Joachim Georg Kroll
Name: Joachim Kroll
Nickname: The Cannibal Killer
Location (of Kills): Ruhr Area and Bredeney and Walstedde, Germany
Number of Kills: 14
Gender of Victims: Men and Women
Sexual Contact: Rape
Types of Murder: Stabbing, Mutilation, Cannibalism, Strangulation
The corpses of five young women were found in small villages in West Germany. Each body had been raped, stabbed and or strangled, as well as mutilated. The cuts were of a strange nature. Parts of the victims had been removed. Slices from the buttocks, thighs, and belly were taken. This type of cut was suggestive of a cannibal. The parts were the meatiest parts of the body. The wounds were about steak size.
The police questioned people in the area of the murders. One man suggested the name of Joachim Kroll. Kroll had told the man not to use the toilet in their apartment building. When the man asked Kroll what it was stopped up with Kroll replied "With guts..."
Police searched Kroll's apartment and found sex gadgets and blow up dolls. Kroll later admitted that he would often masturbate with one hand while strangling the doll with the other hand. They also found plastic bags of flesh (frozen), a hand (in a saucepan), and more flesh including assorted viscera (clogged in the toilet).
Kroll confessed to the murders. He even began to brag about them. Kroll began to confess to murders that the police did not know about. Kroll confessed to the murders of nine other people. Eight young girls and one man.
Kroll had been watching the young man and his girlfriend having sex in a Volkswagen. Kroll became so sexually aroused that he had decided to rape the girl. Kroll slashed the front left tire of the car. Instead of checking the tire the young man hit the gas and sped off. After taking a wrong term the car returned to Kroll. Kroll began waving his arms, as if he were in distress. The young man thought Joachim needed help so he stopped the car. Joachim stabbed the young man in the stomach. His girl friend hit the gas and tried to run over Kroll. She missed.
Kroll's confession helped him earn a sentence of life imprisonment.
Joachim Georg Kroll (17 April 1933 - 1 July 1991) was a German serial killer and cannibal. He was known as the Ruhr Cannibal (Ruhrkannibale), Ruhr Hunter (Ruhrjäger) and the Duisburg Man-Eater (Duisburger Menschenfresser). He was convicted of eight murders but confessed to a total of 13.
Early life
Born the son of a miner in Hindenburg (Zabrze), Province of Upper Silesia, Kroll was the last among eight children. He was a weak child and used to wet the bed. His education was poor, only reaching Grade 3. (Later psychiatrists found he had an IQ of 76.)
After the end of World War II, Kroll's family moved to North Rhine-Westphalia.
Crimes
He began killing in 1955, after his mother died. Around 1960, Kroll went to Duisburg and found work as a toilet attendant for Mannesmann. Afterwards he worked for Thyssen Industries and went to 24 Friesen street, Laar, a district of Duisburg. At that time he resumed killing people.
List of victims
8 February 1955 - Irmgard Strehl, 19, raped and stabbed to death. Her disemboweled body was found in a barn in Lüdinghausen.
16 June 1959 - Klara Frieda Tesmer, 24, murdered in the meadows of the Rhine, near Rheinhausen. A mechanic, Heinrich Ott, was arrested for the crime. He hanged himself in jail.
26 July 1959 - Manuela Knodt, 16, raped and strangled in the City Park of Essen. Slices of flesh were carved from her buttocks and thighs.
1962 - Barbara Bruder, 12, abducted in Burscheid. Her body was never found.
23 April 1962 - Petra Giese, 13, raped and strangled in Dinslaken-Bruckhausen. Vinzenz Kuehn is arrested and convicted.
4 June 1962 - Monika Tafel, 12, killed in Walsum, slices of flesh carved from her buttocks. Walter Quicker is arrested for the crime. He is released but is driven by neighbors to suicide in October.
22 August 1965 - Hermann Schmitz and his girlfriend Marion Veen were attacked as they sat in a car in a lover's lane in Duisburg-Großenbaum. Hermann - Kroll's only male victim - was killed, but Marion escaped.
13 September 1966 - Ursula Rohling, strangled in Foersterbusch Park near Marl. Her boyfriend Adolf Schickel committed suicide after being falsely accused of the crime.
22 December 1966 - Ilona Harke, aged 5, raped and drowned in a ditch in Wuppertal.
12 July 1969 - Maria Hettgen, 61, raped and strangled at Hückeswagen.
21 May 1970 - Jutta Rahn, 13, strangled walking home from a train station. Peter Schay was arrested and eventually released. He confessed to the crime in 1976 after being hounded by his neighbors.
1976 - Karin Toepfer, 10, raped and strangled in Voerde.
