's the head bone around here. Right above the eyeball holder space. Before being shot, also appears a victim was stabbed with a long, sharp metal pointy thing. You can see a slash mark or something on the head bone here. Starting to run a nose hole. Moving down towards a little hard little food cutter grinder bone thingy dingies. Back to the report. Given the size, I didn't get enough sleep last night. Given the size and

condition of the bones, we can assume that there was one particularly strong individual. Two others were of delicate bone structure. Another suffered from coxavera. Coxavera is a hip deformity that leaves you afflicted with a shortened leg and a limp. How much of a limp varies. The cutting surfaces of the bones are jagged as if blunt force was applied, such as the blunt end of an ax or hammer.

Some bones were visibly sawed. Few spots show traces of a sharp tool and ax most probably. Similarly, such traces were found on the articulations, which must've been cut with a knife. Based on these findings, we're able to declare that the bones sent to us belonged to at least 8 people

so at least 8 different people there they would also find numerous additional skeletons and partial skeletons buried around the building in the coming years and then there's the teeth holy shit his dental collection totaled 351 teeth so many fucking teeth

it's like something straight out of a horror movie. The teeth were found in a money bag. Two tin boxes for salt and pepper. Three paper bags meant to hold pepper. They were sorted based on size. The molars were in the money bag. I mean, of course. He got the molars in the money bag.

Others were in the tin box and paper bags. In one paper bag, there seemed to be a set of teeth belonging to just one person, a special set of teeth. In the third paper bag, they found three lower incisors with a strongly atrophic structure. Might have been from an older person. Those were some special teeth. All but six teeth were well-preserved. These teeth were estimated to belong to 20 to 25 different people, conservatively.

Holy shit. Some teeth seemed to be easily extracted, while others had been extracted with force. The teeth showed unnatural fractures and claw marks. He might have cooked people's jaws in advance to remove some of the teeth. From analysis of the teeth and the ledger, they knew they now had

almost no young victims. Four-fifths of the victims were seniors. One person was 16, but the majority of his victims were older than 40. Two were estimated to be between 20 and 30, and one victim between 30 and 40. I got it. What was this guy's deal with all the teeth? He was clearly not just killing people because he

really loved eating meat, and meat was expensive. I feel like best case, and this is a really dark best case, he was harvesting people and seeing how much he could profit from all their parts. He could sell some of their meat and maybe see if somebody wanted to buy a tasty hairy butt steak. Maybe he could, you know, cure their skin, make some fucking belts and shit.

And maybe he could make teeth jewelry or something. I don't know. Worst case, he was another serial killer who felt compelled to kill. These were his trophies. Ah, if the teeth weren't creepy enough, their other findings revealed that he'd experimented with human leather and soap made from human fat. They found three pairs of suspenders made from human skin.

Again, I think of Ed Gein. God, imagine those two motherfuckers together, right? Maybe comparing homemade outfits with each other. What do you think of these back skin boots? So sick, Gein, so sick. What do you think of this beret woven out of pubic hair? Oh my God, I love it. I bet you Ed Gein knew about Carl. Gain, sus, sick. What do you think of this beret woven out of pubic hair? Oh my God, I love it.

I bet you Ed Gein knew about Carl. He started committing his crimes 30 years after Carl died. Also, Gein's grandpa was from Germany. He was known, Gein was known to have read anything he could find about, you know, both true crime and cannibalism. He was 18 when Denke died.

I bet Gein was a big Denke fan. Back to Denke's human skin spenders. He was skinned from the chest to the pubic area to make his leather. Carl was actually wearing human leather suspenders when he died. I'm not making up this fucking ridiculous detail.

Some of his suspenders still had nipples and pubic hair on them. My God! Some of them actually had pubic lice. I swear that's what the source wrote. Pubic lice on the pubic hair on his skin spenders. Clearly he was not doing this just for the meat. I don't think he was doing all this shit for the money, right? He was spending a lot of time with these dead bodies and his family, you know, they would send him money sometimes.

He didn't have to do this. He just was fucking crazy. He liked it. I bet he got off on it. This guy was an evil maniac. He was wearing human suspenders when he died. Think about how dark that is. He was wearing skin spenders with pubic hair on them and little pubic lice.

This guy makes Robert Pickton from a few weeks ago seem not as ghoulish, which I didn't even think was possible when we were doing that suck. You didn't think she was going to come back, did you? You probably hoped you wouldn't. In addition, that was Mama Pickett, the worst character I've ever created from a few weeks ago.

In addition to his skin spenders, his pube spenders, his pubenders, Denki also made human leather straps that he polished with shoe polish. That's fun. They found 41 bundles of rags held together with human skin straps. The rags have been washed and neatly folded, rolled up and tied with some strings.

The strings made from human hair. Mm-hmm. What they thought were wicker baskets, initially, they found out were made from human skin. This fucking lunatic even used human hair to make his shoelaces. Investigators also found a coin collection in his apartment,

presumably a bunch of coins from people he killed, skinned, ate, et cetera. They found ID cards, private papers for several individuals in the room. They found loose sheets of paper that were part of that victim ledger we mentioned. In front of each name, he put a date. The entire list was in chronological order.

Excuse me, the list began at number 11 though, ended at number 31. For his female victims, he usually only wrote their first name. For male victims, he included birthdays, occupation, where they were staying, and their social status. So weird that he didn't do that for the women and only the men. As little regard as he had for the guys, seemed to have less for women. In one column, he put the victim's initials in a number. Most likely, I think their weight. This is my

speculation. Didn't say that in the sources. But they found another slip of paper with names. It'd be like dead, 122, naked, 107, disemboweled, 83. And this kind of system was repeated often throughout the ledger. I think he's referring to weight there, right? Kilograms, probably, you know, dead, 122 kilograms, naked, 107, once disemboweled, 83. I mean, 107 kilograms, you know, naked, that would be, you know, my size, 235 pounds, roughly.

