Killers: Behind the Myth (2013–2015): Season 1, Episode 3 - Kroll: The Duisburg Cannibal - full transcript
For over 20 years, sex killer Joachim Kroll had been strangling women across northern Germany. He claimed an internal force drove him, picking women walking alone in the countryside. Many were strangled with their own clothes. Then he molested them. As his killing spree increased, he started to target younger and younger victims. But even this didn't satisfy him. He killed and cooked a cat, which only drove his desire to taste human flesh. His demons overpowered him into killing, dissecting and then eating a neighbour's 4-year-old daughter. But when he was unable to dispose of the evidence, he was picked up by the police. He was charged with 12 murders but admitted to 30, making him Germany's most prolific killer in decades.
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The most notorious killershide in plain sight
free to kill and kill again.
Most of the criminal
masterminds of fiction.
In their minds, theycommit the perfect murder.
In reality, it's their foolishmistakes that get them caught.
1976, the outskirts ofDuisburg in northern Germany.
For over 20 years,
a serial killer
has led a reign of terror.
11 women have been killed inthe surrounding countryside.
Now, the murderer is
targeting children,
and he has developed a
craving for human flesh.
But this hunger would be theDuisburg cannibals downfall.
In the peaceful
residential neighborhood
of La in the secluded communalgardens of some apartment
blocks, a child is playing.
Watching her from one
of the top floor flats,
he's a quiet and well-respectedresident, Joachim Kroll.
Crime scientist, Kacper Gradon.
The childrendidn't see him as a threat,
because he didn't looktoo frightening or scary.
But Kroll was
not all he appeared.
Bernd Jagers is a DetectiveChief Superintendent
of the Duisburg police.
Under
false pretenses,
he then enticed the girl tofollow him into his flat.
He performed sexual
acts on the child.
The child struggled,
and then he choked her.
When the littlegirl doesn't return home,
her mother contacts
the authorities.
A police door-to-door
investigation follows,
but no one has seen the girlor witnessed her disappearance.
In the meantime, a huge
missing persons search
had been started by the police.
A resident in the
apartment block
tells the police thatJoachim Kroll had a blocked
waste pipe earlier that day.
He told the neighborsthat he had disembowed
a hare or a rabbit, and
he would take care of it
and remove those things
from the blocked drain.
He put the remains in
the apartment bins.
When the police spoke
to Joachim Kroll,
they decided to
investigate further.
But mycolleagues were quite clever
and didn't ignore the clue.
They said, let's seewhich rubbish bin he used.
And when they looked
in the bin, they
realized that these innardsweren't animal, but human.
They then went to JoachimKroll flat and rang the bell.
He let them in straight away.
My first impression of crawlwas what a small person.
He was completely mousy,nondescript, was very quiet.
He hardly talked
about himself at all,
and when you spoke to
him, it often took him
quite a long time to respond.
The police questionedhim about the missing child,
and to their surprise,he tells them everything.
They asked
whether he was connected
to the child's disappearance.
He immediately said, yes
and took my colleagues
to the freezer, openedit so that they could see
the contents, a completely
dismembered girl.
Joachim Kroll hadmurdered the little girl,
cut up her body, and storedparts in his freezer.
By chance, police havediscovered Joachim Kroll,
a serial killer who hasmanaged to avoid detection
for the past 20 years.
So So when this final
murder happened,
Kroll has already been a veryexperienced serial killer.
He's been doing it
for over 20 years.
He knew how to do it
without being caught,
and then at the last momenthe made a silly mistake.
The police takeKroll in for questioning.
The nation's media descendon the police station.
After the caseof the four-year-old girl
had come to light,
there was a huge press
presence at the police station.
So we held a press conference.
Shortly
after his arrest,
he is charged with themurder of the little girl.
When he was shownto the presiding magistrate,
he suspected that thiswasn't Kroll's first crime.
He said, there must be
more to it than this.
The magistratebelieves the child's body has
been skilfully cut up,
and that it's the work
of an experienced killer.
You
wouldn't do something
like this the first timearound and not in the heat
of the moment either.
There are almost 1,200unsolved murders across Germany
over the previous 10 years.
Police suspect that Krollmay have been involved
in some of these crimes.
Klaus Johann reported on
many of these incidents
as editor of the West GermanGeneral Newspaper in Duisburg.
The policelooked into missing persons
from around Germany in casethere were any unsolved cases
that his arrest might clear up.
But
proving this would be
difficult as forensic
technology was
not as advanced as it is today.
Unlike today, weonly had blood examinations.
We didn't have DNA.
Today, there are
computer programs
that can compare cases for us.
At the time, policedidn't have enough equipment,
and they didn't have the propermethodology to link cases.
So the police hadto rely on findings, which were
derived from the crime scene, inother words, rely on witnesses.
We
intended to charge him
with as many unsolvedmurder cases as possible.
While the policecharge Kroll for one murder,
persuading him to
confess to more murders
would be a challenge.
It was hard to talkto him about anything at all.
You had the impression youwere talking to a brick wall.
Sometimes he didn't reactat all to any questions
that had been posed.
He appeared to be very gloomy.
And of course, he
didn't tell us why,
because it wasn't in
his nature to talk much,
but to remain silent instead.
Prying out thatinformation was to become key
in discovering the
full depth and horror
of the most prominentserial killer in decades.
Joachim Kroll has
just been charged
with murdering a four-year-oldgirl in northern Germany.
Police had discovered
her dismembered body
in his freezer.
A media feeding frenzy started.
They are desperate
for information,
but the police are strugglingto clarify just what
crimes Kroll has committed.
We noticed thatKroll had mixed up facts
and that he couldn'tremember where he'd been.
That's when we had the ideato form a three part division.
That meant we separated
into a pre-check team,
an interrogation team,
and a post check team.
They pick apart theinformation Kroll gives them
to see if they
could clear up any
of Germany's unsolved murders.
In doing so they delveinto Joachim Kroll's past.
Joachim Kroll was
born on the 17th
of April 1933 in Hendenburg,northern Germany.
He's one of nine
children who all
shared a small two bedroom flatwith their mother and father.
They lived invery poor circumstances.