3 July 1976 - Marion Ketter, 4. Parts of her body were in the process of being simmered when Kroll was arrested.
Method
Kroll was very particular about where he killed, only killing in the same place on a few occasions years apart. This, and the fact that there were a number of other killers operating in the area at the time, helped him to evade capture. Kroll would surprise his victims and strangle them quickly. Afterward he would strip the body and have intercourse with it, often masturbating over it again. He would then mutilate and cut off pieces to be eaten later. Upon returning home, he would have intercourse again with a rubber sex doll he had for the purpose.
Capture
On 3 July 1976, Kroll was arrested for kidnapping and killing a four-year-old girl named Marion Kettner. As police went from home to home, a neighbor approached a policeman and told him that the waste-pipe in his apartment building had blocked up, and when he had asked his neighbor, Kroll, whether he knew what had been blocking the pipe, Kroll had simply replied; "Guts". Upon this report, the police went up to Kroll's apartment and found the body of the Kettner girl cut up: some parts were in the fridge, a small hand was cooking in a pan of boiling water and the entrails were found stuck in the waste-pipe.
Kroll was immediately arrested.
Trial and death
He admitted killing Marion Kettner and gave details of 14 other murders and one attempted murder over the last two decades.
Kroll said that he often sliced portions of flesh from his victims to cook and eat them, claiming that he did this to save on his grocery bills. In custody, he believed that he was going to get a simple operation to cure him of his homicidal urges and would then be released from prison. Instead he was charged with eight murders and one attempted murder. In April 1982, after a 151-day trial, he was convicted on all counts and was given nine life sentences.
He died of a heart attack in 1991 in the prison of Rheinbach, near Bonn.
Joachim Georg Kroll
He started to rape and kill in 1955 when he was 22, and continued for two decades in the Duisberg area of Germany. At one point on a whim, he tasted the flesh from a murdered woman and found that he liked it. Thereafter, he stalked women or girls that he thought would yield tender meat and left their bodies to be discovered, sans pieces of flesh cut mostly from the buttocks. Many of them were young, and one was only four years old. When police finally nabbed him, they found a kettle on his stove boiling carrots and potatoes along with a tiny female hand.
The Biography of the Ruhr Hunter.
17 april 1933 Joachim Georg Kroll is born in Hindenburg, Oberschlesien, near the Polish border.
Sometime 1947 The Kroll family flees to the West, his father, taken Prisoner of War by the Russians during WWII, remains imprisoned, he will never return in the life of young Jockel.
21 january 1955 Kroll's mother dies.
8 february 1955 Or just 3 weeks after the death of his mother, Kroll stabs to death Irmgard Strehl, after raping her in a barn near Lüdinghausen.
Sometime 1956 Erika Schuleter is raped and strangled as 2nd victim, in Kirchellen.
In 1957 Kroll moves to Duisburg, a heavy industrial city in the midst of the 'Ruhrpott', he will make this area his hunting grounds for the next 20 years.
24 march 1959 Kroll presumably attacks a further unknown Erika near the Moerser Straße in Rheinwiesen, a small Duisburg district across the Rhine-river, also known as Rheinhausen.
16 june 1959 A second attack on the same spot is more succesful, Kroll rapes and strangles Klara Frieda Tesmer .
26 july 1959 Manuela Knodt is raped and strangled in the City Park of Essen, another major Ruhr town, some 20kms away from Duisburg. For this murder, the police later arrest Horst Otto, who initially confessed to the murder. He is brought to trial and imprisoned for 8 years.
Sometime 1962 Kroll takes a trip to Burscheid, south in the direction of Köln, to rape and strangle Barbara Bruder.
23 april 1962 Petra Giese is raped and throttled in Dinslaken-Brückhausen. Some signs of cannibalism show up.
4 june 1962 In a cornfield in Walsum, Kroll strangles Monika Tafel, he also removes some steaks from her buttocks. The town of Walsum is outraged, and points Walter Quicker, a 34-year-old pedophile, as the scapegoat. He hangs himself outside of town in a forest.
22 august 1965 Rita A. and Hermann Schmitz have parked their car in a Lover's Lane in Grossenbaum-Duisburg, Kroll is sneaking around, all excited. He wants Marion, but has to get rid of Schmitz. Therefore he cuts the tire of the car, Schmitz gets out and is stabbed to death immediately. Marion although jumps in the driver's seat and crashes the car forward, almost hitting Kroll, who manages to get away unnoticed in the surrounding woods. This is the only occasion where Kroll killed a man.
13 september 1966 Ursula Rohling is strangled in Foersterbusch Park in Marl on a trip some 25kms north of Duisburg. Ursula's boyfriend Adolf Schickel is falsely accused of the crime and drowns himself in the Main-river in Wiesbaden.
