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Bruno Lüdke (3 April 1908 – 26 April 1944) was
an alleged German serial killer. Nazi police officials connected him to
at least 51 murder victims, mainly women, killed in a 15-year period,
which began in 1928 and ended with his arrest in 1943.
Arrest
Born in Köpenick, Lüdke had a mild intellectual
disability (he could not tell interrogators how many minutes there were
in an hour). On 31 January 1943 a woman was found murdered in the woods
near Köpenick, strangled with her own shawl. The victim showed signs of
post-mortem sexual abuse and her purse was missing. Police brought in
Lüdke for questioning on 18 March 1943, where he quickly confessed to
murdering not only the woman but also several other victims, and was
taken into custody. Witnesses report Lüdke showed signs of physical
abuse and he stated that 'they would kill me if I didn't confess'.
Lüdke was never put on trial for any of the killings.
Declared insane, he was sent to the SS-run 'Institute of Criminological
Medicine' in Vienna, where medical experiments were carried out on him
until his death by lethal injection in 1944.
Controversy
The 50-odd crime scenes showed no similarities in
modus operandi, signature, or motive. No fingerprints were ever found
and no evidence against Lüdke has ever been presented.
A Dutch former Chief of police named Blaauw took an
interest in the case and investigated original police reports. He found
them inconclusive, incoherent, and vague. He also expressed his
disbelief that a semi-illiterate, who once got caught stealing a chicken,
could evade authorities for nearly 20 years, let alone get away with
murder.
Many believe Lüdke to be the victim of a frame-up,
carried out by an ambitious Kriminalkommissar (chief homicide
investigator) Franz, the heavily censored Reichskriminalpolizeiamt, and
the budding Nazi government, that had little patience with people with
intellectual disabilities.
A post-war movie, Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam,
affirmed the image of Lüdke as one of Germany's worst serial killers.
Attempts at reopening the case by members of the Kriminalrat (the German
Internal affairs division) Faulhaber yielded no results. The true nature
of the 51 murders remains unsolved to this day.
Wikipedia.org
Bruno Lüdke, (b.
1909, Köpenick, Ger.—d. April 8, 1944, Vienna, Austria), German serial
killer who may have murdered more than 80 people. Although he is
commonly regarded as continental Europe’s deadliest serial killer, some
criminologists have questioned the scale of his activity, maintaining
that many of his confessions were coerced by police.
Lüdke was a drifter and a petty thief with powerful
sadistic urges. His murders, which often involved sexual crimes, began
in 1928 and continued for 15 years. Many notorious cases of serial
murder took place in Germany in the 1920s, perhaps because the economic
and political chaos of the period made it easy for killers to find
victims whose disappearance would not be quickly noticed. Killers such
as Peter Kürten attracted enormous media attention, and serial murder
became a common theme in German popular culture. Lüdke was unusual,
however, in that he reportedly continued to kill well into the Nazi
period—a time when one would expect policing to be more effective.
Characterized as a “mental defective,” Lüdke was
sterilized under the Nazi government’s eugenics policies. In 1943,
following his arrest on a charge of murder, Lüdke confessed to numerous
other killings, claiming that most of them had been sexually motivated.
Nazi authorities sent him to a Vienna hospital, where he was subjected
to medical experimentation that caused his death in 1944.
"Bruno
Lüdke." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica, 2011.
Ludke, Bruno
German born in 1909, Ludke was a petty thief and mental defective who derived sadistic pleasure from torturing animals. At age eighteen, he made the shift to human victims, stalking girls and women who aroused his hyperactive sexual desires.
On one occasion, working as a roundsman for a laundry, he allegedly ran down a woman with his horse-drawn wagon, leaving her for dead. The atmosphere of violence in Nazi Germany facilitated Ludke's crimes, and if his own confessions are accepted, he was highly active in the early years of World War II. Arrested on a charge of sexual assault, he was sterilized on order of Himmler's SS, but the operation seemingly had no effect on his libido.
On January 29, 1943, Frieda Rosner, age 51, was found strangled in the woods outside Berlin, where she had been collecting firewood. Kriminal Kommissar Franz headed the investigation, beginning with a canvas of known criminals in the nearby village of Kopenick. One of them was Bruno Ludke, who admitted an acquaintance with the victim. When police asked Ludke if he was responsible for Rosner's death, he ran amok, assaulting his interrogators, and was physically subdued. Upon reflection, Ludke made a full confession to the homicide, informing officers that under Paragraph 51 a law dealing with mental defectives - he was immune from indictment. Once he started talking, Ludke could not seem to stop, and his confessions ultimately listed eighty-five murders, committed since 1928.
