Fiendish Killers

by Anne Williams

  Because of her social standing, Elizabeth Bathory was not allowed to be executed and believe it or not the court never convicted her of any crime. She was merely placed under house arrest in her very own torture chamber. Stonemasons were brought to Castle Cséjthe, to wall up the windows and doors, leaving only a small gap in the wall for food to be passed through to her.

  Elizabeth dictated her last will and testament on July 31, 1614, at the age of fifty-four. She left her entire wealth to be divided up between her four children. Towards the end of August, four years after she had been incarcerated in a prison of her own making, Elizabeth Bathory was found lying face down by one of her jailers. The villagers refused to allow the body of the infamous ‘Blood Countess’ to be buried in their town on hallowed ground, and eventually her body was placed in Ecsed, which was the original Bathory family seat.

  Elizabeth Bathory will always be remembered for her seemingly inconceivable disregard for human life. Although it would be nice to think that she was mentally deranged, there is evidence to disprove this theory and it appears that she was in total control of her faculties and just got immense pleasure from pain, killing and the taste of blood – a fiendish killer indeed.

  Arnold Paole

  Our modern concept of a vampire is an animated corpse rising up from the dead, preying on human victims at night, and drinking blood in their quest for immortality. Arnold Paole fits perfectly into this description.

  Paole returned from active service in Greece in the spring of 1727 to his native village of Meduegna, near Belgrade. Having claimed to have had enough adventures to last him a lifetime, Paole decided to settle down and purchased a cottage and two acres of ground. He soon established himself into the village community, although many wondered why such a young man would want to retire from active service in the prime of his life. He appeared to be an honest man, and yet the locals sensed a certain strangeness in his manner, even though they weren’t able to put their finger on it.

  Several months after arriving back at the village, Paole started dating the daughter of one of his neighbours, a young girl called Nina. Her father was a wealthy farmer and within a very short time the couple were married. Nina, like the other villagers, felt there was something not quite right about her new husband and decided to ask him what it was that troubled him so much. He told her that he was constantly haunted by the fear of an early death. He went on to tell Nina that where he had been stationed, the dead frequently came back to torment the living and that he, himself, had experienced a visitation from an undead being. Paole was told that the only way to rid himself of a troublesome vampire was to eat some of the earth from its grave and smear the creature’s blood onto his own skin. Paole did exactly that, and for a long time it seemed to work as an effective deterrent.

  Shortly after his marriage to Nina, Paole had a serious accident while working on the farm. He fell from the top of a loaded hay wagon and was carried, unconscious, back to his house. His injuries were so severe that Paole only survived a couple of days. His body was laid to rest in the village churchyard but it appears his soul was far from being at peace.

  reports of a vampire

  About one month after Paole died, rumours started spreading round the village that people had seen him wandering around the neighbourhood after dark. Several people reported that he was haunting them and seemed to appear when they were feeling particularly weak or vulnerable. Those who claimed to have seen Paole, fell into a state of debility a few days later and, when several of them died, panic spread throughout the neighbourhood. As the dark, winter nights approached, no one dared to venture outdoors. However, this was quite ironic as the spectre was able to penetrate the walls and it seemed no lock or bars at the windows could keep it out. The whole village remained in a state of terror throughout the harsh winter and eventually, in a state of desperation, the villagers decided that the body of Paole must be disinterred.

  The party chosen to carry out the grisly task consisted of two military officers, two army surgeons, a drummer boy who carried their cases of instruments, authorities from the village, the old sexton and his assistants. They set out for the grave-yard in the early hours of the morning while a thin grey mist still hung over the tops of the gravestones. For the most part the graves were well kept and it was easy to find the grave of Arnold Paole. They started to dig away the earth from around the wooden coffin, and when it was uncovered the men managed to drag it out onto the ground. The young drummer boy stood apparently frozen by horror.

  As the men knocked off the lid they saw that the corpse inside had moved to one side. The jaws were wide open, the lips were blue, but trickling from the corners of his mouth were thin streams of fresh blood. Even the soldiers and the surgeon, who were accustomed to the atrocities of the battlefield, gasped in horror. As they stared at Paole’s corpse, despite being exceptionally pale, it had the appearance of a body that had only been dead for a day, not the several months since his funeral. The drummer boy fainted as the doctor said it was obvious that they were looking at the body of a vampire. On closer inspection, underneath the old, flaking external skin, they found new, clear skin and fingernails clearly growing on the body.

  The men decided to waste no time in taking appropriate action to rid themselves of the monster. They scattered garlic over the corpse and then drove a stake through his heart. As the stake pierced his body, it is alleged that he let out a piercing scream and warm, fresh blood spurted out of the wound. Not prepared to take any risks, the men decided to exhume the bodies of the four people who had died as a result of Paole’s visitations, fearing that they would also have taken on the form of vampires. They dealt with them in the same way as they had with Paole’s corpse and then burned all five bodies, placing their ashes on consecrated ground.