22 dec 1966 Abducted in Essen, Kroll takes 5-year-old Ilona Harke on a city-train to Wuppertal, and then on a bus to Remscheid or Hueckeswagen, somewhere on the way they get out and walk through dense bush and woods, down into the 'Feldbachtal'. There in the small ditch Kroll rapes her and watches her drown.
22 june 1967 Kroll lures Gabrielle Puetman into a cornfield and shows her pornographic pictures. The 10-year-old girl faints. As Jockel tries to rape and strangle her, the sirens of a near-by coal-mine sound, and the area is swarmed by miners on their way home, he manages to get away unnoticed. Gabrielle survives.
12 july 1969 On a path near the Baldeneysee in Essen, Kroll encounters Maria Hettgen, and rapes and strangles her.
21 may 1970 Jutta Rahn comes back from school and walks the short stretch between the Hösel Railway-station and her house through a wood. She encounter Kroll and is strangled. Her neighbour-boyfriend Peter Schay is suspected and spends 15 months in prison.
Sometime 1976 Karin Toepfer is raped and strangled in Dinslaken-Voerde.
3 july 1976 When 4-year-old Marion Ketter is missing in the Friesenstraße, a large investigation is set up by neighbours and police. One person complaining about a blocked drain calls the police in his house, where they find the drain blocked with intestins. Investigating the tenants from nr 11, they find Joachim Kroll, sheepishly pointing to a pot on his kitchen stove. The pot contained Marion's hand boiling with some carrots and potatoes. The reign of The Ruhr Hunter was at its end.
4 october 1979 Start of the trial against Joachim Georg Kroll in Saal 201 of the Duisburg Schwürgericht. He is charged with 8 counts and 1 attempt of murder. On 8 april 1982, after 151 days in court, Kroll is sentenced to 9 terms of life-imprisonment.
1 july 1991 Joachim Georg Kroll dies of a heart-attack in the prison of Rheinbach, near Bonn.
Kroll, Joachim
A nomadic German sex killer, Kroll lived in the vicinity of Duisburg, filling his bachelor apartment with electronic gadgets and inflatable sex dolls, frequently strangling the latter with one hand while he masturbated with the other. Too nervous and shy for sex with conscious partners, he turned to rape and murder at age 22, killing so often over the next two decades that he lost count of his victims.
In the 1960s, Kroll tried cannibalism on a whim, enjoying it so much that he kept up the practice, stalking "tender" victims in an effort to reduce his grocery bills.
Kroll's first remembered victim was 19-year-old Inngard Strehl, raped and murdered in a barn near the village of Walstedde, during February 1955.
Twelve-year-old Erika Schuletter was the next to die, raped and strangled at Kirchhellen in 1956. Three years later and miles away, he killed Klara Jesmer in the woods near Rbeinhausen, on June 17, 1959. Sixteen-year-old Manuela Knodt was raped and murdered near Bredeney, south of Essen, with slices cut from her buttocks and thighs in the first slaying attributed to the man police would dub the "Ruhr Hunter."
On April 23, 1962, 13-year-old Petra Giese was raped and killed at Rees, near Walsum, both buttocks sliced off, along with her left forearm and hand. The Hunter was still stalking Walsum on June 4, when 13-year-old Monica Tafel vanished on her way to school. Searchers found her body in a nearby rye field, steaks carved from her buttocks and the back of her thighs.
Kroll sometimes changed his pattern, in an effort to confuse police. No meat was taken when he murdered 12-year-old Barbara Bruder, in Burscheid, during 1962.
In August 1965, at Grossenbaum, he crept up on a pair of young lovers, stabbing a tire on their car, then fatally knifing the driver, Hermann Schmitz, when he stepped out to investigate the noise. In Marl, he raped and murdered Ursula Roling on September 13, 1966, rebounding three months later to kill five-year-old Ilona Harke at Wuppertal, slicing steaks from her buttocks and shoulders.
Kroll's luck nearly ran out in 1967, when he settled briefly in Grafenhausen, befriending local children who began to call him "Uncle."
Luring a 10-year-old girl into a nearby field one afternoon, he promised to "show her a rabbit" but produced obscene photos instead, hoping the child might become sexually aroused. Instead, she was horrified, bolting for safety as Kroll made a grab for her throat, and he fled Grafenhausen the same day, before police could begin asking troublesome questions.
On July 12, 1969, he invaded the home of 61-year-old Maria Hettgen, in Hueckeswagen, strangling her to death and raping her corpse in the front hall. Reverting to children on May 21, 1970, Kroll waylaid 13-year-old Jutta Ranh in Breitscheid, discarding her strangled body after he had satisfied his lust. In 1976, 10-year-old Karin Toepfer was raped and strangled on her way to school, in Dinslaken Voerde.
