00:00:06
-For three decades,
a relentless serial killer was targeting women across
the industrial heartland
00:00:12
of West Germany. Between 1955 and 1976,
he confessed to killing at least 14 victims, the youngest of them
a 4-year-old girl,
00:00:23
but the authorities had no idea. -The fact that he got away
with this for so long,
00:00:28
I think we should really ask
ourselves a lot of questions. How does somebody like this go
under the radar for that long?
00:00:34
-He killed with such stealth that others were blamed
for his murders. -[ Speaking German ]
00:00:40
-Everyone kept saying he was
the alleged child murderer, and that drove my father
to his death.
00:00:48
-In 1976, the police captured
the actual killer, a 43-year-old man
named Joachim Kroll.
00:00:56
He demonstrated how
he'd killed his victims in a series of chilling
reconstruction pictures.
00:01:02
-In my view, Kroll is among
the most depraved serial killers we've seen in Europe
in the 20th century.
00:01:13
-Joachim Kroll, the man dubbed
the Duisburg Cannibal, had carved his place in history
00:01:19
as one of the world's
most evil killers. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ It was a series of murders that
shocked the whole of Germany.
00:01:48
For 21 years, between
the mid-1950s and the mid-'70s, Joachim Kroll murdered
at least 14 people
00:01:56
by strangling them to death. His youngest victim,
Marion Ketter, was just 4 years old.
00:02:03
The discovery of her dismembered
body in the summer of 1976 left the nation in a state
of complete disbelief.
00:02:12
For years, Kroll took care
to strike away from his home in Duisburg,
a town in Ruhrgebiet,
00:02:18
West Germany's
industrial heartland, but Marion Ketter lived
right on his street.
00:02:24
Police were knocking on doors, searching for the missing
4-year-old girl in July, 1976,
00:02:31
when they made
a gruesome discovery. Bernd Jagers was a young
detective on the detective
00:02:37
on the Duisburg murder squad. -[ Speaking German ] -The whole thing was
only discovered
00:02:46
because Joachim took a girl
from the neighborhood. Before that,
he would travel further,
00:02:51
and the crime scenes
were far away from Duisburg. That is the reason why it
took us so long to catch him.
00:02:58
This time, he took a girl
from the neighborhood who he knew by sight. He took her to his flat,
sexually abused her
00:03:04
and then killed her. When a 4-year-old goes missing, the alarm bells
go off everywhere.
00:03:13
Of course,
you use a lot of personnel to try and find this girl,
and when we got there,
00:03:18
other colleagues were
already on the scene, and we then went inside the flat
and experienced
00:03:23
something terrible. ♪♪ -The story of this twisted
killer begins more than 80 years ago.
00:03:36
Joachim Kroll was born on
April 17, 1933, the sixth of nine children. His family lived
in Upper Silesia
00:03:45
in the far east of Germany until they got driven out of
the end of the second World War.
00:03:52
-Joachim Kroll was
the son of a coal miner born in East Germany. Weakly, unprepossessing child,
barely intelligent,
00:04:02
he had an IQ of 79. -[ Speaking German ] -They lived in
very cramped circumstances,
00:04:10
only two rooms
for a family of 11. always in
financial difficulties. And also his relationship
with the family
00:04:18
weighed heavily on him because
he was hardly able to develop any kind of close relationship
with his siblings.
00:04:28
Joachim Kroll was lonely
in his own family because he learned that he
didn't matter much as a human.
00:04:38
He didn't experience
any motherly or fatherly love at home, and therefore couldn't develop
a feeling of self-worth.
00:04:47
He was withdrawn and shy. He was afraid to even speak because he was
physically abused.
00:04:59
-He was a bit of a victim,
a bit of an outcast, even within his own family,
and then when he went to school,
00:05:05
he didn't really
fit in there, either. He had quite a low IQ. He wasn't particularly bright.
He was a bit slow.
00:05:12
So that made him a bit
of a target there, and then later on, he was
drafted into the Hitler Youth.
00:05:18
You know, perhaps his father
thought this was a way of sorting him out and making
him, you know, a real man,
00:05:25
but that didn't really
work out either because he didn't fit in
with that particular culture.