The entire family
was on the breadline.
Due to the number of
children, his mother
didn't have much time tolook after Joachim Kroll.
Growing up,
Joachim Kroll didn't
have much love and affection.
His domineering fatherwould frequently belittle
his son by calling him a loser.
His
siblings always blamed
him for all their tricks, sothat he received the beatings.
That also led to himwithdrawing from his siblings
and turned him into the
outsider of the family.
Life for Kroll atschool was just as tough.
Joachim himselfhad a bad time in class.
He had problems with
numeracy and literacy
and was sent to a
special needs school.
He would havebeen picked up for physical
features/ he would
have been told,
because of his lowerintelligence and probably used
in various pranks and jokes.
When
Kroll was 10, he was
drafted into the Hitler Youth.
The group's leaders carriedon where his father left off
calling him cutless and a wimp.
He would nothave a very high self-esteem,
but he would be developinga certain resilience,
a certain hardness to
the rest of humanity.
After the
war, like many Germans,
the Kroll family
spent life on the road
whilst his father
searched for work.
In 1949, they settled brieflyin Alsdorf, West Germany
where Kroll is employed
as a farm hand.
But Kroll's nomadic existenceand lack of emotional support
leads to behavioral problems.
By the time hearrived in the farmyard scene,
he had virtually no respectfor others whatsoever
and saw absolutely no problem incheating and rebelling and not
having any kind of respect forthose that were supporting him.
On one
occasion, he tries
to make friends with amilkmaid, but is rejected.
His rather
impulsive advances
to an adult female, and
those being repelled
were, kind of, yet
another final blow
pushing him back and causingeven greater frustration.
But there is
one place on the farm
that Kroll seems to findsolace, the slaughter house.
In those days, killing
animals wasn't as humane
as it is today.
The pain and distress
would have been obvious.
He was
on a farm and realized
a pig was being slaughtered.
And then he experienced
a strange feeling.
His stomach started tingling.
It didn't stop.
It just increased.
His heart was racing.
He had problems breathing,and he had to go outside.
When Kroll
actually experienced
the slaughterhouse,
he also experienced
some rather sexual feelings.
He then obviously was going tobe associating his sexuality,
his sexual response,
and probably
his sexual release in theface of animals suffering,
death, being mutilated.
It was a response that didn'treally lead to sexual contact
with a female.
It was obviously
leading elsewhere.
When you analyzethe cases of serial killers,
one thing is very apparent.
Several serial killersclaimed during interrogation
that before killing
that they had
some kind of special
funny feeling
or thought in their
mind that would make
them want to do it again.
Kroll'sunexplained funny feeling
was to become the drivingforce behind his murders.
In 1955, age 22, he meetsa waitress at a local bar
and invites her to the cinema.
They seem to hit it off.
Kroll is too nervous tosexually proposition her,
so she takes control.
They go back to his flat.
But Kroll's inexperience withthe opposite sex lets him down.
He actuallymade contact with the lady,
but really didn't know
how to respond properly,
and then actually failed himselfwith premature ejaculation.
And I think that
not only further
devastated his idea
that he could actually
achieve normal sexuality.
Kroll said himselfthat led to girls teasing him.
They ridiculed him, becauseof his premature ejaculation.
It marked the
beginning of a change
in Kroll's sex life.
Kroll not having the
confidence to achieve
any kind of sexual interactionwith normal females
or females of his own age,and he turned to animals.
He was there whenthe bulls inseminated the cows.
That caused him to think,hey, I can do that too,
and then he used cows topleasure himself sexually.
This
is what we call
a paraphilia being developedby actually finding
sexual relief with animals.
Later on that year,Kroll loses the one woman
he is close to, his mother.
In
the case of Kroll
it was particularly devastating.
Because for him, hismother was the only person
that gave him any kind
of sense of self-esteem
and was not
hypercritical of him.
He was then left almost entirelyat the mercy of his father
who was not particularly
supportive at all.
He
lost the only person
he claimed who would love himand who would take care of him.
He probably thinks that hislife is pointless at this stage
and probably this was themoment when he crossed that line
and started to do things thatmade him a serial killer.
But for now policeknow little of this past.
They are trying to understandhow the body of a small child
ended up in Kroll's freezer.
He was a
very withdrawn person,
hardly gave any
answers while we were
trying to get close to him.
Police's initial bombardment ofKroll was typical of the time.
You try
to intimidate the guy,
you try to get a
force of confession,
and this did not
work with Kroll.
He did not respond to this.
He quite simply
shut up and behaved
as he would as a small
child being intimidated
and not say anything.
The police
change their approach
and slowly crawl opens
up to the interrogators.
But rather than astraightforward confession,
he tells them of
his funny feelings.
He wanted totell me about these murders,
because he thought in doing sothe funny feeling would stop.
Kroll believed
the funny feelings
drove him to kill.
The police listened
as he slowly explains
his first attack which
happened just three
weeks after his mother died.
It's 1955, 21 years
before Kroll's arrest.
Kroll spots 19-year-old
student in Gustrow
walking along a country road.
He might
have asked her if she
wanted to have sex with him.
Of course, she
would have declined.
But when she wanted to move on.
He forced her into the bushes.
He attacked
his helpless victim
in a secluded wooded area,strangled her with her own bra.
As soon as
the teenager is dead,
Kroll draws a knife on her body.
He cuts openher body with a knife,
and then carried outmany perverse sexual acts
on her dead body.
Kroll
abuses the dead body.
And then he
tried to penetrate her
with his penis.
That, once again, led to
premature ejaculation.
The injuries heinflicted were so brutal,
police believe the murderwas an act of sadism.
Then
probably treated
this individual like an animal.
He probably was inspired bythe sexual feelings he had
of the killing and the slashingof animals in a slaughterhouse,
and he enacted parts of this.
Here you clearly have the rootsof what kind of a paraphilia
this was, and it's highlyrelated to sexual sadism.
This person only really
gets fully aroused
and finds relief
in the actual face
of sadistic, brutalactivity, which arouses him.
But even the shocking
treatment of the victim
is not enough for Kroll.
Finally, hedefecates at the crime scene.
