Joachim Kroll was a washroom attendant at a steelworks in Duisburg who, by his own confessions, killed girls and women across the Ruhr region for 21 years without being caught. WDR, the regional public broadcaster, describes him as one of the worst criminals in postwar German history and says he killed at least eight people between 1955 and 1976. He was caught in July 1976, when police searching for a missing four-year-old girl in the Laar district of Duisburg came to his attic flat.
He was tried at the Duisburg Landgericht, the regional court, on an indictment of eight murders and one attempted murder. The trial opened on October 4, 1979, and on April 8, 1982, he was sentenced to nine life terms. He died of a heart attack in the prison at Rheinbach in July 1991, at 58. Other killings he confessed to were never tried.
Much of what is printed about Kroll in English and on websites cannot be traced to a court record or a newspaper. The best-documented accounts are a feature by the journalist Martin Spletter in Akte NRW: Wahre Verbrechen, a true-crime supplement published under the WP newspaper title; the description WDR published with a 2022 episode of its Lokalzeit MordOrte series; an article by Stephan Harbort, a Düsseldorf detective chief inspector and author, in the police journal Die Kriminalpolizei in 2004, which quotes the Duisburg court's judgment; and a 2005 review of Harbort's book on the case by the forensic biologist Mark Benecke. Harbort's book, "Ich musste sie kaputtmachen": Anatomie eines Jahrhundert-Mörders (2004), was written from the complete original case files, according to Benecke, who called it the first and only book on the case.
Kroll came from Upper Silesia. Spletter writes that his father labeled him a failure early on, and that as a young man he moved between farm jobs, first in his Upper Silesian homeland, then in the Sauerland, and from 1952 in the Ruhr. He made no friends and won no one's recognition. He expressed himself poorly, and the trait people noticed most in him was a peculiar apathy. His few attempts to approach women in an ordinary way failed; he met with rejection, slaps and mocking laughter.
By the mid-1970s Kroll was living alone in an attic flat on Friesenstraße in Duisburg-Laar. He worked as a washroom attendant at the August Thyssen steelworks in Hamborn. Spletter describes him as a small, thin man with a receding hairline and prominent ears, who often tinkered with his moped behind the house and greeted his neighbors politely in the hallway. His colleagues did not take him seriously and saw him as a quiet loner; no one could say much more about him. To the children of Friesenstraße he was "dear Uncle Achim".
Kroll's own account, as Spletter summarizes it from the investigation, was that when he felt what he called a "strange tingling" he went out to look for a victim. He preferred remote places, above all woods, and attacked whichever woman or girl happened to come toward him. Spletter writes that he was small and thin but surprisingly strong, and that he usually seized his victims in a chokehold. Benecke, summarizing Harbort's book, describes the same account in Kroll's words: a tingling in the chest and a wish for sex.
Harbort, writing in Die Kriminalpolizei, used Kroll as an example of an offender whose personal "signature" emerged only after a series of killings. He quoted the Duisburg court's finding on the first killing, in February 1955: the court held that Kroll had not strangled that victim, and that because he had not killed before, he could not yet have known that strangling would become the center of his later crimes. That knowledge came only in later cases. The reports do not say which of the victims on Spletter's list was killed in February 1955.
Kroll was never charged with every killing he described. After his arrest, police spent months questioning him and gradually compiled a list of the crimes he admitted. Spletter writes that Kroll described them in terse terms, such as "Hab' se kaputt gemacht", roughly "I broke her".
According to Spletter, Kroll was responsible, besides the girl in Laar, for the deaths of a 19-year-old in Lüdinghausen; a 16-year-old, a 13-year-old and a 61-year-old in Essen; a 13-year-old in Dinslaken; a 20-year-old in Marl; a 23-year-old in Rheinhausen; and an 11-year-old in Walsum. A 10-year-old girl in Bottrop survived his attempt to strangle her.
One victim was a man. In Duisburg-Großenbaum, Kroll stabbed a 25-year-old man who tried to stop him from attacking the man's girlfriend, Spletter writes.
The reports do not give the dates of most of these killings, nor do they say which of them were among the eight murder counts at his trial. WDR's figure, at least eight people killed between 1955 and 1976, is the most cautious published total; Spletter writes that the true number of victims is probably higher than the eight murders charged.
Kroll's killings went unsolved for two decades, and some were blamed on other men. Benecke, reviewing Harbort's book, wrote that the case shows how many innocent people can end up in court while an offender like Kroll remains free. He gave one example from the book: a man, K. M., who confessed to one of Kroll's crimes because, by his own account, he wanted a "time out from life" in prison. Benecke's review does not say which killing it was or what sentence, if any, K. M. received.
Other men have been named on websites as suspects, arrested or convicted in the earlier cases. None of those accounts can be traced to a court record or a newspaper.
In early July 1976 a girl of four and a half disappeared from the housing estate around Friesenstraße, and the police began a large search. Radio 91.2, a Ruhr radio station, gives her first name as Marion and says a neighbor pointed the police to Kroll soon afterward.