00:05:31
So here is somebody who's always
been something of an outsider, somebody who doesn't
always fit in,
00:05:37
who isn't really
accepted anywhere. -[ Speaking German ] -When the Red Army came,
all the Germans were driven out,
00:05:45
and for the Kroll family,
it was an odyssey because they went from
place to place to find
00:05:50
another home somewhere. Kroll had to watch women being
raped, people being killed,
00:05:56
how small boys played
with explosives and blew themselves up
in the process. So as a young man, Joachim Kroll
00:06:04
had already been
badly traumatized. -[ Speaking German ] You have to bear in mind
00:06:12
that Joachim had always
been teased and bullied. Even in his own family,
he was always the loser.
00:06:18
When one of them did something,
his siblings would always say "Joachim did it,"
so he would be beaten again.
00:06:23
-There's quite a few pieces
of the jigsaw puzzle falling quite neatly
into place here for Kroll.
00:06:30
So he started off life
as an outsider, not really got many decent
social relationships.
00:06:37
He's quite isolated,
and he's somebody who is becoming
increasingly introverted,
00:06:42
and that's always
a dangerous thing. -While working on farms
as a teenager, Kroll was regularly beaten
by his superiors
00:06:51
whenever he made a mistake. -He went to work on a farm,
quite a tough environment.
00:06:57
He didn't get on
particularly well socially in this environment. He worked with people
on the farm.
00:07:03
This included women, who he
would make inappropriate passes at because he just didn't
have the social skills
00:07:09
to form normal relationships
with the opposite sex. He was quite aggressive
in his approach to them.
00:07:15
So he was often rejected
by the women that he would try
and develop relationships with,
00:07:20
and I think that that served to
just isolate him even further. -During his time on the farm,
Kroll also developed
00:07:28
a morbid fascination
with the butchery of animals. -Back in those days,
slaughtering animals on farms
00:07:35
isn't the kind of cold, clinical
approach that's taken today. It was incredibly brutal.
It was incredibly bloody.
00:07:42
He wasn't repulsed
by these scenes of gore and blood and violence
that other people might be.
00:07:50
-[ Speaking German ] -When he saw a pig being
slaughtered for the first time, it had a lasting effect on him.
00:08:00
He started sweating.
His pulse was racing. It was basically a very positive and almost ecstatic experience
that he didn't expect to feel.
00:08:09
He was completely overwhelmed
by these sensations that were
totally unknown to him.
00:08:20
-So he's a bit different, and he's developing a tolerance
to violence and to death.
00:08:27
-Kroll's delight in the blood
and gore of the slaughterhouse even manifested into
sexual acts with animals.
00:08:34
-[ Speaking German ] -If fantasies of sexual violence
develop during puberty, and he was in puberty
when he was working on farms,
00:08:45
then you can never
get rid of them. There, he experienced
these sexual things, which aroused him --
the warm blood
00:08:51
and where
he satisfied himself. Then afterwards, he lived out
his fantasies on the animals
00:08:56
with sexual acts with cows
and anything that was available, and something like that
will never go away.
00:09:03
-When we look at sex,
we look at what is it? What does it represent? Essentially,
it represents power.
00:09:08
Now, here's somebody who hasn't
had a lot of power, who hasn't had a lot of control
over the things
00:09:12
that have been happening
in his life, but when he's involved
in the slaughtering of animals,
00:09:16
he's feeling in control
in this situation. And this is something
that he quite enjoys.
00:09:21
It's the first time,
I think, in his life that he's got control
over what's going on.
00:09:25
-Kroll's fantasies
translated into behavior that was becoming
more and more grotesque.
00:09:33
When he lived in a hostel
for single men, and he took a cat
into his room, he had this idea
that he wanted to see
00:09:38
what the insides looked like. He took a hammer, struck the cat
and skinned it and took a closer
look at its intestines.
00:09:49
-And that really does show
this kind of childlike curiosity that he's got and the complete
lack of boundaries around
00:09:57
how to behave appropriately. -His violence towards animals
took a more humanlike turn
00:10:04
when Kroll began experimenting
with blow-up dolls. -[ Speaking German ] -Because Kroll didn't manage
to get access to women,
00:10:14
he procured himself
several rubber dolls instead, which he draped with clothing,
00:10:19
but then also hanged them
with a rope and imagined that
the women would then die.
00:10:24
He got a particular
kick out of that. -It was only a matter of time
before Kroll's perverse behavior
00:10:35
would lead him to kill. When he was arrested
three decades later for the gruesome murder
of 4-year-old Marion Ketter
00:10:44
in July, 1976, the police found communication
with Kroll extremely difficult. -[ Speaking German ]
00:10:53
-Well, we just simply thought if someone does
something like this, other things or fantasies
must have played a part.