It seems
that for the killer,
this grotesque act wasthe ultimate manifestation
of the contempt and hatredhe felt towards his victim.
It was two
days before Irmgard
Strehl's body was discovered.
The police were horrifiedwith what they saw.
A post-mortem revealed
that the 18-year-old
was in the early
stages of pregnancy.
It's
highly likely that even
Kroll's first murder
was already planned
probably way in advance.
The choice of secluded
and wooded sites
proves that the murder
was well-organized.
There is littleevidence available to police
that the crime scene.
After two days in the
woods, semen and blood
are too contaminated toobtain a blood match from.
68 convicted sexoffenders are questioned.
It leaves police
with 32 suspects,
but Kroll isn't on the list.
It seems
like investigating
that first murder,
the police in Germany
did everything
according to the rules.
They collected all the
evidence there was,
but they couldn't
connect it all together,
and they couldn't
find the perpetrator.
They couldn't find Kroll.
It meant Kroll
was free to kill again.
Following hisfailures with adult females,
Kroll have finally
found a sexual,
release something that gave himprowess where he actually felt
confident afterwards,
and that confidence
was going to lead him on intoa much longer career ahead.
Joachim Kroll'skilling spree has only
just begun, and the
treatment of his victims
would take a sickening twist.
Police are interrogating43-year-old, Joachim Kroll,
after discovering the bodyparts of a four-year-old girl
in his freezer.
They are trying to get himto confess to other murders
he may have committed.
But Kroll's not playing ball.
He barely says a word.
Police can't be sure heunderstands their questions.
The
police realized
maybe another
approach would be what
are you doing with the child?
You engaged them innocentlyand adjacently in conversation,
and it happened to
move the conversation
to what is relevant.
A few of usplayed a puzzle game with him.
There's a game with
matches, and then you
say, right everyone, howmany matches do we have here?
So we could see if he could
add up or he couldn't.
That was important lateron when we asked how many
people he had really killed.
Kroll
begins to open up,
but his confessions
don't makes sense.
It was a mishmashof different crimes, which
didn't obviously fit together.
And Kroll then told
us if I'm taken out,
if I'm taken somewhere, I cantell you if I've been there,
and if I've been there, I'llshow you what I've done there.
To get to the bottomof his confused confessions,
the police agree.
They hope getting Kroll toact out his brutal attacks
will reveal more thansimply talking about them.
By now the media has becomeso engrossed with the case,
they are desperate to see
the re-enactments too.
The tabloidscould exert a lot of pressure
on the police.
The police decided, OK,
we'll invite the press
to attend this once,
and I'm sure that this
was a sweetener to them.
When Krollreenacts his second attack
on 24-year-old Klara
Tesmer in June 1959,
it is attended by
the national media.
This murder took placefour years after his attack
on Irmgard Strehl.
Kroll shows a young
Bernd Jagers seen here
on the right the murder scene.
Using a policewoman as
his stand in victim,
Kroll walks through theattack while the cameras roll.
He shows how he knocked outhis victim and strangled her.
Only one month after
killing Klara Tesmer,
Kroll strangles
16-year-old Manuela
Knodt in a wooded area just20 kilometers from his house.
But the body liesundiscovered for two weeks.
Police eventually
find a rotting corpse.
Meanwhile, Kroll is on thehunt for another outlet
for his fantasies.
The escalationof Kroll's killings
possibly may have led himto realize that he couldn't
particularly kill somebodyevery couple of weeks
just to satisfy
himself, and he diverted
and he considered
using blow up dolls.
He dresses
the doll with some
of the clothing he
stole from his victims,
but the doll fails
to satisfy him.
His funny feeling returnsdriving him to kill again,
but now his choice of
victim has changed.
Krollprogressed in the direction
of his serial killing careeralong the same lines of looking
for younger and younger victims
who are less challenging
and possibly moregratifying for him, that he
could engage more easily.
Kroll's fourthvictim was just 13 years old.
The girl wastaking a shortcut along a road
through a forest, andJoachim Kroll was close by.
The police
get Kroll to reenact
the crime with a police woman.
As Kroll continues to
act out his attacks,
the confessions keep coming.
The next attack was just onemonth later in the forests
around his town in a notoriousarea known as the black path.
This time his victim is evenyounger, only 11 years old.
For
Kroll, I think he
associated the
simplicity of children
with the innocence and
simplicity of animals.
And as that was one of hisearly pubescent experiences,
I think the progress
towards children
as part of his paraphilicresponse was inevitable.
There was
widespread panic
amongst the local residents.
The public fear wasconsiderable, because the two
victims were both children.
The number ofmissing children being reported
was rocketing.
Anxious parents were
contacting the police
even if their children weresimply late home from school.
It took a long timefor the police to investigate
the deaths properly, and thismade the public and not just
the families, but theirneighbors and all the people
who lived in the areascared because the police
hadn't;t solved the murders.
But with no
leads, Kroll's killings
were simply added to thelist of unsolved murders.
The police interrogatorsfind Kroll craves friendship.
By playing games and
chatting, they continue
to gain his confidence.
This was
the decisive moment,
because Kroll wasn't
used to someone paying
attention to him,
prepared to talk
to him about his personal life.
You see
who your suspect is.
You analyze theirpersonality to some extent,
and then you decide on whichinterrogation tactic to use.
In this case, it
worked perfectly.
And suddenlyhe realized that someone
understood him, that he wasable to talk about his problems
and about how to resolve them.
I had the impression thathe had gained something.
Kroll confessesto even more murders
and the list begins to rack up.
But not all Kroll's
attacks were successful.
In 1967, he attacked
a 10-year-old.
Kroll strangled her,
and she passed out.
Assuming she was
dead, he left her.
Eventually, the girl
regained consciousness
and managed to escape.
She was probablyable to recognize him,
but the case wasn't
reported to the police,
and her parents held on to thatinformation for over nine years
until Kroll was
finally arrested.
Kroll
not only confesses
to police about hisattacks, he reveals details
of his personal life too.
In 1970, he lines the
best job he's ever had,
a caretaker in charge of sometoilets at the local steel
works.
He had acertain amount of autonomy.
