Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 253 - Hammer Happy Serial Killer Peter Kürten, the "Vampire of Dusseldorf"

Episode Date: July 19, 2021

This guy. Killing mainly in 1929 when he was 46, the final year of his freedom, Peter Kürten would be charged with nine brutal murders and seven attempted murders in 1930, and then executed 1931. Over the course of his depraved life, he'd be sent to prison over and over, for theft, breaking and entering, fraud, army desertion, arson, rape, and then eventually, murder. Dubbed the "Vampire of Dusseldorf" the year before he was caught, this German monster was a sexual sadist who raped and killed women and children, ejaculating at the sight of their blood. He also sometimes killed the occasional man, becoming sexually aroused at the sight of their blood as well. After killing his victims, he was aroused by the press the crimes received, by revisiting the crime scene and talking to investigators, and also be visiting their gravesites later. All of that turned him on. His own execution turned him on. Dogs and farm animals turned him on. It's another strange and dark journey on another twisted true crime edition of Timesuck. Thank you Space Lizards for helping us give $14,400 to https://supportsurfside.org/ - a hardship fund just established by the Miami Heat basketball team to help those impacted by the devastating building collapse in Surfside, Florida. Watch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/D2lnAp7s6bwMerch - 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.

What does it take to be labeled the king of sexual perverts by several psychiatrists who examine you? Repeatedly fucking and simultaneously speed-stabbing barnyard animals has got to be on that list, right? Check and check for today's monster. Sexually obsessing over the blood of one's victims? That probably has to be on the list as well. Check again. What about ejaculating all over victims' desecrated corpses? Check.

What about committing these kinds of acts against children as well as adults? Another sad check. Or how about returning to the crime scene and almost ejaculating in your pants at the idea of it all while asking authorities questions? Check. How about revisiting victims' actual grave sites, running the dirt above their corpses through your creepy fingers, and reliving one's crime so you can get your rocks off one more time and literally coming on their graves. Check. This guy checks nearly all the hyper depravity bingo boxes. I mean, he didn't keep victims in cages or restraints and torture them like some of the other dirtbags we've covered. So I guess that's kind of good.

He didn't kill victims in front of future victims. So maybe that's kind of good. At his murder trial, he would proudly declare that he was not a torturer. I'm not sure that that was about him being a good guy, though. I just don't think he had the patience to show the restraint that would require. This guy was a monster who followed some incredibly dark impulses when it had been too long since his last sadistic release. I'm talking about Peter Curtin, a monster better known, especially in Europe, more specifically in Germany, as the Vampire of Dusseldorf, a man criminal psychiatrists who examined him labeled the king of sexual perverts. After a life of committing a whole bunch of crimes, ranging from theft and breaking and entering to a lot of arson, a lot of arson to bestiality, to rapes, murders, and necrophilia,

his life comes to an end with some of the most twisted evil bad guy in a movie, Final Words of all time. This guy was so perverse, he even got off on his own execution. He died with a smile on his face, and I have to imagine, not kidding, boner in his pants. And somehow this German ghoul managed to have a wife that he was fond of, that he never even murdered one time. He never even smashed her in the head with a hammer, not once. And that's how you knew that Peter was fond of you. She was no angel herself. She murdered a guy for backing out of a planned marriage to her and spent several years in prison for murder before meeting Peter. They seemed to be kind of made for each other. She was no Rose

to his Fred West, but she also was not a sweet, innocent lady. I have another crazy tale for you weirdos today. Join me for yet another hot damn. Germany was a rugged place to live for much of the 20th century edition of Time Suck. This is Michael McDonald and you're listening to Time Suck. You're listening to Time Suck. Happy Monday, Meat Sacks. I'm Dan Cummins, Suck Nasty, Lord Suckington, Nimrod's altar boy, and you are listening to Time Suck. Hail Nimrod, hail Usafina, praise B to Triple M, and praise B to Bojangles.

Couple quick announcements, then a whole bunch of true crime. Symphony of Insanity, stand-up comedy tour almost here. Go to dancummins.tv to get links to tickets in Spokane, Cleveland, Portland, Philadelphia, Kansas City, Denver, and more. Some of the Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio shows already sold out. Other shows are close. More stops coming up this fall, starting in August. But due to my podcasting schedule, there are a lot of markets I used to hit that I will not make it back to.

Just not enough time for everything I want to do. Good problem to have, but I know it sucks for some of you who don't live too close to some of the tour dates I will be going to. I just want to get that out there. And thank you again to our Patreon spaces for allowing us to donate $14,400 to supportsurfside.org. A hardship fund just established by the Miami Heat basketball team to help those impacted by the devastating building collapse in Surfside, Florida. Go to supportsurfside.org to learn more. Time Suck Wolf Pack Tea and Towel in the store at badmagicmerch.com. This shirt is made to have the sleeves torn off.

Towel is 30 by 60 inches, perfect for the beach or the yard, or maybe like a beautiful meadow full of wolves, so you can let them know that you're on their team. It's very funny. I hope you like it. Howl at the moon, meet Zax, get weird. And that's it for announcements. Let's quickly hop into some German serial killing insanity now. Being sucked today is a man who basically was destined to be a problem, or so he claimed. But if a terrible childhood left you destined to be a sadistic rapist and murderer, the world would have a lot more Peter Curtin's than it does right now.

Another pretty straightforward and horrific true crime narrative today. After setting up our story and sharing a few details about his hunting ground of Dusseldorf, we'll get right into another twisted timeline. Peter Curtin's crimes shocked me. And you know, even if you've just listened for a few months, even just for a few weeks, that I've covered a fair amount of shocking shit. He still shocked me, thank God. I hope I never become so jaded that crimes like Peter's fail to upset me. I hope you aren't that jaded either. Easy to forget, but these aren't characters in a movie I'll be talking about today.

His victims were real people, as real as you or I. Just like us, they had dreams, memories, hopes, tendencies, faults, friends, families, favorites. They had a favorite food, a favorite place to spend their time. If they were old enough, they probably had a favorite book. They laughed, they danced. And then Peter Curtin showed up and snuffed them out in an orgy of fucking horror. What a terrible way to meet the reaper. They didn't get to pass peacefully in their sleep. They didn't get the sudden death of say a high-speed car accident. They didn't get to say goodbye to their loved ones.

That bittersweet opportunity a long illness sometimes provides. No, they died scared. They spent their last moments alone with a fucking monster, a creature as bad as any horror writer has ever imagined, a beast as bad as any supposed demon from the most imaginative theologian's hell. This dude was evil. Like so many of the monsters we've covered, Fred and Rose West come to mind because that episode is still so fresh. The making of this monster began shortly after

Peter was born. Maybe before, actually. He might've been warped in the womb. He didn't seem to inherit real good genes. Peter Curtin's childhood was a nightmare, thanks largely to a sexually deviant and abusive father. Then an arguably more sexually deviant neighbor became the mentor that Peter did not need. Oh my God. And then he spent a lot of the last years of his youth incarcerated and whatever humanity and compassion he had left seemed to wither away and die in those prison cells. Most of it anyways. He did like most of these monsters sometimes actually do something kind of good. It's hard to imagine someone who murdered people and was just vile and horrible in his crimes, doing anything nice.

He did clearly care about his wife and himself, the only two people he seemed to care about. He also so weird despised and harshly judged abortionists. He saw them as more vile than himself with larger body counts. Sure, he raped and murdered some kids and even drank their blood, but those doctors aborting fetuses, they're the real monsters. Curtin had a confusing moral code. He bent it however he needed to bend it in order to make himself look less monstrous to society. He would show no remorse to his many victims, but after his capture, he did ask permission to write letters of remorse,

letters that were kind of remorseful to his victims' families, knowing that wasn't going to, or hoping that was going to, or no, at that point, sorry, knowing that was not going to spare him his execution. He was all over the place. So were a lot of sources on him when it comes to dates and details. Did some last minute rearranging, which is why there was a few pauses there. We did our best to provide the details we felt most confident in. The best source we could find, and I imagine the best source there is, was written by a

guy who spent the most time with Peter trying to figure out just exactly what the fuck was wrong with this guy. Professor Carl Berg, generally known as Dr. Berg, a distinguished psychologist, published a book for many years only available in German entitled The Sadist that we leaned on heavily in this episode. The book was written following the many, many interviews and confessions that Peter Curtin gave and made with Berg as he awaited his trial and subsequent execution by swift head removal. It gives us a firsthand account, in his own words, of the vampire of Dusseldorf, also known as the Dusseldorf Monster,

and it also has Dr. Berg's insights regarding the investigation and autopsies that were done at the time. When the book was written, never before had a serial killer spoken so openly and candidly about his murders, fantasies, and motivations. Before we get into the timeline that will share so many of the details Berg unearthed, let's first talk about Dusseldorf in Germany in the early 20th century, when and where Curtin was killing. I'm not going to go into a ton of detail about Germany overall during the interwar years when Curtin was most active, because we did just go into that a few weeks ago in the Carl Denke suck. Consider Denke and Curtin's sister

sucks. Denke was captured just a few years before Curtin. We talked at length about Germany's crippled post-World War I economy in that episode and about the hyperinflation that ravaged the purchasing power of German money as Germany printed way too much money trying to pay back a crippling amount of war debt. We talked about how things got so bad, people literally needed wheelbarrows to carry enough money to the bakers to buy a loaf of bread. The German economy was destroyed and there was a ton of crime being committed by people just trying to survive. Life was chaotic with Germans fleeing the country for work or at least moving around the country looking for work, often not bothering to keep in contact with other family members doing the same.

People were going missing, people who didn't die all the time. And that made it difficult for law enforcement to track down killers, especially serial killers. It was the perfect atmosphere for a man like Curtin to get away with what he did for so long. German law enforcement, with their comparatively rudimentary investigation techniques, this happened a long time ago, had their hands full. You know, German citizens weren't real busy keeping a good eye on their neighbors, trying to make sure everything was hunky-dory. They were just preoccupied with their own survival. Women were resorting to part-time prostitution to put food in their bellies or in their children's bellies on a semi-regular basis. A lot of their baby's

fathers had died in World War I or left in search of work. And that sex work, you know, made it easier for a monster like Peter to come into contact with them. Trouble, trouble times in Germany, even without Hitler and his goons and all their Nazi bullshit. And again, if you'd like more context, a bunch of stats, listen to the Denki Suck if you haven't done so already. Now a few words about Dusseldorf. Dusseldorf is a beautiful city that I got sucked into when I was doing the research and looking at a lot of pictures, thinking like, okay, I can live here. It's in Western Germany, known for fashion industry, art scene. It's the capital cities, known for a lot of things. North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. I probably just

butchered how you're supposed to say that. It's about 560 kilometers, almost 350 miles west of Berlin. Nailed that one. Just over 200 kilometers or 125 miles east of Brussels, Belgium. Almost exactly the same distance, 225 kilometers or 140 miles south of Amsterdam. It's sandwiched between Cologne and Duisburg, Germany. You can get to, or Duisburg, Germany. You can get to either city from Dusseldorf in less than 40 minutes by car if traffic's not too heavy. Those three cities and a few others all now run together to form the Rhein-Ruhr region, the largest metropolitan area in Germany with over 11.3 million people. Over 620,000 reside in Dusseldorf city limits with over 1.2 million in the Dusseldorf urban area. It's a funny word,

Dusseldorf. A very urban area. funny word. Dusseldorf. A very urban area. The population of Dusseldorf during Curtin's murder spree was smaller, but the area was still heavily populated. Back in the early 20th century, or in the early 20th century, between 400,000 and 500,000 people lived in just the Dusseldorf metro area.

An area that has been permanently settled since at least the 7th or 8th century shows up in written records starting in 1135. And currently a happening place. There are more than 400 ad agencies based in Dusseldorf, a few major airlines, Germany's biggest mobile phone providers, Mercedes-Benz builds a lot of their Sprinter vans there,

a lot of Japanese banks have their European headquarters in Dusseldorf, more than 30,000 citizens work in the financial sector alone. It's also Germany's banks have their European headquarters in Dusseldorf. More than 30,000 citizens work in the financial sector alone. It's also Germany's fashion capital, big music hub, full of a ton of college kids, a major cultural center for the arts in general. It's a city that should not be associated primarily with dirtbag Peter Curtin. It's a city of Kraftwerk. Do you know them?

You should. Germany's electronic music pioneers, EDM pioneers. Check out this song called Roboter and try to guess what year this came out. I wish you could see what I'm seeing right now, too. You are hearing a song from 1978. That sounds like some weird ambiance shit that someone could have put on Spotify this morning, at least to me. If you have time, check out some of Kraftwerk's videos.

Performance artists who blend robotics and techno melodies who are still touring. They just won a Grammy 2018. They formed around 1970, 1969, 1970. Rock and roll hall of fame inductees this year. After looking them up as a joke, I can't stop listening. Glad I made at least one not evil discovery in this episode's research. The big influence on Daft Punk. Anyway, Dusseldorf is a cool artsy city.. Historically, also had a relatively low crime rate. But like every city, sometimes it has a monster hiding in its shadows. And none have been more monstrous than Peter Curtin.

Even nice, culturally sophisticated, artsy cities have dirtbags. Now let's really get to know today's dirtbag in today's Time Suck timeline. Strap on those boots, soldier. bag in today's Time Suck timeline. May 26, 1883, Peter Curtin popped out of his mother's oven into a part of the world very close to the area he would soon terrorize, Kolnmulheim. His father was also named Peter Curtin. So he's a junior. His mother was Sibilia. Sibilia.

Thanks to Heike Blumreiter, someone I've never met, for putting together some of his family tree on Ancestry.com. Could not find a single source that gave his parents names until I came across the info that Heike dug deep into some German records to get to. Hail, Heike! Peter was born in KolnmulMünchen, a suburb of Cologne, Germany, less than 30 miles from where he'd do a lot of his killing later. Germany at the time, just a few decades removed from the era

known as the German Revolutionary Period, which lasted from the 1830s to the 1870s. The Industrial Revolution in Germany was in full swing. Both Peters would work in an industrial trade. Germany was transforming when Peter was born. It feels like outside of the last few decades,

Germany has been constantly just transforming, just continually transforming for centuries and centuries. Just a dozen years before Peter's birth in 1871, the German Empire era began with the unification of the German Empire following Germany's defeat of Napoleon III, last monarch of France in the Franco-Prussian War. He's not that Napoleon.