Not sure how they'd be wearing an extra 33 pounds of clothes, but if it was in the winter, I mean, heavy winter boots, you know, heavy winter coats, work shirt, pants, etc. You know, more substantial fabric back then? I think it's possible. And again, the list went all the way to 31. He'd written 31, left it blank.

The line was empty, you know, because that spot was meant for Vincennes Oliver, that guy who had gotten away and exposed this monster. The tools Denke used to cut his victims found in his apartment, three axes, large wood saw, tree saw, pickaxe, three knives. Police took everything but the axes and the tree saw. Those were sent for human protein testing. It came back positive. Such a different time. This dude got away with killing for years, even though he was so sloppy, right? Just axing people after inviting them into his little apartment. It was right next to what, two other

units, three other units. I'm just kind of pulling out of my ass right now. You know, just butchering these people, just a single wall away from a couple of neighbors, cooking them up, pickling them, tossing their bones into a pile, apparently throwing their bloody clothes into a corner. Investigators also determined as stated in this big comprehensive report that none of Danky's crimes appeared to have been sexually motivated. After taking all this in, the author of the big definitive investigative report felt that Denke was a highly organized and meticulous person with no moral compass, but not a sexual sadist.

One investigator, unnamed in the source article, said probably he didn't mean to harm people, but his need for food was primordial. After a series of failures at school, farming, business, he found a simple and effective means of procuring food, and probably. By killing vagabonds, he met at the train station. He could gain their trust quite easily, take them home virtually unnoticed. The train station was a short walk from his place and both were on the outskirts of town. Psychiatrists at the time believed the economic troubles may have led to cannibalism. This appetite, said the experts, was the real foundation of his butcheries. He had become a slave to his stomach

and had to satisfy his craving at any price. I don't know. I feel like it was a bit more complicated than that, but who knows, I guess. Maybe hunger did drive him to kill, and then some OCD tendencies drove him to organize all the body parts like he did. Maybe some kind of autistic tendencies,

you know, drove him to do that. Maybe, but I doubt it. I still feel like this was about way more than just food, making some extra money. Also, how in the world did he go so unnoticed for so many years? I mean, I know things in Germany were fucked up, but come on. Neighbors apparently did notice some pretty weird things, but they just didn't report it. They didn't think much of it. Two men managed to escape after Carl attempted to murder them before he was reported to the police by that third guy who escaped. They just never reported him. They were just happy

to get away. The only thing they talked about was what happened to them after he was dead and gone. Once, one of his own butcher apprentices ran out of his apartment, covered in blood, was never seen again. Some people theorized that Denke found him later, killed him, or maybe Denke talked him into helping him butcher a person

then he freaked out and ran away can you imagine being that ghoul's apprentice a vagabond once complained to neighbors that Carl asked him to write a letter he loved the old stay distracted write a letter so while I ax you in the head trick while he was writing Poppy Denki tried to strangle him with a chain oh yeah so I guess chain not ax this time he was able to overpower him escape again he didn't report the incident to police.

I guess Germany was just such a shit show at the time that he didn't think the police would care. Maybe they wouldn't, or that they wouldn't believe him. Again, the chain detail makes me wonder if his crimes were sexually motivated again. Choking is so intimate, not as quick, so personal. So many rapists and sexually motivated killers choke. My dad was talking about

that uh he talks about all the time it's weird uh jk jk uh investigators said that there was no evidence he had sexually assaulted his victims but that doesn't mean it wasn't sexual it also doesn't mean that he didn't sexually assault his victims i don't trust those old reports right maybe he jerked off into the bodies or on them maybe he did have sex with them right i mean their bodies were all carved up how the fuck did they know what parts he had sex with or not? I feel like modern investigators might come to some very different conclusions about this dude. Also, if modern psychiatrists would have been able to interview him, I feel like we'd learn his skills had way more to do with just wanting that sweet meat, wanting those two pound dinners, hungry man dinners, two pounds, the Denki dinner.

Also think about what his neighbors thought after he got caught. How many times did they smelled that meat cooking next door? Neighbors had at times over the years complained about a strong penetrating smell coming from his apartment. When asked about the smell, Denki would tell them he had a disease that required animal fat treatment. What a dumb excuse. Holy shit, that is a weird explanation that would no longer work today. Not unless your neighbors were total fucking idiots.

If I smelled rotting meat coming from a neighbor's house and I asked my neighbor about it and they were like, oh, that, oh, that's just the smell of animal fat. I cook up and take for my disease. I would immediately assume they were a serial killer. Uh, they also found it odd that he always had plenty of meat, even during the worst of the hyperinflation period. Three different families that lived in the house with Denki all gossiped a bit about it. They thought he was killing cats and dogs for medicine

to treat his weird disease. What a weird old timey thing to think. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we figured he was just killing, but just not people. We assumed as one is likely to do, he's killing the cats and the dogs, eating them, using their fats

to treat his random, never properly described disease. They didn't really care that he was killing pets because things were so bad in Germany at the time that that wasn't that atypical. They saw him pouring buckets of blood into the courtyard behind his apartment. They didn't report him for that because they thought it was just dog blood.

