Peter Kürten

Peter Kürten, born on May twenty-sixth, eighteen eighty-three, was a notorious German criminal whose heinous acts earned him the grim titles of The Vampire of Düsseldorf and the Düsseldorf Monster. His reign of terror unfolded between February and November nineteen twenty-nine in Düsseldorf, where he committed a series of brutal murders and sexual assaults that shocked the nation.

Before his infamous crimes, Kürten had already established a lengthy criminal record, which included offenses such as arson and attempted murder. His dark past was further marred by his confession to the murder of a nine-year-old girl in Mülheim am Rhein in nineteen thirteen, as well as the attempted murder of a seventeen-year-old girl in Düsseldorf.

Described by Karl Berg as 'the king of the sexual perverts,' Kürten's depravity culminated in his conviction for nine counts of murder and seven counts of attempted murder. In April nineteen thirty-one, he was sentenced to death by beheading, a fate he met in July of the same year at the age of forty-eight.

Kürten's moniker, The Vampire of Düsseldorf, stemmed from his chilling habit of attempting to drink the blood of his victims. The savagery he inflicted upon their bodies, combined with the majority of his crimes occurring in and around Düsseldorf, solidified his reputation as a monstrous figure in criminal history.