He's that Napoleon's nephew, the Napoleon that historians don't really fucking care about. A group of 26 constituent entities, primarily little German principalities, formerly part of the Holy Roman Empire, all were conglomerated into one big Germany in 1871. A bunch of little Germanic independent states went full Voltron. Ready to form Voltron. Activate interlock.

Dynatherms connected. Infra cells up. Mega thrusters are go. Go Voltron force. It was like that, but it was like, go Germany, go! This particular configuration of the seemingly continually reimagined German state would last until 1918. Germans, if you've listened to a variety of the German sucks we've done here, German base sucks we've done,

or if you're just a German history nut, they love to keep map builders busy. Holy shit, maybe never been a different ethnic group that has redrawn borders and changed names around as often as the Germans. And now they've been stable for decades. So we should all probably be a little nervous. The municipality of Köln-Mülheim, where Peter was born, colloquially called Mülheim, is located just north of Cologne on the east side of the Rhine, less than 30 kilometers, less than 20 miles from Dusseldorf. And in 1914, when Peter was 33, it was incorporated into the city of Cologne, which I like because that word is easier to say.

At the time of Curtin's birth, Cologne was a rival city across the river. Peter was born into extreme poverty. He was also the oldest of 13 children. Both his parents were described in numerous sources as being alcoholics. Another fun fam, his father, Peter, was a mean drunk, a monster in his own right, described as having sadistic tendencies. When he drank, Petey Sr. would smash up the tiny one-bedroom apartment the growing family lived in,

and he would consistently attack his wife and children, brutalizing them, exposing his daughters to sexual assaults. Echoes of Fred and Rose West again. Peter would recall to Professor Berg later, the whole family suffered through his drinking, for when he was in drink, my father was terrible. Man, and living in such a tiny place. His father was a sand molder. The examining magistrate during Peter Curtin's trial described Pete Sr. as a man who scarcely knew any moral restraints, yet demanded for himself every sort of respect, nor did he suffer contradiction or any challenge to his will. A.K.A. dude was an abusive and hypocritical asshole fuckface. Peter Sr. would end up being sent to prison about as many times as his oldest son would over the course of his life. It seems

as if part of the Curtin family legacy was to spend a good part of your life incarcerated. Peter Jr. did not come from a long line of well-to-do professionals. His family tree was full of all kinds of twisted and rotting branches. Alcoholism seems to have run in the family. Jr.'s paternal grandparents both described as drunks. Many of his uncles described as violent alcoholics. I picture family get-togethers not being for the faint of heart. Peter's mother, Sibilia, did come from a respectable working-class family.

She had five siblings. Her father was a hack proprietor, which means he owned a hack stand, an old timey stand that had horses and carriages for rent, also a place where horses would feed. Think of a gas station, but for horses. Combined with like a rental car center, but for horses. Think of a gas station with no coolers full of soda or beer,

no shelves full of tasty Doritos and ding-dongs and donuts, no red box rental out front, no public restroom. Think of a gas station that has almost none of the things that you like about gas stations. For the entirety of Peter's childhood, he would live with his father's brutality in that same one-room apartment. He would say, in short, my youth was martyrdom. Recalling that apartment years later, he said, as you may well imagine, we suffered terrible poverty, all because the wages went to my father's drink. We all lived in one room. You will appreciate what effect that had on me sexually. Yeah, living in your one room with a huge giant family, that probably would fuck with your sex life a bit. Gotta get creative with when and where you jerk off or DJ that lady wing. We've come across crazy families living in tiny spaces before. I think of

the bloody bers suck. It always sends me shaking my head and letting out a few, what the fuck, when I'm doing the research. At least the bloody benders, that family, you know, lived in the same, you know, they live in the same tiny ass cabin, but out in the county or out in the country, excuse me. The cabin was small, but the land around them was wide open, sparsely settled. You know, they had plenty of room to go explore, get away from other people

they were living with, have a little bit of privacy. But with the curtains, they're all just holed up in this tiny ass one bedroom apartment in the city. Nowhere to go, just a room full of kids, poverty, and alcoholism. You know, it's no wonder they both drank. I love my kids. Kyler Monroe, two wonderful humans, but I wouldn't want 11 more of them. If I had 13 kids, like Pete and Sibilia, we were all in the same little one-bedroom apartment day in and day out year after year, I'd probably be a drunk too. Thank you, sexual pioneers who invented our modern forms of birth control. Hail, Lusafina. Right now is one of the many, many times I have felt very thankful for having had a vasectomy years ago. Never happier

to be shooting blanks than I am when I read about situations like this. Little Petey Jr. did not seem to flourish in this crowded, dysfunctional environment. In his interviews with Dr. Berg, or if his interviews with Dr. Berg are to be believed, he killed two childhood playmates when he was just nine years old. I know child psychologists, but I'm guessing when you're killing at the age of nine, odds are your home life is pretty fucked up. According to Petey, one day while messing around out in a log raft with two of his schoolmates, he followed a sudden impulse to drown them.

The story goes that he pushed one of his friends overboard, knowing that that friend couldn't swim. And then when the other friend jumped into the water to save the first friend, Curtin refused to let either one of them back onto the raft. And then as they kind of got weakened, you know, from struggling, he held their heads underwater until they died. So that's terrifying. At the time, the event was apparently dismissed as a tragic childhood accident, which I do get, you know, sometimes people drown. I mean, even if someone or anyone suspected Peter, who's going to try and charge a nine-year-old with a double homicide when there's no witnesses around and the deaths could have been accidental?

Based on what Peter does later, I will absolutely take his word that this happened. He seems to have been wicked right from the start. Sometime shortly after this, sources don't agree exactly on the age. Probably when he was around 10 or 11, Peter formed a very unhealthy relationship with a dog catcher living in the same apartment building as the Curtains. And this shit is outrageous. This young man showed Junior the

ins and outs of dog fucking. The young murderer has now become friends with an adult dog fucker. And how messed up does it make me to admit that when I first read about this guy being a dog catcher who had sex with dogs, I immediately thought, I wonder if being sexually attracted to dogs made him like a really good dog catcher. I mean, right? I mean, he's going to have an extra level of incentive, of motivation to catch those dogs that most other dog catchers, I hope, just don't have. He knows if he doesn't catch that dog, you know, he's not getting laid. Or does that attraction make him a really inconsistent dog catcher? Like if he's looking for a sexy ass golden retriever, you know, there's not going to be a city big enough in the world

for that beautiful silky haired bitch to hide from him in. But if he's looking for some mangy sharpay and chihuahua mix, he's not going to bother, you know, really putting any effort into finding that prune-faced little fucker. His boss is going to be like, Gunther, you still need to go catch that sharpay mutt. Someone said it's hanging out in the park where the

first report came in. Go, right now, come on man. And Gunther's like, alright, alright, sorry, boss. I just kind of putting it off. It just, I don't know. It just doesn't do it for me. Tight hips, flat ass, big wrinkled head. I mean, it's practically unfuckable. What? I said I'll go grab that little boner killer right

now. God. Okay, no problem. Also, now that we're talking about this, what if a dog catcher caught your dog, and then hours later, when you pay a fine or whatever to get your dog back, you're positive that your dog has been fucked? What an uncomfortable situation. Like, what do you do in that situation? What do you do if you see some petroleum jelly

smeared all over your dog's butt, all the fur around there, it's walking funny. The dog catcher says some creepy shit like, hey, be sure and take good care of that little hot little side piece for me. He's a real good boy. He's a real, real good boy

You call that in? Because how uncomfortable is that call? You're like, hey, animal control? Yeah, I need to talk to you about one of your officers I'm 99% certain That one of your officers just buggered my beagle And I think maybe Did some other freaky stuff

I took out a jar of peanut butter and he helped He saw some of my wife's sex toys in the closet He started whimpering, shaking. Okay, now I'm done. Anyway, this creepy-ass dog catcher slash dog fucker taught young Peter how to do things that no one should do to dogs. And he quickly started doing those things.

It was the start of Peter's long love affair with fucking all sorts of quadrupeds. When he wasn't fucking neighborhood pets, the eldest Curt and son claimed to have been the primary target of much of his father's physical abuse over the years. Although he did well scholastically early on in grade school, his grades soon began to suffer

due to his home life, he would say. He would also later say that his schoolwork suffered, you know, which is probably fair. He often refused to return home from school, hiding in school buildings, in the woods, or in the surrounding area, maybe. I say maybe. This is all according to Peter, and he's such a manipulative weasel, as you'll soon see. He spent so much time

after getting caught clearly trying to get people to feel sorry for him and to not see him as a predator, but as a victim that I'm skeptical of some of his childhood claims. But his account of his childhood is pretty much all we have to go off of. So I'll continue to share his claims. Starting young, he said he would sometimes run away from home for extended periods. Looking back on his youth, he would call himself a real vagabond. Much of the time Junior Curtin spent on the street, much of the time that Junior Curtin spent on the streets was in the company of low-level street criminals and social outcasts who taught him how to commit petty crimes, initially just to eat and have clothes that

fit. Of this experience, while on trial for nine murders years later, he would tell Professor Berg, for weeks I would not return home. I used to steal money from women and children out shopping. Once I was caught at it and should certainly have been sent to the reformatory, but for the interference of my parents. In 1895, there's a change of scenery for the 12-year-old fledgling vampire and his kin. The Curtin family takes their crazy, drunken psycho genes to the city of Dusseldorf. They move into the borough of Grafenburg. No word on how big their place was here. Maybe it had two bedrooms, but probably not. Here, Peter would do well in school again, briefly. The year after moving, at the age of 13, he actually gets his first girlfriend.

She's smart, leggy, beautiful, outgoing, confident, friendly, very energetic. She did need a lot of exercise to be happy. All pretty typical for an Airedale Terrier. No, he has a relationship with a girl his own age. Human girl. While she's happy to allow Curtin to undress and fondle her a bit, she will not allow him to go any further. I mean, yeah, I mean, she's happy to allow Curtin to undress and fondle her a bit, she will not allow him to go any further. I mean, yeah, I mean, she's pretty young. This actually frustrates the young psychopath.

And to find a release for his new sexual urges, Curtin starts fucking all sorts of different four-legged animals. He graduates from banging neighborhood beagles and dachshunds, or whatever. I should have picked a breed that I feel more confident about. Beagles and German shepherds, to animals more commonly found on people's farms. Basically, his motto becomes, if it has four legs, isn't human, and has a butthole, I'm going to figure out how to stick my dick in it. Like we all once

did as energetic and sexually curious youths, he begins roaming the area just outside of town, looking for people's sheep and pigs and goats to fuck. Which he does, after sneaking into their stables. I mean, who hasn't been there? Boys! Boys will be boys! Uh, JK, you know that, right? And then at some point in his early teens, this budding sexual sadist finds out

that he really, really can get his rocks off if he's having sex with barnyard animals while also rapidly stabbing and slashing them to death. Holy shit. How does the thought to even try that pop up into a kid's head? This guy was super fucked up. I do think he probably didn't have a great childhood.

He probably was physically abused. His dad will get caught later raping one of his sisters and will go to prison for that. He for sure had a terrible childhood, but holy shit, fucking animals and stabbing them to death while doing so. Unless some dark, you know, some other dark sociopath teaches you to do that when you're a kid which peter will never claim how does that even occur to you to want to try unless you're

born with something really really wrong with your brain like whatever part of the brain contains empathy and compassion i don't think that part ever developed in old pd jr he described himself to dr berg uh really getting into this uh stabbing faster and faster with these animals as he would achieve orgasm I like to like the my god now. He's really fucked now He has connected sexual satisfaction with extreme violence and gore this connection will later lead of course to a lot of people's misery and death According to him it was seen smelling feeling the blood the actual blood splashed all over him. That's what specifically sexually excited him. So, you know, he's doing pretty well mentally right now. His brain forming all kinds of good connections, really hardwiring himself to become a productive and important member of society.

Can anyone come back from what he's done up to this point and become a decent person? I doubt it. Highly doubt it. I don't, I don't know that I believe in that level of rehab, right? Rehabilitation isn't miracle working. He's killed two kids. He's fucked a whole bunch of pets. Now he's fucking and stabbing barnyard animals and loving it. Not feeling guilty about it later.

Not feeling shame. Loving it. Coming so hard while experiencing another creature's painful death. My God, in the history of humanity, has anyone ever this fucked up as a teenager, later become a consistently decent adult? I'm going to go with a hard no. Peter finally took a break from violent farm fucking when a farmer actually witnessed Peter intensely stab fucking one of his pigs on his property. He barely got away. And then he put the brakes on this because he was afraid he'd get caught. Imagine being that farmer. That is

something you will never forget. Poor bastard. You hear some heavy breathing squealing in your barn. Come around the stall door to find some 14-year-old stab fucking one of your hogs. Guessing that farmer thought about that moment off and on for the rest of his days. Guessing that motherfucker woke up in a cold sweat from time to time. Maybe had a little less faith in humanity after that. Maybe went to church a little bit more.

Like 20 years later, you know, when he's spacing off, his wife is like, did I lose you again, Carl? Where'd you go? And in his head, he's like, son of a bitch, stab fucked my hog. He stab fucked it. I can't unsee that. I can never unsee that. Around this time, Peter Sr. encourages Junior to quit school and get his ass to work. And so he does. Dad wasn't really asking, more like do it or I'll beat you. He becomes an apprentice to a sand molder, his shithead dad's trade, not working under his dad, but working in the very same foundry. And a sand molder, by the way, is also referred to often as a sand caster. I had no idea what this trade was before this week. Casting is used to make metal components of all sizes, ranging from a few ounces to several tons, and sand molds can be formed to create

castings with fine exterior detail, inner cores, and other shapes. Some examples of items manufactured via sand casting are cylinder heads, valves, engine blocks, pump housings, machine tool bases, pulleys, engine manifolds, bearings, gears, bushings, brush holders, brackets, lever arms, electrical contact parts, hardware, machinery parts, nuts, and it's so much more. Very industrial job. Make a lot of important stuff we use every day. I won't bore you with lots of details, but you can make a cast of say a giant bolt out of molding sand, which bonds well, and then it holds a shape and can withstand high heat. Then you pour liquid steel into it, let it cool, then pop a giant steel bolt out. And later you can break

apart that molding. You can unbond the sand and then make a new mold. So it's pretty cool technology, been around for a while, pretty intense manual labor job. Especially back in the late 1800s, as a sand molder, you're working in a poorly ventilated, super hot factory with liquid metal all day. A lot of people getting hurt real bad, not getting big workman's comp settlements. You know, if you do get hurt, very tough job. And Junior, he didn't like it. You know, if only he could get a job stab fucking heifers or diddling Dalmatians, but those jobs didn't exist because he was living on earth and not in hell. Junior also didn't like continue to hang around his horrible father all day. That would change soon. In 1897, Peter's father would be sentenced to 18 months imprisonment for the crime of incest

with his eldest daughter. How long had that been going on? Those details are never revealed. Peter Jr. would later confess to Dr. Berg that he also raped his sister numerous times growing up. A real house of whores. Not as sexually charged as the Fred and Rose West household, but obviously beyond dysfunctional. Also in 1897, Jr. hits the two-year mark of being a sand molder apprentice and then then promptly quits Without his dad around to bully him Into it anymore he's done with that trade and done living At home he has other shit to do There's a big world outside of his parents

Apartment with lots of dogs and goats and stuff to Fuck you know there's needless and dangerous Fires to be started there's so many people's heads That no one is currently taking a hammer to That'll make sense later Junior stole all the money he could find in his family's home Plus what was last reported as, or later reported, is around 300 marks from his foundry employer.