Bojangles just snarled at me for saying just dog blood. Sorry, Bojangles. Not my assessment of the for saying just dog blood. Sorry, Bojangles. Not my assessment of the value of a dog's life, just relaying information. Late at night, neighbors did later say they heard, Jesus Christ, hammering and sawing coming from his apartment, but never called the police. Why not? Well, they assumed that Denke was just working late, preparing some of that sweet meat to sell at the market the next day. No, he's just butchering some dogs and cats for that animal fat he needed to treat his vague disease. My God, I know times are really tough, but I hope none of his neighbors had pets. How could you have a pet and think, oh, well,

no cause for alarm. I mean, sure, my neighbor's killing a fuckload of cats and dogs and dumping out bucketfuls of blood. You know, times are tough. Good on him for being able to catch that many dogs and cats. You know, as a pet lover, I don't like it, but as a hunter, I'm impressed. After they knew he was a serial killer, neighbors did tell investigators and journalists they noticed he was always wearing different secondhand clothing, that he was carrying large packages out of his apartment on a regular basis. You know, at the time, they just didn't question it. Even crazier, in the weeks leading up to his death, Carl had a human rib just laying on the windowsill for anyone to walk by and see. No one questioned that either. It was ballsy or sloppy. You know, maybe he just forgot where he'd set that one rib. And they just couldn't see Papa Denki as someone capable of

murder. So they ignored any signs that something was amiss. After this big investigative report came out about Carl Denki, his story made the papers for a few days and then quickly went away. Investigated report came out about Karl Denke. His story made the papers for a few days and then quickly went away. How? How could that crazy of a story not be big, big news? Well, a different serial killer we'll talk more about soon was hogging all the true crime headlines. Fritz Harman, the werewolf of Hanover, the vampire of Hanover, the wolf man.

So many nicknames. The story is even darker. Yeah, I'll tell a brief version of it soon when we're done wrapping up the timeline. Later in the 1940s, when new Polish owners purchased Denke's house, they discovered more bones from Denki's victims, but that didn't make any headlines. Uh, you know, a couple of other things going on, you know, Hitler, world war two in the 1970s, even more human remains found in his neighbor's garden. Uh, that didn't make international news because now the original story of Denki had largely

been forgotten. Then in the eighties,, a Polish forensics professor, Tadusz Dabusz, I think I'm saying it kind of right, made a shocking discovery and Denki's story was reborn a little bit, at least locally. A total of 1,200 pictures had been dumped at the Medical Academy of Wrocław

in the mid-80s during a renovation at the Medical College of Wrocław. These pictures allegedly belonged to the German Institute of Forensic Medicine in Breslau, had belonged there until 1945 when the city became Polish Wrocław. These pictures allegedly belonged to the German Institute of Forensic Medicine in Breslau. Had belonged there until 1945 when the city became Polish Wrocław. At the time, Tadusz was an employee at the university. He was promoted

to Professor of Molecular Techniques at the Department of Forensic Medicine of the Medical Academy of Wrocław. What a long fucking title. Some of the pictures he found were of a saw, a pickaxe, knives. Other pictures revealed sets of bones, various human parts. Another photo was a table full

of meat, human bones, suspenders made out of human skin. There was other pictures of suspenders, rags, pair of old shoes, messy room filled with pots, an old house, a wooden shed, portrait of a dead man. That picture is now the only known photo of Carl Denke we have. He was so curious about these photos. He starts talking to people. He suspects the photos depicted

some form of cannibalistic activity, but when he does a quick search of Polish criminal records, he can't find any stories about cannibals. But then his talking leads him to Marcin Tos, a local journalist who did know about Denke, and he told Professor all the gory details. Professor Debusch. He told him about the wooden shed in the pictures that was now gone, destroyed after World War II by new Polish owners of the house. He told him these new owners found buried skulls, bones in the yard.

He told him about Denke's murder ledger, the investigative report we went over. Then with salacious crime scene photos and knowledge of the narrative, the legend of the cannibal of Zambitza has been rediscovered. Then in 1999, the cannibal from Zambitza museum exhibit

we mentioned is created by Lutsina Bialy. We met her at the start of the suck. Lutsina was the curator of the archive of old printed materials at the university library at Piasek in Wrocław. She found Denki's story accidentally while she was preparing a back catalog

of old Salesian press articles. She found the story's story accidentally while she was preparing a back catalog of old Salesian press articles. She found the story of Denki separately from Professor Debusch. If it wasn't for the work of Professor Debusch and Luzina, Karl's story may have died with the few people who knew about him. She presented her findings at a scientific conference in Zumbitsa. She approached the mayor of Zumbitsa about a Denki display at that town museum. He's torn about it. German history filled with murderers, town museum. He's torn about it. German history filled with murderers and cruel acts. He doesn't want to glorify such darkness, but he knew that laying claim to a famous cannibal could bring tourism to the town and boost a sagging economy. In the end, he decided boosting the economy was worth promoting in association with

cannibalism. He allegedly said, let us think now how we can exploit our cannibal. A few months later, Zumbitsa says Museum of Household Goods puts out a display for Denki. Still think that is the fucking worst name for a museum. Something in translation has to have been lost there. The museum display featured and may still feature those photos found in the 80s as well as knives, axes, a meat grinder,

tons of the info you heard today. And that brings us to the end of Denki's Carl Denki's Time Time Suck timeline. Good job, soldier. You've made it back. Barely. Now for a bit more darkness, right? We've already waded in so deep with Denke. Might as well go further to illustrate why his story isn't more widely known. The main reason Carl's story got lost in history, probably due to all the press coverage Fritz Harman's murders got.

The werewolf of Hanover. He was convicted just a few days before Carl killed himself. He'd be executed just under four months later. Also a cannibal. And his murders were more sadistic, more extreme, much more extreme, actually. Germany actually produced a statistically abnormal number of cannibals in the first half of the 1900s, first half of the 20th century there. Why? Well, that chaos that followed World War I, that economy that basically completely collapsed, people

wandering the streets, begging for food, searching for jobs. The scapegoating began leading up to World War II. Jewish people, socialists, communists blamed for the economic crisis. The road to the Holocaust being paved.