Kroll's arrogance defeated him in July 1976, when he claimed the next victim in his own neighborhood of Laar, a Duisburg suburb.
Four-year-old Marion Ketter was reported missing from a nearby playground, and police were asking questions door-to-door when they heard a curious story from one of Kroll's neighbors. According to their witness, Kroll had warned him that the upstairs toilet in their block of flats was clogged "with guts." A plumber quickly verified the statement, flushing a child's lungs and other organs out of the pipe, and detectives went calling on Kroll.
In his apartment, they discovered plastic bags of human flesh stored in the freezer; on the stove, a tiny hand was boiling in a pot with carrots and potatoes. Convinced that they had bagged the Hunter, officers were stunned by Kroll's long-running litany of rape and murder.
He remembered fourteen victims, but he really couldn't say if there were more, a circumstance that left detectives free to speculate upon his final body-count. With capital punishment abolished in Germany after World War II, Kroll received the maximum possible sentence of life imprisonment.
Michael Newton - An Encyclopedia of Modern Serial Killers - Hunting Humans
Joachim Kroll (April 17, 1933 - July 1, 1991) was a German serial killer and cannibal. He was known as the Ruhr Cannibal (Ruhrkannibale), and the Duisburg Man-Eater (Duisburger Menschenfresser). He was convicted of eight murders but confessed to a total of 13.
Born the son of a miner in Hindenburg, a town in Upper Silesia (then Germany, now Poland), Kroll was the last among eight children. He was a weak child and used to wet the bed. His education was poor. (Later psychiatrists found he had an IQ of 76.)
After the end of World War II, Kroll's family moved to North Rhine-Westphalia. He began killing in 1955, after his mother died. Around 1960, Kroll went to Duisburg to find work as a toilet attendant for Mannesmann. Afterwards he worked for Thyssen Industries and went to Laar, a district of Duisburg. At that time he resumed killing people.
On July 3, 1976, Kroll was arrested for kidnapping and killing a four-year-old girl named Marion Ketter. As police went from home to home, a neighbor approached a policeman and told him that the waste-pipe in his apartment building had blocked up, and when he had asked his neighbor, Kroll, whether he knew what had been blocking the pipe, Kroll had simply replied; "Guts". Upon this report, the police went up to Kroll's apartment and found the body of the Ketter girl cut up: some parts were in the fridge, a hand was cooking in a pan of boiling water and the intestines were found stuck in the waste-pipe.
Kroll was immediately arrested. He admitted killing Marion Ketter and gave details of 12 other murders and one attempted murder over the last two decades. They were:
February 8, 1955 - Irmgard Strehl, 19, raped and stabbed to death. Her disemboweled body was found in a barn in Lüdinghausen.
June 16, 1959 - Klara Frieda Tesmer, 24, murdered in the meadows of the Rhine.
July 26, 1959 - Manuela Knodt, 16, raped and strangled in the City Park of Essen. Slices of flesh were carved from her buttocks and thighs.
1962 - Barbara Bruder, 12, abducted in Burscheid. Her body was never found.
April 23, 1962 - Petra Giese, 13, raped and strangled in Dinslaken-Bruckhausen
June 1962 - Monika Tafel, 13, killed in Walsum, slices of flesh carved from her buttocks.
August 22, 1965 - Hermann Schmitz and his girlfriend Marion were attacked as they sat in a car in a lover's lane in Duisburg-Großenbaum. Hermann - Kroll's only male victim - was killed, but Marion escaped.
September 1966 - Ursula Rohling, strangled near Duisburg. Her boyfriend committed suicide after being falsely accused of the crime.
December 22, 1966 - Ilona Harke, aged 5, raped and drowned in a ditch in Wuppertal.
July 12, 1969 - Maria Hettgen, 10, raped and strangled at Baldeneysee in Essen.
May 21, 1970 - Jutta Rahn, 13, strangled walking home from a train station.
1976 - Karin Toepfer, raped and strangled in Voerde.
Kroll said that he often sliced portions of flesh from his victims to cook and eat them, claiming that he did this to save on his grocery bills. In custody, he believed that he was going to get a simple operation to cure him of his homicidal urges and would then be released from prison. Instead he was charged with eight murders and one attempted murder. In April 1982, after a 151-day trial, he was convicted on all counts and was given nine life sentences.
He died of a heart attack in 1991 in the prison of Rheinbach, near Bonn.
Joachim Kroll
Joachim Kroll
Joachim Kroll
Joachim Kroll at trial
Joachim Kroll at trial
Joachim Kroll with police at one of the crime scenes.
Joachim Kroll
Joachim Kroll with police at one of the crime scenes.
Joachim Kroll
Joachim Kroll with police at one of the crime scenes.
Joachim Kroll
Kroll's kitchen
Where Kroll lived on Friesenstrasse.
