Joachim Kroll was known as the “Duisburg Man-Eater” or “Ruhr Cannibal” during his frenzied killing spree that lasted more than 20 years.
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Kroll confessed to killing 14 people – some of who he would carve up, take home and eat after he raped them before stabbing and strangling them.
“Meat is expensive”, the twisted killer is alleged to have told cops as he confessed to cannibalism.
And in a chilling echo of another cannibal killer – Dennis Nilsen – he was caught out because he blocked his toilet with human flesh.
Just like the London-based killer who started his own crime spree two years after Kroll was arrested, the German was flushing meat and bone down the drain.
When asked whether he knew what was blocking the waste pipe, Kroll replied: “Guts”.
And when cops got inside, they found a child’s hand boiling on the stove.
Creepy killer Kroll also had a twisted collection of children’s dolls – and a rubber sex doll that he would regularly use after his killings.
He would allegedly use these dolls to practice his murders before hunting down women and children.
Kroll also confessed he was sexually aroused by blood and death – an obsession that started with a childhood visit to a slaughterhouse.
But while he was eventually caught – he managed to evade arrest as other suspects were convicted for his crimes.
Born in 1933, Kroll, the sixth of nine children grew up in Nazi Germany.
After his father was captured as a POW during World War II, the family moved to North Rhine-Westphalia.
Following the death of his mum in 1955, he committed his first murder in the village of Walstedde.
Kroll strangled to death 19-year-old Irmgard Strehl before raping her lifeless body and slashing her abdomen.
Four years later, in June 1959, he murdered 24-year-old Klara Freida Tesmer in Rhine in the same way.
He removed parts of the woman’s flesh and took them home to cook for dinner.
Cannibalism would become his trademark – with the bodies of his victims often being found with slices carved off.
He committed most of the murders by strangling the victims with his hands except in the case of Petra Giese, 13, where he strangled her with her own scarf and five-year-old Ilona Harke whose head he kept underwater in a stream.
Kroll raped most of the lifeless bodies of his victims before mutilating them.
Among his known victims, there was only one male, 25-year-old Hermann Schmitz.
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Schmittz was in his car with his girlfriend, Marion Veen parked by a lake in Duisburg when he was stabbed to death.
Veen was able to flee the scene in her boyfriend’s car.
Part of the reason it took a long time to capture Kroll was that other suspects were convicted of his crimes.
Six months after the murder, rape and mutilation of Manuel Knodt, 15, in July 1959, someone else went to the police and confessed to the crime.
Even though he later admitted he hadn’t actually killed the teen, he was convicted and sentenced to eight years in prison.
In Giese’s case, a man called Vinzenz Kuenh, was arrested and convicted of her murder.
Kroll’s reign of terror finally came to an end when the strong smell of rotting remains brought his gruesome crimes to light.
Police investigating the disappearance of four-year-old Marion Ketter, were conducting house-to-house enquiries on July 3, 1976, when Kroll’s neighbour reported something had blocked the building’s pipes.
The man said that when he asked his neighbour Kroll whether he knew what was blocking the pipes, he had simply replied “guts.”
Officers were horrified when they discovered the severed parts of the missing girl in the refrigerator while a tiny hand was boiling in a pan and other parts were stuck in the waste pipe.
Kroll was immediately arrested and later confessed to another 13 murders.
He also told shocked investigating officers he would often slice parts of flesh of his victims in order to cook and eat them “to save money on grocery bills.”
He admitted his sick urges started when he saw pigs getting slaughtered as a teenager saying the sight of blood sexually aroused him.
After a 151-day-long trial, he was convicted of eight murders and one attempted murder and sentenced to life in April 1982.
The disturbed killer was left shocked by the ruling as he said the reason he confessed to the murders was that he would get the help he needed through treatment and then would be released back to society.
He died from a heart attack while in Rheinbach prison in July 1991, aged 58.
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