This potentially could have
allowed Kroll to develop
a little bit, have hisesteem develop a little bit
in a normal direction.
But this is Kroll, and
that didn't happen.
In Kroll's life, temptationis never far away.
Kroll's only friend,
an ex flatmate
starts a family
with his partner.
When Kroll's ex
flatmate turns out
to have a child with his wife,Kroll looks upon that child
clearly with different eyes.
Unaware of Kroll'shorrific past, the couple
ask him to babysit for them.
Kroll has a choice, look afterthe child or satisfy his urges.
Due
to the friendship,
there'd been a
certain level of trust
between the married
couple and Kroll
without them knowing that hewas a wolf in sheep's clothing.
Luckily,
the child is unharmed.
During his time as a
caretaker, he makes
another friend, a stray cat.
Animals
can be a great sustainer
of contract and reassurance forelderly individuals and others
who suffer.
But this friendshipgives way to a new horror.
He stroked the catand became sexually aroused,
and then the fantasy
came into play.
You've always wanted to knowwhat someone or something
looks like from the inside.
This combined with
the funny feeling
escalated his sexual arousal.
Despite the friendship,
he kills the cat.
Kroll
discovers animals
are slaughtered for a purposeand makes the association.
And after killing
the cat, he actually
decides to try and eat it.
He then put partof the cat into a saucepan
and cooked it.
He tasted it, but he didn'tenjoy it and gave up on it.
In his 21
year killing spree,
Kroll has murdered
at least 12 people.
The police had no idea thatthey were linked to him.
Then in 1973, Kroll developsproblems with the blood
vessels in his legs.
The surgery that
follows would lead
him to make a careless mistakebringing police to his door.
He can't movearound as quickly and as
efficiently as he used to.
With less mobility,he looks closer to home
for his victims, on
his own doorstep.
Kroll's
last victim was
a four-year-old girl fromthe immediate neighborhood.
Kroll is very
careful to maintain
a good relationship
with his neighbors,
including the children.
Added to
that tingling feeling
was his fantasy that one dayhe wanted to murder a child
and see what it looked
like from the inside.
One day when hespots a child playing alone,
he is unable to resist.
Kroll's mindprobably wandered back
to the cats in his earlyslaughter house experiences
and drawing on those, it mayhave crossed his mind that he
may wish, desire, andpossibly plan for the idea
of eating this child.
He hadtried it on a cat before,
but he hadn't liked the taste.
But now, he was finallyable to realize his fantasy.
Kroll
is about to commit
the most unthinkable crime.
Joachim Kroll has enticeda four-year-old girl
into his flat.
He strangles the girl, andthen prepares to eat her.
He dismembers the body.
He keeps part of her
flesh to eat and flushes
the rest down the toilet.
Later
on in the evening,
a neighbor approached him,because his toilet was blocked.
Kroll then told the
neighbor that he'd
slaughtered a hair or a rabbitand had thrown the innards
into the toilet, butthat he would remove them
immediately, which he then did.
He opened up the pipe,took out all the innards,
and put them into
the rubbish bin.
The child's motherreports her missing daughter
to the authorities, but inorder for the police to act,
a child has to be
absent for 24 hours.
It isn't until the next morningthat the investigation begins.
If a
four-year-old child
remains missing overnight,you have to expect the worst.
When police
arrive, they routinely
question the residents.
And bycoincidence, the neighbor
mentioned the incident
with the blocked
pipe, which really
had no connection
with the missing child.
It's a lead that endsup at Joachim Kroll's door.
He promptly tells the
police what he has done.
After disembowelingthe girl, like a butcher,
he cuts off the
calves, the thigh,
the upper arm, the forearm, thefeet, the hands, and the head.
He took the hands and the feetand put them in a saucepan.
He definitely wanted to trya taste of the feet and eyes
to see what a human
would taste like.
My colleagues foundevidence of his bite marks
on the child's limbs.
He wanted toknow how human flesh tasted.
It was quite gruesome,
and this was initially
withheld from the press.
He then admittedthat he had tried it,
but as it hadn't
been cooked yet,
he didn't get the opportunityto eat human flesh.
He found that hewas trapped between his primary
instincts, this paraphilicneed to conquer a small child,
to kill, to eat even,
and the reality before
him where he said
you cannot possibly
do this on your doorstep.
Eventually in Kroll'smind, one was going to win.
And for Kroll, it was
his primary instincts.
After his
arrest, the story
becomes a press sensation.
The press gave himthe name the Duisburg cannibal.
The tabloid newspapers naturallysold this tale of cannibalism
in a very sensational way.
The media are
desperate to know just
how many people he has killed.
I've killed
more people, he said.
He spoke of 20 to 30, whichwas confirmed by his solicitor.
It wouldn'tsurprise me to know that Kroll
is responsible for more killingsthan the official record shows.
Unfortunately, we were only
able to link 12 cases to him.
But there was
a danger might escape
justice for these 12 murders.
After
150 days of trial,
the court had to decide if hewas mentally capable of making
his own decisions.
If he wasn't, he would
be found not guilty.
Experts assess
Kroll's mental state.
No, he was
not criminally liable,
because he was unable tocontrol his actions owing
to his psychological state.
Kroll might
evade a jail sentence.
Had the judgefollowed this recommendation,
he would have been acquitted.
But in my opinion, the strongmedia pressure partly swayed
the judges final verdict.
The judge foundKroll criminally liable meaning
he could be found guilty.
The
courts in Duisburg
found Kroll guilty
of eight murders
and one attempted
murder and sentenced
him to life imprisonment.
I believehe didn't feel any guilt.
He knew what he was doing,but he felt he had to do it.
He believed he was going
to be taken to hospital
and receive correctivesurgery to fix his problem,
and then he would be allowed
home with the surgery
being the only punishment.
But there was a twist.
Rather than serve these
sentences concurrently,
as was the norm in Germany,the law was changed,
so Kroll can serve
them consecutively.
It means Kroll will spendthe rest of his life in jail.
Yet it was only because hehunted for his final victim
closer to home
that he was caught.
In this case,Kroll had been careless,
because he took a child
from the neighborhood,
which he'd never done before.