And then he bails. Only 14 years old, he relocates south of Dusseldorf to a city called Koblenz, 150 kilometers or 93 miles away, about a 90 minute drive today. Longer trip, of course, in Peter's time. When in Koblenz, he meets a young woman who is a sex worker, just two years older than him, and they have a brief relationship. And speaking of her years later, he will claim that she willingly submitted to every form of

sexual perversion he demanded of her. And this is his first romantic relationship. One can only imagine what horrors that amounted to, right? Every sexual perversion he demanded. One does probably not want to imagine what that amounted to, right? Every sexual perversion he demanded. One does probably not want to imagine what that amounted to. Hopefully for her sake, no knives or hammers were involved. While he was having freaky, hopefully non-stabbing sex with a human, he was also committing a bunch of petty crimes. He would soon be arrested and charged with breaking and entering and theft and sentenced to what is reported in several sources as one month in prison. Please note that many of the details and dates for the next several years vary quite a bit from source to source. We went with our gut

as to what we think is most likely to be true. Like some sources, for example, will say he shacked up with a sexy ass Akita for a few days and then bounced when he met an Afghan hound who was super DTF. Others say he found a tight ass Dalmatian to knock it out with, fell in love, briefly considered marriage. One source says he hooked up with a Great Dane who was totally cool with him having an Irish setter side piece, also mixing things up in the bedroom with some border collies and Pomeranians from time to time. JK, of course. Sources don't vary on those details. They varied on non-violent crimes committed and frequency and length of prison stays, mostly. This early charge of breaking and entering and theft will lead to the first of many prison sentences for Peter

that at least would keep him off the streets and away from society for extended periods. These early periods of incarceration may have also turned a bad kid into a much worse man. That's what Peter would claim, but it feels like scapegoating to me. I don't think prison turned Peter into a monster at all. I think a rough combination of his upbringing,

genetics, and his own terrible choices did that for him. Peter would tell Dr. Berg that the appalling conditions of the area's prisons first turned Sure it did, dogfucker. He said that with each successive sentence, curtains rage against society. His capacity for being a stab-happy piece of shit increased. In one interview with Dr. Berg, he said, I don't want to omit describing my prison experiences because I'm convinced that in the light of them,

my whole subsequent life can be explained. So that's why the dog fucker who killed kids when he was nine and already raped his sister became a monster. Prison. Without prison, he'd have been a great dude. He probably would have saved Germany from Hitler or something. But prison, you know, gosh, gosh dang. Curtin said he discovered a fascination for brutal sexual acts while in solitary confinement, which enhanced his fantasies, so much so that he began to break prison rules to receive maximum time in solitary.

What exactly were these brutal acts? He will tell us soon. Curtin claimed to have committed his first murder, or at least attempted murder, as an adult shortly after getting out of jail in November of 1899 when he's just 16. In his 1930 confessions to investigators, Curtin said he picked up an 18-year-old girl off the street, persuaded her to accompany him to Hofgarten, a park in Dusseldorf, actually the first and oldest public park in all of Germany, established back in 1769, big park, over 30 acres of meadows alone. I don't work for the park service, but I thought it was very pretty. There he claimed to have had sex with her before strangling her into unconsciousness with his bare hands. He then quickly fled the scene, assuming her to be dead.

Must have learned how to do that in prison. But she, you know, luckily did not die. Shortly thereafter, 1900, Curtin was arrested for fraud. He would be rearrested later the same year on the same charge. Although on his second occasion, charges pertaining to his 1899 Dusseldorf thefts, plus the attempted murder of a girl with a firearm, a story he would never really talk about, just another random crime were added to the charges. He was a busy 17-year-old, and he's now sentenced to four years imprisonment in October of 1900. He will serve the full sentence in Derrendorf, a borough of Dusseldorf. After being released from prison again in 1904, the now 21-year-old is drafted into the military. He hasn't served

very long before deciding that he just doesn't like it. He'd rather not be there. So he just walks out of the barracks and deserts. And that was it for his military service. In the age of no computers and national databases, he sticks around in Dusseldorf and initially suffers no consequences for his desertion. And he now begins committing acts of arson because why not add setting a bunch of fires to your criminal record? He likes to set fires to some building and then he'll go sit somewhere nearby, watch for, you know, as emergency teams arrive on the scene. He likes to fantasize about people hopefully being trapped inside. Luckily, he didn't seem to have burned anyone alive from what we can

tell. Eventually, he's arrested for arson. Not easy to have a long, capture-free career as a fire starter when you never leave the scene of your fires. After being arrested, they realize this dipshit is also a military deserter, and he's tried by the military court. He'll later say, of the following seven years of his life, from 1905 to 1912, I spent much of my time spinning in my cell in Munster prison. My rages in my cell, which occurred periodically, were the result of harsh treatment. In Munster, I had sort of a prison psychosis. One day, I rolled myself up in silk under a table. Okay.

He said his crimes were explained by sheer want. I stole to eat. Got food under false pretenses. In 1909, I got a week in prison. 1910, six weeks, six months, three days, so on. To the extent of three quarters of the year. He's just trying to get food and maybe burn some people alive. That's all.

God, he's just trying to fucking live his Bernie life. While in prison during this time, he claims he developed deranged erotic fantasies, which will then cause him to spontaneously ejaculate while fantasizing about them later. He was now developing some kind of dark wizard-like dick control. Just needs to think about evil shit to come. God, and I thought my imagination was intense. It's not that intense. At least not where my dick's concerned. You know, he's like, if I'm going to finish, someone has to touch me. He's a diva. During his periods of release between these numerous prison spells, Curtin is responsible for various sexual assaults, loads of other crimes all over the area. According to Curtin's later confessions in 1913, the now 29-year-old commits a number of brazen thefts.

He says, It was my specialty to frequent at such times houses where the ground floors were utilized as business premises, in particular inns, where the proprietor and his family lived above. It was easy to search such premises without fear of discovery. For this purpose, I have even left Dusseldorf and gone to other towns. Then on the eve of his 30th birthday, he gets back to murdering. And we'll explore the dark details right after today's sponsor break. Thank you again for listening to our sponsors. Felt like the least disruptive place in this timeline to do that. Now we jump back into 1913, where Peter either murders for the first time

or for the first time as an adult. On May 25th, 1913, Peter Curtin kills a nine-year-old. I find it interesting that when he starts killing again, he kills a child the same age or roughly the same age as the two boys he supposedly drowned when he was nine. The unfortunate child's name was Christine Klein, and she was sexually assaulted and stabbed by Peter in her home in Cologne while her parents worked down in the pub below her bedroom.

Those poor parents. How could you ever get over knowing that your child was being brutalized and murdered right above you, just a couple feet away from you? Curtin quietly entered the building with the intent to rob the family, then sneak out undetected, but then he found nothing of value to steal. Then he came across Christine sleeping, and he was overcome with feelings of lust. He later said, I seized her by the neck with my hands and throttled her for one or two minutes. The child woke up and struggled, but lost consciousness. I had a small but sharp pocket

knife with me. I held the child's head and cut her throat. I heard the blood spurt and drip on the mat beside the bed. It spurted in an arch right over my hand. The whole thing lasted about three minutes. Then I locked the door again and went back home to Dusseldorf. Holy shit. Her uncle, who had had an argument with her father recently and threatened him that something terrible was going to happen, immediately falls under suspicion.

And then Curtin returns to the scene of the crime the next day by visiting a tavern across the street and is enthralled by the shock and horror the killing has invoked in the locals. Especially when the sexual assault becomes, you know, publicly known and makes it into the papers. And how fucked up is this? He had dropped an embroidered handkerchief at the scene of this crime, one that had his initials PK on it. That uncle's initials also happened to be PK. So he's arrested for his niece's murder.

Fortunately, the innocent uncle is eventually cleared of the murder given a lack of evidence. Curtin follows this trial with interest, will later admit to getting off on the public suffering of this poor innocent man and his family. He will watch some of the trial. He'll have to stifle laughter while he's watched. He's a piece of shit.

This creep, for several months after killing this poor girl, will visit her grave to touch the soil under which she's buried for more sexual satisfaction. He will jerk off on her grave. God, he's like he's a fucking monster. It's like a weird. I've never. That's I don't know.

I've gone over a lot of things, but that that specific image of my what? Short time later, Curtin will commit another sexual assault on a woman named Margaret Schaefer during the summer of 1913. In court many years later, Schaefer will recall the events like this. We walked in the woods the whole night. Curtin would not let me go home. He had my bag with my keys in it. He wanted to kiss me and he knocked me about, afterwards becoming friendly again. This guy's so crazy.

Then he threw me on a bench and tried to have sexual intercourse with me. In the struggle, my dress got torn and I cried. Then he became kinder again. This guy's so crazy. It's like the very devil himself i begged him to calm down for otherwise he would end in hell my words had some effect on him and he did calm down he made me swear that i would not tell anything to anybody we might meet this poor lady would then escape by alerting the wait staff of a restaurant they would go to together uh dude was a maniac uh my god she was so lucky to not have been raped or murdered uh curtain also admitted to attacking two people by stabbing them in the back with an axe around this time. Doesn't kill him. Just, you know, walks up to a stranger holding an axe and just slams him in the back and then fucking takes off.

Just trying out some new shit now. Following all kinds of dark urges. Sometimes, you know, he feels like setting a fire. Sometimes he feels like fucking a dog. Sometimes he feels like raping a lady in the park. Maybe sometimes he wants to break into a house and kill a kid. Maybe sometimes he wants to, you know,

bury an ax into a stranger's back. He just loves seeing blood, loved it, turned him on. Dude was sexually attracted to carnage. He admitted to attacking another woman who he says was between 18 and 20 years old in June of 1913. He struck her once hard with a blunt object, struck her in the head.

She crumbled, dropped without a sound. No one knows if she died or not. Then in July of 1913, he crept up on a man sitting on a bench at the park. He just smashed him over the head with a blunt object. Said he collapsed without a sound, doesn't know if he lived or not.

My God, it's like you'd just be walking along, see a stranger and think, I don't know what happened. If I just smashed him over the fucking head. And then, you know, maybe looked around, made sure no one else was watching, and then just did it. He just loved committing impulsive evil acts. Yeah, he'd smash somebody in the head, see their blood, and then either come right then and there or go masturbate to the thought of the blood soon thereafter. He also claimed to have never felt an ounce of remorse, any guilt about doing these things. He just didn't give a fuck about hurting people.

It was rare for Curtin to approach men during the entirety of his murder spree. It would happen only on three occasions. He preferred women and children, people who couldn't fight back as effectively. Also in July of 1913, he said he strangled another young female when he broke into her home. Her name was Gertrude Franken, and she was no more than 16 or 17 years old. Didn't quite kill her, but he choked her hard enough for blood to begin to come out of her mouth. When he saw the blood, he spontaneously ejaculated, and then he fled. He got what he wanted. Following year, his murder spree is put on hold. In early 1914, right before World War I breaks out, he is jailed for arson and burglary.

He just is like, he's constantly committing crimes. And because of his now lengthy criminal record, he gets a seven-year sentence and will serve all of it, staying behind bars until 1921. He spends a sentence in Brieg Penitentiary, which does not seem to exist anymore, at least not by that name. Later, he will tell Professor Berg, it was then that I became acquainted with disciplinary punishment in prison and the severest kinds. It was terrible what I suffered under it. I would describe it all as barbarous, and I suppose most men would do so today. Gosh, why are people being so naughty to him? Yes, he's in there for smashing people.

Actually, he's not in there for smashing people. He got caught for arson. But it's just funny to me that the guy who was, you know, out in public when he's free, just fucking bashing people, strangling, raping, hitting people with axes. He's like, that's barbarous, the way they would treat me. He explained that he was seen as a terrible inmate. He said while he was there, he fell victim to what he called cell madness and was unable to think logically. He said, I don't want to claim that all the punishments I got were all inflicted unjustly. My anger and

resentment were really directed against the prison officials who got me into trouble by their exaggerated reports on me. What a piece of shit. Always the same blame game with these assholes. He's being victimized for being a constant criminal by being punished he's being abused by prison officials who exaggerate these exaggerators are ruining his life i'm guessing they had the reasons for writing the reports as they did i love how he uh says he wasn't able to think logically in prison as if as if this fucking guy was ever logical. As if back before prison, you know, when he was randomly bashing strangers' heads in at the park

and burying axes in people's backs and stab fucking farm animals, you know, that was when he was logical. That's when he had all his logic and then he lost it when he went to prison. April 1921. After seven years are up, the vampire of Dusseldorf is back on the streets. He will say in April 1921, I was released from break.

Seven months of that sentence had been remitted because I carried a wounded official from the firing line on the occasion of a mutiny. On the other hand, I myself took part in that mutiny. Hilarious. They reduced his sentence because he helped a wounded official who'd gotten injured during a mutiny he'd helped create. The head warden of the Brigg Penitentiary would write a report about Curtin, an exit review of sorts, said Curtin appreciated every situation at once, and when the favorable moment arrived, used it adroitly for his own advantage. He had no consideration for his fellow prisoners. He tried to hoodwink the prison officials by extreme sycophancy. For example, when the man who usually said prayers before the convicts fell ill, Curtin volunteered at once. It was astonishing with how much piety he recited the evening prayers. Once he threw a box of felt slippers at an overseer. You seem to think I'm your messenger boy, he said.