There was escalating violence against many people who had been dehumanized. The German zeitgeist at the time, so much hate and angst in the air, made people more willing to turn a blind eye to horrific crimes

than they might have reported in other circumstances. And it led others to commit horrific crimes, they might have reported in other circumstances. And it led others to commit horrific crimes, to do things like kill for meat. I mean, I guess think about it. If you'd already witnessed a Jewish couple next door dragged from their homes, beaten for doing nothing other than being Jewish. If you've already seen people being beaten for not being nationalistic enough, guessing a lot of people are going to be pretty reluctant to contact authorities for anything. A lot of people probably just wanted to keep as low profile as possible.

Many had stolen also, you know, killed, lied to get food, work to help authorities for anything. A lot of people probably just wanted to keep as low profile as possible. Many had stolen, also, you know, killed, lied to get food, work to help their families survive. That may have made them less likely to report certain crimes. And hunger helped lead, you know, other people to commit crimes specifically of cannibalism. Denke had several contemporaries. None of them knew each other or were inspired by each other, but all operated at the same time. And Fritz Harmon was the most infamous of them. In 1918, Fritz had just finished a five-year prison sentence for a series of burglaries. At the age of 39, he entered the city of Hanover, known for high crime rates at the time. Perfect place for a guy planning on committing a lot more crimes. Fritz had been in and out of jail for years prior to 1918, mainly for fraud, theft, and also for sexually assaulting children. This guy was a real monster, real piece of shit. Fritz probably had a tougher childhood

than Denke's, characterized by abuse at the hands of his violent father. Fritz's father actually tried to have him put in an institution when he discovered that his son was a homosexual, sadly a big crime at that time. Fritz was molested by one of his school teachers growing up when he was just eight years old. Years later, after he left prison in 1918, Fritz was molested by one of his school teachers growing up when he was just eight years old. Years later, after he left prison in 1918, Fritz became a police informant in Hanover. Local police trusted him, liked him so much he was given the nickname Detective. They paid him, they gave him a badge, and unbeknownst to them, you know, all of this just led to more crimes, more really horrible crimes. Fritz began attacking and molesting young homeless boys, using his badge to gain their

trust, most of them very young, not even teenagers. His favorite spot to catch homeless boys was the railroad station where they gathered to beg for food or money. Like Denke, he targeted people who wouldn't be missed, people with little or no family ties. He lured them to his apartment with the promise of a hot meal and potential jobs. Once inside, Fritz attacked them, raped them, then murdered them. And this is not something I've ever heard of before. This is beyond horrific. He often murdered them by tearing their throats out with his teeth. Holy shit. You did not hear that wrong. He would tear their throats out with his teeth. Wow. That's how he got the dueling nicknames of the Vampire of Hanover and the Werewolf of Hanover. On several occasions, Harmon bit clear through his victim's Adam's apples,

trachea. Harmon later referred to his acts of biting through his victim's necks as a love bite. Holy shit. He then drank their blood and indulged in necrophiliac activities. True monster. He then took their bodies up to his attic, transformed their flesh into buckets, or transferred, excuse me, transformed, that's super weird. He transformed their flesh into, he made flesh buckets.

No, he transferred their flesh into buckets to either cook up or dispose of. He also either sometimes wore their clothes, gave their clothing to his lover and former male escort, Hans Granz. I swear that's his name. Oh, Hans Granz. Hans Granz, who would sometimes help him catch. Oh, Hans Granz. Hans Granz,

who would sometimes help him catch his kids. Fritz, similar to Denke, pretended to be a meat market trader, sold buckets of human flesh along with secondhand clothes. And it's really one source he pretended, but I guess he didn't really pretend. He was.

He just wasn't selling, you know, the meat he claimed to sell. He told his customers it was horse meat and he got a lot of people to eat human flesh, we think. He sold his products at a lower price in the competition, like Denki, desperate people, hungry in a horrific economy, willing to buy anything to feed and clothe their families.

His first victim, 17-year-old Friedel Roth, who disappeared in 1918. He was last seen with Fritz Harman. The police interviewed Fritz, but didn't make much of an effort to see if he was really the killer because they wanted to keep their informant working for them. Eventually in court interviewed Fritz, but didn't make much of an effort to see if he was really the killer because they wanted to keep their informant working for them. Eventually in court, Fritz would brag that when investigators came to his apartment

to talk to him, the head of the boy was lying wrapped in newspaper behind the oven. Yeah. Neighbors were suspicious of Fritz on many occasions, but didn't report him. They'd occasionally see Hans wearing the suits of a missing boy or see Fritz wearing clothes of the missing boys.

They also noted seeing lots of young men enter the apartment but never leave. Late at night, they heard chopping and sawing. They just told themselves that Fritz was just preparing some, you know, meat for the market the next day. When they saw him carrying buckets of blood like with Denki, they assumed it was animal blood. Just such strange times. Fritz even had his neighbors take care of some of the human bones for him. He gave them away so they could make soups, telling them it was just various animal bones. Neighbors were suspicious, but still never went to the police. Finally, at a meat market, one customer was so concerned

about Fritz's product, she took a sample to the police, thinking it was human meat, but they dismissed her, told her it was just pork. They still didn't want to believe Fritz was guilty of anything. He was just too good of an informant. By 1923, he'd been killing for five years now. He's still working with the police, at the time helping them form a secret organization to combat French occupation of the Ruhr, an area of West Germany. He's working directly with a bunch of detectives. At that time, local newspapers start putting public pressure on the police to investigate a lot of missing boys. This is so sad. One newspaper estimated that 600 area boys had disappeared in just the past year. Rumors started to spread that a werewolf was eating the children. It was

dismissed as paranoia until a skull washed up on the banks of a local river. Then in May of 1924, public pressure intensifies when more skulls wash up. Then some sacks of human remains wash up from the river as well. Dredgers then dig up the riverbed and they find 500 human bones. That's so fucking dark. Who was killing all these kids? Thanks to a few witnesses seeing him toss shit into the river, Fritz Harman becomes, you know, suspect number one. The police he's been working for now finally put him under surveillance.