Although his victims were occasionally robbed, Ludke claimed rape as his primary motive. Kommissar Franz spent a year checking Ludke's confessions, emerging convinced that his suspect was guilty of numerous murders; conversely, some critics maintain that police saw the chance to unload open cases on Ludke and thereby save face. Embarrassed by a case that now included the arrest of several blameless men for crimes confessed by Ludke, Nazi prosecutors opted for a cover-up. Immune to prosecution under law, Ludke was dispatched to Vienna as a subject for medical experimentation.
He died there, from a chemical injection, on April 8, 1944.
Michael Newton - An Encyclopedia
of Modern Serial Killers
Bruno Lüdke
Born in Germany in 1909, Ludke was a petty thief and
mental retard who got off on torturing animals.
At eighteen he started killing humans, obsessively
stalking anyone who even remotely turned him on. Once he actually ran
down a woman with his horse drawn cart, leaving her to die.
Once WW2 started Ludke really started to hunt.
Unluckily for him he was caught while molesting one young lady and,
under Himmlers orders, was sterilized. Having no balls didn't seem to
stop him though as he kept on killing after the *CHOP*.
Ludke's method was quite simple, he would either
strangle or stab the girls/women. He usually raped them as well, before
and after death. Usually after.
Ludke's luck eventually ran out on January 29, 1943,
when he killed Frieda Rosner. The cops, while doing routine
investigating stumbled upon poor Bruno, who went crazy on them,
assaulting them, before being arrested.
Once in custody Ludke, unable to be charged as he was
'mentally defective', told his tale. In all he admitted to 85 killings,
claiming rape was the main objective (although some had been robbed).
The police allege that they checked out all the confessed murders and
that most were definitely done by Ludke, but it has been argued since
that they were just trying to clean out there books. (sound familiar?)
Ludke was immune from prosecution so the Nazi's
decided that they would use him in some experiments. He died from a
chemical injection in Vienna on April 8, 1944.
Human Monsters, Everitt, David, Contemporary Books,
Chicago, 1993.
The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers, Lane, Brian and
Gregg, Wilfred, Headline, London, 1992.
The Wacky World of Murder
Bruno Lüdke - A serial killer?
by Timo Worst
Who was Bruno Lüdke?
Bruno Lüdke was born on 3 April
1908 in Köpenick, near Berlin. He was the fourth of the six children of
Otto and Emma Lüdke. From 1914 to 1919 Bruno visited the local school in
Köpenick and it was soon noticed that he had difficulties with keeping
pass with the other children. He did not manage to reach the sixth grade
and was send to a school for children with learning difficulties. After
he left this "Hilfsschule" in 1922 he worked in the laundry of his
parents till 1939.
When his father, who suffered
from throat cancer, died in 1937, Bruno became responsible for driving
the horse and cart and to deliver the laundry to the customers. For this
job his mother payed him 50 pfennig per day. On Sundays he received 1
Reichsmark extra.
On a regular base Bruno stole
parts of the money he received from customers, which led to hefty
discussions with his very strict mother. Lüdke was a notorious smoker
and most of the money he earned was spend on tabacco for his pipe and an
incidental glass of beer. He was known as "Dumme Bruno". He was known as
good-natured and far from dangerous. He had no friends and no enemies.
He did not care much for girls, let alone marriage.
Because he wasn't very gentle to
his horse, using the whip far to often, people made a complaint about
this with the Köpenick police in early 1938. As a result he was checked
in the Staatskrankenhaus der Polizei, to see if he was mentally and
physically fit to be a horseman. Some examples of Lüdke's test-results:
Q: We are surrounded by fog. All
we can see is a distant village
A: That could be true
Q: A man fell out of a window and
broke his leg. To get help he ran to the hospital
A: I don't know
Q: Can you tell me the alphabet?
Answers correct until F.
Q: How many days in a year?
A: I don't know
Q: How many hours in a day?
A: 24
Q: How many minutes in an hour?
A: I don't know
Q: Who was Hindenburg?
A: That was before our emperor
Q: Who is our reichscancellor?
A: Adolf Hitler, our Führer
The outcome: Lüdke is physically
healty, but feeble-minded since birth. He is orientated to time, place
and person. But he cannot calculate or write and unable to perform
simple mental challenges. He is however fit to work as a cart driver.