The perpetratorchanged his modus operandi.
Probably his biggest
mistake was killing
the last victim in his house,not in some secluded area.
And the reason behind that,most probably, in my opinion,
was his sheer thoughtlessness.
He didn't realizehow easily this was going
to trap him with evidence.
Joachim Kroll
served life in prison.
In 1991, age 58, he
died of a heart attack.
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The most notorious killershide in plain sight
free to kill and kill again.
Most of the criminal
masterminds of fiction.
In their minds, theycommit the perfect murder.
In reality, it's their foolishmistakes that get them caught.
1976, the outskirts ofDuisburg in northern Germany.
For over 20 years,
a serial killer
has led a reign of terror.
11 women have been killed inthe surrounding countryside.
Now, the murderer is
targeting children,
and he has developed a
craving for human flesh.
But this hunger would be theDuisburg cannibals downfall.
In the peaceful
residential neighborhood
of La in the secluded communalgardens of some apartment
blocks, a child is playing.
Watching her from one
of the top floor flats,
he's a quiet and well-respectedresident, Joachim Kroll.
Crime scientist, Kacper Gradon.
The childrendidn't see him as a threat,
because he didn't looktoo frightening or scary.
But Kroll was
not all he appeared.
Bernd Jagers is a DetectiveChief Superintendent
of the Duisburg police.
Under
false pretenses,
he then enticed the girl tofollow him into his flat.
He performed sexual
acts on the child.
The child struggled,
and then he choked her.
When the littlegirl doesn't return home,
her mother contacts
the authorities.
A police door-to-door
investigation follows,
but no one has seen the girlor witnessed her disappearance.
In the meantime, a huge
missing persons search
had been started by the police.
A resident in the
apartment block
tells the police thatJoachim Kroll had a blocked
waste pipe earlier that day.
He told the neighborsthat he had disembowed
a hare or a rabbit, and
he would take care of it
and remove those things
from the blocked drain.
He put the remains in
the apartment bins.
When the police spoke
to Joachim Kroll,
they decided to
investigate further.
But mycolleagues were quite clever
and didn't ignore the clue.
They said, let's seewhich rubbish bin he used.
And when they looked
in the bin, they
realized that these innardsweren't animal, but human.
They then went to JoachimKroll flat and rang the bell.
He let them in straight away.
My first impression of crawlwas what a small person.
He was completely mousy,nondescript, was very quiet.
He hardly talked
about himself at all,
and when you spoke to
him, it often took him
quite a long time to respond.
The police questionedhim about the missing child,
and to their surprise,he tells them everything.
They asked
whether he was connected
to the child's disappearance.
He immediately said, yes
and took my colleagues
to the freezer, openedit so that they could see
the contents, a completely
dismembered girl.
Joachim Kroll hadmurdered the little girl,
cut up her body, and storedparts in his freezer.
By chance, police havediscovered Joachim Kroll,
a serial killer who hasmanaged to avoid detection
for the past 20 years.
So So when this final
murder happened,
Kroll has already been a veryexperienced serial killer.
He's been doing it
for over 20 years.
He knew how to do it
without being caught,
and then at the last momenthe made a silly mistake.
The police takeKroll in for questioning.
The nation's media descendon the police station.
After the caseof the four-year-old girl
had come to light,
there was a huge press
presence at the police station.
So we held a press conference.
Shortly
after his arrest,
he is charged with themurder of the little girl.
When he was shownto the presiding magistrate,
he suspected that thiswasn't Kroll's first crime.
He said, there must be
more to it than this.
The magistratebelieves the child's body has
been skilfully cut up,
and that it's the work
of an experienced killer.
You
wouldn't do something
like this the first timearound and not in the heat
of the moment either.
There are almost 1,200unsolved murders across Germany
over the previous 10 years.
Police suspect that Krollmay have been involved
in some of these crimes.
Klaus Johann reported on
many of these incidents
as editor of the West GermanGeneral Newspaper in Duisburg.
The policelooked into missing persons
from around Germany in casethere were any unsolved cases
that his arrest might clear up.
But
proving this would be
difficult as forensic
technology was
not as advanced as it is today.
Unlike today, weonly had blood examinations.
We didn't have DNA.
Today, there are
computer programs
that can compare cases for us.
At the time, policedidn't have enough equipment,
and they didn't have the propermethodology to link cases.
So the police hadto rely on findings, which were
derived from the crime scene, inother words, rely on witnesses.
We
intended to charge him
with as many unsolvedmurder cases as possible.
While the policecharge Kroll for one murder,
persuading him to
confess to more murders
would be a challenge.
It was hard to talkto him about anything at all.
You had the impression youwere talking to a brick wall.
Sometimes he didn't reactat all to any questions
that had been posed.
He appeared to be very gloomy.
And of course, he
didn't tell us why,
because it wasn't in
his nature to talk much,
but to remain silent instead.
Prying out thatinformation was to become key
in discovering the
full depth and horror
of the most prominentserial killer in decades.
Joachim Kroll has
just been charged
with murdering a four-year-oldgirl in northern Germany.
Police had discovered
her dismembered body
in his freezer.
A media feeding frenzy started.
They are desperate
for information,
but the police are strugglingto clarify just what
crimes Kroll has committed.
We noticed thatKroll had mixed up facts
and that he couldn'tremember where he'd been.
That's when we had the ideato form a three part division.
That meant we separated
into a pre-check team,
an interrogation team,
and a post check team.
They pick apart theinformation Kroll gives them
to see if they
could clear up any
of Germany's unsolved murders.
In doing so they delveinto Joachim Kroll's past.
Joachim Kroll was
born on the 17th
of April 1933 in Hendenburg,northern Germany.
He's one of nine
children who all
shared a small two bedroom flatwith their mother and father.
They lived invery poor circumstances.
The entire family
was on the breadline.
Due to the number of
children, his mother
didn't have much time tolook after Joachim Kroll.
Growing up,
Joachim Kroll didn't
have much love and affection.
His domineering fatherwould frequently belittle
his son by calling him a loser.
His
siblings always blamed
him for all their tricks, sothat he received the beatings.