Name: Joachim Kroll
Nickname: The Cannibal Killer
Location (of Kills): Ruhr Area and Bredeney and Walstedde, Germany
Number of Kills: 14
Gender of Victims: Men and Women
Sexual Contact: Rape
Types of Murder: Stabbing, Mutilation, Cannibalism, Strangulation
The corpses of five young women were found in small villages in West Germany. Each body had been raped, stabbed and or strangled, as well as mutilated. The cuts were of a strange nature. Parts of the victims had been removed. Slices from the buttocks, thighs, and belly were taken. This type of cut was suggestive of a cannibal. The parts were the meatiest parts of the body. The wounds were about steak size.
The police questioned people in the area of the murders. One man suggested the name of Joachim Kroll. Kroll had told the man not to use the toilet in their apartment building. When the man asked Kroll what it was stopped up with Kroll replied "With guts..."
Police searched Kroll's apartment and found sex gadgets and blow up dolls. Kroll later admitted that he would often masturbate with one hand while strangling the doll with the other hand. They also found plastic bags of flesh (frozen), a hand (in a saucepan), and more flesh including assorted viscera (clogged in the toilet).
Kroll confessed to the murders. He even began to brag about them. Kroll began to confess to murders that the police did not know about. Kroll confessed to the murders of nine other people. Eight young girls and one man.
Kroll had been watching the young man and his girlfriend having sex in a Volkswagen. Kroll became so sexually aroused that he had decided to rape the girl. Kroll slashed the front left tire of the car. Instead of checking the tire the young man hit the gas and sped off. After taking a wrong term the car returned to Kroll. Kroll began waving his arms, as if he were in distress. The young man thought Joachim needed help so he stopped the car. Joachim stabbed the young man in the stomach. His girl friend hit the gas and tried to run over Kroll. She missed.
Kroll's confession helped him earn a sentence of life imprisonment.
Joachim Georg Kroll (17 April 1933 - 1 July 1991) was a German serial killer and cannibal. He was known as the Ruhr Cannibal (Ruhrkannibale), Ruhr Hunter (Ruhrjäger) and the Duisburg Man-Eater (Duisburger Menschenfresser). He was convicted of eight murders but confessed to a total of 13.
Early life
Born the son of a miner in Hindenburg (Zabrze), Province of Upper Silesia, Kroll was the last among eight children. He was a weak child and used to wet the bed. His education was poor, only reaching Grade 3. (Later psychiatrists found he had an IQ of 76.)
After the end of World War II, Kroll's family moved to North Rhine-Westphalia.
Crimes
He began killing in 1955, after his mother died. Around 1960, Kroll went to Duisburg and found work as a toilet attendant for Mannesmann. Afterwards he worked for Thyssen Industries and went to 24 Friesen street, Laar, a district of Duisburg. At that time he resumed killing people.
List of victims
8 February 1955 - Irmgard Strehl, 19, raped and stabbed to death. Her disemboweled body was found in a barn in Lüdinghausen.
16 June 1959 - Klara Frieda Tesmer, 24, murdered in the meadows of the Rhine, near Rheinhausen. A mechanic, Heinrich Ott, was arrested for the crime. He hanged himself in jail.
26 July 1959 - Manuela Knodt, 16, raped and strangled in the City Park of Essen. Slices of flesh were carved from her buttocks and thighs.
1962 - Barbara Bruder, 12, abducted in Burscheid. Her body was never found.
23 April 1962 - Petra Giese, 13, raped and strangled in Dinslaken-Bruckhausen. Vinzenz Kuehn is arrested and convicted.
4 June 1962 - Monika Tafel, 12, killed in Walsum, slices of flesh carved from her buttocks. Walter Quicker is arrested for the crime. He is released but is driven by neighbors to suicide in October.
22 August 1965 - Hermann Schmitz and his girlfriend Marion Veen were attacked as they sat in a car in a lover's lane in Duisburg-Großenbaum. Hermann - Kroll's only male victim - was killed, but Marion escaped.
13 September 1966 - Ursula Rohling, strangled in Foersterbusch Park near Marl. Her boyfriend Adolf Schickel committed suicide after being falsely accused of the crime.
22 December 1966 - Ilona Harke, aged 5, raped and drowned in a ditch in Wuppertal.
12 July 1969 - Maria Hettgen, 61, raped and strangled at Hückeswagen.
21 May 1970 - Jutta Rahn, 13, strangled walking home from a train station. Peter Schay was arrested and eventually released. He confessed to the crime in 1976 after being hounded by his neighbors.
1976 - Karin Toepfer, 10, raped and strangled in Voerde.