00:11:01
-Kroll was so withdrawn
that police decided he might open up more
if just one detective tried
00:11:07
to form a rapport with him. -[ Speaking German ] -I said to our boss, "I would
like to talk to Joachim alone."
00:11:15
So the two of us sat down
in the interview room, and I tried
with absolute mundane
00:11:19
and trivial subjects
to get through to him. To get through to this man now
was, of course, not easy.
00:11:28
I then tried with something
we found out through interviews
with his neighbors --
00:11:31
that he would often work
on the moped that he owned, that he would fix it
and adjust it,
00:11:35
and that he also repaired
his own television, and so I tried
to go down this route,
00:11:40
and all of a sudden,
I noticed that he realized, "Someone is listening to me
when I talk about myself
00:11:46
and is actually
asking questions," and that was the moment when
trust was gradually built up,
00:11:51
where I was fortunate enough
to kindle a spark of trust, so he'd also discussed
other things with me.
00:12:04
-Kroll was ready
to talk to the police. They had no idea that the quiet
man sitting before them
00:12:10
was responsible
for the barbaric killing of at least 14 people
over the past 21 years.
00:12:17
His confession would stun
the whole of West Germany. As detectives continued
with their interrogations,
00:12:25
Kroll began to open up. -[ Speaking German ] -My colleague, Bernd Jagers,
did it all the right way.
00:12:35
He's the one who
broke the ice because without his special
relationship with Kroll,
00:12:40
all these murder confessions would probably
never have been possible. So therefore, he deserves
the very highest respect.
00:12:52
He gave Kroll the feeling,
"I don't see you as a beast or man-eater,
but just as a human being,
00:12:59
and that's exactly
how I'll treat you. Let yourself go, do that,"
and Kroll did that,
00:13:04
and then, day after day,
he confessed to new murders. -Kroll told detectives that
he'd committed his first murder
00:13:14
when he was 22 years old,
in February, 1955, just three weeks after
the death of his mother.
00:13:23
-[ Speaking German ] -Joachim Kroll's
murderous career started when the only person
he could relate to,
00:13:32
his mother, died. His mother was, above all, the most important person
in Kroll's life,
00:13:39
in contrast with his father,
who beat him regularly. She was the only
positive figure in his life.
00:13:46
He looked up to her
and didn't have to be afraid. So when this pillar broke,
there was no halt
00:13:51
to his sexual
pathological development. -The victim was 19-year-old
Irmgard Strehl.
00:14:06
Kroll had attacked her
in the town of Ludinghausen, an hour's drive
northeast of Duisburg.
00:14:13
-So he sees this woman, and he
tries to make a pass at her, to grab her and kiss her,
00:14:18
and understandably,
she doesn't react well to this. -[ Speaking German ] -That rejection stunned him
so much that he thought,
00:14:26
"I'm a human being,
and I want to live my sexuality, so I have to find another way,"
00:14:32
and so violence
was the only solution. -As a result, he kind of
shuffles her off into the woods,
00:14:38
where he sexually assaults her, and he kills her,
and then he mutilates her body.
00:14:45
So this is somebody
who appears to be, you know,
kind of sub-human in a way. Why don't we put
his first murder in context?
00:14:53
The only way that
he's felt powerful and that he's felt in control is when he's been
killing animals on the farm.
00:14:59
So when he kills
his first victim, this is another
exercise of power. It's another exercise
of control.
00:15:06
But what's particularly
important about this one is that he's crossed a line.
00:15:10
He's killed a human being.
He's killed an individual. And I think this is a line
00:15:15
that he will cross
time and time again. -Kroll began to confess
to a murderous career
00:15:21
that had lasted
for the previous 21 years. He had developed
a familiar M.O. -- sneaking up behind people
and strangling them to death.
00:15:31
-Kroll was one of the few people who almost fulfilled the
stereotype of a serial killer.
00:15:40
He did have slightly
staring eyes and a small, rather weasely, ratlike face. He tended to be furtive
in all his movements.