  The men were now happy that they had dealt with the matter satisfactorily and that the village of Meduegna would have no more unwelcome night visitors.

  new victims

  Indeed, everything was quiet in Meduegna until 1732, when there was a second spate of inexplicable deaths. The victims all appeared to have died from loss of blood, their bodies being in a terrible state of anaemia. Apparently, even though they had destroyed Arnold Paole, humans were not his only victims. He had also drunk the blood of cattle which had subsequently been eaten by some of the villagers. In a period of three months, seventeen people died both young and old, all with no previous history of illness.

  The officials wasted no time in visiting the graveyard for a second time, examining all the graves. Several eminent surgeons were invited to Meduegna and their investigations yielded some quite extraordinary results. Three distinguished army surgeons – Johannes Flickinger, Isaac Siedel and Johann Friedrich Baumgärtner – wrote detailed reports on what they found, the most remarkable of which were:

  A woman by the name of Stana, twenty years of age, who had died three months before, after an illness which only lasted three days and which followed directly after her confinement. Upon her deathbed she confessed that she had anointed herself with the blood of a vampire to liberate herself from his persecutions. The body of the child, owing to a hasty and careless interment, had been half scraped up and devoured by wolves. The body of the woman, Stana, was untouched by decomposition. When it was opened the chest was found to be full of fresh blood, the viscera had all the appearance of soundest health. The skin and nails of both hands and feet were loose and came off, but underneath was a clean new skin and nails.

  One Joachim, a boy of seventeen, who was the son of a heyduk. He had died after a short illness of three days, and had lain buried for eight weeks and four days. His complexion was fresh, and the body unmistakably in the vampire condition.

  a scientific reason

  All of the phenomena described above can be explained scientifically, because they are all characteristic at certain stages of decomposition. It is not uncommon for the body to appear ruddy in complexion, and non-coagulated blood is often present and may be seen
escaping from the orifices. Whatever your belief, let’s hope that the tormented soul of Arnold Paole has now found its resting place.

  Peter Plogojowitz

  Peter Plogojowitz was a farmer who lived in the early eighteenth century in the village of Kisolova in what was then Austrian Serbia (modern-day Hungary). The previous hale and hearty sixty-two-year-old died suddenly in 1725 and was buried in the churchyard of his village. His family mourned his death, but little did they realise that that was not to be the last time they would see him. Just three days after his death, Plogojowitz appeared at midnight at his own front door and asked his son for some food. The following night was peaceful and passed without incident. The next night the vision of Plogojowitz appeared again to his son, but this time the younger man refused his father any food. Having been turned down, the ghostly corpse cast his son a threatening look and then disappeared. The following morning the younger Plogojowitz was dead.

  Two months later, nine other villagers of differing ages died within a single week, all from a mysterious twenty-four-hour illness. On their deathbeds, each one of them claimed to have been visited by the corpse of Plogojowitz. They said that he had bent over them while they lay in their beds and had sunk his teeth into their necks. It appears that instead of resting peacefully in his grave, Peter Plogojowitz had become a vampire. The widow of Plogojowitz further frightened the villagers when she told them that her husband had visited her and demanded his old shoes. Fearing for her own life, Plogojowitz’s wife fled Kisolova.

  At the time of these mysterious deaths, Kisolova and the surrounding district was under the imperial rule of Austria. Many Austrian officials had come to live in the region to serve in the government, and it was one such official that was approached by the Kisolova villagers. They asked the Imperial Provisor to oversee the opening of Plogojowitz’s grave and make an official report. Although the Provisor wished to seek advice from his superiors in Belgrade, the villagers were too terrified to let the matter rest and went ahead with the exhumation of the remains of Peter Plogojowitz.

  The reluctant Provisor and the local priest accompanied the crowd and watched as they dug up the coffin. Everyone was shocked when they slid back the lid. Despite the period of time that Plogojowitz had been in the ground, his corpse did not emit the usual foul odour and the body was amazingly intact, except for the nose which had decayed away. The old skin was white, but most of it had peeled away to reveal a new one growing underneath. Also, Plogojowitz’s hair and beard had grown, he had new nails on his hands and feet, and there were traces of fresh blood around his mouth.

  The Provisor had to admit that the corpse showed every sign of having become a vampire and ordered the men to drive a sharpened stake through its heart. As the stake entered the body, fresh blood poured from his nose and mouth and the corpse showed signs of visibly struggling. The body was burned to ashes and then scattered on consecrated ground.

  Remembering the stories surrounding the death of Arnold Paole, the official decided to inspect the graves of the people who were said to have been visited by Plogojowitz. There were no signs of vampirism and the men simply treated their graves with the traditional method of placing garlic and whitethorn next to their bodies.

  Both Plogojowitz and Paole lived in a part of the world where it was widely believed that the dead could be transformed into undead souls who preyed on the living. They also believed that they could only be dealt with by the traditional methods. These thoughts have haunted people for centuries and have been romanticised in literature and film.

