Vampires

by Charlotte Montague

  Madness and depravity

  Not surprisingly, during these years of madness and depravity, de Rais’ family shunned him, but when they heard that he was about to sell one of his castles, the Chateau Champtoce, in defiance of the royal edict, they seized it. De Rais feared that they would find many bodies of murdered children there, but fortunately for him, they did not. However, as a precaution, he began to remove bodies from his other castles, and later took the opportunity to cover his traces at Champtoce.

  By now, his behaviour was becoming ever more erratic. He sold the Chateau Mer Morte, but then decided to take it back, stealing the keys from the new owner’s brother, Jean de Ferron, who happened to be a priest. De Rais and his men turned up at the church, dragged the priest away, and beat him until he offered up the keys. Afterwards, de Rais stayed the night in a town called Vannes, where to celebrate, he raped and decapitated a 10-year-old boy, afterwards throwing the child’s body into a latrine.

  ‘Vices against nature’

  This attack on the priest was the chance that the authorities had been waiting for. De Rais was arrested and in 1440, was summoned before the court. A large number of witnesses, including the parents of some of the children, gave a testimony against him. According to the bizarre morality of the day, the main charge against him was heresy (because he had entered the church violently and attacked the priest) but he was also accused of other offences, including the rape and murder of the children. In total, he faced 47 charges that ranged from ‘the abuse of clerical privilege’ to ‘the conjuration of demons’, and ‘vices against nature’.

  In all, there were 110 witnesses at the trial, which attracted tremendous attention throughout France. History records that the servants’ descriptions of the murders were so horrifying that the judges ordered parts of their testimony to be deleted. One of de Rais’ servants, Etienne Corillait, known as Poitou – who had personal experience of de Rais’ sadism, having been procured as a murder victim himself, and then spared – gave a graphic account of the way de Rais went about extracting maximum enjoyment from his hideous crimes:

  ‘He had considerable pleasure in watching the heads of children separated from their bodies. Sometimes he made an incision behind the neck to make them die slowly, at which he became very excited … sometimes he would ask, when they were dead, which of them had the most beautiful head.’

  Corillait also described, in graphic detail, how de Rais masturbated over the children’s bodies, both when they were dead and when they were alive.

  Final execution

  Some believe that these accounts, extracted as they were under torture, were exaggerated. Certainly, de Rais himself was so brutally tortured that by the end of the trial, he was confessing to anything. His trial was farcical, even by the standards of the day, and the main objection to his behaviour seemed to be that it was heretical, rather than the fact that he had murdered dozens, if not hundreds, of innocent children. Eventually, he was sentenced to death, garrotted and his body thrown onto a funeral pyre. However, before the pyre was lit, his family were allowed to take the body away for burial.

  In his chronicles of the period, the French nobleman Enguerrand de Monstrelet, wrote: ‘The greater part of the nobles of Brittany, more especially his own kindred, were in utmost grief and confusion at his disgraceful death. Before this event, he was much renowned as a most valiant knight at arms.’

  The legacy of de Rais

  Today, the extent of de Rais’ crimes is the subject of some controversy among historians. There is no doubt that his trial was carried out with such disregard for the law that the findings of it cannot be seen as entirely valid. De Rais was not allowed to give testimony in his defence, and nor were any of his family, friends, or servants. Indeed, the ecclesiastic and secular authorities showed such bias in their attitude towards him that it is hard not to doubt the accuracy of their conclusions.

  In her book, The Witch Cult of Western Europe, anthropologist Margaret Murray argues that de Rais was possibly involved in a fertility cult centred around the pagan goddess Diana, and that he was tried and executed, like Joan of Arc before him, for heresy. Others have suggested that de Rais might have been framed by the Church, or by other elements within the French nobility, as part of a plot to take over his remaining lands. It is certainly true that his crazed behaviour made him an easy target for any power group wishing to divest him of his rapidly dwindling estates.

  However, the testimony of so many witnesses, including his young victims’ parents, would suggest that Gilles was indeed guilty of serial murder, and that after his glorious days as a young soldier, he descended into a nightmare world of madness, debauchery, and violence that only ended when he was finally put to death, on 26 October 1440.

  Peter Kürten

  The Vampire of Düsseldorf was perhaps the most notorious among the spate of serial killers who terrorized Germany in the years between the world wars. This was a time of terrible poverty in the country, and in the resulting social breakdown, crime of all kinds, including the murder, abduction, and abuse of both adults and children, was rife. At the peak of Peter Kürten’s activities during 1929 he carried out so many attacks against such a wide variety of victims that the police assumed there must be several murderers at large, not just one. Kürten was nicknamed ‘the Vampire’ because of his obsession with his victims’ blood. He was believed to drink it, but there is no firm evidence that this was the case. What is indisputable is that he was a sadist who derived pleasure from killing, in particular watching his victims’ blood drain away from their bodies.