3 July 1976 - Marion Ketter, 4. Parts of her body were in the process of being simmered when Kroll was arrested.
Method
Kroll was very particular about where he killed, only killing in the same place on a few occasions years apart. This, and the fact that there were a number of other killers operating in the area at the time, helped him to evade capture. Kroll would surprise his victims and strangle them quickly. Afterward he would strip the body and have intercourse with it, often masturbating over it again. He would then mutilate and cut off pieces to be eaten later. Upon returning home, he would have intercourse again with a rubber sex doll he had for the purpose.
Capture
On 3 July 1976, Kroll was arrested for kidnapping and killing a four-year-old girl named Marion Kettner. As police went from home to home, a neighbor approached a policeman and told him that the waste-pipe in his apartment building had blocked up, and when he had asked his neighbor, Kroll, whether he knew what had been blocking the pipe, Kroll had simply replied; "Guts". Upon this report, the police went up to Kroll's apartment and found the body of the Kettner girl cut up: some parts were in the fridge, a small hand was cooking in a pan of boiling water and the entrails were found stuck in the waste-pipe.
Kroll was immediately arrested.
Trial and death
He admitted killing Marion Kettner and gave details of 14 other murders and one attempted murder over the last two decades.
Kroll said that he often sliced portions of flesh from his victims to cook and eat them, claiming that he did this to save on his grocery bills. In custody, he believed that he was going to get a simple operation to cure him of his homicidal urges and would then be released from prison. Instead he was charged with eight murders and one attempted murder. In April 1982, after a 151-day trial, he was convicted on all counts and was given nine life sentences.
He died of a heart attack in 1991 in the prison of Rheinbach, near Bonn.
Joachim Georg Kroll
He started to rape and kill in 1955 when he was 22, and continued for two decades in the Duisberg area of Germany. At one point on a whim, he tasted the flesh from a murdered woman and found that he liked it. Thereafter, he stalked women or girls that he thought would yield tender meat and left their bodies to be discovered, sans pieces of flesh cut mostly from the buttocks. Many of them were young, and one was only four years old. When police finally nabbed him, they found a kettle on his stove boiling carrots and potatoes along with a tiny female hand.
The Biography of the Ruhr Hunter.
17 april 1933 Joachim Georg Kroll is born in Hindenburg, Oberschlesien, near the Polish border.
Sometime 1947 The Kroll family flees to the West, his father, taken Prisoner of War by the Russians during WWII, remains imprisoned, he will never return in the life of young Jockel.
21 january 1955 Kroll's mother dies.
8 february 1955 Or just 3 weeks after the death of his mother, Kroll stabs to death Irmgard Strehl, after raping her in a barn near Lüdinghausen.
Sometime 1956 Erika Schuleter is raped and strangled as 2nd victim, in Kirchellen.
In 1957 Kroll moves to Duisburg, a heavy industrial city in the midst of the 'Ruhrpott', he will make this area his hunting grounds for the next 20 years.
24 march 1959 Kroll presumably attacks a further unknown Erika near the Moerser Straße in Rheinwiesen, a small Duisburg district across the Rhine-river, also known as Rheinhausen.
16 june 1959 A second attack on the same spot is more succesful, Kroll rapes and strangles Klara Frieda Tesmer .
26 july 1959 Manuela Knodt is raped and strangled in the City Park of Essen, another major Ruhr town, some 20kms away from Duisburg. For this murder, the police later arrest Horst Otto, who initially confessed to the murder. He is brought to trial and imprisoned for 8 years.
Sometime 1962 Kroll takes a trip to Burscheid, south in the direction of Köln, to rape and strangle Barbara Bruder.
23 april 1962 Petra Giese is raped and throttled in Dinslaken-Brückhausen. Some signs of cannibalism show up.
4 june 1962 In a cornfield in Walsum, Kroll strangles Monika Tafel, he also removes some steaks from her buttocks. The town of Walsum is outraged, and points Walter Quicker, a 34-year-old pedophile, as the scapegoat. He hangs himself outside of town in a forest.
22 august 1965 Rita A. and Hermann Schmitz have parked their car in a Lover's Lane in Grossenbaum-Duisburg, Kroll is sneaking around, all excited. He wants Marion, but has to get rid of Schmitz. Therefore he cuts the tire of the car, Schmitz gets out and is stabbed to death immediately. Marion although jumps in the driver's seat and crashes the car forward, almost hitting Kroll, who manages to get away unnoticed in the surrounding woods. This is the only occasion where Kroll killed a man.
13 september 1966 Ursula Rohling is strangled in Foersterbusch Park in Marl on a trip some 25kms north of Duisburg. Ursula's boyfriend Adolf Schickel is falsely accused of the crime and drowns himself in the Main-river in Wiesbaden.