00:15:51
He targeted women,
but they had to be inert. Well, the only way that Kroll
could be assured
00:15:58
that his female victims
were inert was to kill them. He would strangle them rapidly,
often by surprise,
00:16:11
usually in isolated places. He was the sort of chap
you probably would have wanted
00:16:18
to cross the street to avoid. -The main effect of
strangulation is that it blocks
the blood supply to the brain
00:16:25
and it blocks the blood coming
back from the brain to the body. That's far more
immediately damaging
00:16:32
than pressure on the windpipe
or blocking off the air supply. So once you've blocked
the blood supply to the brain,
00:16:38
once the arteries
aren't supplying it with blood, you've literally got
about 10 seconds
00:16:43
before you lose consciousness,
so it's quick. -As Detective Bernd Jagers continued with his
daily interrogation of Kroll,
00:16:52
the story began to captivate
the German press, who dubbed the killer
"The Duisburg Cannibal."
00:16:59
-His nickname at one point
was the Ruhr Cannibal or the Ruhr Hunter
because he regularly boasted,
00:17:05
in the wake of his capture,
that he ate the victims. He said it was the only meat
he could eat.
00:17:15
-[ Speaking German ] -You have to explain
that back then, there were all kinds of stories
published in the press,
00:17:21
wild stories,
none of which were true. Let's say that<i> Bild-Zeitung</i>
00:17:25
published interviews
word-for-word in the newspaper, but we never actually
talked to the<i> Bild-Zeitung.</i>
00:17:31
They published such things as,
"Now Joachim Kroll is being given cake
or potato fritters
00:17:35
so that he will confess
to the next murder." This is, of course,
total nonsense.
00:17:41
Now we were there every day, also the weekends in order
to keep Joachim's spirits up.
00:17:46
So I just asked him,
"What would you like to eat?" Which is quite normal.
00:17:51
He would say,
"I would like a piece of cake." Then of course,
we would go and get cake,
00:17:56
but that was just about
being human and not to get
a murder confession. No one would confess to murder
because of that.
00:18:04
-[ Speaking German ] -You have to imagine
Kroll is built up in the media as a monster, a man-eater,
a cannibal, and then the police
00:18:15
go and serve him
with his favorite food. In the end, it was also just
a tactic to get Kroll to talk,
00:18:23
and using these means
has to be allowed. -Having gained
the confidence of Kroll,
00:18:32
the police got a clear insight
into the perverse fantasies that ultimately motivated him
to commit his appalling crimes.
00:18:40
-[ Speaking German ] -He needed this killing. He needed this seeing
how to kill,
00:18:45
and that gave him
sexual gratification, but the corpses in themselves
no longer interested him.
00:18:51
He just left them. He did not cover them up,
nothing at all, and then he got the bus or train
00:18:57
or whatever home
in a completely normal way. -Kroll tended to minimize
his behavior,
00:19:04
and, as criminologists, we call this
techniques of neutralization. So rather than describing them
00:19:10
as the horrendous
things they are, he described them
as these funny feelings, you know, something that was
a bit of a quirk
00:19:17
or something that was a bit odd. So he's minimizing
what he's doing by describing it in that way.
00:19:24
-Between 1955 and 1976, Kroll told detectives that
he'd killed at least 14 people
00:19:32
and that he could take them
to some of the crime scenes. Officers decided to drive him
to a series of
00:19:39
cold case locations throughout
the Ruhrgebiet region. They hoped by allowing him
to reenact the murders,
00:19:46
it may help them identify
his unknown victims. The police captured photographs of these macabre
reconstructions.
00:19:55
-[ Speaking German ] -We as interrogators
had no files, nothing at all. We drove behind them.
00:20:03
They stop somewhere, then
Joachim got out, and we asked, "Joachim, have you been
here before?"
00:20:08
and if he recognized something,
then he said, "Yes, I have been here before."
00:20:13
He then looked at it all
and went with us into the forest depending on what
crime scene it was.
00:20:18
He then could describe
how it had looked at that time. That was incredible.
He had a photographic memory.
00:20:23
He did not know where he was, but he just had
this photographic memory. -Kroll would try and identify
a specific tree or shrub,
00:20:33
but he couldn't always find
what he was looking for. -We would find a few places
where a forest used to be,
00:20:41
but now they were
high-rise buildings. Then he didn't know anymore,
and he said, "I'm sorry.
00:20:45
I can't say if I was here.
I don't know." Of course, this was
sometimes frustrating,
00:20:50
but you have to live with that
after such a long time. -Kroll took the police
to the town of Essen,
00:20:57
half an hour's drive
from his home in Duisburg where he told them how he killed
61-year-old Maria Hettgen
00:21:04
outside of her house in 1969. -[ Speaking German ] -He walked around
the lake all day.
