Bruno Lüdke
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Bruno Lüdke (1909-1944) was an alleged German serial killer. At least 51 people, mainly women, were killed in a 15-year period, which began in 1928.[1] Feeble-minded to the point of being mildly retarded (he could not tell interrogators how many minutes there were in an hour) Lüdke might have been an easy scapegoat. He was discovered by Nazi police committing necrophilia on a recently-deceased victim. He quickly confessed to his crimes, and was taken into custody. Witnesses report Bruno showed signs of physical abuse after the 'confessions' and he stated that 'they would kill me if I didn't confess'.[2]
Declared insane, he was sent to a Vienna hospital, where experiments were carried out on him until he died by lethal injection in 1944.
The 50-odd crimescenes showed no similarities in m.o., signature or motive. No fingerprints were ever found and no evidence against Bruno has ever been presented.
Dutch former Chief of police Blauw took an interest in the case and investigated original police reports. He found 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 Bruno Lüdke to be the victim of a frame-up, carried out by an ambitious Kriminalkommisar (chief homicide investigator) Franz, the heavily censored Reichskriminalpolizeiamt, and the budding Nazi government, that had little patience with the mentally challenged. A post-war movie "Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam" affirmated the image of Bruno as one of Germany's worst serial killers ever. Attempts at reopening the case by members of the Kriminalrat (The German Internal affairs division) Faulhaber yielded no results. The true nature of the 51 murders remains unsolved to this day.[3]