However, the Third Chamber of the "Erbgesundheitsgericht" in Berlin
ordered in January 1939 that Lüdke should be sterilized, following the
laws concerning "prevention of posterity with a mental disease". This
was done in a hospital in Berlin, on 22 May 1940.
Lüdke and the local police were
no strangers. Only small thefts. His criminal record shows no violence
or sexual crimes. Just things like stealing and selling wood on a
regular base. There was no doubt that this wouldn't last long: first of
all Köpenick is only a small town and, second, the name " Lüdke Laundry"
was printed on the cart he used in bold letters. Lüdke stole a total
amount of 13 x 28 cubic meters of wood, worth a total of 187,5
Reichsmark. He earned 13 Reichsmark with it. It cost him 3 months in
jail. The police in Köpenick noted: we don't think Bruno Lüdke is a
criminal. His crime was caused by his "Dummheit", a result of his feeble
mind.
Another case like that is the
stolen duck. In the evening of 16 February 1940 Lüdke entered Café Fuchs
at the Bahnhofstrasse 20 in Köpenick. Under his arm a bag with a dead
duck. He tried to sell the animal to a visitor for 15 Reichsmark.
Another visitor payed attention as he was an officer of the
Sicherheitspolizei. He confiscated the duck and arrested Bruno Lüdke. At
the Köpenick police station they soon found out that Bruno stole the
duck from a farmer named Skole.
Skole reported the theft and
stated that the duck had cost him 10 Reichsmark. Lüdke stayed in
detention on remand for five weeks, but was never tried. According to
clause 51 of the penal code, a feeble-minded person could not be tried.
One month after he was released from jail Bruno was caught with a stolen
cock, which he tried to sell in another local pub.
On Friday 29 January 1943 Frieda
Rössner, a locally well-known 59-year-old widow, was murdered in the
woods near her house in Köpenick. She was found two days later,
strangled with her shawl. The murderer abused her and stole her purse,
containing 1 Reichsmark.
Immediately after they found the
body, the Köpenick police alarmed the the homicide departement of the
Berlin police. A group of three detectives was formed, led by
Kriminalkommisar Heinz Franz. The other members of the team were KS
Jachode and KS Mahnke. That same Sunday they hurried to the scene of the
crime.
After checking various "suspects"
KK Franz arrested Bruno Lüdke on 18 March 1943. From his report: "On
18 March 1943 we learned that a worker named Bruno Lüdke was a feeble-minded
man who was known for troubling local women. As we figured that this man,
who lives in the area of the Elisabethstrasse, could know more about the
murder, I questioned him at work. Following this informal interview I
got the impression that he should know more."
Bruno Lüdke's first
confessions
Bruno Lüdke was arrested for the
sole reason that KK Franz had the "impression" that he should know more
about the case Frieda Rössner, but there was absolutely no evidence
against Lüdke and nobody pointed out Bruno Lüdke to the police. It is
not clear what Franz asked Lüdke when he questioned him for the first
time, but given Bruno Lüdke's mental level he probably acted in a way
that looked strange to Franz and Franz interpreted this behaviour in a
way that suited his investigations.
According to the confessions
Lüdke made directly after he was arrested, he had raped or tried to rape
"fifty women" over a period of several years. It is strange however that
this is never mentioned again in the Lüdke-case. Also, for the years
that Lüdke was supposed to have done this, not a single complaint was
made against Lüdke by anyone. It seems this first version by Lüdke
silently became a minor detail when Lüdke "confessed" the murder of
Frieda Rössner and, shortly after that, the murders of Käthe Mundt,
Bertha Schulz and the Umann's. KK Franz gives the impression that he
learned from the Mundt and Schulz cases through Lüdke, but from the
original police files we learn that Franz picked out these cases prior
to Lüdke's "confessions".
The files proof that KK Franz
searched for murder cases in the Köpenick-area in the archives of the
Berlin Homicide Department immediately after Lüdke told him about the
fifty women and about Rössner. After that he talked Lüdke in the right
direction and Lüdke immediately "confessed the Mundt and Schulz cases.
Strange moves by Lüdke fit perfectly into the methods used by Franz. For
example: when Lüdke confessed murdering Herr and Frau Umann, he did not
mention the murder of Frau Gutermann. This is strange because this
murder took place just two days before the Umann's were killed. Months
later, when Franz asked him about Frau Gutermann, Lüdke suddenly "remembered"
killing her. But he could not give any correct details about the murder.
Only when KK Franz took him to the murder scene in Berlin Lüdke managed
to do a little better, but this trip also showed that Lüdke hardly knew
the area.