That also led to himwithdrawing from his siblings
and turned him into the
outsider of the family.
Life for Kroll atschool was just as tough.
Joachim himselfhad a bad time in class.
He had problems with
numeracy and literacy
and was sent to a
special needs school.
He would havebeen picked up for physical
features/ he would
have been told,
because of his lowerintelligence and probably used
in various pranks and jokes.
When
Kroll was 10, he was
drafted into the Hitler Youth.
The group's leaders carriedon where his father left off
calling him cutless and a wimp.
He would nothave a very high self-esteem,
but he would be developinga certain resilience,
a certain hardness to
the rest of humanity.
After the
war, like many Germans,
the Kroll family
spent life on the road
whilst his father
searched for work.
In 1949, they settled brieflyin Alsdorf, West Germany
where Kroll is employed
as a farm hand.
But Kroll's nomadic existenceand lack of emotional support
leads to behavioral problems.
By the time hearrived in the farmyard scene,
he had virtually no respectfor others whatsoever
and saw absolutely no problem incheating and rebelling and not
having any kind of respect forthose that were supporting him.
On one
occasion, he tries
to make friends with amilkmaid, but is rejected.
His rather
impulsive advances
to an adult female, and
those being repelled
were, kind of, yet
another final blow
pushing him back and causingeven greater frustration.
But there is
one place on the farm
that Kroll seems to findsolace, the slaughter house.
In those days, killing
animals wasn't as humane
as it is today.
The pain and distress
would have been obvious.
He was
on a farm and realized
a pig was being slaughtered.
And then he experienced
a strange feeling.
His stomach started tingling.
It didn't stop.
It just increased.
His heart was racing.
He had problems breathing,and he had to go outside.
When Kroll
actually experienced
the slaughterhouse,
he also experienced
some rather sexual feelings.
He then obviously was going tobe associating his sexuality,
his sexual response,
and probably
his sexual release in theface of animals suffering,
death, being mutilated.
It was a response that didn'treally lead to sexual contact
with a female.
It was obviously
leading elsewhere.
When you analyzethe cases of serial killers,
one thing is very apparent.
Several serial killersclaimed during interrogation
that before killing
that they had
some kind of special
funny feeling
or thought in their
mind that would make
them want to do it again.
Kroll'sunexplained funny feeling
was to become the drivingforce behind his murders.
In 1955, age 22, he meetsa waitress at a local bar
and invites her to the cinema.
They seem to hit it off.
Kroll is too nervous tosexually proposition her,
so she takes control.
They go back to his flat.
But Kroll's inexperience withthe opposite sex lets him down.
He actuallymade contact with the lady,
but really didn't know
how to respond properly,
and then actually failed himselfwith premature ejaculation.
And I think that
not only further
devastated his idea
that he could actually
achieve normal sexuality.
Kroll said himselfthat led to girls teasing him.
They ridiculed him, becauseof his premature ejaculation.
It marked the
beginning of a change
in Kroll's sex life.
Kroll not having the
confidence to achieve
any kind of sexual interactionwith normal females
or females of his own age,and he turned to animals.
He was there whenthe bulls inseminated the cows.
That caused him to think,hey, I can do that too,
and then he used cows topleasure himself sexually.
This
is what we call
a paraphilia being developedby actually finding
sexual relief with animals.
Later on that year,Kroll loses the one woman
he is close to, his mother.
In
the case of Kroll
it was particularly devastating.
Because for him, hismother was the only person
that gave him any kind
of sense of self-esteem
and was not
hypercritical of him.
He was then left almost entirelyat the mercy of his father
who was not particularly
supportive at all.
He
lost the only person
he claimed who would love himand who would take care of him.
He probably thinks that hislife is pointless at this stage
and probably this was themoment when he crossed that line
and started to do things thatmade him a serial killer.
But for now policeknow little of this past.
They are trying to understandhow the body of a small child
ended up in Kroll's freezer.
He was a
very withdrawn person,
hardly gave any
answers while we were
trying to get close to him.
Police's initial bombardment ofKroll was typical of the time.
You try
to intimidate the guy,
you try to get a
force of confession,
and this did not
work with Kroll.
He did not respond to this.
He quite simply
shut up and behaved
as he would as a small
child being intimidated
and not say anything.
The police
change their approach
and slowly crawl opens
up to the interrogators.
But rather than astraightforward confession,
he tells them of
his funny feelings.
He wanted totell me about these murders,
because he thought in doing sothe funny feeling would stop.
Kroll believed
the funny feelings
drove him to kill.
The police listened
as he slowly explains
his first attack which
happened just three
weeks after his mother died.
It's 1955, 21 years
before Kroll's arrest.
Kroll spots 19-year-old
student in Gustrow
walking along a country road.
He might
have asked her if she
wanted to have sex with him.
Of course, she
would have declined.
But when she wanted to move on.
He forced her into the bushes.
He attacked
his helpless victim
in a secluded wooded area,strangled her with her own bra.
As soon as
the teenager is dead,
Kroll draws a knife on her body.
He cuts openher body with a knife,
and then carried outmany perverse sexual acts
on her dead body.
Kroll
abuses the dead body.
And then he
tried to penetrate her
with his penis.
That, once again, led to
premature ejaculation.
The injuries heinflicted were so brutal,
police believe the murderwas an act of sadism.
Then
probably treated
this individual like an animal.
He probably was inspired bythe sexual feelings he had
of the killing and the slashingof animals in a slaughterhouse,
and he enacted parts of this.
Here you clearly have the rootsof what kind of a paraphilia
this was, and it's highlyrelated to sexual sadism.
This person only really
gets fully aroused
and finds relief
in the actual face
of sadistic, brutalactivity, which arouses him.
But even the shocking
treatment of the victim
is not enough for Kroll.
Finally, hedefecates at the crime scene.
It seems
that for the killer,
this grotesque act wasthe ultimate manifestation
of the contempt and hatredhe felt towards his victim.
It was two
days before Irmgard
Strehl's body was discovered.
The police were horrifiedwith what they saw.
A post-mortem revealed
that the 18-year-old
was in the early
stages of pregnancy.
It's
highly likely that even
Kroll's first murder
was already planned
probably way in advance.