00:21:11
It was nice weather
and had this feeling. It had slowly turned to dusk,
and he wanted to go home,
00:21:16
but then he saw the old lady,
whom he immediately addressed and said, "Do you want
to have sex with me?"
00:21:21
She did not want to, of course. He snatched her and pulled her
into a wooded area,
00:21:26
and then he killed her there. -He doesn't seem to have
a particular victim type,
00:21:32
which is something that we do
tend to see in serial killers. So this could suggest
that these crimes
00:21:38
are completely opportunistic,
that he's not consciously targeting a particular
group of people.
00:21:44
-Using the information gathered
in these fact-finding missions, the police were able
to piece together
00:21:50
Kroll's history of murder. -[ Speaking German ] -We could only use
what Joachim Kroll told us
00:22:00
during the reenactment
during the interrogation, and we would ask
a few questions
00:22:05
about whether or not
anything more had occurred. Well, we asked,
"Joachim, what did you do then?
00:22:10
What happened then?"
Questions like that. These answers convinced us that
he is not inventing the stuff
00:22:15
and that he really wants
to get it off his chest. After spending
three months with Joachim
00:22:24
and looking into
more than 100 cases, at some point
the defense said, "That's enough.
Joachim Kroll will no longer
00:22:30
go into the car
with the police." So we could not continue to go to all the unsolved
crime scenes.
00:22:37
This may have also resulted
in solving other unsolved cases. That was a shame. -As new crimes
were revealed to detectives,
00:22:48
they soon realize that Kroll
was confessing to murders that had already been solved.
00:22:54
Some of these innocent men
who had been wrongly accused were in prison
and some had even ended up dead.
00:23:03
He had confessed to the murder
of 14 people and led detectives to the location
of many of the crime scenes.
00:23:11
One of these victims
was 13-year-old Jutta Rahn. Kroll had strangled and killed
her in the town of Breitscheid
00:23:19
in 1970, six years
before his arrest, but in a time
before DNA evidence existed,
00:23:27
the police had focused
their investigation on Jutta's boyfriend. -[ Speaking German ]
00:23:36
-For the police and also
for the prosecutor, the matter was resolved, and because of that,
it was not on the list,
00:23:43
and then Joachim went with us
into the forest and explained what he had done. This was the first story
where we then said,
00:23:50
"Hey, we have somebody here
who is in the know. We're not here with somebody
who is not quite so clever.
00:23:57
He wants to show us
what he's done, and now we have a crime
for which someone else
00:24:01
has almost been sentenced,
and he has another 20 to 30 people
that he might have killed."
00:24:07
-A blood group classification
expert later confirmed that Jutta's boyfriend could
not have been the perpetrator,
00:24:14
and he was acquitted,
but he was not the only man who had been mistakenly
accused of a Kroll murder.
00:24:22
One man had even made
a false confession about killing 16-year-old
Manuela Knodt,
00:24:28
who was in fact murdered
by Kroll in 1959. -[ Speaking German ] -After some time, this man
went to the police
00:24:41
and told them
that he killed this girl. He really went to prison
for the crime but then said during his trial,
"It wasn't me.
00:24:48
I only said that because
I had financial problems, family problems.
I was on the street.
00:24:53
I needed somewhere to go
and confessed to this crime." It was, of course, no longer
treated as an unsolved case
00:24:59
by the police. The case had been closed. It had come to a trial,
and he had been convicted.
00:25:09
-Following Kroll's
arrest in 1976, the convicted man wrote
an astonishing letter,
00:25:16
which was published
in the press. -[ Speaking German ] -This man had already turned
to our boss at the murder squad.
00:25:24
He wrote a letter then saying
that he was not the perpetrator, and that the perpetrator must
still be walking around free.
00:25:30
We went to that scene,
to the crime scene, and Joachim got out and said,
"Yes, I was here, too."
00:25:35
He went into the forest
and again looked for a very specific bush and a specific place,
and he said, "Here it was,"
00:25:42
and we immediately did
a reconstruction. So that was the second story
where an innocent person
00:25:48
had served time in prison, and the matter
was considered as solved. -Another man who was falsely
accused was Walter Quicker,
00:25:59
a farmer from Walsum,
a suburb of Duisburg. He lived less than a mile
from the spot
00:26:06
where 11-year-old Monika Tafel
was killed in June, 1962. -[ Speaking German ] -The young happened to be out
and about that day
00:26:17
and bumped into Joachim Kroll, who was out looking for
a new victim to kill and rape.
