The sadist: atrocity crimes of Peter Kürten, the vampire of Düsseldorf

In 1929, the German city of Dusseldorf was afflicted by a horrifying series of brutal, random and often fatal attacks upon women and young girls. With weapons ranging from knives and hammers to his bare strangling hands, a shadowy predator left a mounting trail of sexual assault, carnage and murder in his wake, fomenting mortal terror amongst the local populace. Police finally arrested Peter Kurten, a convicted felon, in connection with the crimes; his subsequent confessions revealed a staggering career of evil, documented in at least 69 cases of theft, arson, rape, throttling, stabbing, hammering, hacking, mutilation, blood-drinking and corpse immolation spanning some 30 years.