Kuno HOFMANN
AKA "The Vampire of Nuremberg"
Classification: Murderer
Characteristics: Deaf mute - Nine years in mental institutions - Necrophilia
Number of victims: 2
Date of murders: May 6, 1972
Date of arrest: 4 days after
Date of birth: 1931
Victims profile: Markus Adler, 24, and his fiancee Ruth Lissy, 18
Method of murder: Shooting
Location: Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany
Status: Sentenced to life in prison, 1972
Born in 1931, Kuno Hofmann suffered a traumatic childhood, beaten so severely by his alcoholic father that he lost the powers of speech and hearing. Imprisoned for nine years on theft charges, he emerged with an obsession for self-improvement via the occult "sciences." Hofmann read widely on Satanism and black magic, focusing compulsively on rituals involving necrophilia and vampirism.
In April 1971, police and morgue attendants across Germany began comparing notes on a series of bizarre grave robberies. At least five bodies were exhumed and gnawed upon, with evidence of sex attempted in the case of female corpses. Seeking fresher victims, Hofmann later shot and killed three victims, drinking blood from each and pausing to molest the lifeless bodies.
In May 1972, a morgue attendant surprised Hofmann in the act of kissing a cadaver. Kuno drew a pistol, but his shot went wild, and the surviving witness offered a description to police. Arrested in the dragnet, Hofmann readily confessed and drew a term of life imprisonment for murder. As a parting shot, while waiting for his transfer to a federal penitentiary, he pestered jailers with requests for one last sip of virgin's blood.
Michael Newton - An Encyclopedia of Modern Serial Killers
Kuno Hofmann
In 1972, Kuno Hofmann was a deaf mute German labourer, a cripple who had spent nine years in mental institutions (he escaped 12 times). According to the public prosecutors, he was perfectly sane and fully accountable for his actions. But his actions were extraordinary by any normal standards.
The police have records of at least 35 occasions between 1971 and 1972 when Hofmann forced entry into graveyards and mortuaries near his home in Nurenberg. He made copies of the keys to the local cemetary where he stole among the tombstones, heading unerringly for the fresh graves.
He chose his victims from death notices in the newspapers, and methodically made his way to a new corpse, stabbing into it with razor blades or a knife. Sometimes, he cut the head off, sometimes he drank the blood. From his prison cell, Hofmann explained matter of factly, that he did it to make himself "good looking and strong".
In May 1972, Hofmann decided on a new approach. He found two young lovers in a car, shot them dead, and drank the blood from their wounds. It made him happy, he told police, adding that the young and pretty girl had been much better than the women in the graveyards.