He also tried to win the favor of the officials by betraying to them plans for attacks on them or of mutiny. So basically, he was an unscrupulous weasel who would just sell out whoever, you know, he could sell out if it would improve his situation. A fellow prisoner would say of him, Curtin was amiable and sly. Yep, sly. He's a weasel. He liked to hobnob with the officials. He was also capable of being brutal. He talked a lot about his sexual adventures. He told how once he had bitten a woman's genitals until the blood came. He said, that's the greatest enjoyment one can get. He then demonstrated how he would behave in doing it. What the fuck? He used to ask all the criminal sexual perverts questions and then give them advice. Too bad some guard didn't overhear some of this talk and then accidentally bashed this fucker's head flat. Following his release from prison, Peter, now 37 and about to turn 38,

moves 315 miles east of Dusseldorf to a city called Altenburg. It's actually closer to the city of Prague in the Czech Republic than it is to Dusseldorf. It was in Altenburg that this monster of a man would meet someone he actually seemed to care about. He met his future wife on May 12th, 1921. She was a former sex worker and shop owner

named Augusty Scharf, who had gone to jail herself for the murder of her fiance. So match made in hell. Augusti Scharf, who had gone to jail herself for the murder of her fiance. So match made in hell. Augusti Scharf was born in 1880, the daughter of a tailor. As a domestic servant, she traveled to Berlin in 1896, got hooked up with a bad crowd before being brought home. Yeah, before being brought home for naughty behavior in 1897. Then she had a job at a factory. In 1903, she began to have intimate relationships, some relations with a gardener, a relationship which would last for eight years.

Although this gardener promised to marry her and they were even engaged, he finally said, ah, nevermind, in 1911. And she did not take that rejection well. She quickly got a pistol and shot him dead as fuck. And she got thrown in prison for murder for four years. Released in 1915, she remained in Leipzig until 1920, working as a dressmaker, and then she took over a sweet shop in Altenburg. Ah, the murderer now working at a sweet shop. There she became acquainted with one of Peter's sisters, guessing one of the sisters he never raped. And in May of 1921, that sister introduced her to Curtin. And at first he was not interested because he was dating some other women. He was a man about town. Then he came around to liking her,

probably heard about her killing that guy and got his ween heart. And then the hopeless romantic approached her and threatened that he would push something between her ribs if she did not have sex with him. That's what he said. I imagine that being one of his main pickup lines. Along with, can I stab fuck you?

And, hey, can I throttle that puss? Or am I going to have to hammer your head? Your choice. The hammer line will make more sense later. Thinking he truly might kill her if she refused him, she reluctantly said yes, gave in. I think reluctantly. Don't have enough details about their romance

to really understand their dynamic. I think she may have actually cared about this maniac. So now the two are dating. Sounds like they may have been kind of a hostage situation that turned into some kind of Stockholm syndrome, but at least in Petey Jr.'s mind, they're dating now. They will date for almost two years. Then in 1923, Jr. threatens the future Frau Curtin.

Again, he tells her that he will kill her if she doesn't marry him. And she's like, oh, this guy does like me. And she says yes. And she will sadly go on to enable this monster and help so many more women get raped and killed. When they first married a young local woman named Oler that was threatening to bring a charge of rape against Peter and is threatening to bring a charge of rape against Peter.

And then Frau Kurden persuades her to drop the case. This is crazy. She did not deny that her husband had raped her, but described her husband as being otherwise good. Talk about low standards. You know, I just picture this horrible scenario. Yes, I'm sure he did rape you, older. I believe you. Yes, I believe you. He rapes me. He rapes everyone. That's how we started dating. He's a very rapey guy, but no one's perfect. I mean, good guys are hard to come by. Trust me. I've had to kill a man before. Some guys, they have no work ethic, never bring home any money.

Other guys, they chew their mouths open. It's hard to enjoy a meal around them. And then there are good guys like Peter. And yes, sometimes they hold a knife to your throat and they fuck you whenever they want, you know, but everyone has their faults. And other than the raping, he's a good guy. Peter and his new wife now spend the next four years living a life of relative normality.

He won't talk a lot later about these years, but I'm guessing, I'm guessing some, ah, he's doing something. No part of me believes that he was just like, oh, I'm not going to rape people anymore. I'm not going to bash people anymore. I'm just going to live on the straight and narrow. Uh, but, but he has no criminal record from this part of his life. And he doesn't discuss it again at length with Dr. Berg later. He, uh, He finds work once

again as a sand molder, becomes active in the trade union. About their marital relations around this time, Frau Curtin will later say, Peter was very excitable and he bullied and shouted. But when, this is all just so sad and crazy. But when I remained quiet, he too soon calmed down. For my part, I have taken all things as a punishment for my own old life. Oh, all right. The Altenburg period was by far the best. There he was home loving and took part in club life. It was in Altenburg that Curtin left the Catholic church, but only because of the tax. Not until we came to Dusseldorf were we married in church. That was on the advice of the prison priest. But Curtin never wanted to hear about going to church

or about God either. She would say that he would often force her to have sex when she didn't want to as well in Altenburg. So, you know, he was a verbally abusive rapist. And that's when he was at his best. Those were the good years. That's when he was really kind of keeping his shit together. Peter, of course, not able to keep his shit compare uh comparatively together for very long uh he soon found himself in uh you know unexplainably drawn back to dusseldorf where his criminal desires intensified he began committing petty crimes and setting fires

again he initially made the move alone sending money back home to his wife then in 1925 augustine joins him in dusseldorf on the night of his arrival he observes the sunset was blood red on my return he will say I consider this to be an omen symbolic of my destiny oh boy here we go he'd soon begin committing more arsons and rapes preludes to his murder spree of 1929

that coincided with a huge economic collapse Germany would arguably suffer more than any other nation that year as a result of a recall of US loans following the stock market crash in the U.S., combined with severe World War I reparations. In 1925, Peter has affairs with two local maids named T.D. and Mitch. To impress them, he pretended he was 10 years younger than he was, and they did a great job. And then he would start choking T.D. by the throat during sex. And when she got angry about that, he would pacify her by saying, that's what love means. Okay.

Excuse me. Curtin's wife discovered these affairs, confronted the women, telling them he was a married man. And then the affairs would continue with a relationship with Mitch somehow lasting until his final arrest, according to some sources. And these are two of many affairs his wife would learn of. She would often see her husband walking down the street with another woman Catch him in bed with another woman But she always forgave him She said it was the only way she could stay married to him

If she stuck up for herself, he would threaten suicide So it sounds like they have a really fun marriage While clearly this marriage was not amazing for her Peter, after his final rests, would say they had a fantastic marriage He'd say, my relations with my wife were always good I did not love her in the sensual way, but because of my admiration for her fine character. Back to his relationship with the two girls, Titi and Mitch, at least one of these affairs, no surprise here, not consensual. Titi ended up pressing charges against Peter,

claiming Curtin had raped her. I'm sure he did. The charges held up in court. Curtin ascends to his fifth prison sentence, this time sadly for only six months, maybe less. Peter would later say, I got two months imprisonment for attempted seduction. Uh-huh. During the trial, I defended myself vigorously against the charge, but I got the two months and I did it in 1927. Then Metsch and T.D. met and Metsch cut up Ruff and charged me with rape, but I was acquitted. They cut up Ruff. They victimized him. He was just, you know, choke fucking, you know, against their wishes.

And then they ganged up and TD tattled. Tough break. He says, then she charged me with using threats and insulting behavior. For that, I got eight months imprisonment. I served six months, two being remitted on my undertaking to leave Dusseldorf. That wasn't so easy. So I wrote the ministry with the result

that that condition was canceled. The ministry would later regret canceling the condition for him to leave greatly. After he was released from prison, he would eventually go on a pretty terrible strangling spree. Before that spree, not surprisingly, he said some pretty creepy shit in prison. A fellow prisoner named Clouth said, Curtin thought a lot of his wife, but he also said, I like veal best, something I can really tease in the dark and quiet places. That's some creepy shit to say. And then he goes,

I asked, are you a pervert? He answered, even old goats like to eat a green leaf now and then. A change is nice. Eh? The same prisoner would later come forward with his own suspicions about Kirt in 1929 over a murder. I liked that he asked, are you a pervert? I imagine that question coming after tales of stab fucking barnyard animals. And cloth just isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Like it takes a long time for it to dawn on him that this guy's a pervert. Oh, so you stabbed the goat while you throttled it, huh? Hey, wait a minute. Are you a pervert? Still in 1925, that summer, Peter picks up a woman named Maria Kiefer at the park. They have consensual sex in the cellar of a nearby warehouse. And he grabs her by the throat and strangles her, not consensual, with the intent to kill her then and there.

A tough meat sack, she manages to fight him off and escape, yelling loudly, so he quickly leaves the area. She will later testify at his trial for murders. In the spring of 1926, Curtin attacks another woman who will also get away. Her name was Maria Wach. She will later recall the incident like this. In June of 1926, I became acquainted with a man who called himself Fritz Kettler.

I was cleaning the doorstep when he accosted me. We made an appointment and inside three weeks, we had been out five times. So I'm guessing she's a sex worker, made an appointment. I mean, maybe it's a date. Kettler was an employee of the railway and behaved decently in every way, she said. One Sunday, he suggested that we should go to the Grafenburg, you know, that big park in Dusseldorf. Dusk had fallen in the woods and we were passing a bench when he suddenly seized me,

flung me on it, and groped me with his hand under my skirt. I defended myself. Okay, so maybe just a date. Apparently, passersby frightened him for he desisted. I jumped up, grabbed his hat, and ran away. He called after me asking for his hat. He then exchanged his hat for mine and made the remark that I ought to be human. There he left me standing and made off. The translation is so weird sometimes with this. It's like these reads so weird. What an odd exchange after an attempted rape. Like you're running away and this person's like, hey, give me my hat back. Then you stop

like, oh, oh yeah, yeah. Sorry. I forgot I had your hat. Then you give the guy that just tried to rape you your hat. Here's your hat. And that guy's like, you ought to be more human. Oh, okay, sorry. And then just go on your own separate ways. The following year, 1927, now 44-year-old Peter Curtin commits five major acts of arson to barns and plantations. He also strangles at least one more woman who will get away again.

Then in 1928, he sets at least 10 major fires, including a forest fire. Oh my God. He confesses to no known strangulations for this year. He will later confess to many in 1929. 1929 will be the year this monster will truly become the vampire of Dusseldorf. And now we are at 1929.

February 3rd, 1929, the first of the year of terror murders, as the press will call them, will be enacted. On this cold winter's day, a woman named Frau Kuhn. If I didn't say before, Frau was just like Mrs. in German. So, yeah, if I didn't make that clear, sorry. So Mrs. Kuhn stopped around 9 p.m. on a road in the Flingern district of Dusseldorf. Flingern, a former blue-collar borough of Dusseldorf, would be home to many of Peter's attacks.

Located northeast of Dusseldorf proper, it's divided into two boroughs today, Flingernord and Flingernsud. Kjorten simply walked up to Frau Kuhn, grabbed her by the coat with one hand, said, Good evening, don't scream. Then with his free hand, just immediately started stabbing her. He rapidly stabbed her over and over and over. She screamed for help. You know, his instructions to not scream, don't carry a lot of weight when he's trying stabbing her. He rapidly stabbed her over and over and over. She screamed for help. You know, his instructions to not scream, don't carry a lot of weight when he's trying to kill her.

And then Peter runs off. As always, he is overjoyed. The sight of the fresh gushing and squirting blood he ejaculated in his pants during the stabbing. Amazingly, Frau Kuhn lived despite 24 stab wounds. Head, torso, and arms. Just fucking went off. Compared to most of the rest of the victims he would attack in 1929, she would actually be lucky. Six days later, February 9th, about 9 a.m.

Once again in the Flingern district. Some men on their way to work find the body of a young girl of only about eight or nine lying under a hedge, Rosa Oliger. It was really only by chance her body was discovered as it was hidden and covered in a cloak. Her clothing partially burnt, her underwear actually still smoldering when she was discovered. The tiny body of Rosa smelled like she had been doused in gasoline. An examination of her clothing revealed bloodstains from multiple wounds to her breast, wounds made quite obviously through the clothing. On the inner part of the victim's underwear near her genitalia were two small bloodstains.

Later, under microscopic examination, seminal fluid was found there. Peter later admitted to climaxing during the attack, but not in the girl's vagina. In the vagina, there was fluid blood, which had flowed from a wound a centimeter in length at the entrance of the vaginal cavity. After the autopsy, investigators thought

that Peter's objective was not sex, but that he inserted a finger that had already been covered in semen into her vagina. Just what the fuck? The autopsy also showed that the burning had charred the upper parts of her thighs, neck, chin. The hair on her head was burned down to a black charred mass with many patches burned completely off. On her left breast, there was a group of 13 stab wounds. The many stab wounds on her left breast tightly grouped within a few inches of one another. It appeared that Peter stabbed the girl while she was unconscious and laying on the ground.

This was backed up by no defensive wounds on her hands or arms. Five of the wounds penetrated the heart. Three more penetrated her liver. It was speculated that death had come quickly from internal hemorrhaging from the wounds to her heart. There was also some evidence that besides stabbing Rosa, Peter had strangled her.

It also became apparent that the young girl was attacked and killed somewhere else. The scene of the crime had no blood, no calls for help had been heard in the highly populated neighborhood. Later, it was realized that it happened just after Rosa was visiting with a friend of hers. And Rosa's friend told her to hurry back and get home before dark. So she took a public footpath, a little trail that was a shortcut, and it led her to the fucking devil. Peter loved when his crimes would make it to the news, and the more heinous they were, the more news it would make. This particular crime, you know, got a lot of coverage in the press. He intentionally began killing his victims in more shocking ways to get more press so he could then get off further on those crimes.

He visited the crime scenes, you know, as often as he could, as much as he felt like he could without raising suspicions. He would even talk to investigators. The more they would talk to him, the more erect he got. How hateable is this guy? After doing what he did to that little girl, I would sign off on someone covering his body with like a thousand little cuts and then dumping him into a big tank of salt water full of hungry sharks, or maybe burying him up to his neck in an anthill, covering his ears, eyes, nose with honey. Let the feeling of those ants burrowing into his head drive him mad before he dies of exposure or dehydration. I wish those ombre asino ants I made up a long time ago were real and could be unleashed on him. Or maybe those roanoke recluse spiders. Maybe the two of those insects working together. Just five days later, Dusseldorf would

be rocked by another gruesome murder, one of Kirtan's rare attacks on men. This time it was a 45-year-old mechanic named Herr Scheer, Mr. Scheer, who would also be the victim of multiple rapid-fire stab wounds, 20 of them, 16 of them in his neck. One stab penetrated his temple, which caused severe hemorrhaging to the brain. Another stab in the neck caused bleeding into his spinal cord. Stabbed in the back, also. No defensive wounds. It was speculated he was attacked from behind, like the back stab came first and then bleeding out

and in shock, killed by one of the blows to either his neck or head. She had just left a beer house that night and was by all accounts in a drunken state. He's walking home drunk and the vampire of Dusseldorf sees him and just thinks, ah, fuck it. Why not stab this dude I've never met a whole bunch of times? That'll probably help me come.