00:26:23
Without the slightest
hesitation, he kept turning around to check
if anyone could see him,
00:26:28
approached the girl,
dragged her into a field, strangled her, and then
sexually assaulted her.
00:26:37
-But in 1962, Joachim Kroll
was just a phantom, and a few days after the brutal
killing of Monika Tafel,
00:26:46
the police arrested
Walter Quicker. His daughter, Marlies, was just
6 years old at the time.
00:26:53
-[ Speaking German ] -My father was suspected
of raping and murdering an 11-year-old girl 150 meters
from his family home.
00:27:17
People who lived in the area and also from among
his acquaintances made claims. They expressed suspicions,
which the police reacted to.
00:27:27
And I think it was
five days after the child's body was found, they arrested him
at his workplace.
00:27:41
No one could have seen him because on the day of the
disappearance, he was at work.
00:27:45
So in that sense,
he also had a kind of alibi. He was accused, and I know
that some people
00:27:54
who were very close to me made negative comments
about my father. -The murder of Monika
had left the community
00:28:05
in a state of shock. People were keen to keep
their children within sight because no one knew
where the killer lived
00:28:13
or when he'd strike again. -[ Speaking German ] -This created an oppressive
atmosphere in the area,
00:28:26
and at the same time,
people voiced their suspicions. One person suspected the next.
00:28:31
It was a hard time for everyone, and no one insisted
that it wasn't him. The accusations were there,
apart from my mother.
00:28:42
She always said,
"It wasn't him." -Walter was only held
in police custody
00:28:53
for a few days before
being released without charge, but people in the area
continued to see Marlies' father
00:29:01
as the killer. -[ Speaking German ] -So after he was released,
people avoided him,
00:29:10
and people called out
behind him, "Murderer," and stuff like that. It was the case that people
really avoided him in the area.
00:29:20
-Just six months
after his arrest, the false accusations became
too much for Walter to take.
00:29:26
-[ Speaking German ] -On the evening of
the 10th of December, he left the house, and that was
the last time he was seen.
00:29:41
On the 15th of December, 1962, he was found hanging
from a tree by some children.
00:30:02
I was 9 years old when I really
grasped what had happened, and it appalled me. It touched me inside,
and I often stood
00:30:11
and looked at the spot
where the girl was murdered. -When Kroll confessed
to the murder
00:30:20
of 11-year-old Monika Tafel
following his arrest in 1976, it came as a huge relief
to Marlies,
00:30:29
but in a way,
Walter Quicker had become yet another victim
of Joachim Kroll. -[ Speaking German ]
00:30:43
-My grandmother came out
with the remark, "So it wasn't him after all."
00:30:48
This remark affected me
very deeply, and I didn't ever discuss it
with anyone else
00:30:53
because I had to process
the fact that the pressure
of being the daughter of a suspected murderer
had disappeared.
00:31:14
My father had been
rehabilitated. I don't know what other people
said about that afterwards.
00:31:21
I only know what I heard
and what I felt myself, and that's the only thing
that counted for me.
00:31:32
-Before Kroll was arrested,
a whole series of other men came under suspicion
as part of the investigation,
00:31:38
and that is of course
particularly tragic because these were always
men who, at the end of the day,
00:31:44
had nothing to do
with the crime. -Kroll saw no problem with that. No, that's their problem.
00:31:52
That would be their difficulty.
I can get away with it. And to get away with it
for 21 years
00:31:57
so consistently,
with so many deaths, in such a small area
is horrifying, but also remarkable.
00:32:06
-In total, two men were
falsely accused or imprisoned, and three men committed suicide
in relation to Kroll's murders,
00:32:15
another five victims
of the callous killer. After his arrest in July, 1976,
it appeared to detectives
00:32:23
that Kroll was almost relieved
to be captured. -[ Speaking German ] -He wanted this sensation gone,
00:32:30
which had always led him
to commit these crimes. So he really felt the need,
and he thought that
00:32:34
when he told his story
that it would go away somehow. -In terms of what Kroll
expressed about his punishment,
00:32:41
it is quite childlike
and quite immature in a way because he thought that
he would just go to hospital
00:32:47
and his funny feelings
would be cured, and then he'd be able
to go home. So this implies quite a kind of
simplistic interpretation
00:32:54
of his own problems. -But Joachim Kroll could not
make these murders simply disappear.