And then in June of 1924, they catch him trying to pick up a boy. The boy tells the police Fritz attempted to molest him. So the police now arrest Fritz. While he's in custody, the police search his apartments. They soon realize his days as an informant are over. They find the bloody room with piles of clothes, similar to what the police found in Carl Denke's apartment. Fritz tells him he's a butcher. He's a clothes trader. So, you know, what were they expecting? Of course, it's going to be bloody. But then the mother of one of the missing boys tells, you know, him that a, or tells the police that a neighbor saw Fritz wearing her son's coat. The neighbor tells police Fritz had given him, oh, I'm sorry. The mother of one of the missing boys saw one of Fritz's neighbors wearing her son's coat. And then that neighbor tells police

that Fritz had given him that coat and Fritz then confesses. The gig is up. In December of 1924, his sensational trial begins. It was up until that time, the most highly publicized trial in the history of Germany. Front page headlines, day after day for weeks.

Fritz captivated and infuriated the public with all the horrible shit he had done. He admits to everything. He made no attempt to show remorse. At one point, nonchalantly telling the judge regarding how many boys he'd killed, it might've been 30, it might've been 40. I really can't remember the exact number. Later denying raping one of his victims, he tells one of the parents, and he did kill this kid, why he did this, saying, I have my taste after all. Such an ugly creature,

as according to his photographs, your son must have been. I would have never have taken to poor stuff like him. Such a youngster was much beneath my notice. Some evil shit to say, the parents of a child you likely savagely killed. Fritz made no attempt to hide his monstrous nature to avoid punishment or deny any of his crimes.

He seemed strangely proud of his crimes. He seemed to enjoy the attention he got from his trial. He did beg for the death penalty instead of being put in an insane asylum. He said, I want to be executed in the marketplace. And on my tombstone must be put this inscription, here lies mass murderer Harmon. Man, he tells the court if he were to ever be released He would definitely brutalize more children On the final day of his trial He pleads to the court Do you think I enjoy killing people?

I was ill for eight days after the first time Condemn me to death, I am not mad It is true I often get into a state when I do not know what I am doing But that is not madness I will not petition for mercy, nor will I appeal I just want to pass one more merry evening in my cell With coffee, hard cheese, and cigars, after which I will curse my father and go to my execution as if it were to a wedding.

Damn. Harmon got his wish. He was sentenced to death, beheaded via guillotine on April 15th, 1925 at the age of 45. In his final moment, he stoically walked up to the guillotine, never got emotional, never seemed nervous, never seemed like he was shaking. He spoke his last words calmly saying, I repent, but I do not fear death. And that is why Carl Denke's case never got that much attention. As insane as it was, it wasn't quite as sensational as the highly publicized evil deeds of Fritz Harman. And you know, Carl never had a trial, never spoke about his crimes. Fritz spoke about them at length. Fritz's trial ended on December 19th, just two days before Karl's death. And that takes us to the end of this crazy look into a dark time in Germany's history,

often forgotten because it was sandwiched between two even darker times, those two world wars. Let's recap. Karl Denke, the cannibal of Zambitza, believed that he killed at least 30 people. Many think based on the amount of remains found inside his apartment and around his apartment, the number is likely somewhere in the 40s.

May have forgotten to make some entries in that ledger of his. He's probably too busy, you know, grilling up some two-pound butt steaks that he ate, you know, and he took a nap and forgot. He killed from as early as February 1903 all the way to December of 1924. He targeted both male and female victims, primarily male, usually journeymen or homeless people, anyone who he didn't think would be missed by their families. His most common methods of murder were axe or strangulation. He operated out of his hometown of Munsterberg, Silesia, now Zubice, Poland. Excuse me, Zumbice, Poland.

In the early 1900s, Germany produced several cannibals. There were others in addition to Karl Denke and Fritz Harman, and many of them got away with their crimes for years. How? It was a different time. A chaotic time. A hard time for police to catch people. They didn't have modern surveillance technology. The evidence-gathering techniques they now have.

Strange, strange time. We'll be looking at it again later this year when we suck on today's fifth takeaway. Peter Kirtan, the Dusseldorf vampire, so many vampires and werewolves, so much cannibalism. Imagine if one of these fuckers did this in your town today, right? Lindsay and I buy meat from a local farmer's market every summer. I've bought meat from a family owned meat stand. I'm told is pork or beef many times. I do it every year now. I don't know these people. I just trust that they're telling me that the meat is what they say it is. We eat at a German restaurant in town a couple times a month, Bierhaus. It's our kids' Kyler and Rose favorite local restaurant. It's a place where

they make their own sausage. I don't know what the fuck's actually in it. They say it's beef and pork. It's seasoned really well. I put so much spicy mustard on it. It can be anything. What if 10 years from now, I find out that the guy at the farmer's market At that meat stand is a serial killer Cannibal, he's been selling human meat for years What if the cook at the German restaurant Has been doing that for years How would I throw up and have to steer clear of meat for a while

And I think like What if I knew one of the victims And then realized I had possibly eaten some of them Holy shit It's so crazy that odds are hundreds, if not thousands of Germans experience that. Right, that they ate some of Fritz's or Carl's human meat.

What if they ate that human meat, you know, a couple weeks after one of their relatives went missing? Ah, what a mind fuck. What a wild world. How many other stories like this are out there? It seems like an endless amount. Time now for today's top five takeaways.

