Serial Killer Joachim Kroll #truecrime

For more than 20 years a vicious serial killer lurked in West Germany murdering women and children before eating their flesh. This monster confessed to killing at least 14 people to fulfill his twisted desires.
Joachim. Kroll. The Ruhr Cannibal.

Kroll was born in 1933 in a village called Hindenburg in Germany near the polish border. He was the sixth child out of nine and during World War 2, his father was a prisoner of war in Russia after fighting as a German soldier and would die in a Russian prison. Joachim was known as the town idiot and only stayed in school up to the third grad. He would later be found to have an IQ of 76.

In 1947 his family moved to West Germany, where Kroll would later hunt his human victims. The murders began in 1955 shortly after his mother died in late January.

The first victim was a 19 year old named Irmgard Strehl who Kroll killed in February 1955 only weeks after his mother passed away. He had asked the young woman to go with him on a walk. After she rebuffed his attempt to kiss her, he responded by stabbing her 4 times and raping her before strangling her to death. Her body was found in a barn and she had been disemboweled similarly to how an animal would be butchered. He was only 22 years old at the time.

In 1956 Joachim Kroll would strike for the second time in a small town called Kirchhellen. Erika Schuletter was only 12 years old when she crossed paths with the depraved cannibal. She was raped and strangled to death. In later years when he stood trial, Kroll would not be charged with her murder due to a lack of evidence connecting him to the crime.

3 years later, the killer would earn the nickname “the Ruhr hunter,” after he sliced strips of meat from his third victim. Manuela Knodt was 16 when she was attacked by Kroll in 1959 near Essen. He raped and killed before slicing flesh from her legs and taking it with him to eat. Around this time he also killed 24 year old Klara Jesmer in the woods outside of Rheinhausen.

Another 3 year period would pass before the next known victim of Joachim Kroll was killed. In late April 1962, when 13 year old Petra Griese was raped and murdered near Rees Germany. This time in addition to taking meat from her legs and buttocks, Kroll also removed her left forearm and hand to be consumed.

Kroll struck again that June. Another 13 year old disappeared on her way to school. Her name was Monica Tafel and her body was found in a rye field with portions of meat taken from her thighs and buttocks.

The next murders was shifted the pattern slightly and some speculate that it was in an effort to mislead the police who sought the Ruhr Hunter. Also in 1962 a 12 year old girl named Barbara Bruder was murdered in the city of Burscheid Germany.

In August 1965, Kroll attacked a young couple. While they sat in their car, he slashed their tire with a knife. Then when the driver, Herman Schnitz, Kroll stabbed him to death before fleeing the scene.

Just over a year after attacking the couple in the car, Joachim Kroll was back to his preferred victims. In September 1966, kroll attacked and murdered a young woman named Ursula Rolling.

Only 3 months after killing miss Rolling, Kroll murdered what is likely his youngest victim. Ilona Harke was only 5 when she crossed paths with the monster. Her butchered body was discovered in Wuppertal Germany with flesh removed from her buttocks and shoulders.

Kroll seemed to become very confident he would not be caught and in 1967 while living in The city of Grafenhausen Germany it almost led to him being found out. He was making friends with the local children. Kroll even had them refer to him as “uncle.”

One of these children was a 10 year old girl who caught the eye of the killer. He told her he would show her a rabbit and lured her into a field. Instead of a rabbit, he showed her pornographic pictures. She became extremely upset, and when Kroll reached for her throat, she ran to safety. Before police could question Joachim Kroll about the incident he had fled the city.

By 1969, he was at it again. In July he broke into the home of a 61 year old woman named Maria Hettgen in Hueckeswagen Germany. Kroll strangled her to death in the front room of her home before abusing her corpse.

Less than a year later, Kroll reverted to his favorite type of victim, children. In May of 1970, he attacked a 13 year old girl named Jutta Rahn in Breitscheif Germany. He strangled the young girl and then assaulted her corpse as he had with previous victims.

There is not another known victim until 1976. Karin Torpfer was a normal 10 year old girl in the city of Dinslaken on her way to school when she was attacked by Kroll. She was strangled and assaulted sexually by the monster before being discarded.

That same year, Kroll would make mistakes that would lead to his capture in a small community called Laar near the western border of Germany.

A 4 year old girl named Marion Ketter was had been playing in a park near the apartments where Kroll lived. The building had shared bathrooms on each floor used by all the tenants. When police were going door to door asking for information about the missing girl, one of Kroll’s neighbors had a horrific report for them. Joachim Kroll had told him that one of the toilets in their floors bathroom was clogged and to avoid it. When the man asked what clogged it, Kroll responded “mit Orgahnen” which translates to “with organs.”

The police brought in a plumber to clear the pipes out to find what was in them. They were horrified when he pulled out the lungs of a child along with other organs. The police immediately rushed to speak with Kroll. What they found in his apartment was as bad as what would he found decades later in the apartment of Jeffrey Dahmer.

Once police searched Joachim Krolls apartment, they found a large amount of human meat. His freezer was filled with bags of flesh and on the stove was a boiling pot. Inside that stew was carrots, potatoes, and a child’s hand. At this point they were sure they had caught the killer who they had been searching for.

When he was interrogated, Kroll told them he had lost count of the number of people he had killed, but could recall at least 14 and that he took the strips of meat from his victims to save money on groceries. The police only had enough evidence to charge Kroll with 8 of the murders he confessed to and 1 attempted murder. Unfortunately Germany had abolished executions after world war 2 and so in 1982 after a lengthy trial, Kroll was given 9 life sentences. He died of a heart attack in 1991 in Rheinbach prison.

#serialkiller #crime