What possessed them? A watchmaker, a railwayman, a doctor, a pianist, a priest ... they were human beings, just like all of us, and yet they had committed unimaginable crimes. So terrible and disgusting that to this day we remember them with trepidation, giving these degenerates a disgraceful place in history.
The following list of the ten most shocking and gruesome crimes is based on our articles. For more chilling stories, click HERE.
10. Watchmaker, pedophile and serial killer
In the mid-1930s, little boys began to disappear without a trace in Mecklenburg, Germany. They had one thing in common - they all wore the then fashionable sailor uniforms. Initially, the policemen did not suspect that there was one man behind the disappearances. The bodies of several-year-olds found in desolate places did not fit into one whole.
The pedophile was mainly interested in boys in navy clothes fashionable at the time ... in the illustration there is a painting by Ernesztin Lohwag (source:public domain).
Until, in February 1935, as many as two boys in sailor's uniforms disappeared within a week. It couldn't be a coincidence - the investigators concluded that they were dealing with a serial killer. However, it remained elusive for a long time.
Finally, Adolf Seefeld, a 65-year-old itinerant watchmaker who has been repeatedly convicted of sexual offenses, has been traced. He is proven twelve murders. There could have been many more victims.
One snag, however, remains unclear - how did it kill? There were no visible injuries to the boys' bodies and the autopsy ruled out suffocation and poison… (read more on this).
9. Bloody kiosk from Lviv
On February 5, 1933, a passer-by stumbled upon a bloody trail in the snow in Lviv's Kiliński Park. The blood drops formed a path leading to the nearby bushes. There, the terrified man found scattered pieces of meat and bones.
And this is what the criminal and his kiosk looked like. The photo comes from the "Illustrated Daily Kuryer", which informed the whole of Poland about what happened in Lviv (source:public domain).
The alarmed police determined that the pieces of meat were fragments of a human body. Lviv investigators quickly found clues and testimonies that led them to Hieronim Cybulski. Hieronim worked and lived in a small kiosk at the edge of the park.
Witnesses claimed that Cybulski often brought prostitutes to his booth since his separation from his wife. Some later disappeared without a trace ... When the policemen entered the kiosk, they found a macabre scene:
The whole floor was littered with blood. In the corners there were bloodied rags and shreds of women's clothing. Several fingers were found among the rubbish on the floor. There was a water box under the counter, and inside the intestines, pieces of meat and bones, and the skin of the scalp. On the shelf in the briefcase there was a head massacred so that no facial features could be recognized (read more about it).
8. The Black Widow's Killing Business
A fire on an American farm owned by Belle Gunness was the cause of a gruesome discovery. Twenty-eight bodies were found on the plot! That would explain why the men who appeared on the doorstep in response to the marriage advertisement no one saw later ...
Belle Gunness farm. It was there that the ignorant victims of the black widow died.
The murderer came up with a way to make a profitable business - she placed an advertisement in the newspaper saying that she was looking for a husband. And as she inherited some money from her wedding day, she pointed out that gentlemen must also have cash. As proof of their wealth, everyone who came to visit her was to bring five hundred dollars with them.
Ms Gunness was suspected of killing twenty-one more people, including farm workers and adopted children, as well as her husband. However, she did not go to prison. She probably died in the fire, although there were indications that the fire was only intended to cover up her escape ... (read more on that).
7. Priest and wife of the castellan - medieval born murderers
Not only did he make the castellan Jakub Boglewski a deer, but he and his unfaithful wife also devised a plan to murder the betrayed husband! This is a list of accusations that can be formulated against Jan Pieniążek, a chaplain from the 15th century. We know about his dissolute behavior and murderous instincts thanks to Jan Długosz, who described the whole case.
Did Dorota expect the priest-lover to absolve her of killing her husband? (source:public domain).
The Cieszyn castellan Jakub Boglewski died in his own bed, chopped into pieces with swords, spears and axes. Behind this disgusting crime were his wife Dorota and her lover - a priest. The maid of Dorota, the servant of the chaplain and the notary in the services of the castellan, Mr. Jakub Jaczechowski, were also confused.
It was the latter who faced the most severe, truly medieval, punishment - he was gutted alive and then dismembered. The chaplain, thanks to good connections, received quite a lenient sentence - he spent three and a half years imprisoned in the tower. Dorothy, on the other hand, came out of all the confusion unscathed (read more on that).
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6. A German railwayman who hated women
At the turn of 1940 and 1941, a series of crimes shook Berlin. Young women began to die - they were choked, stabbed, and often pushed out of a speeding train. Their bodies also showed signs of sexual violence. The total blackout at night, introduced with the start of World War II, made it difficult for the police to find the culprit.
It was in this setting that a serial killer operated… (source:public domain).
First, no witnesses were found, and second, the Egyptian darkness was the cause of a large number of accidents, especially at stations and railroads. This made it difficult to distinguish an unfortunate event from a deliberate crime.
However, the police became suspicious of a railroad employee, Paul Ogorzow. According to his friends, he definitely hated women. His work schedule also matched the times of individual crimes…
Ogorzow took an interesting line of defense - he claimed that everything was to blame ... a Jewish doctor who prescribed him an unusual treatment for treating gonorrhea. Ultimately pleaded guilty to eight homicides, six attempted murders, and thirty-one other sexual harassment cases (read more on this).