Curtin again returns to the scene of the crime to relive the moment. Again, speaks to detectives about the murder. In less than two weeks, two exceptionally violent murders, one attempted murder have taken place. Authorities have no clue as to who the killer is. But investigators are seeing a pattern. All three victims have been attacked in isolated parts of Flingern. Victims were stabbed repeatedly in small groupings. but investigators are seeing a pattern. All three victims have been attacked in isolated parts of Flingern. They were, victims were stabbed repeatedly

in small groupings. Each of the two murder victims had stabbed one to the temple. None of the crimes were done with the intention to steal anything. Sensationalist German press covered the attacks extensively when they discovered that investigators

believed the attacker might be also drinking the blood of his victims, which it doesn't seem he was. He was immortalized in the press as the Vampire of Dusseldorf. So that's how he gets his name. So truly a monster, but actually doesn't seem to have been a vampire.

Then a strange monkey wrench is thrown into their investigation. About six weeks later, a 20-year-old mentally handicapped man named Stausberg is arrested. He had also attacked some women in the area, two at least. This is how he described his attack

on a woman identified as Frau Kuhn. I had gone to Gershom in Dusseldorf to look for work. Then I walked. A woman was walking in front of me. It was dark. I gripped her on the breast and stabbed the woman first in her head. Then I went on stabbing. Blood came immediately after the first stab.

She fell down. I stabbed into her heart. She shouted for help. I ran away. I couldn't help it. She shouted for help. I ran away. I couldn't help it. What the hell was going on in Dusseldorf in 1929? A lot of women just getting stabbed out in public. 24 hours later, Stausberg would attack again.

Here is Frau Flake, the second victim's account of her attack. On the 3rd of April, 1929, I was walking from the place where I used to work in the north part of the town by an ill-lit street. I heard steps behind me. I saw a man coming. I walked more slowly in order to let him pass. The man must have jumped at me very quickly because suddenly something was flung over my head and I was jerked violently backwards. I was pulled from the road into the field. I could not shout for the man had tried to push a handkerchief into my mouth. I clenched my teeth. He said half aloud, open your mouth.

He tightened the loop still more than he listened to see whether I'd still breathed and held his hand in front of my mouth. He then hauled me another 10 meters. I heard steps approaching and tried to shout, but couldn't. I struggled with my legs. It was then that I was released and the man turned and ran across the field.

I loosened the loop and dragged myself towards some people who were standing in the road. With this info, the police now think that they have found their serial killer. Stausberg is able to provide great details for the two attacks I just mentioned. And despite being illiterate and therefore unable to read the accounts of other murders in the paper, he also gave accurate details to Peter Curtin's murders of nine-year-old Rosa and 45-year-old Shear. So case closed, right? No, Stasberg is not the first maniac we've come across in true crime explorations who confesses to crimes he did not commit.

Under the German criminal code, Stasberg is not tried due to his limited intellectual ability and instead is sent to an asylum and put in a straitjacket. A few months later, authorities realize their year of terror is not over and they had not caught the man they had hoped to catch. By late August of 1929, it became apparent that there was still a vampire on the loose. Stausberg had not been quite as prolific as investigators had hoped when they caught him. Dusseldorf women keep being murdered or disappearing. girl named Maria Hahn disappears. More on her in a bit. In the western Dusseldorf suburb of Lierenfeld on August 21st, three separate people, all stabbed by the vampire,

while making their way home at night in three separate incidents. All in the span of a single hour. Guy went fucking bananas. While walking to a church square, a woman named Frau Montell was attacked by Kirtan, who said, may I accompany you, Frau Lin? When she didn't answer, he immediately stabbed her in the back and then runs off. Same night, he approaches a woman named Anna Goldhausen and reportedly doesn't even say anything before she is stabbed right between the sixth and seventh ribs, penetrating her liver and stomach, leaving her permanently debilitated. Again, in the same

hour, in the same area of town, a man named Heinrich Kornblum is accosted and stabbed in the back by a guy who runs off. Peter's crazy ass just literally running around town fucking stabbing people. All three of these victims would live. Just four days later, August 25th, the vampire will kill again two more children. It was Sunday at about six in the morning when the bodies of five-year-old Gertrude Hamaker and her 14-year-old adopted sister Louisa Lenzen are found in another Dusseldorf neighborhood. They'd gone to the marketplace on the previous evening, had failed to return home. During that night, a search is made for them in every public place and thoroughfare between the marketplace and their house. They are found separately. One of their

bodies lay in a bean patch, the other one in a freshly turned vegetable bed, both found within just 200 meters of their home. Their genitalia had been unharmed, but they were both strangled and had their throats slit. So sad, at around 9.15 that Saturday evening, the sounds of a child crying, Mama, Mama, are reportedly heard. Gertrude, again, just five, had bled to death from a wound in the right carotid artery, which was completely severed. Her throat was left gaping open with her larynx almost completely severed as well. Louisa, the 14-year-old, was also left with wounds to the right side of her throat and traces of a beating as well. She'd been stabbed four times, three times on the right side of the spine that penetrated the lung and abdominal

cavity, while another wound passed through the left lung and into her aorta. It was becoming obvious to investigators, including Dr. Berg, who followed the case before he became Peter's psychiatrist, that the murders were the handiwork of a sadist. Either they were purely lust murders, sheer killing for the sake of lustful excitement without actual sexual violation of the children, or the murderer had been disturbed and alarmed before he could consummate his purpose.

People all over Germany are now absolutely horrified by the news of these crimes. The vampire of Dusseldorf is attacking their children. Man, these poor Germans. Things are horrible for many, but not nearly as bad as they will soon get for so many. I picture Hitler reading about these crimes and thinking,

you're outraged by this? Oh, shit. You motherfuckers ain't seen nothing yet. Those two girls were not the only people Peter attacked that day. There was also Gertrude Schult. Schult was a 26-year-old maid who was approached by a strange man calling himself Baumgart. She was visiting an outdoor market at Neuss across the river from Dusseldorf when he came to the meadows that flanked the Rhine River. And I swear that the name of this city, N-E-U-S-S, I listened to numerous pronunciation videos, is pronounced almost exactly like

Neuss. Neuss! I love it. Anyway, Peter convinces Gertrude to walk with him in Neuss. And they sit down at some point. Curtin then makes a number of inappropriate sexual advances. Not noise! When she was not interested

and tries to leave, Peter holds her down, tries to remove her underwear. She frantically defends herself, saying, I would rather die. And then he responds by stabbing her in the throat and saying, then you shall die.

Really not noise! Peter then stabs her multiple times, so hard, with so much force that during one thrust, the knife blade breaks off into her body. She is found by a small group of young people, somehow still barely clinging to life. They rush her to the hospital.

She'll have had several wounds to her head and neck. The damage was so great to her vertebrae that she was unable to ever use her left leg again, but she would survive. And the broken piece of knife blade that was found in her first lumbar vertebrae is traced to a local store that sold Solingen knives. So finally a clue. This attack would be the first big break in the curtain case. That part's noise. Schultz able to describe her attacker in great detail. She described him as a pleasant looking male around 40 years old.

Sadly, before authorities catch this male, many more will die. And each new attack is more widely publicized than the last, throwing the population of Dusseldorf into a panic as the victim count climbs. September 29th, 1929. On another Sunday, the vampire of Dusseldorf will continue to fulfill his barbaric desires. A housekeeper named Ida Reuter, finally get a first name on these people,

left her job in Barman, 21 miles east of Dusseldorf at 4 p.m. and she never made it home. The next morning around 7 a.m., her she never made it home. The next morning, around 7 a.m., her body is found in some meadow beside the Rhine. She is left with her bare legs spread, her clothing ripped off of her, her genitals exposed. There were extensive drag marks that went on for 70 meters from the banks of the Rhine, where she was likely first attacked. Her head was bruised deeply, and upon autopsy, it was determined the weapon of choice this time appeared to be a square-faced hammer. Now the hammer shows up.

The hammer's going to be around for a while. Peter bashed her in the head repeatedly until she died. And then when she was dead, he sexually penetrated her corpse, as indicated by vaginal tearing and seminal fluid found at the crime scene. Oh, my God. So less than a month later, this necrophiliac kills again. Oh my God. So less than a month later, this necrophiliac kills again.

On October 12th, 1929, Elizabeth Dorrier, another housekeeper or maid, found beaten in a similar way in Dusseldorf, hammer style to the head, repeatedly, once again in the Flingern area. She would be found in a coma

and would die the next day. Unlike Ruiter, Seaman was not left at the crime scene, but like several other cases, her vagina was torn and showed obvious signs of rape. It's thought he was interrupted mid-act. It was clear to police and the public that the two attacks were committed by the same

man using the same distinctly square hammer. Another attack takes place October 25th. Late that afternoon, 34-year-old Frau Muir is on her way home from work, once again in the Flingern district. She's accosted by the vampire. As he aggressively pursues her, this guy's like out of a horror movie, he taunts her, saying, aren't you afraid? Quite a lot of things have happened here already. My God. She tries to ignore him. He continues to walk beside her. And then the next thing she remembers is waking up in the hospital. He cracked her on the head and then forehead first and then

over the right ear with that trusty hammer. Miraculously, she not only survived but was released as cured in just two weeks. God, I bet that was a rough two weeks of recovery.

I hope they gave her a lot of painkillers. I cannot imagine the headache you would have after some maniac cracks you twice in the skull with a fucking hammer. Very same evening

that Frau Muir is attacked, so is another woman, Frau Wanders. She's accosted by Hammer Happy attacked, so is another woman. Frau wanders. She's accosted by Hammer Happy Petey in the heart of Dusseldorf. She'd been a regular sex worker downtown for years, like so many times before. She thought she'd found a new client when she met Peter. At first, they negotiate over prices. Then out of nowhere, he just whips out that hammer and smashes her in the head. Knocks her out. Then he hits her a few more times. We're running off thinking she's dead. Incredibly,

she regains consciousness soon, makes her way to the nearest police station where officers took her to a hospital. She had four head wounds, a depression fracture over her left ear,

two depression fractures on the crown, one on the right temple. Dude loved hammering people in the head. Thank God that little dog fucking weasel wasn't strong enough

to kill a good amount of the people he hit. Unfortunately for investigators and victims' families, neither of the two women that were attacked that night could give a great description of Dusseldorf's hammer-wielding vampire. And I gotta say, I find these quick-hit hammer attacks weirder than the murders. I just can't recall an equivalent string of crimes.

I mean, sure, other serial killers have often left behind victims who have lived that they thought were dead, but Peter leaves a lot of them alive. It makes him seem like he's just a really lazy murderer. Like he doesn't, he doesn't put a lot of thought in this. Doesn't, doesn't patiently stalk people or break into a home where others can't see what he's going to do. He just sees someone he wants to bash for the most part. Maybe he just gets a little horny. He's like, oh man, I'd love to come. I can bash them in the head. Just impulsive and reckless. He'll explain it a bit later,

his reasoning here after he gets caught. I'm surprised he didn't get caught earlier in this spree. One interesting theory I came across that may explain some of these quick hit hammer attacks is that on each and every occasion, Peter went crazy and started bashing strangers and running off. He would later tell investigators

that he had drank a fuckton of Whipple! Gunther Whipple here, Whipple president and CEO of Fuck You. Yeah, Whipple was founded in Germany, and yes, sometimes it makes you take a hammer and start swinging. Who cares? Life is a house. Some people are hammers, and some people are nails, and some people can eat my dick. Will Whipple make you want to kill strangers? Yeah, yeah maybe that's a risk go-gators are willing to take you like impressions here's mine of you i'm a fucking cry baby who won't drink whipple because i'm afraid of going to prison for murder drinking up whipple you could be the ceo of fortune 500 company or end up with 10 sentences 10 life sentences who gives a shit go big or go drown yourself in a kiddie pool, bitch baby.

Fuck you. Fuck your family. And drink Whipple. Now available with vanilla mace and hamburger shotgun flavors. So yeah, those Whipple ads are not going away anytime soon. They might maybe pass out from lack of properly breathing though. November 7th. If you're very confused, well, listen to a previous episode.

November 7th, 1929. In the same Flingern district, five-year-old Gertrude Alperman is last seen alive around 7 p.m. Sadly, he was plenty strong enough to overpower and kill her. Two days later, her body is found in an isolated place

lying against the wall of a house next to a footpath. She's faced downward. Her legs are left spread open, fully clothed, but obvious by her torn underwear that they had been removed and then put back on. This was among the most brutal, if not the brutal, of all the crimes so far. The autopsy revealed just the absolutely depraved and

sadistic, heartless nature of Peter. There were two stab wounds on the left side of her head and 34 more stab wounds in the breast and torso. She's five. Nine stabs penetrated her heart. Two head stabs or two stabs to her head appears to cranium fissures. Five deep knife wounds damage her liver, her lungs, stomach, kidney, spleen, all damaged by, you know, stabs. Her vagina filled with blood, her anus ripped and torn. Jesus Christ. Once again, sperm found on the scene, this time in the vagina, believed by investigators and Dr. Berg that she had been raped after

she died. After finding the body of this poor little girl, what the police called a murder letter is received by investigators. So this is new. It was posted the day before and addressed to a local communist newspaper. Easy Bojangles. It said where to find the body, which he'd already done.

It also mentioned where to find a second body buried at the edge of the woods. Peter never says exactly why he wrote this letter. I'm guessing he just got off on taunting the cops. Just a new thrill for him.

Gave him a harder boner or something. Everything this guy did was his horrific stuff was all based on his fucking dick. On November 15th, police followed the communications

instructions, started digging, and they indeed find another body. It was the body of Maria Hahn, young local woman, age not listed in sources, who had disappeared in early August. It had been on another Sunday that Hahn had gone missing, August 11th. Hahn had the day off, was last seen in a beer garden with a man not far from where her body was found. Although her body had lain in the ground for three months now, it was quite well preserved. She had similar wounds to the other victims, though the weapon of choice this time thought to be scissors.

