Bruno Lüdke (3 April 1908 – 8 April 1944) was a

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

alleged

serial killer A serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more persons,A * * * * with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant period of time between them. While most authorities set a threshold of three ...

. 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. He was never given a trial, and is considered as innocent.

Arrest

Born in

Köpenick Köpenick () is a historic town and locality (''Ortsteil'') in Berlin, situated at the confluence of the rivers Dahme and Spree in the south-east of the German capital. It was formerly known as Copanic and then Cöpenick, only officially adopt ...

, Lüdke had a mild intellectual disability (he could not, for example, tell interrogators how many minutes there were in an hour) and worked as a

coachman A coachman is an employee who drives a coach or carriage, a horse-drawn vehicle designed for the conveyance of passengers. A coachman has also been called a coachee, coachy, whip, or hackman. The coachman's first concern is to remain in full c ...

. He was well known by the local police as a petty thief and

peeping tom Lady Godiva (; died between 1066 and 1086), in Old English , was a late Anglo-Saxon noblewoman who is relatively well documented as the wife of Leofric, Earl of Mercia, and a patron of various churches and monasteries. Today, she is mainly reme ...

. 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 Insanity, madness, lunacy, and craziness are behaviors performed by certain abnormal mental or behavioral patterns. Insanity can be manifest as violations of societal norms, including a person or persons becoming a danger to themselves or to ...

, he was sent to the SS-run Institute of Criminological Medicine in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, where medical experiments were carried out on him until his death, when an experiment went wrong in 1944.

Controversy

The 50-odd crime scenes showed no similarities in

modus operandi A ''modus operandi'' (often shortened to M.O.) is someone's habits of working, particularly in the context of business or criminal investigations, but also more generally. It is a Latin phrase, approximately translated as "mode (or manner) of op ...

, signature, or motive. No fingerprints were ever found and no evidence against Lüdke has ever been presented. A

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

former Chief of police named Jan Blaauw investigated original police reports, finding 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 (Detective Captain) Franz, the heavily censored

Reichskriminalpolizeiamt ''Reichskriminalpolizeiamt'' (RKPA), was Nazi Germany's central criminal investigation department, founded in 1936 after the Prussian central criminal investigation department ''(Landeskriminalpolizeiamt)'' became the national criminal investigati ...

, and the Nazi government, that had little patience with people with intellectual disabilities. A 1957 movie, ''

Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam ''The Devil Strikes at Night'' (german: Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam) is a 1957 West German film directed by Robert Siodmak. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and is based on the true story of Bruno Lüdke. ...

'', doubted Lüdke as one of Germany's worst serial killers. Attempts at reopening the case by members of the Kriminalrat (Detective Major) Faulhaber yielded no results. The true nature of the 51 murders remains unsolved.

References

1908 births 1944 deaths German serial killers Male serial killers Murdered serial killers Necrophiles People killed by Nazi Germany People from Treptow-Köpenick {{crime-bio-stub

Arrest

Controversy

See also

References