The Killing of Emma Gross (33 page)
The
Schupo
returned, marching back to the car in tight formation. In their midst sauntered Peter Kürten, hands cuffed, a plainclothesman at either elbow. Gennat followed along behind the group, beside another dark-suited man who looked like the public prosecutor. More cameras flashed, but the press contingent was small, fewer than a half-dozen guys. For once Gennat was doing something low key.
He said a few words to the reporters then he slapped the PP on the back and pushed him forwards into the press pack. The
Schupo
phalanx steered its cargo into the back of the armoured car.
Kürten's plainclothes escort went with him and pushed him into a seat. From where I sat, his hair looked freshly barbered, neat and oiled. I couldn't make out the status of his pencil-line moustache, though his face appeared clean-shaven. Even his suit had been pressed. He looked a damn sight better than I did.
As the car pulled away, I stood to watch its passage down the street. Kürten looked up, or I imagined he did. Did he see me looking out, watching his progress towards Düsseldorf Prison and his eventual trial? His inevitable execution?
There was the man who'd terrorised first a city then an entire country for a year and a half – no, more than that even. The man who'd changed me for the worse. And the better. Whose phoney confession to Emma Gross' murder had led me to discover that I was a detective after all.
A killer too.
He was smiling, I swear he was, as the car turned the corner and took him away.
I thought once more of Gertrude Albermann, her torn panties and blood-caked little face. Kürten would die and Ritter was dead, but so was her dad, and I was responsible for all three. What kind of a result was that?
'I'm sorry,' I whispered.
For all the good it would do.
Several of the characters in the story you just read were based (loosely) on real people, including Ernst Gennat, Karl Berg, Emma Gross and, of course, Peter Kürten himself. I should stress that the character of Gertrude Albermann’s father was entirely my own creation.
Gennat was one of the most famous detectives in Germany. So much so that he inspired the Inspector Karl ‘Fatty’ Lohmann character in Fritz Lang’s 1931 expressionist movie
M
, just as Kürten inspired that of Lang’s child killer Hans Beckert in the same movie, however much Lang half-heartedly denied it at the time. Karl Lohmann in turn proved popular enough for Lang to bring him back for his next onscreen crime epic, 1933’s
The Testament of Dr Mabuse
. Both of these films are well worth checking out by anyone interested in interwar Germany or film history.
Back in the real world, Gennat played a major role in reforming Berlin’s criminal investigations department. In 1925 he was finally able to establish the permanent homicide department he’d been lobbying his superiors for since at least the end of the First World War. He ran the department at a clean-up rate of around 97% until well into the 1930s. He also really did coin the term ‘
Serienm
ö
rder
’ for a magazine article off the back of his experience on the Kürten case. This was more than 40 years before the equivalent phrase ‘serial killer’ entered the English language.
In his capacity as forensic pathologist, Karl Berg interviewed Kürten ahead of the latter’s trial, going on to publish a book called
The Sadist
shortly after Kürten’s execution. If this book remains the closest we have to a definitive version of the case, it’s because of its exhaustive reproduction of Kürten’s confessions to every single murder and attack carried out over the course of his life, as well as statements from as many of the surviving victims as the police were able to track down. Berg’s memoirs of the autopsies he carried out during the case are also invaluable. The book is out of print but anyone who lives near a large public library should be able to get hold of a copy with a little determination, and a little patience.
All the English language accounts of Kürten’s crimes published since the 1930s are best taken with a pinch of salt, especially those to be found on the internet. Most – if not all – of them are hack jobs involving no original research. Some of them mistakenly place the February murder of Rosa Ohliger in March, while others claim that the 3
rd
February attack on Frau Kühn took place on 8
th
February. The Ohliger mix up seems to be the result of a typo in Karl Berg’s book which has been copied over and over ever since by those in too much of a hurry to check their facts.
Having read as many contemporary accounts as I could, I believe the timeline that follows is the most accurate version of events published in English since the first translation of
The Sadist
appeared in 1938. If any readers know differently I’d be happy to hear from them.
