A cannibal killer who committed some horrifying atrocities during a spree that lasted for more than 20 years was captured in a bizarre way, bringing his reign of terror to an end.
For some reason – OK, because there’s a new Netflix show – everyone is fascinated by the cannibal killer Jeffrey Dahmer at the minute.
Sickening though Dahmer’s crimes are, he’s a long way from having a monopoly on this kind of monstrous behaviour.
In fact, well before he got started, there was Germany’s Joachim Kroll, who murdered at least eight young women and girls in the Ruhr area between 1955 and his eventual arrest in 1976.
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In the end, Kroll was convicted of eight murders, but he admitted to killing 14 people.
Kroll had a very specific way of going about his business, choosing his locations carefully before strangling his victims and sexually assaulting them, before mutilating their bodies and cutting off pieces that he would then eat.
It was his disposal of some of the pieces of human flesh that eventually lead to his arrest. However, the gruesome discovery came too late for four-year-old Marion Ketter.
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The police were already searching around the apartment block where Kroll lived and received a tip-off from one of his neighbours.
The neighbour explained how the drains at their flats had started emitting a horrible smell. That stench, it transpired, was caused by Kroll flushing innards of his victims down the toilet.
When the neighbour questioned Kroll on what the smell was, the monster replied ‘guts’.
Presumably, he thought that he might have sounded like he was describing an upset stomach, but the neighbour still became suspicious.
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Regardless, Kroll said that he would sort out the blockage, eventually grabbing a load of bloody matter – you can guess what – and taking it to a bin, claiming to have been butchering a rabbit.
Later, the neighbour recounted what he’d heard and seen to the police, who were searching for the young girl.
They went to search the bins and discovered that the stuff that Kroll had put in the bin was not a rabbit at all.
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Upon searching Kroll’s apartment, they found all sorts of dismembered body parts in the flat, as well as the intestines in the waste pipe, and – most disturbingly – a hand in a cooking pot.
Kroll was arrested and admitted to carrying out the murder, as well as 13 others.
In 1982, he was sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted of eight murders.
Kroll died in prison after suffering a heart attack in 1991.
Topics: Crime, True crime, Weird
Tom Wood