Time shock, top five takeaways. Number one, Carl Denke grew up with various speech delays and learning disabilities. He didn't start speaking until age seven, had trouble in school. His teachers called him an idiot, complained that he defied authority, never listened. He didn't like to socialize with other children. His brothers had to carry him back inside school sometimes because he didn't want to go back to class. Did any of this push him towards becoming a serial killer? I doubt it. Despite all these troubles in school, he probably had a relatively normal childhood. I mean, not a great childhood, but not the worst. His parents don't seem to have abused him. And he had no extremely traumatic events happen to him in childhood, like most serial killers, at least none that we know of.

Was it nature or nurture that led Carl to become a serial killer? Was it desperate times caused by hyperinflation? Was he born bad? A combination of both of these factors and others, probably a combo. I usually tend to think it's a combo. Number two, Carl Denke had a license from the city and the Butcher's Guild to sell secondhand clothing, leather goods, and meat at the local market and sell it door to door. How many people bought either human meat from him or some fucked up piece of skin clothing? Some skin spenders with pubes still attached to them with some pubic lice still on them? My God. Number three, Carl Denke was truly a butcher, a human butcher.

He used every part of his victim's bodies. He ate their flesh, used their skin to make suspenders, their hair to make string and shoelaces, their fat to make soap. His home butcher shop was highly organized with jars full of various human parts that he prepped for himself to eat or turn into goods to sell.

Number four, Vincennes Oliver, the man who was meant to be Denke's last victim, survived and got him arrested. Spot number 31 on Denke's dark ledger was meant for Vincennes, but he managed to escape the attempted murder, reported Carl to the police. The police then arrested Vincennes and sentenced him to 10 days in jail for being homeless. Pretty fucked up, a crime at that time in Germany. This is the reason why another survivor never reported Denke, didn't want to go to jail,

wanted to avoid jail time. Crazy times. Number five new info. Another killer who was active a few years after Carl, but still from interwar period was Peter Curtin, the Dusseldorf vampire. We'll be doing an episode on him later this year. So many creepy dirt bags in that area of Germany or in Germany at that time. Peter killed for 13 years, part of which overlapped with Carl Denke and Fritz Harman. Peter grew up in a family of abusers and criminals. Man, his story is dark. His father raped his mother in front of the kids,

also raped Peter's sisters. Peter Curtin eventually raped his sisters as well, following his father's example. His life is full of so much darkness. He spent his entire childhood and adolescence witnessing sexual abuse, later participating in sexual abuse as an abuser. He formed the connection early on between sexual violence and pleasure, and it fucking ruined him. He developed intense fantasies about sadism, killing children, arson, harming animals. Shockingly, Peter was able to hide his extremely dark nature when he wanted to. He was well-liked by his community, even small children. He killed for several years until he settled down, got married. He was kind and loving to his wife, so much so that she didn't believe him when he confessed his crimes to her. He never sexually abused or hurt his wife. Like many serial killers, he was a master of

compartmentalization. He was able to lead the perfect double life. From February 1929 to 1930, he terrorized the city of Dusseldorf, earning himself the nickname of the Dusseldorf Vampire. He stabbed men, women, and children, drank their blood, mutilated their bodies, tossed them into the river. A quick glance at a few sources also mentioned the bestiality, cannibalism, so much cannibalism at this time in Germany. Curtin would be found guilty of murder

and beheaded by guillotine in July of 1931. Time shock, top five takeaways. Carl Danky has been sucked. And Fritz Harman got sucked a little bit as well. And we even learned a little bit about inflation.

That was surprising. Strange topic, strange episode. Thank God those fuckers are the exception to the rule. Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions team for all the help in making time suck. Queen of Bad Magic, Lindsay Cummins, Reverend Dr. Joe Paisley, the script keeper, Zach Flannery,

producing today, Sophie Fax, Sorceress Evans, Bid Elixir, Logan the Art Warlock, running badmagicmerch.com, also running the socials with Liz Hernandez. And thanks to Olivia Lee Grace for digging up so many details for today's topic. A lot of people have been joining

the new Cult of the Curious private Facebook group page. Thanks to Liz Hernandez for all seeing eyes for helping run that. Thanks to others who have been downloading the free subgroup social pack in the download section of our robust store. So cool that there are, you know, so many awesome Cult of the Curious subgroups

out there, like the cooks of the curious. Over 700 members in there exchanging grillin' tips and shit. I love it. Perfect for summer. Hail Nimrod. Beefsteak, almost 10,000 meat sacks on the TimeSuck Discord channel and the Mod Squad running things over there.

What's on the docket for next week? The Trail of Tears, finally. I say finally because this topic has almost, but not quite won the Space Lizard Patreon topic vote probably 10 times. Easily the topic that has almost won, but not quite won more than any other topic. Lots of meat sacks.

Been waiting on this one. We'll try and make the wait worth it, do it justice. We've mentioned this historical topic several times, but have never dedicated a full suck to it. The Trail of Tears refers to the march, the forced relocation that the Cherokee people undertook at gunpoint beginning in May of 1838. U.S. Army troops, along with various state militia, moved into the tribe's homelands, forcibly evicted more than 16,000 Cherokee people from their homelands in Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, and Georgia. The Cherokee name for the Trail of Tears literally translates to the trail where they cried. Nearly a quarter perished on the way,

with the remainder left to seek survival in a completely foreign land. Imagine that. Even a worse overall situation than what we just went over in Germany. There were other tribes that would suffer the same forced relocation. So many more would undergo the same process, losing their land possessions, sometimes their lives on the hard journey. Some tribes did try to resist. The Seminole resistance in Florida was formidable, resulting in a war that began under chief, uh, Ossie, Ossie Ola. There we go. Ossie Ola and lasted into the 1840s. Uh, the U S would spend millions of dollars fighting the Seminole. The Cherokees used legal action to resist.