God, that seems even more barbaric than the hammer. I don't know if you had to be attacked by a hammer or scissors. Which would you pick? Oh my God, that's a terrible choice. That's a terrible choice. If you had to be shot, hammered, or scissored. Oh my God. I think, ah, they're all so bad i think shot i think i'd rather be shot than hammered or scissored and i think i would rather be hammered than scissor attacked i'm not sure it's also

terrible uh yeah three deep stab wounds to the left temple into the brain a group of seven stabs in her neck 10 knife wounds to her chest, two penetrated her heart. This motherfucker loved to stab people in the heart. Dr. Berg wrote of her wounds, the vagina was large and undamaged. The anus gaped wide, permitting the passage of three fingers, excrement, and dried up brown leaves visible in it. The rectum was obviously also large, and when dissected, it was found to be 12 centimeters in diameter. There were no wounds in it. Tests for spermatosa were negative. When I first read this, I was super tired

and I found the description so extra creepy because I didn't understand why he was saying large. I didn't understand the point Dr. Berg was trying to make here. Like if her vagina was undamaged, I thought like, well, why would you need to talk about it being large? Right, that's just so weird.

Just some police chief, how's our victim's body, coroner? Was she sexually assaulted like I suspect? No, chief, she was not. But I think you know, police chief. How's our victim's body, coroner? Was she sexually assaulted like I suspect? No, chief, she was not. But I think you'll find this interesting. She has a very large vagina. Is that a sign that she may have been sexually assaulted? No, it's not. I just, I've never seen one like that. It's very large. Just found that interesting. I wanted to tell someone about it. When I read further, this description makes sense. He believed that Han had also been violated sexually in both the vagina and rectus,

why they were large, but the decomposition made it difficult to be sure. While some sources we found say that the vampire's attacks continue after this, most say they are over as of early November 1929. Dr. Berg later wrote in his book, With the Olbermann case, the series of murders and attacks in Dusseldorf ceased. The winter remained quiet. The Dusseldorf murderer had not been apprehended, despite the fact that an enormous police machine had been set in motion against him.

Because of this failure, the press launched an attack against the police, in my opinion, unjustly. The newspapers and the public at large condemned police for failing to catch the vampire of Dusseldorf. Berg believed it was just, you know, incredibly difficult and confusing to try and catch this guy. You know, made more confusing and difficult and confusing to try and catch this guy. You know, made more confusing and difficult by that false confession of Stausberg.

Berg describes why it was so complicated saying, where a series of crimes are committed, the same technique inevitably suggests the same criminal. That is an old aphorism of criminology. But just this very thing is missing in our cases. Certainly there were points in common. In five murders, the sexual motive was perfectly clear from the condition of the genitals. In other cases, that of the murdered Shear or the stabbed Kornblum, or again in the case of Frau Muir, it could not be definitely

demonstrated. In a different category was the type of outrage that began with the strangling of the older child. Hamaker, Lenzen, Alberman, these were cases in which throttling was a common feature, but among the surviving victims, throttling was not employed. Further, the multiplicity of stabs in the one series of victims and the absence of stabbing in the case of the other series, along with the hammer blows, all argued against one and the same criminal.

Makes sense. The vampire did not have a consistent modus operandi. And that made it more difficult to catch him. And also throttling, a weird word showing up again. Some of these translation issues made it very confusing for me when I was first going through this. For a while, I thought they were using throttling as a synonym for rape, and that seemed so

weird to me. Like imagine someone in English using that term like a rape trial. The prosecution wants to paint my client as a serial throttler No, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my client has never throttled anyone Does he look like a throttler to you? Sexual acts are all consensual The only thing getting throttled in this courtroom is my client's constitutional rights I figured out contextually, I think

That when they say throttled, they're talking about a quick succession of stab wounds Like stabbing, throttling somebody with his knife, which makes way more sense. Six months later, another letter shows up and it brings Peter down. It was not one written by him and not intended for the police to even see, actually. A lucky accident after all this leads to Peter's final arrest. Very odd way for this crime spree to end. May 14th, 1930 sees the start of a chain of events that finally results in the capture of Curtin. Curtin would describe it all in his own words later saying, oh yeah, and I'm going to get into this.

But first, there's a bunch of names for small German side streets in this description. I'm sure some fluent, you know, somebody fluent in German will know how to say, but that person's not me. There's no pronunciation guide for these little side streets. So I'll do my best. Peter said, I saw a man accost a young girl at the railway station and go off with her. Out of curiosity, I followed the couple. When the man wanted to go into the dark place with the girl, she resisted him. I seized the opportunity and approached the couple. I asked him what he meant to do with the girl. He replied that the girl had no lodging and that he proposed to take

her to his sister. At this point, the girl asked me whether the Achenbach and Strasse was in that neighborhood. It's a street. I did find it on a map. It was there the man's sister was supposed to live. When I assured her very convincingly that the street was in an entirely different neighborhood, she stepped to my side and the man made off very quickly. We returned. The girl told me that she was out of work and had nowhere to go. She agreed to come with me to my room at Metzmana Strasse, another street, 71.

Round about 11 o'clock, we got to my room, which is on the third floor. Then she suddenly said she didn't want any sexual intercourse and asked me whether I couldn't find her some other place to sleep. I agreed.

We went by Trom to Vorrngeplatz and onwards to Grafenbackelwald, going along to the Wolfesschlacht until we came to the last of the houses. Here I seized, uh, Bootlis. She's described by different names and sources slightly different, but most of them is Bootlis. Uh, I seized her with one hand by the neck, pressing her head back very hard and kissing her. Sounds very rapey, very forced. I asked her to let me have her. I thought that under the circumstance, she would agree and my opinion was right. Afterwards, I asked whether I had hurt her. She denied. I wanted to take her back to the tram,

but I did not accompany her right to it because I was afraid that she might inform the police officer who was standing there. So clearly not consensual. I had no intention of killing Bootlis. She offered no resistance. We had sexual intercourse standing after I'd pulled down her knickers. There was another reason why I could not do anything to her if I had been seen by a friend in the tram. I did not think that Bootlis would be able to find her way back again to my apartment in the rather obscure Mitzmaner Strasse. So much the more was I surprised when on Wednesday, the 21st of May, I saw Bootlis again in my house. Initially ashamed over this incident, Bootlis has no intention of going to the police, but

a letter she wrote to a friend about the attack, intended for her eyes only, is incorrectly delivered. And the recipient of the letter realizes that, yeah, this is clearly not a consensual sexual encounter she's talking about. They call the police. Hail you, anonymous do-gooder. Hail the police who then track down Boothley's, persuade her to press charges. Fucking crazy-ass

Peter. I love how that psychopath saw this incident. He read, the way he talked about it, he wouldn't say rape. It's like he's almost kind of tried to twist it into being consensual. Like, I asked her if she wanted to have sex, and she said no. And then I violently grabbed her, you know, and I violently grabbed this young lady looking for a place to sleep, you know, and she's scared. But she didn't say no, so I fucked her standing up, and I don't know what she's so upset about. I wonder if there has to be some people out there who actually,

rather than just rationalize it, they're actually too dumb to understand when someone doesn't really want you to fuck them. Makes me wonder how many rapists in prison right now are actually more stupid than they are wicked. Just too dumb to understand the difference between consent or lack of consent. And that doesn't make me feel sorry for them, by the way. Not really.

Actually, for the greater public good, if you're intellectually incapable of understanding sexual consent, well, you should never, ever roam free because you're a rabid dog. You're a walking time bomb. Bootleys recalls, recalled, would recall

Curtin's apartment clearly when she talked to investigators. And she returned there with the police on May 21st, 1930. And when Curtin sees her, he makes a quick escape. Curtin explains the last few days of his freedom saying,

on Wednesday, the 21st of May, I happened to look over the banisters and saw Bootleys and recognized her. She can be recognized easily. She has very fair hair, is slant-eyed and bow-legged. Weird. She left the house again at lunch. Not her description would be weird.

Her being weird, just his description weird. Okay, fair hair, slant-eyed and bow-legged. That's the first three things you're going to say. She left the house again at lunchtime. She came back, this time with a police officer. I saw her stand in the entrance doors, speak to the landlady. Then in the afternoon, she came again to the house, this time coming up to our floor. She entered the flat of the Vimmers and saw me. So some neighbors of his, she was startled. I think it is likely that she recognized me then I knew what would happen after that. So

now he knows the end is near. And it seems as if he's only worried about one thing when it comes to his capture, his wife. Throughout Kirtan's reign of terror, he maintained a fond attachment to his wife, despite how he treated her. Recognizing that he would now eventually be caught for the rape of Butelys, you know, that the police know his identity, he devises a plan to try and ensure her financial security following his arrest. That same evening, I fetched my wife from the place where she worked.

I said, I must get out of the flat. I explained the Butely's case to her, but I only mentioned the attempt at sexual intercourse, saying that it could be called rape. And then along with my previous convictions, that would be enough to get me 15 years penal servitude. Interesting phrasing. It could be called rape. I mean, I didn't rape her, baby, but I can see how from the law's point of view, forcing her to have sex against her will could be viewed as rape. Peter continues. He says, therefore, I had to get out. I changed. Throughout the night, I walked about. On Thursday, the 22nd of May, I saw my wife in the morning in the flat. I fetched my things away in a bag and rented a room in the Adlerstrasse. I assume it's the name of a

nearby hotel. I sleep quietly until Friday morning. Frau Vampire of Dusseldorf, not happy with this confession. Of course not. How could she be? Not only would she be separated from her husband of at least a decade, or excuse me, from her husband for at least a decade, if not indefinitely,

she's also now very worried about her future. Probably most of her worries is about her future outside of him. She's worried about surviving in Germany's collapsed economy alone. Bit of a national depression going on. She's worried about starvation. She becomes hysterical. According to Kirtan, she was inconsolable.

And he said she raved that I should take my life. She said she would do the same since her future was in ruins. But then Kirtan has a plan. He says, in late afternoon, I told my wife that I could help her. I could still do something for her. I told her that I was the Dusseldorf murderer. Of course, she didn't think it was possible, didn't want to believe it. But then I disclosed everything to her, naming myself the murderer in each case.

When she asked me how this could help her, I hinted that a high reward had been offered for the discovery as well as for the capture of the criminal. That she could get hold of that reward, or at least some part of it, if she would report my confession and denounce me to the police. So this has also got to be a first. A serial killer encouraging his partner to turn him in to get reward money. If we have covered a detail like that with the previous serial killer, I have forgotten about it. May 24th, 1930, Curtin takes a bath, has lunch, gets a haircut. Got to look good for those newspaper pictures. Can't look like a disheveled child rapist and serial killer.

And at 3 p.m. he puts his plan in motion. Frau Kirtan reluctantly does as he had added. Frau Kirtan reluctantly does as she had it. Jesus Christ. His wife does what he fucking asked her to do. And took the police to the designated rendezvous site. A local church called the Ruckus Church, where her husband surrendered quietly. Once under arrest and situated, Kirtan would provide an astonishingly detailed account of his string of crimes to Professor Berg. Kirtan trusted Berg and was candid. That's why his book, although short,

is still considered the best insight into his case. Overall, the so-called Vampire of Dusseldorf claimed he committed 79 individual acts of major crime, and he went to great lengths to convince the authorities of his guilt. As we mentioned, it was his hope that his full cooperation would ensure the maximum financial benefit for his wife, the only person on earth he seemed to have any semblance of compassion for. And she will actually get that reward money, too, which I think is insane. When the vampire begins confessing, investigators are blown away.

Curtin's memory regarding his crimes near photographic. Dr. Berg wrote that his own action replay of each offense obviously provided him with great pleasure. I'm guessing what helped provide such details, you know, or, you know, I'm guessing what helped him provide these details was he'd probably been replaying these crimes over and over in his head,

you know, since they happened, just to continue to give himself more sexual gratification. As Curtin awaited his trial, then later, as he awaited his execution, he was extensively interviewed by Burke. Curtin told the doctor that his primary motive in committing any form of criminal activity was one of sexual pleasure, and that he'd begun to associate sexual excitement with violent acts and the sight of blood via indulging in both daydreams and masturbation fantasies, particularly when he had been in isolation in prison. So that's what he'd been doing while in isolation as a teen in a prison cell, jerking off to murder fantasies. The majority of his assaults and murders had

been committed when his wife had been working evenings and the number of stab or bludgeoning wounds Curtin inflicted upon each victim varied depending on the length of time it took him to achieve orgasm holy shit did not see that particular detail coming a horrible pun uh really not intended there uh holding to the vampire nickname he stated the actual site of his victim's blood had been integral to his sexual stimulation curtain uh further elaborated dr berg that once he had committed an attack or murder, the feeling of tension he experienced before the act of murder would be followed by a great feeling of relief.

The dark obsession built and built and built inside of the psychotic monster, and then with a few swings of the hammer or some knife throttling and or a rape, he feels release. In reference to the actual choice of weapon used in his attacks, Curtin stressed that although he did change

his method of attack to deceive investigators, so to make them think that they were looking for more than one perpetrator, the weapon he used was inconsequential in reference to his ultimate objective of seeing his victim's blood. Elaborating, Curtin said, Whether I took a knife or a pair of scissors or a hammer in order to see blood was a matter of indifference to me, or mere chance. Often after the hammer blows, the bleeding victims moved and struggled just as they did when they were throttled. Curtin seemed to enjoy his interviews with Dr. Berg, had a lot to say. He said, although he had occasionally penetrated his female victims, he had only done so to feign the act of sex as a motive for his crimes. I don't know if I believe that. He also confessed that many of his later strangulation victims had only survived his attacks because he'd achieved an orgasm before they could get to the dying part.

So his attacks, you know, all about sexual release, the thrill of murder, not his primary motivation. Or was it? Curtin would later contradict these initial claims by proclaiming to both Dr. Berg and legal examinators that his primary motive in all of his criminal activities was to strike back at an oppressive society for what he considered the injustice

of his being repeatedly incarcerated throughout his life and as a form of revenge for the neglect and abuse he endured as a child. Was the sex motivation or, you know, did he just, you know, say that because he thought that's what Dr. Berg wanted to hear? You know, that's what he told him. So hard to accept anything

these manipulative motherfuckers say at face value. Berg would write, these desires had fermented in his mind throughout the long periods he had been confined in solitary confinement for various forms of insubordination. And Curtin explained that he deliberately broke minor prison rules as a means of guaranteeing that he would be sentenced to solitary confinement in order that he could indulge in his psychosexual fantasies. To Dr. Berg and legal examiners, Kirtin did not deny that he had sexually molested his female victims or to have stroked or used his fingers to penetrate their genitals as he stabbed, slashed, strangled, or bludgeoned their bodies.

