#Serial hunter stephane bourgoin hansen serial#
#Serial hunter stephane bourgoin hansen trial#

But it was in solitary confinement, in prison for burglary, that rape fantasies turned into dreams of blood. Peter Kürten was introduced to sadism at the age of nine by a dog-catcher who liked to torture animals. The basic psychological pattern of the sex criminal is a slow development of sexual craving through fantasy. Both succeeded in finding a wife with whom they could overcome their shyness and impotence, but proved unenthusiastic husbands where sex was concerned. Like Chikatilo, Christie was an intelligent depressive of low self-esteem, who tried to conceal himself behind an ‘official’ facade-Christie was a reserve constable, Chikatilo a minor Communist Party member.

Like Chikatilo, Christie was so paralysingly shy that it made him virtually impotent-as a teenager he was known as ‘Reggie-no-dick’ and ‘Can’t-do-it Christie’. The one that immediately springs to mind is that of Reginald Christie, the Notting Hill murderer. It enables us to see just how many interesting parallels there are with other well-known cases of sex murder.

#Serial hunter stephane bourgoin hansen serial#

The result is that we have a more profound understanding of Chikatilo than of virtually any other serial killer since Kürten. Several psychiatrists, beginning with Aleksandr Bukhanovsky, have studied Chikatilo since his arrest in November 1990, and some of them have provided Peter Conradi with an amazingly detailed account of Chikatilo’s mental development. The Chikatilo case is a welcome exception. Since the Second World War, there has been a steady increase in cases of sex crime, and in the decades since 1970, a terrifying rise in the number of what used to be called mass murderers, and what are now called serial killers, but none have been studied with the thoroughness that Berg brought to Kürten. In America during the mid-1930s, a sadistic pervert named Albert Fish-sentenced to death for killing and partly eating ten-year-old Grace Budd-spoke frankly to psychiatrist Frederic Wertham, and told him of a lifetime of sadism and child murder but Wertham chose to devote only one chapter of his book The Show of Violence to Fish. Since then, there have been few equally detailed studies of such criminals. Kürten seemed pleased to recount his strange sexual history to a doctor, and the result was the first detailed study of the development of a psychopathic killer.

Berg was surprised to find a mild, pleasant-looking man who proved to be charming and intelligent-and whose neighbours were at first convinced that the police had made some absurd mistake. During this time, the ‘Monster’ had killed eight people-a man, three women and four children-by methods that included stabbing, strangulation and hammer blows. Peter Conradi has, I believe, produced one of the most interesting case histories of a serial killer since Dr Karl Berg published The Sadist-a study of the ‘Düsseldorf Monster’, Peter Kürlen-in 1932.Īs the professor of forensic medicine in the Düsseldorf Medical Academy, Berg was naturally called in when, on, the police finally arrested the killer who had terrorised Düsseldorf for fifteen months. Interviews with Moscow police detectives detail the fervent hunt for the man who preyed on young children, prostitutes, and runaways-a search that turned up many dead ends and false convictions before a massive undercover surveillance effort ultimately nabbed Chikatilo.Ī chilling look into the deranged mind of a monster, The Red Ripper is a comprehensive and shocking true crime account-plus photos-of one of the twentieth century’s deadliest killers and the manhunt to catch him.

#Serial hunter stephane bourgoin hansen trial#

Compiling exclusive interviews and trial transcripts, journalist and editor at London’s Sunday Times Peter Conradi reveals how the grandfather and former teacher carried out a horrific twelve-year killing spree right under the nose of authority.īased on extensive research into Chikatilo’s past and the elements of Soviet society that allowed his crimes to go unsolved for so long, Conradi delves into the life of one of history’s most prolific and disturbing serial killers. Although he was initially arrested in 1984, the police lacked enough evidence to pin the unsolved murders on him and he was able to torture and kill dozens more before his eventual conviction. The shocking true story of the Russian serial killer who brutally murdered more than fifty victims-and evaded capture for over a decade.īy the time he was brought to trial in 1992, Soviet serial killer Andrei Chikatilo had killed more than fifty women and children, often sexually abusing them and leaving their bodies mutilated beyond recognition.