Incidentally, although Kürten is well known to true crime hounds today as the ‘Vampire of Düsseldorf’, none of the accounts dating from the time of the case mention this, suggesting that this touch of melodrama was added later.
Sun 3 Feb 1929
Frau Kühn attacked at around 9pm on ‘lonely road’ in the south-western Flingern district of Düsseldorf. According to Kühn’s statement, her attacker passes by and says good evening before grabbing her coat lapels in one hand and demanding she keep quiet. He then stabs her repeatedly. Kühn does not see the weapon, nor can she describe her attacker; her memory of the attack is hazy. Medical exam reveals twenty-four flesh wounds to head, arms and torso.
Sat 9 Feb 1929
Construction gang discovers fully clothed corpse of young girl at 9am. Body lies under a fence surrounding the building they’re working on in Kettwigerstrasse, Flingern district. Body is partially burned and smells of kerosene: underclothes still smoulder. There are bloodstains and stab marks in the clothing. Autopsy reveals up to thirteen stab wounds on the left torso and left temple and concludes that internal bleeding from these wounds caused the girl’s death. Bloated and livid appearance of girl’s face indicates congestion in the head; suggests the girl was also strangled before death. Burn patterns are limited to upper thighs, neck, chin and hair; lack of soot in lungs suggests the body was burned after death. Microscopic exam of girl’s underwear and genitalia reveals semen stains not visible to the naked eye. Medical examiner concludes coitus was not the aim of the attacker, but that he probably ejaculated and then inserted a semen-smeared finger under the child’s panties. Stomach contents indicate a time of death between 6pm and 7pm on Friday 8
th
Feb. Police soon ID the girl as eight-year-old Rosa Ohliger. Girl’s mother confirms Rosa ate lunch at 2pm on the 8
th
before visiting a friend. The friend confirms Rosa leaving for home at 6pm. Police find no witnesses to the crime.
Local press picks up on these crimes and starts name-checking Jack the Ripper in its reports, implying a link between the attacks.
Weds 13 Feb 1929
Corpse of forty-five year-old disabled mechanic Rudolf Scheer discovered 8am, again in the Flingern district. Autopsy finds twenty stab wounds to the neck and back. This, along with absence of defensive wounds, suggests Scheer was stabbed from behind. Examiner deduces time of death between 11pm and midnight the night before.
At this point there have been three attacks in ten days. The press warms to its Jack the Ripper musings.
Forensic experts involved in case agree similarities:
1) all three victims attacked in isolated areas of the Flingern district;
2) the use of a stabbing instrument, perhaps the same one in each case;
3) absence of common motive such as robbery or rape;
4) attacks came at dusk or later; numerous stabs of same type executed rapidly and always including at least one stab to the temple.
Karl Berg MD is one such expert. He performed the Ohliger autopsy and writes later: ‘All these factors, taken together, make inevitable the conclusion that the same criminal committed the crimes and, furthermore, the abnormal character of the criminal.’
Tues 2 Apr 1929
Sixteen-year-old Erna Penning attacked on way home. Attacker throws rope noose around her neck. Penning struggles to get away but attacker closes in and attempts to tighten the noose with one hand while throttling her with the other. According to her statement, Penning prevents the man from tightening his noose and pinches his nostrils together so he can’t breathe. This causes him to step back and remove the noose. Penning takes her chance and flees.
Weds 3 Apr 1929
Frau Flake attacked on ‘ill-lit’ street after leaving her workplace in northern Düsseldorf. According to her statement, she hears and then sees a man walk quickly behind her. She slows down to let him past. Instead, he flings his noose around her neck, drags her into a field by the side of the road and tries to stuff a handkerchief into her mouth. Flake resists and the man tells her to open her mouth while tightening the noose. Witnesses stumble on the scene and observe the attacker fleeing.