Although throughout his trial, Kirtin repeatedly claimed the sexual assault of his victims was not his primary motive. Huh. So he tells Dr. Berg that sex was his primary motivation, tells the courtroom that sexual assault was not his primary motive. I wonder if he even truly knew why he did what he did. I think it was sexual. I think he was just switching it around if he thought it could win favor with the court. Dr. Berg and five separate

psychologists who also examined Kirtan would conclude from their study in Kirtan that he was not insane. He was fully able to control his actions, but chose not to. And he appreciated the criminality of his conduct. Each ruled Kirtan legally sane and competent to stand trial. And then his trial would begin soon. His trial commenced on April 13th, 1931 on charges, including nine murders and seven attempted murders. Son of a bitch shows up in court dressed as a successful businessman

wearing a well-tailored suit. And then in a weird 180 flip, he retracts his extensive confession, claiming he had sought only to ensure his wife's financial security, but that he really didn't do it. Despite this flip, after two months of exhaustive questioning by the examining magistrate and a sizable pile of evidence now, he flips again and admits his guilt. And then the blame game starts in an emotion in an emotionless voice.

He claims that his childhood and the German penal system, that's what's responsible for his sadistic tendencies. He shows zero remorse for his crimes. Peter Kiernan's lack of remorse further presents itself. When a judge asked him about his conscience questioning, if the man feels he has one. He responds, I have none. Never have I felt any misgiving in my soul. Never did I think to myself that what I did was bad, even though human society condemns it. My blood and the blood of my victims must be on the heads of my torturers. The punishments I have suffered have destroyed

all my feelings as a human being. That was why I had no pity for my victims. How nice it must be to give yourself a moral out like that and then really commit to it. Right? Just give yourself a story that allows you to commit any monstrous act at all, but never feel like a monster. Each act just further proves how you are the victim. Each act is a reminder of what the system had done to you. The system was throttling and hammering

and raping those victims when you really think about it. You were just a vehicle for their torture. What a great way to ensure that you'll never improve as a human being and just always be a piece of shit. Blame, blame, blame. I fucking hate excuse givers, blamers. June 21st, 1931, the jury of the Dusseldorf Criminal Court

finds Curtin guilty of murder in all nine murder cases and he's handed out nine death sentences, for storytelling purposes, I would love it if they executed him nine times, right, like if they cut his head off with a guillotine and they tape it back on his neck and cut it off again and then just keep doing that over and over, but of course that does not happen

he will make his execution very memorable though, dishing out some of the most memorable final words I've ever heard heard but we're not quite there yet after all the evidence had been presented it took the jury just 90 minutes to reach their verdict in addition he is found guilty of attempted murder in all the 7 attempted murder cases it's easy to

convict him he gives a full confession in the end to all these crimes and witnesses were examined regarding all the charges and it was a slam dunk case after receiving the sentence Peter never challenges the death sentence directly but he does challenge the accuracy of the details brought forth by witnesses and the public prosecutor and their hired experts. At the close of his trial comes his final address. He says, as I now see the crimes committed by me that are so ghastly that I do not want to attempt any sort of excuse for them. Still,

I feel some bitterness when I think of the physician and the lady physician in Stuttgart who have been encouraged by a section of the community to murder and who have stained their hands with human blood to the extent of 1,500 murders. He is referring to some local doctors who performed abortions here. That they're worse than him, which is such an idiotic stance. Trace that logic back a little bit further, and every dude who masturbates is a serial killer, right? Shooting babies into socks, onto bellies, onto shower floors. And I know, I know, sperm is not a fetus,

but I also know that a human fetus's brain is not fully developed until 33 weeks, and that a first-term abortion is not the same as executing a sentient, born, currently full of hopes and dreams, living on its own creature. The kind of creature that Peter killed over and over. Not opening up some pro-life, pro-choice argument here. I just have a real hard time glossing over serial killer acting like he is morally superior to a doctor who commits abortions. That is some Westboro Baptist Church level of crazy logic there. Fuck that shit and hail Nimrod. Peter continues, I do not want to accuse. All I want to do is let you

see what passes in my soul. I cannot refrain from reproaching you, Professor Scioli, for saying that the conditions of my home were not the decisive factor. On the contrary, you may well assume that youthful surroundings are decisive for the development of my character. With silent longing, I have sometimes in my early days glimpsed other families and asked myself why it could not be like that with us. So, I mean, yes, childhood's sad, but also more blame game. If I'd had a better upbringing, I wouldn't be here. I mean, by that logic, you know, the sister that both he and his dad raped should be on trial for committing more murders than he committed, right?

Since she had it worse than he did. He continues, Continues, I contradict the chief public prosecutor when he asserts that it was out of cowardice that I revoked my confession. The very day that I opened up to my wife, I well knew the consequences of the confession. I felt liberated in a certain way, and I had the firm intention of sticking to my confession so that I could do a last good turn to my wife. But the real reason was that there arrives for every criminal that moment beyond which he cannot go. And I was in due course subject to this psychic collapse. As I have related already, I followed the report to the newspapers then, and of course, later very thoroughly. I convinced myself that on the whole, the newspaper reports had been moderate.

I may say that I used to intoxicate myself with the sensational press. It was the poison, which must bear part of the responsibility of my poison life. It's the newspaper's fault. If they wouldn't have written about the shit that I did, I probably wouldn't have kept doing that shit. So really, they should be executed. And he says, by being moderate now, it has done a great deal to prevent the public from being poisoned. I'm a hero.

I feel urged to make one more statement. Some victims made it rather easy for me to overpower them. What the fuck? I think he's trying to still say, though, he's a great man. Yes. Yes, he raped guys. Guys.

He's a great man. Sure, he raped some kids and dogs and farm animals and women. And yes, he's killed dogs and farm animals and, you know, women. But sure, he's bashed a lot of people in the head with a hammer.

And yes, he's literally stabbed strangers in the back with an axe. But now, because deep down, he is a solid, moderate dude, he wants to help society. That's why he confessed, because he wants to transform from being a predator into a living PSA, a martyr, really. If you don't raise your kid rights, you know, you'll get another Peter Kirtan. If you don't pay attention to your

surroundings, if you make it easy for Peter Kirtan to kill you. Well, then that's on you now because he's giving you this great message. He's helping more people that he hurt. You're welcome. Then he says, I do not want to forget to mention what I frequently said before, that I detest the crimes and I feel deep sorrow for the relatives.

I even dare to ask those relatives to forgive me as far as that may be possible for them. He dares. He's so brave. He's so admirable. Then he says, furthermore, I want to point out emphatically that contrary to the version of the chief public prosecutor, I never tortured a victim. I do not attempt to excuse my crimes. I've already pointed out that I am prepared to bear the consequences of my misdeeds.

I hope that thus I will atone for a large part of what I've done. Guys, guys, stabbing the fuck out of people while you rip someone's clothes off and start to rape them is not torture. It's, uh, I don't know. It's probably not good, but torture gross. I'm disgusted by that action. Yes, I killed a lot of people, but now I'm being executed and we're cool, right? I just want to be cool with everybody before I go. I want everybody, you know, to be cool with me. I don't want anyone to hate me for being a torturer since I am not a torturer. Then he says, although I can suffer capital punishment only once,

you may be rest assured that it is one of the many unknown tortures to endure the time before the execution of the sentence. And dozens of times, I have lived through the moment of the execution. And when you consider this and recognize my goodwill to atone for all my crimes, I should think that the terrible desire for revenge and hatred against me cannot endure. And I want to ask you to forgive me. Guys, gosh dang. Again,

I didn't torture anyone, not ever, especially not with a hammer, yet I'm definitely being tortured. How, God, how I wish someone as kind as me could just bash my head in with a hammer, or maybe stab fuck me and get it over with. Oh, what I would give for a mercy throttling. That would be pleasant compared with this torture of thinking about my upcoming execution. Stop hating me. Stop thinking about revenge. Why can't we just be cool? He was not giving this speech to make the public think he was a good guy. He was trying to manipulate. He's always trying to fucking weasel. This whole thing was about him trying to weasel the government into sparing his life. He would not appeal his conviction, but he did put in a petition for pardon to Germany's Minister of Justice. And if the minister had accepted, he would have his sentence changed from the death penalty to life

in prison, where he could jerk off to his fucking hammer fantasies for the rest of his days. Germany's Minister of Justice at that time was adamantly against capital punishment, so there was reason to believe he might get the death penalty overturned. Uh, shortly after the speech was delivered, he expressed joy to his lawyers also that his wife indeed received the 4,000 Deutschmark reward for turning him in, which is just so gross to me. Difficult to determine the exact exchange rate due to all the, uh, economic fluctuation and fuckery going on in Germany at that time. But basically he, uh, she got tens of thousands of, or the equivalent of tens of thousands of US dollars. You know, what that would be today. Peter also

now says that horrific fantasies, the sadistic imagery that his mind had been plagued by for years, has now stopped. He's a new man. He claims he's been transformed into a whole new being. Guys, I'm all better now. There's no need to kill someone who's all better, who is not

a torturer. Put me away for life, and then maybe we can talk about parole later. No one buys this shit. It's a clear ploy to get a stay of execution, and it would not work. On July 1st, 1931, he learns that his petition is denied to not be executed. Even the anti-death penalty minister of justice is like, well, of course that guy should be executed. Are you fucking kidding me? He's not even a human being. For his last wish, he now requests permission to write some farewell letters. This crazy fuck would then write 13 of them to the relatives of victims asking for their pardon and for their prayers. And he would add that he will be praying for them while he's in heaven. What a piece of shit. He actually says

that in letters. Hey guys, Peter again. I just want to ask you to forgive me for hammering and raping and killing your daughter. You know, and just know that whether or not you forgive me, I'll be praying for you from heaven. Well, I will definitely be. You might not be able to forgive me, but you know who will? Jesus.

Bingo, bingo, my favorite loophole ever. Suck my dick. Forgive me, Jesus. Back in heaven. I love killing your kid. Forgive me, Jesus. Back in heaven. I loved killing your kid. Forgive me, Jesus. Back in. God, I wish I could hammer every last fucking one of you piles of shit and come on your graves.

Forgive me, Jesus. Back in heaven. July 2nd, 1931 is execution day. Peter ordered his last meal. Wienerschnitzel, bottle of white wine, fried potatoes. I hope the cook spit in it. I hope he shit in it. I don't think that happened. He devours the entire meal before requesting a second helping.

And the prison staff, they're like, oh, okay, sure, you can have a second helping. Dr. Karl Berg would be present at his execution. Karl Groppler, infamous German executioner who had already lopped the heads off of 140 people, would be chopping his head off via guillotine. This guy had actually also executed Fritz Harman six years earlier, the vampire of Hanover,

we talked about at length in the Kral Denkisack. Before Kiernan's head was placed on the guillotine, he turned to the psychiatrist. These are those crazy ass last words I was talking about. Right? Right as he's about to get his fucking head chopped off, he turns to the psychiatrist and asks, tell me, after my head is chopped off,

will I still be able to hear, at least for a moment, the sound of my own blood gushing from the stump of my neck? That would be the pleasure to end all pleasures. Yikes. So maybe he didn't leave all those fucked up fantasies behind after all. Maybe not a changed man. Man.

Then he's asked if he has any other last words and Kirtan just smiles and replies, no. And he is still smiling when his fucking head is chopped off. And I have to wonder if he also came. I can't be the only one who thought that. Those are some crazy ass final words, right? Let's hop out of this dark and demented Time Suck timeline. Good job, soldier.

You've made it back. Barely. Barely. noble black fellow, chief black eagle, the reformer junior the third. I know that's a lot to say, so you can just call me for short, Dr. Dwight Z. Malachi, Saeed Al-Mumbra, Isa Al-Hajidi Tandi, the divine noble black fellow, chief black eagle, the reformer junior. As long as you're not white or any other race in African, I want you to come live in my compound and worship me and worship with me.

Together, we can pray to Jesus, Allah, Muhammad, with me. Together, we can pray to Jesus, Allah, Muhammad, God, Ra, Zeus, Apollo, Buddha, Vishnu, Shiva, E.T., Alf, Marvin the Martian, Black Panther, Louis Farrakhan, James Brown, Joseph Smith, L. Ron Hubbard, me, Boney M., Casey and the Sunshine Band, some of them, Earth, Wind, and Fire. All of them. Stevie Wonder. Giants. The Andronaki. And Samuel L. Jackson. I hope to see you in one of my pyramids. Please bring your kids. Even if you don't come, just bring the kids. Mostly just bring the kids.

Amen and stuff. See you in Georgia with the kids. That's an odd sponsor, I know. And it only makes sense if you listen to last week's show. I just couldn't stop thinking this past week after recording last week's episode about how many fucking times this guy just changed what he worshiped. Let's get back to Germany now. No more interruptions. After Curtin was executed in 1931, his head was bisected and mummified and his brain removed, subjected to forensic analysis

in an attempt to explain his personality and almost unprecedented behavior. There was a lot of fascination about this guy. Like how the hell did this guy become who he was? And it is crazy what they found when they opened up his head. Excuse me. In the very center of his brain, they found another smaller brain. It was a German shepherd brain.

And that they were like, that's why he wanted to fuck dogs. No, they didn't find shit. The examinations of Curtin's brain revealed no abnormalities. The autopsy conducted upon Curtin's body revealed that aside from his having an enlarged thymus gland, he didn't have any other physical abnormalities. And this one wouldn't have affected his behavior. Located behind your sternum and between your lungs, it's part of your immune system.

It's instrumental in the production and maturation of T-cells, a specific type of white blood cell that protects the body from certain threats, including viruses and infections, and has nothing to do with regulating the impulse to hammer strangers. So, you know, doesn't help explain why Kirtan did what he did. Shortly after World War II, just more weirdness with this story,

Kirtan's head is transported to the United States and put on display at the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin. And apparently it's still on display there. That's such a, I would have never in a million years guessed that, what a weird place for it to end up, Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin. And apparently it's still on display there. That's such a, I would have never in a million years guessed that. What a weird place for it to end up, Wisconsin Dells. Weird place for a weird dude. In the end, Curtin admitted to 79 major crimes again, according to Dr. Berg.

