Peter Kurten

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

EVIL ON EARTH

“After my head has been chopped off, will I still be able to hear, at least for a moment, the sound of my own blood gushing from my neck? That would be the pleasure to end all pleasures.” In his own words - Peter Kurten aspired to become, “the most celebrated criminal of all time.” But other criminals were more famous, including his role model, Jack the Ripper.   Kurten fell short of his goal but can claim another distinction. In a century of sadistic lust killers, Kurten is in the view of many expertes, the most appalling of all. Kurten grew up in a single room with ten family members - a hotbed of depraved sex. His father, a vicious drunk who forced himself upon his wife in front of their children.  He was jailed for the rape of his thirteen-year-old daughter.   Kurten also engaged in sex with his sisters. His favourite form of sexual activity was not incest but beastiality. A neighbor who was a dog catcher taught the boy to torture and masturbate animals, forging an early link in Kurten’s already twisted psyche between sadistic cruelty and sexual release. At the age of thirteen and fifteen, he committed countless acts of beastiality with pigs, sheep and goats, deriving intense pleasure to stab the animal to death while having intercourse with it.   At fifteen - already a habitual thief - Kurten was arrested and jailed; the first of a long string of prison sentences.  He would spend more than half his forty-seven years behind bars. Between 1899 and 1928, during those periods, he managed to stay at large and may have committted atleast three murders but none were pinned on him. A pyromaniac, he also derived sexual satisfaction from torching barns. Kurten took a wife in 1921 and won her consent in an unconventional way - he threatened to kill her if she refused to marry him. Until Kurten confessed to the truth, his loyal, long-suffering wife was unaware she had wed the infamous “Monster of Dusseldorf.”   Kurten earned the nickname in 1929. That year, he unleashed an unprecedented torrent of violence, attacking twenty-nine people between February and November. This spree ended with the death of a five-year-old girl, Gertrude Alberman.  Days later, emulating his idol, Jack the Ripper, Kurten sent a letter to the police. In it he directed them to the Alberman girl, other victims and a housemaid. For more than a year, the citizens of Dusseldorf lived in terror.   The police did everything possible to track the killer, questioning almost a thousand suspects and following hundreds of leads; Kurten was hellishly difficult to track. Most lust killers prefer a single kind of weapon and type of victim. Kurten used axes, scissors, hammers, knives and his bare hands.   In May 1930, Kurten mysteriously let a young woman go after attempting to rape her. Seventy-two hours later he was under arrest. In custody, he spilled his unspeakable story in amazing detail. Among other facts, authorities learned that besides his other perversions, Kurten was a vampire who drank the blood of victims. Convicted of nine murders, he was guillotined in July 1931.