  Even as late as 1912, a story appeared in The Daily Telegraph on February 15, reporting that a Hungarian farmer was convinced that he had been visited by a vampire.

  A Buda-Pesth telegram to the Messagerro reports a terrible instance of superstition.

  A boy of fourteen died some days ago in a small village. A farmer, in whose employment the boy had been, thought that the ghost of the latter appeared to him every night. In order to put a stop to these supposed visitations, the farmer, accompanied by some friends, went to the cemetery one night, stuffed three pieces of garlic and three stones in the mouth, and thrust a stake through the corpse, fixing it to the ground. This was to deliver themselves from the evil spirit, as the credulous farmer and his friends stated when they were arrested.

  Peter Kurten

  Peter Kurten was a mild-mannered, soft-spoken man who, to all intents and purposes, appeared to be totally harmless. Yet this middle-class man concealed a very sick, sadistic nature which would eventually come to the fore in the form of vampirism. He struck terror among the inhabitants of Düsseldorf as the man they had dubbed ‘The Vampire of Düsseldorf’ demonstrated his full range of bestiality.

  rotten childhood

  Kurten was born on May 26, 1883, the eldest of thirteen children. The Kurten family lived in abject poverty in a one-bedroom apartment in Cologne. Peter’s father was a moulder by trade but spent most of his leisure hours in a state of inebriation which left him with an uncontrollable temper. The family lived in fear of him coming home from work and the young Peter often felt the brunt of his anger. He was also forced to watch as his father repeatedly raped his mother and sisters and, subjected to this daily form of brutality, Peter Kurten grew up a bitter and twisted young man.

  When Peter was only nine years old he pushed a friend off a raft as they played on the river. When another boy jumped into the water and tried to save his drowning friend, Peter held the boy’s head under the water until he suffocated. The boys’ deaths were treated as an accident and the young Kurten was cleared of any blame.

  When he was sixteen, Kurten ran away from home and had to beg and steal to survive. For the next twenty-four years, Kurten was in and out of jail and it is alleged that his brutal treatment during this time left him wanting to take revenge on the society that had treated him so cruelly.

  cruel revenge

  When Kurten was released from prison in May 1913, he was a handsome young man who had no problems attracting the opposite sex. However, his past left him incapable of forming any lasting relationships and with a lack of normal human emotions he went in search of revenge. Kurten was prowling the streets of Cologne looking for a house to break in to, when he came across a young girl asleep in her bed. He cut her throat and then sexually abused the child, leaving a trademark on his way out – a handkerchief bearing his initials. The body of ten-year-old Christine Klein was found the next morning and suspicion immediately fell on her uncle, Otto. He was charged with Christine’s murder, but was cleared by a jury and the real killer would not be apprehended for another eighteen years.

  With the rumblings of war growing over Europe, Kurten was called to fight for Germany. However, Kurten did not fit comfortably into the military lifestyle and he deserted. He was captured and arrested and spent the remainder of the war incarcerated. Due to his insubordinance, Kurten spent much of his time in solitary confinement, dreaming up wild and abhorrent fantasies that he hoped one day to fulfil.

  When he was eventually released in 1921, Kurten went to live with his sister in a small town by the name of Altenburg. It was here that he met a former prostitute who had spent a few years in jail for shooting a man who had jilted her at the altar. They started to date and within a few months Kurten asked her to be his wife.

  After they were married they lived in Altenburg until 1925, with Kurten earning an honest living as a moulder in a local factory. However, his ‘normal’ existence didn’t last for very long and he abused a couple of servant girls. With the finger of suspicion pointing at Kurten, the couple moved to Düsseldorf in 1925, and it was here that his reign of terror began in earnest.

  the vampire of Düsseldorf

  Throughout 1929 and 1930 the streets of Düsseldorf were eerily empty as soon as the night closed in. Everyone rushed to the safety of their houses, bolting their doors and drawing their curtains, living in constant fear of the ‘beast’ who had no face, no name and no definite form. It had already committed
forty-six violent crimes, showing virtually every type of perversion. The citizens of Düsseldorf grew more frightened and angry with each new murder and the German newspapers carried headlines of ‘monsters’ and ‘vampires’ stalking the streets. However, the full atrocities of the creature now dubbed ‘The Vampire of Düsseldorf’ revealed themselves on the night of August 23, 1929.

  The people who lived in the suburb of Flehe had gathered to celebrate an annual fair. Everyone was starting to relax, feeling comfort in the closely packed crowd. There were old-fashioned merry-go-rounds and stalls selling food and beer, all to the sound of German marching songs.

  At about 10.30 p.m., two foster sisters, fourteen-year-old Louise Lenzen and five-year-old Gurtrude Hamacher, left the safety of the fairground and started to walk home. As they made their way across some allotments they didn’t notice the shadowy figure following them along the footpath.