In the whole affair there was
only one location that was very well known to Lüdke and that was Frieda
Rössner's place. No surprise as he picked up and delivered her laundry
every week. But even in this case at first he pointed out the wrong spot
as the place where he met with Frau Rössner. Furthermore, he should have
been able to point out this exact location even before he visited the
location with KK Franz. This was not the case. He could not give any
correct information about the locations of the murders in any of the
cases. Not in the Rössner-case, not in the Mundt-case, not in the
Schulze-case and not in the Umann-case. Same with the objects stolen
from the Umann's and Rössner. During the first interviews Lüdke could
not give any useful information about the stolen items. Not what he took
and not what he did with it. His incoherent stories about the locations
and the stolen items, combined with a prober conduct of Lüdke's alibis
should have opened the eyes of KK Franz and his men. But instead of that,
Lüdke's quick and easy "confessions" created euphoria with Franz.
Meanwhile we can only guess what Lüdke's reasons for confessing these
first murders have been. But its seems to be the result of Lüdke's
labile (unstable) mental capacities, combined with physical violence,
intimidation, suggestive questioning and manipulation of his "confessions".
Then how did KK Franz manage
to get further confessions from Lüdke?
From the original files of all 51
"confessed" murders becomes clear that the "confessions" made by Bruno
Lüdke are the result of KK Franz methods of questioning. In other words:
Lüdke did not tell Franz about the murders, Franz told Lüdke about them.
In this way Bruno Lüdke "confessed" in exactly the order Franz wanted
him to confess: first 20 cases in Berlin, but then Hosang-case in
Genthin open the way for KK Franz to tackle the unsolved murders in the
rest of Germany.
Reconstruction of the (formal)
interrogations gives a clear view on the methods used by KK Franz:
The questioning about a new
murder case comes out of the blue. The usual question for Bruno Lüdke in
such a case was usually if he had ever been in a certain town or village.
Most of the times Lüdke's first reaction to this question is "no".
Through several interviews, most of the time giving enough evidence that
Lüdke doesn't know what it's all about, he is talked into a "confession"
that fits the case a little. As soon as possible, in several cases
without an introducing interview, the location of the murder is visited.
Here the case is "reconstructed" and the "confession" completed. Between
the original denial and the confession Franz only needs a minimum number
of interviews. If some evidence is still missing or unclear, Franz makes
everything fit in his final report (Morgenmeldung). Often the
information Franz gives in these reports is simply not true or even
plain lies.
Franz and Lüdke: The
interrogator and the interrogated
KK Franz is the only person who
interviewed Bruno Lüdke during the investigations. Thus it is no
surprise that a certain "bond" grew between Franz and Lüdke, resulting
in a great trust of Bruno Lüdke towards KK Franz. Bruno Lüdke became
convinced that Franz was the only man he could rely on. It is clear that
Franz was fully aware of this. On the other hand KK Franz did not have
and evidence other then Bruno Lüdke's confessions and he had to take
full advantage to get as much info from Lüdke as possible. He soon
realized that Bruno Lüdke was feeble-minded. By creating the right
ambiance he could get anything out of him. An aggressive tactic was
useless but, on the other hand, a soft approach worked out "perfect".
Lüdke from his side, felt fairly secure due to his "clause 51". Due to
this clause (he was feeble-minded and thus not responsible for his
misdeeds) he felt he had no reasons to fear the police. "If he spoke the
truth" he would get his job back and be home by Christmas. Another thing
happened to the rather primitive Lüdke. It appears that he was quite
content with all the interest for his person. A man who, until the 18
March 1943 only had to deal with the police for minor theft cases, all
over sudden found himself the center of enormous interest from the
police. Not only in Berlin, but also in the whole of Germany. They
traveled the country with him, interviewed him, looked at him
photographed him. He had "his Kommissar", who watched over him and took
care of his daily meals and cigarettes. The whole atmosphere caused
satisfaction with Lüdke and to continue this wonderful situation, all he
had to do is talk a lot and "confess". When reading the reports one gets
the feeling that Bruno Lüdke did not want to disappoint "Herr Kommissar
Franz" and did his best to "remember" the details of what he did.
The questions
Bruno Lüdke may have been feeble-minded,
but he wasn't plain stupid. After some time he was very well aware of
the questions he had to ask KK Franz in order to get help when he was "confessing".
This becomes clear from the formal interrogations:
When KK Franz is referring to a
point they discussed in an earlier informal interview, he always used a
sort of "pay attention" signal by starting with "I want to think deeply".
