"Murder is like potato chips: you can't stop with just one." -Stephen King
Hindenburg, Germany gave birth to one of the most fearsome serial killers of all time: the Ruhr Hunter - Joachim Kroll, born 17 April 1933, grew up to be a necrophile, a cannibal and a serial killer. A son to abusive parents born as the youngest of 8 siblings, Kroll was a below average individual. His IQ has been revealed to be 78 and there are also reports that state that he was illiterate. He was also considered weak by his family and community alike and continually degraded for it.
Early Life
Kroll’s father was a soldier in the military during World War II and was taken as a prisoner of war by the Russian army, leaving Kroll and his 7 siblings with his mother. After having to repeat the same school grade multiple times, he quit in 1948. Around 1960, he began to work as a toilet attendant in Duisburg.
As a child, he possessed 2 out of 3 traits from the Macdonald triad,proposed by psychiatrist J.M. Macdonald. It suggests that the 3 traits of animal cruelty, fire setting, and bed wetting in childhood is indicative of later aggressive and violent behaviour in adults. Kroll was a frequent bedwetter and engaged in various acts of animal cruelty, showing no empathy but a disturbing fascination with inflicting pain.
Disturbing practices
Joachim Kroll began working as a farmhand. Here, he says, he saw a pig being slaughtered and that “awakened his sex drive.” In one instance, he attempted to have a sexual encounter with an unknown woman but he felt “awkward and inadequate”. From this he concluded that he should have sexual encounters with “someone who could not complain about his performance.” This is indicative of his future necrophiliac tendencies.
His obsession with death grew and, on 8th February 1955, he murdered his first victim, 19 year old Irmgard Strehl. Kroll claimed that his murderous ages subsided after this instance for the next 4 years but authorities believe otherwise and are of the opinion that he was responsible for a number of murders in this period as well.
What’s interesting is the way he was captured. A neighbour of his asked if he knew what was blocking the pipes in the building’s shared lavatory. Kroll’s response? “Guts.” Naturally, the neighbour took this as a joke until he saw tiny human organs inside the toilet and called the police. On searching his apartment, the police found the dismembered body of 4-year old Marion Kettner, some parts in the refrigerator, her entrails clogging the toilet and a hand cooking on the stove in a pot of boiling water.
According to reports, Kroll had brutally murdered what he claimed as 14 people, from 1959 to 1976, but was arrested for 8 murders and 1 attempted murder after a gruelling 151 day trial. He was sentenced to life in 1982 and died in prison of a heart attack in 1991, at the age of 58.
Psyche of a killer
He would strangle each of his victims to death. Strangulation commonly occurs for the perpetrator to feel some form of power over the vulnerable party, by having some sort of choice whether they live or not. We can also assume that the reason why a large number of Kroll’s victims were young girls was for the same reason, the feeling of power.
Joachim Kroll was infamous for eating his victims, the very act in which he was caught. He would commit necrophilia with the corpses and would feed on their flesh afterwards. Typically, he would eat the flesh of his younger victims because their “flesh was more tender.” Kroll had a practical view of the act. He said that he took pieces of flesh from his victims because “meat was expensive.”
His feeling of sexual inadequacy compelled him to rape each of his victims, but only once they were dying or dead - helpless. We had discussed earlier that Kroll had had sexual relations with a woman when he was younger and had stated that he should instead have sexual encounters with “someone who could not complain about his performance.”, which we can recognise as an indication of why he would commit necrophilia and sexually abuse his victims’ corpses.
Conclusion
Learning about serial killers and their history and psyche is something that is fascinating while being incredibly disturbing. Through this, we also manage to understand why serial killers exist and how their thought processes work (at least to some extent). Joachim Kroll’s story will remain as a horrifying depiction of what humans and their minds are capable of.
The quote sent chills down my back! Loved this article can't wait to read more!!