22 dec 1966 Abducted in Essen, Kroll takes 5-year-old Ilona Harke on a city-train to Wuppertal, and then on a bus to Remscheid or Hueckeswagen, somewhere on the way they get out and walk through dense bush and woods, down into the 'Feldbachtal'. There in the small ditch Kroll rapes her and watches her drown.
22 june 1967 Kroll lures Gabrielle Puetman into a cornfield and shows her pornographic pictures. The 10-year-old girl faints. As Jockel tries to rape and strangle her, the sirens of a near-by coal-mine sound, and the area is swarmed by miners on their way home, he manages to get away unnoticed. Gabrielle survives.
12 july 1969 On a path near the Baldeneysee in Essen, Kroll encounters Maria Hettgen, and rapes and strangles her.
21 may 1970 Jutta Rahn comes back from school and walks the short stretch between the Hösel Railway-station and her house through a wood. She encounter Kroll and is strangled. Her neighbour-boyfriend Peter Schay is suspected and spends 15 months in prison.
Sometime 1976 Karin Toepfer is raped and strangled in Dinslaken-Voerde.
3 july 1976 When 4-year-old Marion Ketter is missing in the Friesenstraße, a large investigation is set up by neighbours and police. One person complaining about a blocked drain calls the police in his house, where they find the drain blocked with intestins. Investigating the tenants from nr 11, they find Joachim Kroll, sheepishly pointing to a pot on his kitchen stove. The pot contained Marion's hand boiling with some carrots and potatoes. The reign of The Ruhr Hunter was at its end.
4 october 1979 Start of the trial against Joachim Georg Kroll in Saal 201 of the Duisburg Schwürgericht. He is charged with 8 counts and 1 attempt of murder. On 8 april 1982, after 151 days in court, Kroll is sentenced to 9 terms of life-imprisonment.
1 july 1991 Joachim Georg Kroll dies of a heart-attack in the prison of Rheinbach, near Bonn.
Kroll, Joachim
A nomadic German sex killer, Kroll lived in the vicinity of Duisburg, filling his bachelor apartment with electronic gadgets and inflatable sex dolls, frequently strangling the latter with one hand while he masturbated with the other. Too nervous and shy for sex with conscious partners, he turned to rape and murder at age 22, killing so often over the next two decades that he lost count of his victims.
In the 1960s, Kroll tried cannibalism on a whim, enjoying it so much that he kept up the practice, stalking "tender" victims in an effort to reduce his grocery bills.
Kroll's first remembered victim was 19-year-old Inngard Strehl, raped and murdered in a barn near the village of Walstedde, during February 1955.
Twelve-year-old Erika Schuletter was the next to die, raped and strangled at Kirchhellen in 1956. Three years later and miles away, he killed Klara Jesmer in the woods near Rbeinhausen, on June 17, 1959. Sixteen-year-old Manuela Knodt was raped and murdered near Bredeney, south of Essen, with slices cut from her buttocks and thighs in the first slaying attributed to the man police would dub the "Ruhr Hunter."
On April 23, 1962, 13-year-old Petra Giese was raped and killed at Rees, near Walsum, both buttocks sliced off, along with her left forearm and hand. The Hunter was still stalking Walsum on June 4, when 13-year-old Monica Tafel vanished on her way to school. Searchers found her body in a nearby rye field, steaks carved from her buttocks and the back of her thighs.
Kroll sometimes changed his pattern, in an effort to confuse police. No meat was taken when he murdered 12-year-old Barbara Bruder, in Burscheid, during 1962.
In August 1965, at Grossenbaum, he crept up on a pair of young lovers, stabbing a tire on their car, then fatally knifing the driver, Hermann Schmitz, when he stepped out to investigate the noise. In Marl, he raped and murdered Ursula Roling on September 13, 1966, rebounding three months later to kill five-year-old Ilona Harke at Wuppertal, slicing steaks from her buttocks and shoulders.
Kroll's luck nearly ran out in 1967, when he settled briefly in Grafenhausen, befriending local children who began to call him "Uncle."
Luring a 10-year-old girl into a nearby field one afternoon, he promised to "show her a rabbit" but produced obscene photos instead, hoping the child might become sexually aroused. Instead, she was horrified, bolting for safety as Kroll made a grab for her throat, and he fled Grafenhausen the same day, before police could begin asking troublesome questions.
On July 12, 1969, he invaded the home of 61-year-old Maria Hettgen, in Hueckeswagen, strangling her to death and raping her corpse in the front hall. Reverting to children on May 21, 1970, Kroll waylaid 13-year-old Jutta Ranh in Breitscheid, discarding her strangled body after he had satisfied his lust. In 1976, 10-year-old Karin Toepfer was raped and strangled on her way to school, in Dinslaken Voerde.
Kroll's arrogance defeated him in July 1976, when he claimed the next victim in his own neighborhood of Laar, a Duisburg suburb.