00:33:02
He would have to face justice
for his crimes. Kroll may have gone on
to kill many more women,
00:33:08
but one costly mistake
had led to his capture, and a gruesome discovery in his
home had stunned the country.
00:33:17
-He presented to the world
as friendly, plausible, agreeable
to his neighbors in Duisburg.
00:33:29
The local children
would visit him, although I think sometimes
their parents must have been
a little suspicious.
00:33:36
He was known as Uncle Joachim. -[ Speaking German ] -We also tried to speak to those
around the neighborhood,
00:33:43
asked who knows him,
who had contact with him. People said he was a bit weird,
a bit odd somehow,
00:33:48
but he was
dear old Uncle Joachim, and in reality, he was a wolf
in sheep's clothing.
00:33:54
-Behind this facade
of Uncle Joachim and, "Oh, I like to look
after you girls and boys,
00:33:59
and they come around to see me,
and I'll give them sweets," was this man who was
very, very angry,
00:34:04
who wanted to make society
well aware that they were living
by a thread, and he could cut it
at any moment that he chose.
00:34:14
-Kroll usually did
his killing miles away from his Duisburg home, but in July, 1976,
suffering with a bad leg,
00:34:24
he finally struck
within his own community when he kidnapped and murdered
4-year-old Marion Ketter.
00:34:31
It was the mistake
that led to his capture. -[ Speaking German ] -His crime scenes
got closer and closer,
00:34:38
and therefore it was the dumbest
thing he could really do was take a girl
from the direct neighborhood,
00:34:43
but as I said,
his feeling was greater, and if he had thought about it,
he should have said,
00:34:48
"This, what I am doing now,
is nonsense. They will catch me." -Door-to-door questioning
throughout the neighborhood
00:34:56
led the police
directly to Kroll. Inside his home was
an horrific crime scene. Detectives found a saucepan on
the stove with body parts in it.
00:35:06
Worse still were the contents
of the refrigerator. -There was this girl
completely dismembered,
00:35:13
upper arm, forearm placed
on corresponding shelves so that he only had
to take something out
00:35:19
and add it to the pan. That was unfathomable for us. -When we look at cannibalism,
00:35:25
we're essentially
looking at those who consume
the bodies of other humans, and this is something
that we do see
00:35:33
sometimes in cases
of serial murder, and it is about power,
and it's about control again.
00:35:39
It's about completely
possessing your victim. So not only have you
taken away their life,
00:35:45
you're now mutilating their body
and consuming it. -Kroll disposed of other
parts of the body
00:35:51
by flushing them
down the lavatory. -[ Speaking German ] -But that blocked the toilet
00:35:57
and that of his neighbor
below, as well. The neighbor approached
him and said, "Hey, something
is blocked here."
00:36:05
-One of the horrifying things
of Kroll's crimes was that he took pleasure in taking out
the intestines of his victims,
00:36:13
and he told a neighbor who was
asking him what the smell was, and he said rather flippantly,
"Oh, it's guts,"
00:36:21
which it literally
was intestines, and the neighbor complained. Kroll was nothing if not brazen.
00:36:28
-Kroll claimed he had
butchered a rabbit and would make sure the remains
were removed from the pipe.
00:36:35
-[ Speaking German ] -He did that, too, and he took
it to the waste bins in the courtyard
where he disposed of it.
00:36:42
He was seen by this neighbor,
who then told our colleagues, who were walking around,
asking questions,
00:36:47
"Who has seen this girl last?" This neighbor told them
of his observations,
00:36:52
and so they checked
the waste bin and found that this was
not from a rabbit, but that they
were human innards.
00:36:59
-Kroll had kidnapped
and murdered the helpless 4-year-old
just days before. -[ Speaking German ]
00:37:10
-He felt particularly attracted
to this young girl. He always stood up in the attic
00:37:15
looking down
into the playground, saw Marion playing,
and got this funny feeling,
00:37:20
"I want to have this girl, and I will snatch her up
at the next opportunity,"
00:37:25
and the 4-year-old girl did then
come into his flat with him, and then he strangled her,
00:37:30
and after that did
all these awful things that one can scarcely bear
to talk about.