21 of them were acts of arson, mainly in 1927 and 1928. That's when he got real fire happy. Most of the others were attempted murders or successful murders. In the end, he was convicted of nine murders, seven attempted murders. Obviously, there could be others. Like the two boys, he may have drowned as a child. His infatuation with blood, the media speculation that he drank victim's blood in eight parts of their bodies, that did not seem to actually happen. That earned him the nickname of the Vampire of Dusseldorf. When he wasn't chasing down women, children, and the occasional dude walking home drunk from the bar, he spent a lot of time in

prison for his many other crimes like breaking and entering, theft. He was incarcerated from 1900 to 1904, again from 1905 to 1913, again from 1913 to 1921, with brief prison stints interspersed in there as well. It all feels like something out of a horror movie, but he was very real. And we wouldn't know much about him if not for Dr. Carl Berg's work on the subject. His book Das Sadist, reprinted as the book The Dusseldorf Vampire, first published in Germany in 1932, translated into English, published again in 1938. This was the first psychological evaluation ever performed on a sexual serial killer. I wish I knew more about Dr. Berg, but not a lot is written about him. Maybe after writing his book about Peter, he, I don't know, he'd had it with monsters and retreated into a quiet counseling practice. Or maybe he ran into the machinery of another German monster,

Hitler, a decade or so after he published his book. I hope not. I don't really have any additional final thoughts on this guy. Not really. Just glad I've never been targeted by someone like him. Sometimes I think about that or glad that no one in my family has been targeted by somebody like him. Like what a terrible, terrible thing, right? Sometimes I think it's feel like it's easy not to think about that aspect of

it, but just imagine like you're living your life. Weren't about the same shit we all worry about. And then suddenly this motherfucker shows up out of nowhere, grabs you, hammers you. Now all of your old concerns don't matter. One moment you're thinking about,

you know, maybe trying to get to bed early because you got a long day ahead, or you're worried about grandma because she's sick. And then fucking bam, vampire of Dusseldorf up in your shit. After a few quick words, starts throttling you, swinging that hammer. How about the shock of a lifetime? So I guess if I can take something positive from all this, if you're having a really bad day today, feel a little better knowing that this motherfucker isn't turning your world into hell on earth right now. Be glad that you don't have a hammer cracking your skull or a knife being shoved in between your ribs. Be glad someone isn't killing you. Someone who will later come on your grave. My God. Glad he was executed.

Bummer he seemed to enjoy it. Let's review and then get the hell out of here. Time shock. top five takeaways. Number one, once again, the combination of a shitty roll of the genetic dice plus a rough upbringing plus playing the continual blame game instead of holding oneself accountable for one's actions leads to some serial killing.

Number two, the deranged goof troop vampire was taught by a dog catcher to fuck man's four-legged best friend and over a short time graduated from dog rape to stab fucking barnyard animals. That's going to stick with me. I'm not going to forget about that anytime soon. Number three, Papa Kirtan was a sexual monster just like his son, even being incarcerated for sexually assaulting his own daughter.

Peter himself also admits to sexually assaulting this poor girl, his sister. Second time we have covered this family dynamic in just the last four episodes. Let's hope we can steer clear of gratuitous incest for a little while. Number four, despite being a complete psycho, the vampire of Dusseldorf still had a soft spot in his dark heart for his wife that he totally cheated on constantly and also raped and threatened to marry him. But still, he seemed to actually care about her, which proves he could care somewhat about others and just often chose not to. Number five, new info, because we sucked a handful of 20th century German serial killers, we wanted to know who the most prolific murderer in Germany was, and we found three possible candidates. Haven't sucked any of them yet. In the late 16th century, there was a probably

mythical bandit who is said to have tallied up his kills to be 964. Executed in 1581. His name was Christmann, followed by a completely unpronounceable abomination of a last name that starts with a G. If this dude was real, he was like a troll or something.

He apparently lived in a cave for many years or he dragged his victims, making some of them sex slaves before killing them. His cave was near a well-traveled road and travelers, you know, coming through with their goods. He'd fucking kill them and rob them. And then he'd fill his cave with their treasure, stuff he took from his victims. And he was condemned to death by the breaking wheel.

He endured nine days on the wheel prior to expiring, kept alive in his sufferings with strong drink every day so his heart would be strengthened. That's the legend. Probably folklore. If real, he was the worst. Another potentially fictitious bandit from the 16th century is Peter Niers, body count of 544. Why did he kill so many people? To get ingredients for his wizard spells. He was a dark wizard, so probably not real. But, you know, some people think he was. Germany also had a couple of for sure real Dr. Death type serial killers

that have quietly killed dozens of their patients. A nurse named Niles Hogle seems to have been the worst. Arrested in 2005, he's been convicted of killing 85 patients and counting in multiple trials. Investigators think he killed at least 300 people over 15 years. Why?

He won't really say, but the speculation is that he just reveled in plain God. Peter Curtin, the vampire of Dusseldorf, has been sucked? What a monstrous weirdo. Be glad that you never met him. Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions team for all their help in making Time Suck. Queen of Bad Magic, Lindsay Cummins. Reverend Dr. Joe Paisley. The script keeper, Zach Flannery, running point on this week's research. Bid Elixir, continuously refining the Time Suck app. Logan, the art warlock.

Keith, running badmagicmerch.com, being the visual artist for all things bad magic, and working on our socials with Liz Hernandez, who runs the Cult of the Curious Facebook private page, along with a lot of other things, along with her all-seeing eyes. Thanks also to Beefsteak and the mod squad running discord. You can link to discord through the time suck app next week on times.

Like we dive back into the world of true crime, but it's a very different type of topic. This time, this episode will be akin to our Casey Anthony suck. The OJ Simpson suck. Another so-called trial of the century, Jody Arias and the murder of Travis Alexander. When Jody Arias and Travis

Alexander first met at a conference in Las Vegas in September of 2006, it seemed like a good match. There was instant physical chemistry. The two seemed to have a lot in common. They were both looking for someone to spend the rest of their lives with after years of dating around. Then things would go really wrong. Unbeknownst to Travis, Jodi quickly became a lot more obsessed with him than he was with her. Travis was a devout Mormon who struggled with guilt about his sexuality. The more time they spent together, the more sex they had, the more Travis would push Jodi away emotionally, making her his dirty little secret while he pursued other,

you know, more virginal Mormon girls. Jodi, understandably, really did not like that. She started dropping by his house, which was hours away from hers, unexpectedly concerning. She read his messages on social media accounts and his texts. She slashed his girlfriend's tires, wrote them threatening emails. Things were getting crazy. One friend of Travis's even told him that, you know, she was worried that his head was going to end up in Jody's freezer. Travis continues to sleep with her. If he were alive today, I'm guessing he would say that's

not a great choice. And then one fateful day in the summer of 2008, his life comes to a grisly end at Jody's hands. And then the ensuing trial will shock the nation with descriptions of raunchy sex, illicit trysts. It was like seeing that movie Fatal Attraction play out in real time with the added twist of Mormonism, a multi-level marketing company, and up close and personal photos of Jarius's anatomy displayed for the world to see. How did this relationship go so wrong? Tune in next week to follow the strange and steamy story of Jody Arius. And now let's head on over to this week's Time Sucker Updates. Updates? Get your Time Sucker Updates.

Starting off with a message from Relieved Meatsack, Jalil, regarding last week's Nuwabia Nation of Moorsuck. Jalil writes, hey, Dan, just wanted to say that every time I hear a podcaster talking about black hate groups, I get a little anxious. The reason being is that they tend to dismiss the idea of black superiority, but not the idea of any race being superior at all, which you managed to do. But when you don't, but when you don't, it kind of enables the one-off weirdos that listen to the podcast to double down on their crazy-ass ideas. Anyways, I just want to say that most of the time, you manage to maneuver through racial issues very well.

Keep up the good work. Have a good day, man. Jalil. Thank you, Jalil. I try. Always dicey to talk about race in America, especially as a white guy. I know it's the group that most people want to hear about race from the least. I try to make it clear that every race is capable of racism and all racism is

bad. Any form of it will inevitably lead to more racism, which is obviously not the direction we need to be heading in. So I just announced it in all its various forms. Glad I came across as fair. That's always the goal as opinionated as I am. Uh, I wish I would have gotten this,

uh, this next very short message from properly speaking sack, Nick Billups before last week suck. Nick just writes facsimile. You're welcome, Dan. He just broke that word out into phonetics. Man, thanks for breaking that word. That word always stops me in my tracks.

And after looking at your breakdown, it's so easy. It's very phonetic. But when I see that S hiding behind the C, when it starts off F-A-C-S, I'm just like, ah, I panic. I think it's going to be like, facsimile. No, facsimile. All right. Okay.

Another Dwight York cult suck update now coming in from ancient aliens expert, Tyler Cox. And Tyler writes, hail Dan Vanguard of Nimrod's butthole. Just listened to Dwight York suck and holy fucking shit. What a creep.

You mentioned ancient aliens in there that York was kind of a precursor to it. I think York had to have read some of Eric Von Daniken's stuff. That's the guy behind ancient aliens. And he's been writing his wacky little horse shit since the 60s. Yeah, I did not know that.

I love that you pointed this out. When York was looking at the nascent new age movement for ideas to steal, he had to have run across Von Daniken's gibberish by the 80s. Man, you slipped into that David Hatcher children, David Hatcher children's voice for a second. I thought you were going to quote York talking about ancient aliens and Anunnaki and Nimrod's balls or whatever in children,

in that voice. Sadly, it was not to be three out of five stars. Anyways, had that thought, figured I'd bleep blop it to you. Thanks for all the insanity from a longtime sucker and space lizard. Well, thank you, Tyler. Uh, yeah. Miss children's opportunity there. I didn't think about it. I even had a note to do it in the draft, but there was so much crazy already in that episode.

And it was such a big episode. I think maybe the biggest we've done real close to it. If not, I did not end up adding it. Uh, did not know about Eric Von Daniken, 86 years old, still kicking out constant ancient aliens content,

very active on YouTube. And yeah, yeah, he wrote Chariots of the Gods back in 1968, a book full of a lot of debunked theories that really helped kick off the ancient aliens movements. A lot of stuff that York would later draw from. He wrote a lot of other books too. That book was a New York Times bestseller and he's actually sold over 70 million copies of his books. Other titles include Gods from Outer Space and The Gods Were Astronauts, a documentary based on the book, that first one I mentioned,

Chariots of the Gods, called In Search of Ancient Astronauts, came out in 1972. So his ideas said to have inspired the History Channel show, Ancient Aliens. So another wackadoodle fueling the insanity of so many others, guy writing books that belong on the same shelf as David Icke's. Thanks for bringing him to my

attention again. And yeah, he was pretty well known by the time Dwight York was forming his alien ideas. So he did very likely inspire Dwight York. Thanks for correcting me on that timeline. Now for some inspiration. I love this. Last message for today. Hardworking, never given up sack Austin M has a story to share. He writes, dear Captain Suck, I stumbled on a time suck about a year ago and I've listened to something every day since. Basically, I just want to say thank you.

I forget which episodes exactly, but on a couple of them, you've gone about hard work and doing what you're good at. The way you talk about being the best you can be got to me in a way that no one else ever had. And I constantly hear it echoing in my head whenever I start to get frustrated and start debating whether or not what I'm doing is right for me. I'm sure you're doing what it is that I do for, or I'm sure you're

wondering, sorry, what it is I do for work. I'm interested in the process of trying to start up my own classic car restoration shop. I love the work and everything about it, but I got started at a very late age due to a medical condition with my back, which caused me to be on disability starting six months after graduating high school. I was in excruciating pain 24 hours a day for 10 years until I had a procedure done a couple of years ago, which took my pain down to a tolerable level. Sorry to go on, but you inspired me to keep fighting for my dream. And I'm very thankful that I stumbled onto this podcast. I'm 32 years old. Unfortunately, I still live at home due to everything that has happened, but my parents agreed to let me stay until my shop is open and I'm making enough to

get my own place. The one thing that always gets me is where I am in life compared to others that I went to school with. And I have to say, it's a real kick in the ball sack. I fight every day to stay focused. And I constantly tell myself, even though I was dealt a shithand, now is the time to turn it around. I was hit with many other medical issues over those 10 years, and it definitely took a toll on me mentally. I sought out some help and it was the best decision I ever made. Now I know this is my time. Sorry to rattle on, but thank you very much, and keep on sucking. Well, Austin, you son of a bitch. You made me so happy hearing this. Man, all we can do is fight, right? All we have is today and what goes forward. Can't go back in the past and change anything. Whatever

hand we're dealt, all we can do is push, try to do our best, give it your all, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead, let the chips fall where they may. Right? And I just feel like even if you're feeling down, if you're feeling bummed, I mean, you know, it's that thing of just being practical, like, ah, fuck, I get that frustration. Like, why are those people farther along? That you can't change. You have no control over that. What you have control of or control of is what can I do today for me? You know, and it sounds like you're doing a great job. You know, you're pursuing what you're passionate about. That's going to help you get further ahead than it would if you were pursuing something you didn't give a shit about. And just remember that your journey is for you, not for

them. What a fun journey. It sounds like you're on, right? You have supportive parents. That's awesome. Your passion for classic cars, again, will give you a solid chance at success. You just can't fake true passion. Now just be smart about it, right? Manage your expectations. Don't get ahead of yourself. Remember that, you know, very common cliche that Rome was not built in a day. Just keep chipping away. Keep chipping away, you know, one foot in front of the other and plan for how to grow your business. Be flexible enough to alter plans as necessary, and just enjoy this fucking journey. Right?

Don't do that thing where it's like, okay, once I get here, then I'll be happy. No, man, be proud that you're just moving forward. That's fucking huge. So let's go, Austin. Let's fucking go. Hail Nimrod.

I am rooting for your ass. Put all the love you can into those cars, and I think they'll love you back. That's all for today. Let's end on chasing some dreams. Next time, suckers. I needed that. We all did. Thanks for listening

to another Bad Magic Productions podcast. Meat Sacks, please don't let your dream be hitting strangers in the head with hammers or stabbing people in the back. Don't let your dream be focusing on bloody orgasms. Maybe part of your dream can just be to keep on sucking. Time for a little

palate cleanser after all that horror. A little more Croftbook. Or Kraftwerk. We are city robot-er. We are city robot-er. Probably need more robot moves. Wir funktionieren automatisch. Jetzt wollen wir tanzen mechanisch. Wir sind die robot-er. Jetzt wollen wir tanzen, Mekanik. Wir sind die Roboter. Wir sind die Roboter.