The choice of secluded
and wooded sites
proves that the murder
was well-organized.
There is littleevidence available to police
that the crime scene.
After two days in the
woods, semen and blood
are too contaminated toobtain a blood match from.
68 convicted sexoffenders are questioned.
It leaves police
with 32 suspects,
but Kroll isn't on the list.
It seems
like investigating
that first murder,
the police in Germany
did everything
according to the rules.
They collected all the
evidence there was,
but they couldn't
connect it all together,
and they couldn't
find the perpetrator.
They couldn't find Kroll.
It meant Kroll
was free to kill again.
Following hisfailures with adult females,
Kroll have finally
found a sexual,
release something that gave himprowess where he actually felt
confident afterwards,
and that confidence
was going to lead him on intoa much longer career ahead.
Joachim Kroll'skilling spree has only
just begun, and the
treatment of his victims
would take a sickening twist.
Police are interrogating43-year-old, Joachim Kroll,
after discovering the bodyparts of a four-year-old girl
in his freezer.
They are trying to get himto confess to other murders
he may have committed.
But Kroll's not playing ball.
He barely says a word.
Police can't be sure heunderstands their questions.
The
police realized
maybe another
approach would be what
are you doing with the child?
You engaged them innocentlyand adjacently in conversation,
and it happened to
move the conversation
to what is relevant.
A few of usplayed a puzzle game with him.
There's a game with
matches, and then you
say, right everyone, howmany matches do we have here?
So we could see if he could
add up or he couldn't.
That was important lateron when we asked how many
people he had really killed.
Kroll
begins to open up,
but his confessions
don't makes sense.
It was a mishmashof different crimes, which
didn't obviously fit together.
And Kroll then told
us if I'm taken out,
if I'm taken somewhere, I cantell you if I've been there,
and if I've been there, I'llshow you what I've done there.
To get to the bottomof his confused confessions,
the police agree.
They hope getting Kroll toact out his brutal attacks
will reveal more thansimply talking about them.
By now the media has becomeso engrossed with the case,
they are desperate to see
the re-enactments too.
The tabloidscould exert a lot of pressure
on the police.
The police decided, OK,
we'll invite the press
to attend this once,
and I'm sure that this
was a sweetener to them.
When Krollreenacts his second attack
on 24-year-old Klara
Tesmer in June 1959,
it is attended by
the national media.
This murder took placefour years after his attack
on Irmgard Strehl.
Kroll shows a young
Bernd Jagers seen here
on the right the murder scene.
Using a policewoman as
his stand in victim,
Kroll walks through theattack while the cameras roll.
He shows how he knocked outhis victim and strangled her.
Only one month after
killing Klara Tesmer,
Kroll strangles
16-year-old Manuela
Knodt in a wooded area just20 kilometers from his house.
But the body liesundiscovered for two weeks.
Police eventually
find a rotting corpse.
Meanwhile, Kroll is on thehunt for another outlet
for his fantasies.
The escalationof Kroll's killings
possibly may have led himto realize that he couldn't
particularly kill somebodyevery couple of weeks
just to satisfy
himself, and he diverted
and he considered
using blow up dolls.
He dresses
the doll with some
of the clothing he
stole from his victims,
but the doll fails
to satisfy him.
His funny feeling returnsdriving him to kill again,
but now his choice of
victim has changed.
Krollprogressed in the direction
of his serial killing careeralong the same lines of looking
for younger and younger victims
who are less challenging
and possibly moregratifying for him, that he
could engage more easily.
Kroll's fourthvictim was just 13 years old.
The girl wastaking a shortcut along a road
through a forest, andJoachim Kroll was close by.
The police
get Kroll to reenact
the crime with a police woman.
As Kroll continues to
act out his attacks,
the confessions keep coming.
The next attack was just onemonth later in the forests
around his town in a notoriousarea known as the black path.
This time his victim is evenyounger, only 11 years old.
For
Kroll, I think he
associated the
simplicity of children
with the innocence and
simplicity of animals.
And as that was one of hisearly pubescent experiences,
I think the progress
towards children
as part of his paraphilicresponse was inevitable.
There was
widespread panic
amongst the local residents.
The public fear wasconsiderable, because the two
victims were both children.
The number ofmissing children being reported
was rocketing.
Anxious parents were
contacting the police
even if their children weresimply late home from school.
It took a long timefor the police to investigate
the deaths properly, and thismade the public and not just
the families, but theirneighbors and all the people
who lived in the areascared because the police
hadn't;t solved the murders.
But with no
leads, Kroll's killings
were simply added to thelist of unsolved murders.
The police interrogatorsfind Kroll craves friendship.
By playing games and
chatting, they continue
to gain his confidence.
This was
the decisive moment,
because Kroll wasn't
used to someone paying
attention to him,
prepared to talk
to him about his personal life.
You see
who your suspect is.
You analyze theirpersonality to some extent,
and then you decide on whichinterrogation tactic to use.
In this case, it
worked perfectly.
And suddenlyhe realized that someone
understood him, that he wasable to talk about his problems
and about how to resolve them.
I had the impression thathe had gained something.
Kroll confessesto even more murders
and the list begins to rack up.
But not all Kroll's
attacks were successful.
In 1967, he attacked
a 10-year-old.
Kroll strangled her,
and she passed out.
Assuming she was
dead, he left her.
Eventually, the girl
regained consciousness
and managed to escape.
She was probablyable to recognize him,
but the case wasn't
reported to the police,
and her parents held on to thatinformation for over nine years
until Kroll was
finally arrested.
Kroll
not only confesses
to police about hisattacks, he reveals details
of his personal life too.
In 1970, he lines the
best job he's ever had,
a caretaker in charge of sometoilets at the local steel
works.
He had acertain amount of autonomy.
This potentially could have
allowed Kroll to develop
a little bit, have hisesteem develop a little bit
in a normal direction.
But this is Kroll, and
that didn't happen.
In Kroll's life, temptationis never far away.
Kroll's only friend,
an ex flatmate
starts a family
with his partner.
When Kroll's ex
flatmate turns out
to have a child with his wife,Kroll looks upon that child
clearly with different eyes.