  Child murderer

  Peter Kürten was born into desperate poverty in Köln-Mullheim on 26 May 1883. He was one of a family of thirteen who all lived in one room. His father was a violent drunk who would regularly come home and rape his wife in front of the rest of the family. Later, this vicious and violent man’s attentions turned to his 13-year-old daughter. It was only at this point that his wife put her foot down and had him arrested. Kürten senior was sent to prison for raping his daughter. While he was in prison, his wife divorced him.

  Sadly, however, this appalling start to his life had a marked effect on the young Peter. As a child, he became friendly with a dogcatcher who lived in the same building. The dogcatcher was a sadist who tortured and sexually assaulted animals and taught Peter to do likewise. At the same time, Peter started to sexually abuse his sisters, as he had seen his father do.

  By his own account, Kürten carried out his first murders aged nine, when he contrived to drown two of his friends while playing on a raft in the Rhine. However, this was taken to be an accident, and he was not charged with the murders. If he had been, many people’s lives might have been saved as a result.

  Sadist on the loose

  With the arrival of puberty, things went from bad to worse. Kürten became a compulsive masturbator who started to experiment with bestiality. During intercourse with sheep, he took to stabbing the animals, which he found he particularly enjoyed.

  By the age of 16, he had run away from home. He supported himself by petty crime, which in turn led to regular short spells in prison. When not in prison he tended to strike up relationships with masochistic prostitutes considerably older than himself. During this period he also claimed to have carried out his first murder as an adult, strangling a girl during sex some time in 1899. No body was ever found so this claim cannot be verified. A year later, however, he was jailed for two years for attempting to shoot a girl.

  On release in 1904, Kürten was drafted into the army. He soon deserted and struck up a new interest, setting fire to barns and haystacks in the hope of burning a tramp alive. The following year, he received his longest prison sentence yet, seven years for theft.

  While in prison he claims to have poisoned several inmates, though once again, this proved to be unverifiable. What is clear is that his extended stay in prison clearly stoked his violent sexual fantasies to fever pitch.

  On release in 1912, Kürten raped
a servant girl. A year later, he broke into an inn and found a young girl asleep in bed. He strangled her and then cut her throat, revelling in the sight of the blood spurting out of her neck. Despite leaving a handkerchief with his initials embroidered on the scene, he got away with the crime and the girl’s uncle was blamed. He had recently had a bitter row with her father and therefore was suspected of carrying out the murder.

  A changed man?

  Kürten went on to attack several more women, none of them fatally, before once again being sent to jail, this time for eight years. Released in 1921, Kürten moved to the town of Altenburg and for a while seemed to be a changed man. He met a local woman and married her, settled down to a steady job as a moulder in a factory, and became an active trade unionist. However, when in 1925 the couple moved to Düsseldorf, his self-control began to slip. Perhaps it was the fact that he had previously committed so many crimes there; perhaps his marriage was beginning to fail; perhaps he became tired of his respectable life. Whatever the reason, he went on back to his old ways. Over the next four years he would carry out several sexual assaults on women, generally involving attempts at strangulation. Then, in February 1929, his reign of terror began in earnest.

  Brutal murders

  On 3 February, Kürten ran up to a complete stranger, a woman named Frau Kuhn, in the street. He proceeded to stab her 24 times, including several blows to the temple, and then ran away, leaving her lying on the pavement. Remarkably, she survived. His next victim was not so lucky. On 9 February, only six days later, Kürten attacked a nine-year-old girl named Rose Ohliger. He stabbed her 13 times, once again including blows to the temple, which were sufficient to kill her. Semen was found on her body, it was thought that he may have inserted it into her vagina after death, with his finger. He then attempted to burn the child’s corpse and left the partially burnt body on a building site.

  Five day later he killed again. This time his victim was a man, a 45-year-old mechanic by the name of Scheer. He stabbed Scheer 20 times, once again including wounds to the temple. The police were baffled. The stab wounds on the victim’s body indicated that this was the same murderer as before, but in terms of the victim, there seemed to be no pattern at all. Whoever it was who was doing the killings seemed to strike at random, without any obvious sexual or other motivation.

  Random killings

  Whatever demons drove Kürten were satisfied for a while. He bided his time while a drifter was arrested and briefly suspected of being the killer. When the drifter was cleared, Kürten waited until August then struck again. Three more victims were attacked in apparently random stabbings but survived. Then on 24 August, two children, ten-year-old Gertrude Hamacher and 14-year-old Louise Lenzen, were accosted as they walked home from a fair. Kürten came out of the shadows and strangled them before cutting Gertrude’s throat and decapitating Louise.

  The next day he accosted another woman, Gertrude Schelkter, near a different fair. When he asked her for sex, she replied that she would rather die, to which he responded, ‘Well, die then’. He went on to stab her several times. Surprisingly, she survived the attack, and was able to give the police a description of her assailant.