When the government of Georgia refused to recognize their autonomy and threatened to seize their lands, the Cherokees took their case to the U.S. Supreme Court and actually won a favorable decision, but it wouldn't be enough. How did this happen? Why did it happen? What horrors did various tribes suffer on the road to relocation? And did people at the time know it was a bad thing? Tune in next week for all this and more. And now, stay tuned in for this week's Time Sucker Updates.

Updates? Get your Time Sucker Updates. Starting off with a new message regarding an old episode. Listening to the old Jonestown Massacre suck help save thankful meat sack lizard boy McStuffins. Birth name, I'm guessing. From a terrible and real fucking culty job. Lizard boy writes,

Most esteemed Lord Suckins. I'm a fairly recent convert to the cult of the curious, and still making my way through this insanely massive backlog of episodes. Just finished your suck on the Jersey devil, but I'm writing a reference to an even older episode, the Jonestown massacre. While I may not have any information to add,

I'd like to say that you're reading of Colt red flags at the end of the episode. I actually forgot I did that. Help me get out of the worst job I've had in my life. I was working for a family member, one ex communicator from the rest of the family for reasons I now understand his interactions with me and the rest of his employees, I was the last to leave, checked off nine of the 10 warning signs you shared. He kept me isolated from friends and family, paid me just enough to keep me from starving, far less than somewhat of my skill

level and our trade should be paid, and attempted control of every aspect of my life, far over reaching the boundaries of an employee-employer relationship, saying that he knew what was best for me and that no one in my family truly had my best interests at heart, and I believed him. I was completely convinced that this was my only future. That is, until I could see that his preaching of fear, manipulation of my life, and constant degradation were the ravings of a selfish egomaniac abusing the last remaining member of his family, not only willing to put up with his shit, but blind to it. I am now enrolling in college, better late than never, majoring in a field I'm not only passionate about, but where there are numerous career opportunities that may

help others in similar or worse situations. Hail fucking Nimrod. I'm eternally grateful, unless this totally blows up my face, in which case, suck you. This is all your fault. But seriously, thank you for the incredible show. Thank you for putting out amazing, irreverent content, and thank you for creating the base on which the cult of the curious was founded. Hail Nimrod, Lizard Boy McStuffins. P.S. I'm not far enough along to know if shout outs are still a free service. If it isn't, that's completely understandable. I'm sure you get a million a week, but I'd like to shout out to the suckers of the forbidden app. Part of the ship, part of the crew. So happy for you, Lizard Boy. And yeah, no,

shout outs are free here. Also, at the risk of sounding like a huge boomer, what the fuck is the Forbidden app? What is suckers on the Forbidden app? It sounds fun. I hope I'm not promoting some kind of horrific snuff film app or something that I don't know about when I say that.

But I hope you're having a good time there. Unless it's a snuff, you know, snuff film app, then stop it. Seriously, though, glad you got out. That relative does sound like a shitty cult leader. And hail Nimrod to you, sir. Now a cool message about staying connected from Sweet Sack Samantha Gallery. Samantha writes, hello, Master

of the Suck. My name is Sam. I just wanted to thank you. A little about me. My husband serves in the United States Marine Corps and will be coming home soon from an eight and a half month deployment. Before he left, I was turned soon from an eight and a half month deployment. Before he left, I was turned on to your podcast and shared it with him. Since he was unable to have cell phone usage during his deployment, he was only able to download a few of the episodes to listen to before he left. After he left, I listened to your podcast every night. I went to bed. It helped keep my mind occupied from the emptiness of my bed. Oh yeah. And loneliness,

worry. I felt every night as I went to bed. Oh man. Your episodes have kept me distracted and educated me on so much. When my husband has been able to call to talk, I would often tell him about the latest episode I'd listened to. We both are eager to learn and be educated. This podcast has let us do that.

I appreciate you getting me through this long and difficult deployment as it was much easier than the prior one when I had not been blessed with being introduced to the suck. I look forward to every Monday and can't wait until my husband is home. We can continue listening to the show together.

We hope if you ever tour San Diego, we can go. As always, hail Lucifina, praise Bojangles, glory be to Triple M. You're a grateful sucker, Sam. Sam, first off, thank your husband for his service from me, from us here at the Suck Dungeon. We appreciate men and women like him doing whatever needs to be done

to let jackasses like me say the crazy shit I say and live in a safe and secure nation. I'm glad you both have, sorry, I just have to share this. As I said, crazy jackasses like me, calliope music just literally started to play inside my head. I just hear that melody sometimes, which is probably not good. I'm glad you both have something interesting to talk about with all the weird shit we cover. Sounds like you like to learn as much as I do I love the constant challenge of these topics I love the side roads You know, I loved this week learning about economics

Which is a challenge for me Just, you know, when we picked a story about a German cannibal I feel like I kind of understand A little bit about how inflation works now For the first time in my life Enjoy that husband Enjoy that husband being home I hope the two of you

have a fucking blast. Hope you have a great life. Just keep having a great life. Praise Bojangles. Quick and interesting QAnon slash Antifa update now from small town sucker Jason Wharton.

Jason writes, Dear Master Sucker, insert ridiculous nickname here. First, don't beat yourself up so hard. I think you did the QAnon and Antifa suck amazingly. Should those subjects have not been put in together?

Yeah, sure. Maybe should you have included some of a few things that can be provenon Antifa suck amazingly. Should those subjects have not been put in together? Yeah, sure. Maybe should you have included some of a few things that can be proven about Antifa? Okay, yeah. But you said it. It's hard to prove who was in Antifa and what they've all done. I feel like our community tries to deal in hard facts when we can. Exactly. Now, although Antifa isn't a complete scapegoat, it seems like they are definitely being used as one.