When Lüdke did not have a
straight answer to a question, he always tried to figure out what the
desired answer would be, by asking semi-rhetorical questions. For
example: "the name of the town is at the tip of my tongue", "I must have
taken something else, but I can't recall what it was" or "It can't have
been in the summer, it must have been winter". KK Franz jumped at it by
asking a new (suggestive) question or by ending the interview. In most
cases Lüdke did know the right answer during the next interview.
The reconstruction's
A man who did not manage to steal
a cock from a chicken-house without being seen, would be the same man
who managed to murder 51 women over a period of 20 years, without being
seen? He traveled through Germany by train, by bike, hiking and by foot,
murdering women in every corner of the country, only to immediately
return to Köpenick because nobody there missed him even for one day (not
his mother, not his boss at work). The truth is, that Lüdke had no
geographical knowledge of Germany at all and didn't even know how to buy
a train ticket. An example:
KK Franz: How did you buy that
ticket?
Lüdke: Simple, I just said I want
a ticket to there and there…
KK Franz: But where?
Lüdke: I will think about that
during the night.
The next morning:
KK Franz: How did you buy a
ticket to that place?
Lüdke: I went to the ticket-window
and asked for a ticket to Silezia.
KK Franz: What is Silezia?
Lüdke: It's a city.
KK Franz: But Bruno, Silezia is a
province. That’s more than a city. It's much bigger, with many towns.
Lüdke: I call that a city…
This didn't keep Franz from
reporting that Lüdke's knowledge of most places outside Berlin is "amazing"
In the whole Lüdke-file there's
no mention of any truck-driver who took the hiking Lüdke with him. It is
ridiculous to even consider the possibility that Lüdke managed to travel
in wartime Germany, 1939/1943, in the way he told KK Franz. Police and
others were constantly checking every traveler, looking for escaped
forced laborers and POW's. Yet they did not find a single policeman who
checked Lüdke during one of his trips.
The signature of the killer
There is no "signature" for the
killer. Meaning that there are no clear similarities in the murder cases
that proof that it's the work of one man. All cases show different facts
of the case, different ways of killing and different motives. Dr. Wehner
told Blauw (a Dutch former Chief of Police who researched the Lüdke case
after his retirement) that even the supervising Reichskriminalpolizeiamt
never managed to connect the murders. At none of the murder scenes the
police managed to find useful fingerprints.
The liquidation of Bruno Lüdke
Bruno Lüdke is liquidated in a
police prison in Vienna. This becomes clear from a Telex message from KK
Franz dated 1 March 1944. The reason for this: due to the "clause 51"
situation he would escape being tried. On the other hand the phenomenon
of a serial killer in the National-Socialist police state was
unthinkable and had to be kept "under the hat". Also, it was very
possible that Bruno Lüdke, once on trial, would have understood that
Franz could not protect him and revoke his "confessions". Besides that,
a lawyer, but also the D.A., after serious study of the files, would
come to the conclusion that the whole evidence was questionable and
based on false testimonies. Such a defeat was unthinkable for the RKPA (Nebe)
and the RSHA (Kaltenbrunner), especially after all the commotion the
Lüdke-case caused even with Himmler.
Conclusion
Leaves us with the question how
the Lüdke-case became what it is today.
What started as normal
investigations in one normal murder case, became the most unbelievable
murder case in German criminal history. The truth is that the serial
killer Bruno Lüdke never existed. All "confessions" KK Franz got out of
him were false.
Then why did it happen?
It’s not that difficult as all
the necessary ingredients were there: The feeble-minded Lüdke, the
ambitious Kriminalkommisar Franz who was driven by a need for fame and
honor, an authority like the Reichskriminalpolizeiamt, a system that had
no real justice, a system that had no real press, a group of failing
superiors to Franz and a group of failing authorities who did not manage
to fathom the psyche of Lüdke.
After the war the police did
nothing to seriously investigate the serious doubts Kriminalrat
Faulhaber had regarding this case, and the movie "Nachts, wenn der
Teufel kam" completed the portrait of "serial killer Bruno Lüdke" and
gave it almost mythical proportions.
In the end it leaves Germany with
51 unsolved murder cases.
Source:
"Bruno Lüdke: Seriemoordenaar" by
J.A. Blaauw (Uitgeverij De Fontein, Baarn, 1994 - ISBN 9026 10732-3)
SEX:
M RACE: W TYPE: N MOTIVE: Sex.
DISPOSITION:
Died under Nazi experimentation, Apr. 8, 1944.
