M is a 1931 German mystery suspense thriller film directed by Fritz Lang and starring Peter Lorre in his third screen role as Hans Beckert, a serial killer who targets children. An early example of a procedural drama, the film centers on the manhunt for Lorre's character, conducted by both the police and the criminal underworld.
Alexander Nikolayevich Spesivtsev is a Russian serial killer, also known as The Novokuznetsk Monster and The Siberian Ripper, convicted for the killing of 5 people in Novokuznetsk in 1991 and 1996.
Friedrich Heinrich Karl "Fritz" Haarmann was a German serial killer, known as the Butcher of Hanover, the Vampire of Hanover and the Wolf Man, who committed the sexual assault, murder, mutilation and dismemberment of at least twenty-four young men and boys in the city of Hanover between 1918 and 1924.
Peter Kürten was a German serial killer, known as "The Vampire of Düsseldorf" and the "Düsseldorf Monster", who committed a series of murders and sexual assaults between February and November 1929 in the city of Düsseldorf. In the years before these assaults and murders, Kürten had amassed a lengthy criminal record for offences including arson and attempted murder. He also confessed to the 1913 murder of a nine-year-old girl in Mülheim am Rhein and the attempted murder of a 17-year-old girl in Düsseldorf.
Robert K. Ressler was an FBI agent and author. He played a significant role in the psychological profiling of violent offenders in the 1970s and is often credited with coining the term "serial killer", though the term is a direct translation of the German term "Serienmörder" coined in 1930 by Berlin investigator Ernst Gennat. After retiring from the FBI, he authored a number of books on serial murders, and often gave lectures on criminology.
Friedrich Paul "Fritz" Honka was a German serial killer. Between 1970 and 1975 he killed at least four women from Hamburg's red light district, keeping three of the bodies in his flat.
The Cologne school massacre was a mass murder that occurred at the Catholic elementary school located in the suburb of Volkhoven in Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, West Germany, on 11 June 1964. The perpetrator, Walter Seifert, also known as "Der Feuerteufel von Volkhoven", attacked the people at the school with a home-made flamethrower and a spear, killing eight pupils and two teachers, and wounding twenty-two others. When police arrived at the scene, Seifert fled from the school compound and poisoned himself. He was taken to a hospital, where he died the same evening.
His Majesty's Prison Wakefield is a Category A men's prison in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England, operated by His Majesty's Prison Service. The prison has been nicknamed the "Monster Mansion" due to the large number of high-profile, high-risk sex offenders and murderers held there.
The National Socialist Underground, or NSU, was a far-right German neo-Nazi terrorist group which was uncovered in November 2011. The NSU is mostly associated with Uwe Mundlos, Uwe Böhnhardt and Beate Zschäpe, who lived together under false identities. Between 100 and 150 further associates were identified who supported the core trio in their decade-long underground life and provided them with money, false identities and weapons. Unlike other terror groups, the NSU had not claimed responsibility for their actions. The group's existence was discovered only after the deaths of Böhnhardt and Mundlos, and the subsequent arrest of Zschäpe.
Lucien Léger, born in Paris on March 30, 1937, and died in Laon in July 2008, was a French criminal, sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a child in 1964. He was the oldest detainee in France before being released on October 3, 2005, after 41 years of imprisonment, which constitutes one of the longest detentions in Europe.
Martin Ney is a German serial killer. He wore a mask while killing three and sexually assaulting at least 40 children in school camps. He also did some of his activities in camps, private homes and other places. Ney, who committed his first act in 1992, was also known as the "Masked Man" and the "Black Man". After his arrest on 15 April 2011, the 40-year-old educator confessed to three murders, but is suspected of two others. Ney was sentenced on 27 February 2012 by the Stade district court, among other things, for three murders to life imprisonment. The court also noted the particular severity of the guilt.
Thomas "Pinocchio" Rung is a German serial killer, who is considered to be the most dangerous of his kind since the end of the Second World War.
Ernst-Dieter Beck was a German serial killer. He was the first person accused of murder in German legal history, on whom a chromosome test was applied.
The Göhrde murders were two double murders which took place in the summer of 1989 near Göhrde in Lower Saxony, West Germany. Within the space of a few weeks, two couples were found dead in the Göhrde State Forest, deemed by police to have been victims of the same killer. Although the murders remain unresolved, police announced in December 2017 that Kurt-Werner Wichmann, a suspected serial killer who committed suicide in 1993, was their prime suspect. Investigators have also speculated that another unknown person may be linked to the killings. The murders were widely reported on in the German press, and the area where they took place was largely avoided by members of the public for nearly thirty years.
The Saw-Killer of Hanover is the name of an unidentified German serial killer, who is supposedly responsible for murdering and dismembering at least four women and two men, whose body parts were found in Hanover and the surrounding area in the 1970s. None of the victims have been identified, and the case is also referred to as The Found Corpses of Hanover. The "SOKO Torso" Unit of the Hanoverian police, directed by Commissioner Günter Nowatius, investigated the murders at the time.
The Hamburg rubble murderer is the name of an unidentified German serial killer, supposedly responsible for a series of murders in Hamburg during early 1947.
Mathias Kindlinger, known as The Bluebeard of Schrems, was an Austrian murderer and suspected serial killer who was convicted of killing his first and fifth wives in 1927 and 1961, respectively, but is alleged to have been responsible for the deaths of three other women as well. He was never charged in the other murders and was instead sentenced to life imprisonment for the final murder, dying behind bars in 1964.
Siegfried Walter Rautenberg was a German waiter and suspected serial killer who was indicted for the murder of Monika Schwiegerhausen, a 22-year-old prostitute who worked at a red-light district in Hamburg, who was found drowned on 10 October 1968. In addition to this, he was also considered the prime suspect in the killings of two others committed months earlier. Rautenberg fled the country before he could be arrested and was later said to have died while serving in the Spanish Legion, but as his body was never recovered, this cannot be confirmed with certainty.