5. Obstetricians and murderers?
William Hunter and William Smellie - two 18th century English doctors, pioneers in gynecology and considered the fathers of modern obstetrics, had a dark secret behind their successes.
Illustration from Smelli's anatomical atlas. What was the price of his discoveries? (source:public domain).
The drawings of the fetuses in the wombs in their textbooks were astonishing with their precision and reliability. Nobody asked where the doctors found more than thirty bodies of women in advanced pregnancy that they could model. Don Schelton of the Royal Society of Medicine estimated the probability of recovering a pregnant woman's remains at 7-9 months in the mid-18th century at 0.1%.
William Hunter himself wrote in the introduction to his work "Anatomy of the Human Pregnant Uterus with Drawings":
(...) the chance of an autopsy on a human pregnant uterus is very rare . Indeed, if this does happen to anatomists, it is at most once or twice in their lifetime .
No wonder that it has long been suspected that in order to obtain such a large "research material", doctors ruthlessly murdered pregnant women. Such rumors appeared at the beginning of the 19th century. There were also ambiguous notes by an assistant of one of the doctors ... of course, the medical community reacted indignantly at the accusations made against the titled obstetricians. But the gruesome suspicions remained… (read more on this).
4. A pianist who rapes and kills
The dream of becoming a famous actress accompanies many young girls. Most of it grows out of it, some follows it, a few manage to fulfill it. There is also a dark margin - those women who lose their heads and their sanity in pursuit of fame. And they fall into the hands of psychopaths.
Instead of staying with the piano, Charles Yukl decided to go down the road of murder ... (photo:Gryffindor, license CC BY-SA 3.0).
This was the case with 24-year-old Karin Irene Schlegel from New York. After reading the advertisement in the local press, she decided to apply to the casting. She disregarded friends' warnings that it was unreasonable to visit an unknown man's house that evening, where the alleged interrogation was to take place. It was a mistake.
Charles Yukl, the piano teacher, attacked the girl as soon as she crossed the threshold of the house. He broke her neck and massacred her body, and then hid her under the bed. My wife, who returned home soon, apparently didn't notice anything ...
The girl's body was abandoned on the roof of the building. After some time, the caretaker found them. The sight was gruesome - the girl was covered in bruises and cuts, her throat had been slashed, her genitals slashed and her nipples cut off. The pianist was imprisoned for his crime - but only for eleven years! (read more about it).
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3. Incest crime with kangaroos in the background
In 1898 a terrible crime shook the tiny Australian town of Gatton. Three bloody bodies arranged in a triangle were found in the forest. There was a carriage and a dead horse beside it.
The Murphy Family - parents Daniel and Mary with eight of their ten children a few months before the tragedy. Second and third from the right are Ellen and Norah (source:public domain).
The bodies belonged to Murphy's siblings - Michael, twenty-eight, Nora, twenty-seven, and Ellen, eighteen. The mystery of their deaths has never been solved, but the threads in the case make it a real sensation.
In the course of the investigation, it was first found that the women had been raped. Later investigators concluded that the sisters had sex voluntarily… possibly with their brother. But who killed? Suspicion fell on the father, Daniel Murphy. Another potential killer was supposed to be a local pastor…
Although there were various indications, the murderer was not found. The case was so disturbing that some people are still looking for a solution to this day. Gatton residents, however, were always hostile to snooping around murder. Maybe they knew who killed, but thought the incest three deserved to die (read more on that).
2. A vampire from Düsseldorf
He killed victims with a knife and a hammer. He murdered both men and women, the latter additionally raped. He often returned to the scene of the crime and masturbated. He played with policemen, sending them tips on where the bodies were hidden, like in box office Hollywood thrillers. For a long time he remained elusive and kept the people of Düsseldorf awake at night.
Photo from Kürten's trial. The press all over Europe had an interest in it.
Peter Kürten had as many as seventy-nine victims. Men, women and children. His crimes were particularly cruel - like the case of sixteen-year-old Rosa Ohlinger, who was stabbed thirteen times by a degenerate, raped with a knife and then set fire to her body.
Popped in, as is usually the case, by accident. He was detained on suspicion of rape. He finally admitted that he was the serial killer that everyone was trembling at and that the newspapers dubbed him "vampire" (read more on that).
1. Baba Yaga from Barcelona
She kidnapped children, forced them into prostitution and killed them. But this is not the end of the macabre - she made various potions and ointments from the blood, bones and fat of the little ones. She earned a lot of money from the suffering of the youngest!
Angelita, one of the girls saved from the hands of Baba Yaga in Barcelona.
Enriquet Martí and Ripollés, because that was the name of the terrifying witch of Barcelona, had avoided justice for a long time. Despite the fact that in her house, missing girls were found, and these are the remains of children. Why? The answer was simple and embarrassing for the Barcelona Escort of the time.
Prominent members of the Barcelona community used both the services of her children's brothel and the macabre "cures". It is said that even King Alfonso XIII himself drank a decoction of its production based on children's blood. It was believed then (not so long ago, because at the beginning of the 20th century!) That such drugs cure tuberculosis, venereal diseases, and even prevent aging (read more on this topic).