  Panic response

  Three more attempted strangulations followed in September of that year before Kürten once more confused the police by switching weapon. His next two victims, Ida Reuter and Elizabeth Dirries, both had their heads bashed in by blows from a hammer. Kürten then returned to a previous modus operandi for his next victim, five-year-old Gertrude Albernaman. Kürten strangled and stabbed her 36 times. By now, it appeared that Kürten was crying out to be caught. He sent directions as to where her body could be found to a local newspaper. He followed that stunt up by informing the paper of the whereabouts of a previously unknown victim, Maria Hahn, whom he had stabbed and raped back in August. By now, residents of the area were becoming panic-stricken by the murders, and not only Germany but the whole world was nervously waiting for the monster’s next move. Not since Jack the Ripper had a community been so traumatized by a single maniac.

  Final capture

  Kürten responded by going quiet once again. For a while it seemed as if he had simply disappeared. But on 14 May 1930, he picked up a young woman named Mari Budlick who was looking for work. He took her to his house, then took her to the woods, where he attempted to rape her. She resisted and amazingly, he simply let her go. She went to the police and told them where her would-be rapist lived. Even then, Kürten initially evaded capture. When he saw the police arrive at his house, he quickly left and rented a room round the corner. Then he summoned his wife and confessed to her. His concern was that she should receive the reward money for turning him in. She agreed to the plan and on 24 May, arranged for his handover to the police. When they approached him, he simply smiled and said, ‘There is no need to be afraid’.

  Kürten, it seemed, was as relieved as anyone else that it was over, he was quickly tried, convicted of nine murders, and sentenced to death by beheading. In prison waiting for execution he was extensively interviewed by psychiatrists. He told them that he was looking forward to his death – he could imagine no greater thrill than hearing the blood spurt out from his severed neck.

  The sentence was carried out on 2 July 1931. Today, Kürten is remembered as the ‘Vampire of Düsseldorf’, one of the most bloodthirsty serial killers of all time.

  Fritz Haarmann

  In the early years of the twentieth century, the term ‘serial killer’ had not been coined. Instead, media pundits used a variety of terms from European folklore to describe killers who struck again and again, seemingly at random. What we would now call a serial killer would be described, especially in Northern Europe, as a vampire, a werewolf, or a ‘wolf man’.

  Thus it was that Fritz Haarmann, a murderer who committed a series of shocking crimes in the period after World War I, was dubbed ‘the Vampire of Hanover’. In actual fact, most of the murders he committed involved beheading his victims, knifing them, and cutting up their bodies, which he then – horrifyingly – sold as pork meat on the black market. It was only towards the end of his grisly run of murders that Haarmann began to bite his victims in the neck, sucking out their blood. Nevertheless, he went down in history as a real-life vampire, and his chilling legacy of violence and murder is still part of the city’s heritage today. Haarmann is also thought to be the first serial killer whose case was widely reported in the press, causing a media frenzy that culminated in a sensational trial, and giving him the dubious honour of being forever remembered as ‘The Vampire of Hanover’.

  Savage onslaught

  Fritz Haarmann was one of the first serial killers to hit the headlines in modern times, having confessed to the murders of at least 27 young men and boys in the town of Hanover between 1918 and 1924. What made Haarmann uniquely terrifying was the bizarre mixture of frenzy and orderliness that characterized his crimes. He would kill his victims in a savage onslaught, biting through their windpipes as he raped them. Then with considerable care he would remove their clothes and sell them, dismember the bodies, dispose of the bones, cook the flesh, and finally sell it on the black market as pork.

  If this seems hard to believe, one should remember that Germany in the years after World War I was on the brink of starvation. People were so hungry that few questions were asked as to the provenance of food, especially meat. In addition, the basic structures of government, law and order, and social services had almost entirely broken down, so that the disappearance of individuals – especially those who were not from the more wealthy classes – was not often remarked upon. Life was cheap, and horrific murderers like Haarmann flourished in such circumstances.

  Epileptic fits

  Fritz (Friedrich) Haarmann was born on 25 October in Hanover. He was the sixth child of Ollie and Johanna. Ollie was a locomotive stoker, a drunk and a womanizer. Johanna was older than him, 41 at the time Fritz was born and in poor health. Fritz, the baby of the family, was his mother’s particular favouri
te and he often sided with her against his father. As a child he preferred dolls to boys’ toys. More worrying at the time was a fondness for frightening people, particularly his sisters. He liked to play games that involved tying them up or scaring them by tapping on their windows at night.

  Haarmann’s mother died when he was 12 and his feuding with his father intensified. After school he tried an apprenticeship as a locksmith. When that failed, he was sent to military school. After six months there, however, he was sent home because he seemed to be suffering from epileptic fits.

  Child molester

  Back in Hanover, the young Haarmann took to molesting children. Complaints were made and he was examined by a doctor, who sent him to the insane asylum. This turned out to be a deeply traumatizing experience. Haarmann eventually escaped and fled to Switzerland before returning to Hanover at the turn of the twentieth century. To all appearances, he seemed to be a reformed character. He married a woman named Erna Loewert and seemed ready to settle down. This peaceful interlude was not to last, when his wife became pregnant, Haarmann left her and joined the army.