April 1929
Police ID the would-be strangler as twenty-year-old Johann Stausberg, a man variously described as an ‘imbecile’ and a ‘cretin’, with either a ‘cleft palate [and] hare lip’ or a simple ‘speech impediment’, according to whose account you are reading. Police arrest and interrogate Stausberg who confesses to the noose attacks on Penning and Flake. According to Berg: ‘Naturally, nothing was simpler than to accuse Stausberg of the three February attacks…He knew so many details that he could not have known from the newspapers, being an illiterate. So it came about that he was suspected of having committed these crimes, and this despite certain grave doubts.’ In short, Stausberg confesses to the murders of Rudolf Scheer and Rosa Ohliger, and the attack on Frau Kühn. His confessions are convincing, albeit hazy on the details. Stausberg suffers from epilepsy, so detectives explain away the inaccuracies by pointing to the fact that many epilepsy sufferers have poor memories, particularly after suffering an epileptic seizure. Also, Stausberg’s mother tells police that her son told her he’d murdered Rosa Ohliger on 9
th
February, when the case first hit the press. Stausberg’s prosecution is stopped under paragraph 51 of the German criminal code – which allows for diminished responsibility in cases of questionable sanity – and he is taken to an asylum.
Tues 30 July 1929
Emma Gross, thirty-five year-old prostitute, found murdered in a hotel near Düsseldorf’s central train station; her body has been strangled and left naked on a divan. She has not been stabbed and her body bears no wounds other than bruising around the neck. Police take a relaxed view towards tracing the killer and seem to regard such attacks as an occupational hazard. Although Kürten will confess to this murder shortly after capture, he later retracts the confession. No evidence ever links him to the crime and the real perpetrator is never caught. Berg: ‘There was nothing about this case to incline me to the view that it was another committed by the same unknown as in the previous cases under investigation.’
Sun 11 Aug 1929
Domestic servant Maria Hahn disappears during an afternoon off work. Hahn having recently resigned, her employer assumes Hahn has left before working out her notice and therefore doesn’t think to notify police. Hahn’s body will turn up in November.
Weds 21 Aug 1929
Frau Mantel accosted near church square in the western Lierenfeld suburb of Düsseldorf. A stranger asks Frau Mantel if he can accompany her to the country fair being held in the area; he then stabs her in the back. A little later, in the same area, Anna Goldhausen is stabbed between her ribs by a stranger, the stab piercing liver and stomach. Within an hour, Heinrich Kornblum is stabbed in the back while sitting on a park bench. All three victims survive their attacks. The knife cuts through Kornblum’s leather braces, from which medical examiners determine the dimensions of the blade. Investigators see no evidence to contradict their prosecution of Stausberg for the stabbings and stranglings earlier in the year. Berg: ‘On these data I came to the conclusion that the knife used in this case was not that used in the case of the Ohliger child or that of the man Scheer. This seemed to be one more ground for suspecting someone other than Stausberg.’
The German press dusts off its Jack the Ripper cuttings. Panic begins to spread in Düsseldorf.
Sun 25 Aug 1929
Bodies of five-year-old Gertrude Hamacher and fourteen-year-old foster sister Louise Lenzen are found on allotments 200 metres from their home in the Flehe district of Düsseldorf. The girls had gone missing the previous evening after attending a fair in the market place. Aware of Jack the Ripper reports in the press and fearing the worst, family and friends had been searching for the girls most of the night. Hamacher’s body lies on a patch of runner beans. Lenzen’s body lies 17 metres away on a bare patch of earth. Locals report hearing children's cries in the area at 9.15pm on the 24
th
, which detectives interpret as the time of death. Autopsy confirms this conclusion. Footprints at the scene and the wounds on the bodies are the only physical evidence of the crime. From these, detectives and medical examiners piece together the girls’ last moments. The Hamacher girl is strangled until she loses consciousness. Lenzen probably calls out for help – the cries that the passersby later reported. The killer strangles Lenzen, cuts her throat and stabs her in the back. Still alive but weakened, Lenzen tries to flee but collapses due to blood loss. Footprints indicate the killer walks back from Lenzen’s body, probably to cut Hamacher’s throat.