00:37:38
-[ Speaking German ] -Well, I was shocked
because I had a son who was not that much older.
00:37:44
I had not been in
the homicide division long, only for two years. That was something where you
had to more than just swallow.
00:37:51
I have seen many things, but this was something
completely new to me that a human being was able
to do such a thing.
00:38:01
-Kroll had evaded detection
for so long and had no remorse whatsoever
for the suffering he'd caused.
00:38:10
-He was not capable of feeling
any sort of empathy towards anybody,
especially his victims.
00:38:16
They were simply objects to him that he wanted
to manipulate and kill, and then he was content.
00:38:26
-Joachim Kroll never cared
about what he did. He did not even ask
what her name was.
00:38:31
He did not care.
His tingling feeling was gone. Her body remained there. He got up, possibly
cleaned himself up,
00:38:40
and then the matter
was done for him. There was not even
a reaction like, "When I count them up,
you'd be able to prove so many.
00:38:46
That is so bad." Such things we did not hear
from him. In that regard,
he was totally emotionless.
00:38:55
-Although he had confessed
to killing at least 14 people, the police officially charged
Joachim Kroll
00:39:02
with eight murders. -On the 4th of October, 1979, Kroll's hearing
began in Duisburg.
00:39:10
As the details of Kroll's gruesome sexual deviance
were revealed, the case caught
the public's imagination
00:39:17
in a way few others have. -[ Speaking German ] -The, in some cases,
excessive media coverage
00:39:26
obviously contributed to Kroll
becoming a case of the century, but on the other hand,
00:39:32
from a criminologist's
perspective, one has to say that there hasn't
been a comparable case
00:39:36
in Germany at least
since the second World War where so many people have been
killed over such a long period.
00:39:45
-Over the next
two and a half years, the court was only
in session 151 times, but in April, 1982,
00:39:53
Kroll was convicted of all eight
murder charges against him. He was sentenced
to life imprisonment.
00:39:59
The 49-year-old was immediately
sent to Rheinbach Prison. -[ Speaking German ] -In my view,
Kroll wasn't mad or bad,
00:40:14
but was a human being
who had failed in social terms, sexually and in his work life,
00:40:19
and who on this basis committed
the most terrible crimes. In my opinion, Joachim Kroll
00:40:25
would not have become
a serial killer if he had been valued
as a human being. -Whilst most of his victims
were young,
00:40:35
there was somebody
who was in their 60s. So there was an array
of victims. It wasn't a particular type,
00:40:42
and the fact that he got away
with this for so long, I think we should really ask
ourselves a lot of questions,
00:40:47
you know, as a society. How does somebody like this go
under the radar for that long?
00:40:52
-On July 1, 1991, nine years
after being convicted, Joachim Kroll died
of a heart attack
00:41:00
in Rheinbach Prison. He was 58 years old. -I think Kroll did some
incredibly evil things
00:41:09
which really do kind of breach
not just legal codes, but social and moral ones,
as well,
00:41:15
and what's interesting for me is
what made him into this person that did these evil things?
00:41:22
He didn't really have very much
in the way of monitoring of his behavior
or any breaks on his behavior.
00:41:27
So I think when you have
a situation like that, you can have somebody who turns into someone
capable of real evil.
00:41:35
-The news of Kroll's demise was of scant
consolation to Marlies Woywod. -[ Speaking German ]
00:41:54
-After I heard about it,
I felt hatred for Kroll and would have liked
to wish on him
00:41:59
that everything he did
to the children at to the adults
would be done to him, and I'm sorry that he died
so early,
00:42:09
and this anger I have will
probably never go away. -Had he not kidnapped
Marion Ketter close to home
00:42:22
in one of his very few mistakes
in this killing spree of 20 years or more, then I'm absolutely sure
he would have continued to kill.
00:42:30
If there is ever anyone
who could be said to epitomize
what the word "evil" means,
00:42:36
I would say
it was Joachim Kroll, a genuinely evil man who defiled
the world he inhabited.
00:42:44
-For 21 years,
West Germany was haunted by an almost-invisible killer. Joachim Kroll was so ordinary
00:42:52
that he blended
into the background. While other men were accused
of his most vile crimes,
00:42:58
he continued to murder
for his own gratification, regardless of the consequences.
00:43:04
His capture came as a shock
to the whole country, who will remember Kroll as one of the world's
most evil killers.
00:43:12
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