John H Dawson

Peter Kurten John H Dawson

Peter Kürten, called "The Vampire of Dusseldorf", was a German serial killer. The brutality of his murders and the hysteria that he triggered in the Rhineland made the search for him the most-noticed crime case in the Weimar Republic and also sparked international interest. The nickname that the press gave him at that time was due to an incident in December 1929, when Kürten killed a young swan in the Düsseldorf court garden and drank its blood. Police and court records show that he also drank or tried to drink from the blood of some of his victims.