Unaware of Kroll'shorrific past, the couple
ask him to babysit for them.
Kroll has a choice, look afterthe child or satisfy his urges.
Due
to the friendship,
there'd been a
certain level of trust
between the married
couple and Kroll
without them knowing that hewas a wolf in sheep's clothing.
Luckily,
the child is unharmed.
During his time as a
caretaker, he makes
another friend, a stray cat.
Animals
can be a great sustainer
of contract and reassurance forelderly individuals and others
who suffer.
But this friendshipgives way to a new horror.
He stroked the catand became sexually aroused,
and then the fantasy
came into play.
You've always wanted to knowwhat someone or something
looks like from the inside.
This combined with
the funny feeling
escalated his sexual arousal.
Despite the friendship,
he kills the cat.
Kroll
discovers animals
are slaughtered for a purposeand makes the association.
And after killing
the cat, he actually
decides to try and eat it.
He then put partof the cat into a saucepan
and cooked it.
He tasted it, but he didn'tenjoy it and gave up on it.
In his 21
year killing spree,
Kroll has murdered
at least 12 people.
The police had no idea thatthey were linked to him.
Then in 1973, Kroll developsproblems with the blood
vessels in his legs.
The surgery that
follows would lead
him to make a careless mistakebringing police to his door.
He can't movearound as quickly and as
efficiently as he used to.
With less mobility,he looks closer to home
for his victims, on
his own doorstep.
Kroll's
last victim was
a four-year-old girl fromthe immediate neighborhood.
Kroll is very
careful to maintain
a good relationship
with his neighbors,
including the children.
Added to
that tingling feeling
was his fantasy that one dayhe wanted to murder a child
and see what it looked
like from the inside.
One day when hespots a child playing alone,
he is unable to resist.
Kroll's mindprobably wandered back
to the cats in his earlyslaughter house experiences
and drawing on those, it mayhave crossed his mind that he
may wish, desire, andpossibly plan for the idea
of eating this child.
He hadtried it on a cat before,
but he hadn't liked the taste.
But now, he was finallyable to realize his fantasy.
Kroll
is about to commit
the most unthinkable crime.
Joachim Kroll has enticeda four-year-old girl
into his flat.
He strangles the girl, andthen prepares to eat her.
He dismembers the body.
He keeps part of her
flesh to eat and flushes
the rest down the toilet.
Later
on in the evening,
a neighbor approached him,because his toilet was blocked.
Kroll then told the
neighbor that he'd
slaughtered a hair or a rabbitand had thrown the innards
into the toilet, butthat he would remove them
immediately, which he then did.
He opened up the pipe,took out all the innards,
and put them into
the rubbish bin.
The child's motherreports her missing daughter
to the authorities, but inorder for the police to act,
a child has to be
absent for 24 hours.
It isn't until the next morningthat the investigation begins.
If a
four-year-old child
remains missing overnight,you have to expect the worst.
When police
arrive, they routinely
question the residents.
And bycoincidence, the neighbor
mentioned the incident
with the blocked
pipe, which really
had no connection
with the missing child.
It's a lead that endsup at Joachim Kroll's door.
He promptly tells the
police what he has done.
After disembowelingthe girl, like a butcher,
he cuts off the
calves, the thigh,
the upper arm, the forearm, thefeet, the hands, and the head.
He took the hands and the feetand put them in a saucepan.
He definitely wanted to trya taste of the feet and eyes
to see what a human
would taste like.
My colleagues foundevidence of his bite marks
on the child's limbs.
He wanted toknow how human flesh tasted.
It was quite gruesome,
and this was initially
withheld from the press.
He then admittedthat he had tried it,
but as it hadn't
been cooked yet,
he didn't get the opportunityto eat human flesh.
He found that hewas trapped between his primary
instincts, this paraphilicneed to conquer a small child,
to kill, to eat even,
and the reality before
him where he said
you cannot possibly
do this on your doorstep.
Eventually in Kroll'smind, one was going to win.
And for Kroll, it was
his primary instincts.
After his
arrest, the story
becomes a press sensation.
The press gave himthe name the Duisburg cannibal.
The tabloid newspapers naturallysold this tale of cannibalism
in a very sensational way.
The media are
desperate to know just
how many people he has killed.
I've killed
more people, he said.
He spoke of 20 to 30, whichwas confirmed by his solicitor.
It wouldn'tsurprise me to know that Kroll
is responsible for more killingsthan the official record shows.
Unfortunately, we were only
able to link 12 cases to him.
But there was
a danger might escape
justice for these 12 murders.
After
150 days of trial,
the court had to decide if hewas mentally capable of making
his own decisions.
If he wasn't, he would
be found not guilty.
Experts assess
Kroll's mental state.
No, he was
not criminally liable,
because he was unable tocontrol his actions owing
to his psychological state.
Kroll might
evade a jail sentence.
Had the judgefollowed this recommendation,
he would have been acquitted.
But in my opinion, the strongmedia pressure partly swayed
the judges final verdict.
The judge foundKroll criminally liable meaning
he could be found guilty.
The
courts in Duisburg
found Kroll guilty
of eight murders
and one attempted
murder and sentenced
him to life imprisonment.
I believehe didn't feel any guilt.
He knew what he was doing,but he felt he had to do it.
He believed he was going
to be taken to hospital
and receive correctivesurgery to fix his problem,
and then he would be allowed
home with the surgery
being the only punishment.
But there was a twist.
Rather than serve these
sentences concurrently,
as was the norm in Germany,the law was changed,
so Kroll can serve
them consecutively.
It means Kroll will spendthe rest of his life in jail.
Yet it was only because hehunted for his final victim
closer to home
that he was caught.
In this case,Kroll had been careless,
because he took a child
from the neighborhood,
which he'd never done before.
The perpetratorchanged his modus operandi.
Probably his biggest
mistake was killing
the last victim in his house,not in some secluded area.
And the reason behind that,most probably, in my opinion,
was his sheer thoughtlessness.
He didn't realizehow easily this was going
to trap him with evidence.
Joachim Kroll
served life in prison.
In 1991, age 58, he
died of a heart attack.