Officers knocked on doors in the building, Kroll's among them. Tenants had reported that the pipes in the house were suddenly blocked with offal. When the officers entered his attic flat, Kroll stammered that he had slaughtered a rabbit. It was not a rabbit. WDR says the girl had been dismembered, and that parts of her body were found in a cooking pot in his flat. Harbort records that Kroll used the word "slaughtered" himself, and that the killing of the girl in 1976 departed from the pattern of his earlier crimes.
Kroll was arrested. He confessed to killing the girl, and over the following months to many more crimes going back 21 years. The national press called him the "Schlächter von Duisburg", the Butcher of Duisburg, Spletter writes.
Photographs from the police file, reproduced by Spletter, show Kroll back at old crime scenes with investigators, including one in a wood, where he was to show a police officer how and where he had overpowered his victims.
One of the detectives who questioned him was Bernd Jägers. WDR, which interviewed Jägers for its 2022 program, describes him as the former investigator who heard some of Kroll's confessions. Radio 91.2 credits a photograph of the reconstructions to Jägers.
Benecke notes that Harbort's book quotes the psychiatric expert Eberhard Schorsch, whose comments Benecke found among the few moments of real insight into Kroll in the book. Schorsch's role in the proceedings was not otherwise reported.
The trial opened on October 4, 1979, in Room 201 of the Duisburg Landgericht. The press called it a "trial of the century". Kroll was charged with eight murders and one attempted murder. Spletter writes that the prosecution limited itself to eight cases because these were enough, in law, for the verdict the court would have to reach.
Interest from the media was heavy, and seats in the courtroom were limited to selected outlets, WDR says. The trial lasted 151 days of hearings by Spletter's count and 155 by WDR's. Kroll was silent for most of it and spoke only about the death of the four-year-old girl from Laar.
On April 8, 1982, after what Spletter calls two and a half years of grueling evidence-gathering, the court sentenced Kroll to nine life terms, according to WDR. The reasoning of the judgment, the names of the judges and lawyers, and any appeal were not reported.
The killings Kroll confessed to that were not among the eight murder counts were never tried. They are confessed, not convicted.
Kroll was sent to the prison in Rheinbach. By reports, no one ever visited him there. In July 1991 the newspapers carried a short item, the last time they wrote about him: he had died in prison of a heart attack, at 58.
The case has been retold on regional radio and television. WDR's Lokalzeit MordOrte series devoted an episode to Kroll in March 2022, with Bernd Jägers, the Duisburg lawyer André Miegel, who discussed the case's effect on Duisburg and the Ruhr and the experience of defending a murderer, and the legal psychologist Natalie Oesterlein. Radio 91.2 told the story in two parts in its Mord im Pott series, beginning in January 2020. Spletter's account appeared in the Akte NRW true-crime supplement, which describes Kroll as a serial killer and cannibal.
Benecke praised Harbort's research but criticized the book's novel-like structure and its lack of an index; he said he had needed hundreds of notes to sort out the chronology of the case.
Proven in court: the sentence of nine life terms passed by the Duisburg Landgericht on April 8, 1982, on an indictment of eight murders and one attempted murder. The victims in the eight counts were not named in the reports.
Confessed but never tried: the other killings Kroll described to police after July 1976.
Details that vary between sources: the length of the trial (151 days of hearings in Spletter, 155 in WDR); the name of the first victim (Harbort's quotation from the court judgment gives one surname, and websites give another); and the number of victims, given as at least eight by WDR and as probably more than eight by Spletter.
Not established in the reporting: the exact day of his arrest in July 1976; his date and place of birth; the exact day of his death; the names, dates and fates of the men who were suspected, arrested or convicted in the earlier cases, other than K. M.'s false confession; the claim, repeated widely online, that Kroll gave a reason for taking flesh from his victims; and the nickname "The Ruhr Hunter".
From 1952: works in the Ruhr region, after farm jobs in Upper Silesia and the Sauerland.
February 1955: his first killing, according to the Duisburg court's findings as quoted by Harbort; the court found he did not strangle that victim.
1955 to 1976: further killings in Essen, Dinslaken, Marl, Rheinhausen, Walsum and Duisburg-Großenbaum, and an attack on a 10-year-old girl in Bottrop, who survived.
Mid-1970s: lives alone in an attic flat on Friesenstraße, Duisburg-Laar; washroom attendant at the August Thyssen steelworks, Hamborn.
Early July 1976: a girl of four and a half disappears in Laar; police come to his flat, and he is arrested and confesses.
1976 onward: months of questioning; reconstructions at old crime scenes.
October 4, 1979: trial opens in Room 201 of the Duisburg Landgericht.
April 8, 1982: sentenced to nine life terms.
July 1991: dies of a heart attack in the prison at Rheinbach, aged 58.
2004: Stephan Harbort publishes his book on the case.
January 2020: Radio 91.2 tells the story in Mord im Pott.
March 7, 2022: WDR's Lokalzeit MordOrte episode on Kroll is published.