Four-year-old Marion Ketter was reported missing from a nearby playground, and police were asking questions door-to-door when they heard a curious story from one of Kroll's neighbors. According to their witness, Kroll had warned him that the upstairs toilet in their block of flats was clogged "with guts." A plumber quickly verified the statement, flushing a child's lungs and other organs out of the pipe, and detectives went calling on Kroll.
In his apartment, they discovered plastic bags of human flesh stored in the freezer; on the stove, a tiny hand was boiling in a pot with carrots and potatoes. Convinced that they had bagged the Hunter, officers were stunned by Kroll's long-running litany of rape and murder.
He remembered fourteen victims, but he really couldn't say if there were more, a circumstance that left detectives free to speculate upon his final body-count. With capital punishment abolished in Germany after World War II, Kroll received the maximum possible sentence of life imprisonment.
Michael Newton - An Encyclopedia of Modern Serial Killers - Hunting Humans
Joachim Kroll (April 17, 1933 - July 1, 1991) was a German serial killer and cannibal. He was known as the Ruhr Cannibal (Ruhrkannibale), and the Duisburg Man-Eater (Duisburger Menschenfresser). He was convicted of eight murders but confessed to a total of 13.
Born the son of a miner in Hindenburg, a town in Upper Silesia (then Germany, now Poland), Kroll was the last among eight children. He was a weak child and used to wet the bed. His education was poor. (Later psychiatrists found he had an IQ of 76.)
After the end of World War II, Kroll's family moved to North Rhine-Westphalia. He began killing in 1955, after his mother died. Around 1960, Kroll went to Duisburg to find work as a toilet attendant for Mannesmann. Afterwards he worked for Thyssen Industries and went to Laar, a district of Duisburg. At that time he resumed killing people.
On July 3, 1976, Kroll was arrested for kidnapping and killing a four-year-old girl named Marion Ketter. As police went from home to home, a neighbor approached a policeman and told him that the waste-pipe in his apartment building had blocked up, and when he had asked his neighbor, Kroll, whether he knew what had been blocking the pipe, Kroll had simply replied; "Guts". Upon this report, the police went up to Kroll's apartment and found the body of the Ketter girl cut up: some parts were in the fridge, a hand was cooking in a pan of boiling water and the intestines were found stuck in the waste-pipe.
Kroll was immediately arrested. He admitted killing Marion Ketter and gave details of 12 other murders and one attempted murder over the last two decades. They were:
February 8, 1955 - Irmgard Strehl, 19, raped and stabbed to death. Her disemboweled body was found in a barn in Lüdinghausen.
June 16, 1959 - Klara Frieda Tesmer, 24, murdered in the meadows of the Rhine.
July 26, 1959 - Manuela Knodt, 16, raped and strangled in the City Park of Essen. Slices of flesh were carved from her buttocks and thighs.
1962 - Barbara Bruder, 12, abducted in Burscheid. Her body was never found.
April 23, 1962 - Petra Giese, 13, raped and strangled in Dinslaken-Bruckhausen
June 1962 - Monika Tafel, 13, killed in Walsum, slices of flesh carved from her buttocks.
August 22, 1965 - Hermann Schmitz and his girlfriend Marion were attacked as they sat in a car in a lover's lane in Duisburg-Großenbaum. Hermann - Kroll's only male victim - was killed, but Marion escaped.
September 1966 - Ursula Rohling, strangled near Duisburg. Her boyfriend committed suicide after being falsely accused of the crime.
December 22, 1966 - Ilona Harke, aged 5, raped and drowned in a ditch in Wuppertal.
July 12, 1969 - Maria Hettgen, 10, raped and strangled at Baldeneysee in Essen.
May 21, 1970 - Jutta Rahn, 13, strangled walking home from a train station.
1976 - Karin Toepfer, raped and strangled in Voerde.
Kroll said that he often sliced portions of flesh from his victims to cook and eat them, claiming that he did this to save on his grocery bills. In custody, he believed that he was going to get a simple operation to cure him of his homicidal urges and would then be released from prison. Instead he was charged with eight murders and one attempted murder. In April 1982, after a 151-day trial, he was convicted on all counts and was given nine life sentences.
He died of a heart attack in 1991 in the prison of Rheinbach, near Bonn.
Joachim Kroll
Joachim Kroll
Joachim Kroll
Joachim Kroll at trial
Joachim Kroll at trial
Joachim Kroll with police at one of the crime scenes.
Joachim Kroll
Joachim Kroll with police at one of the crime scenes.
Joachim Kroll
Joachim Kroll with police at one of the crime scenes.
Joachim Kroll
Kroll's kitchen
Where Kroll lived on Friesenstrasse.