I live in a small town in Iowa. We had a BLM protest and it went off without a hitch thanks to the amazing organizers and our wonderful police department who we were in step with, who kneeled with us. Leading up to this event, we were threatened with violence and death on social media. Jesus Christ. There were several fake reports of busloads of Antifa being dropped off in town to work people up. Just thought you'd like to hear an instance of them actually being used as a boogeyman from a BLM supporting cop loving loyal time sucker.

Yes, you can be all three. Not sorry. One fucking ball, not sorry. One fucking ball hair off. Bojangles, uh,

glory's nutsack for the length of his email. Keep up the good work. Long live the suck and keep on sucking. Ah, man, I love that message, Jason. Yeah,

you sure can be somebody who supports BLM and the police. Resist the urge to be pushed into some confining. This is how you need to think about all this shit, little marketing box so that various companies can sell you more shit easily

and various politicians can just count on you for their votes. Fuck that. I like to a la carte my views. Left, right, the center. And I can as much as I fucking want to. And so can all of you. I appreciate the message, the right, the center. And I can as much as I fucking want to. And so can all of you. I appreciate the message, Jason. That's awesome. Now for a very cool drug reform update

from longtime sucker, Jackie Berry, Jackie writes, hello, stockmaster, supreme worshiper of the great God Nimrod. I am super torn on this whole drug reform thing for a really quick backstory. I was raised by two addicts, lived a pretty rough life, even struggled with addiction myself. I've always been strong in my stance against drugs until I heard your fucking stance and you made my last surviving brain cells start fighting. I love the idea of regulation. And as someone who's working towards a degree in medicine, I love the idea of being able to talk with patients and open doors for people to deal with addiction. But here's where I struggle. Addiction, no matter what type, is swarmed by never-ending stigma. I've been told that my family members, as well as myself,

are weak-minded and weak-willed because we allowed ourselves to be addicted. I have lost friends and even some family members who have had the audacity to tell me that allowing addicts to die is better than treating them. That's a pretty fucking hardcore stance because it weeds them out of the population.

This stigma ruins the ability of addicts to be open and seek help, even with healthcare providers. And even with legalization and regulations, the stigma will remain for a long, long time. Alcohol has been legal since 1933, and there's still a massive stigma around people with an alcohol addiction. I've dealt with patients that I could smell alcohol on and are obviously having some type of withdrawal who have told me they haven't had a drink in years. Drinking years, yeah. People are afraid to be open because they don't want to be hated for being sick.

I guess I want to know know how can we fight this? How do we fight a stigma that is burned into our society? I come from a place of fear for addicts because even though death rates will go down They will still be present considering my vow in life is to protect others lives and well-being I just can't get past the lives lost Also, if you or someone you know is an addict, please please please get help. You're not irreparable. You're irreplaceable And you deserve to live a happy, a healthy life. If you have a sickness and you need to get help from

people who want to give you a new chance at life, reach out. There are always resources. Thank you for everything you do, Suckmaster. Thank you for constantly making my head hurt and making me think outside my little echo chamber. Hail Nimrod. Praise the wood jangles. Jackie B. What a great message, Jackie B. Yeah, you're right. There is a stigma with addiction. And I think legalization and regulation is a great step in working towards de-stigmatization because there's also a stigma with felons, right? With criminals. I think removing that stigma from addiction could help remove the overall stigma. And I realize what you're saying about like, you know, alcoholics, there's still stigma there, but I think it's a step in a good, the direction. Obviously, a lot more needs to be done.

More government-funded PSAs, more celebrities being open about addiction and treatment, more people like you sending the kind of messages that you just sent in. Thanks for helping like you just did. Thank you, everyone else, for keeping me from falling into an echo chamber, brought up echo chambers.

So glad we have listeners from left, right, middle, people with all different kinds of perspectives. It's so important to be continually exposed to different viewpoints. I think, uh, last message today, not an email, just some interesting,

uh, text messages that came in from my cousin, Matt Cummins. Uh, Matt said that his mom and some of his other relatives, uh, I'm related to his dad. His dad is my dad's brother.

So, you know, probably murder. Uh, his relatives likely went to school with Angels Landing cult leader, Daniel Perez, down in Aransas, Texas. I just found that really interesting.

His mom's brother's wife does remember going to school with a young Daniel Perez, right? That future shithead cult leader. Says he dropped out around eighth grade, not surprised. I think it's just so cool. We get more messages like this now. People who know people, who know the subjects we talk about, people who know the subjects directly. If you

have messages like that, some kind of personal connection to the topic in some way, send them in either to Bojangles at TimeSuckPodcast.com or you can use the TimeSuck app. It was just updated again. Now it has a cool drop-down menu. And you can click updates and then it'll send the message-down menu. And you can click updates, and then it'll send the message straight to me.

Straight to my laptop in the contact time suck message feature. So keep them coming, and hail Nimrod. Thanks, time suckers. I needed that. We all did. Well, thanks for listening to another Bad Magic Productions Podcast.

I hope I made your head bone hurt in a fun way or something. I don't know. Please don't eat anyone this week or any week. Don't make any pubic hair suspenders out of human skin this week or ever. Don't be a dinky. Don't be a dinky. Just keep on sucking. Sucking.

Hey, Zach. Can you check this out? Does that look like a butt hair to you? Well, that looks like a butthole. Oh, that does look like a butthole. That is a butt hair. That's a lot of butt hair. That's for sure. Okay, okay. I'd eat it. You want me to eat it? Well, that looks like a butt hole. Oh, that does look like a butt hole. That is a butt hair. That's a lot of butt hair. That's for sure.

Okay, okay. I'd eat it. You want me to eat it? Yeah, yeah, man. Thanks.

Yeah, okay, cool, cool. Well, you know, different strokes for different folks.