Gravity’s Volkswagen

Seven

The Cannibal Beetle

Joachim Kroll was known as the Cannibal Killer, but not always, obviously. It took the German police over twenty years to work out that he was either of these things. For most of his life he was known around his hometown of Duisberg as a likeable man with an IQ of 76 who kept a collection of dolls in his apartment and invited little girls from the neighbourhood in to play with them. What could be more innocent? He had other dolls in his apartment too, full-size female sex dolls on which, among other activities, he practised his strangulation technique.

Between 1955 and 1976, according to his own confession, he raped and murdered at least fourteen females. There may well have been others: he admitted that his memory was vague on some of the details. At least two of the victims were under five.

Kroll’s motives for the killings were primarily sexual, and in general he had no interest in murdering men. However, on 22 August 1965, by the lake in Grossenbaum, a few miles south of Duisberg, Kroll encountered the unfortunate Herman Schmitz who was with his girlfriend, generally known as ‘Rita’ in the literature, though that is not her real name. The couple was having sex in the front seat of Schmitz’s Volkswagen Beetle, unaware that Joachim Kroll was standing hidden outside, looking in through the window of the car and spying on them.

After a while Kroll’s voyeurism caused him to become uncontrollably aroused and he felt the urgent need to rape and murder ‘Rita’. He seems to have been concerned with Schmitz only in so far as he wanted to get him out of the way. And so, improbably and unpractically, Kroll crawled along the ground, unseen, and jammed a knife into the Beetle’s front tyre, which exploded with a loud bang.

Kroll had presumably expected Schmitz to get out of the car to investigate, but instead of doing that Schmitz started the engine and began to drive away. He didn’t know the area, however, and drove in the wrong direction, into a dead end, giving Kroll time to catch up.

Schmitz turned the Beetle around in the dead end and was heading back the way he’d come when Kroll leapt in front of the car, waving his arms, begging Schmitz to stop. Even more improbably Schmitz now decided that Kroll was a harmless passer-by in need of help. He stopped the car and got out to talk to Kroll and offer assistance, leaving ‘Rita’ inside the car, from where she was able to watch as Kroll now stabbed her boyfriend in the stomach with his knife. Schmitz collapsed in agony.

‘Rita’ seems to have been rather smarter than her boyfriend: she got behind the wheel of the Beetle, set it in motion and tried to run Kroll down. She failed, and Kroll escaped through the woods. Herman Schmitz died of his injuries a few days later. He was Kroll’s only male victim. The police saw no connection between Schmitz’s death and those of the women who had been raped and murdered in the area. Kroll would be able to enjoy another twelve years of murderous liberty.