A Serial Killer in Nazi Berlin (22 page)

He had discussed tickets with Gerda Kargoll when she accidentally traveled past her destination. Also, he had invited her and later Elizabeth Bendorf to ride in a second-class compartment even though they had tickets for third class. But he had not impersonated a ticket inspector in either case.

All the police work to date and the creation of a volunteer service to accompany women home had not been enough to prevent Mrs. Voigt’s violent death.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Push to Catch the Killer

With the murder of another woman on the S-Bahn (Mrs. Voigt), the pressure on the police to catch the S-Bahn Murderer increased. Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, and Reinhard Heydrich all wanted this case closed. And so Arthur Nebe, as head of the Kripo, was well aware that it was a priority to stop these killings. And he in turn pushed Lüdtke to stop this killer before he threw another woman from the train.

As part of this effort, the police regularly visited the Rummelsburg and Karlshorst S-Bahn stations in the hopes of finding the killer there. They also rode the rails, often while wearing the uniforms of regular S-Bahn staff.

Given that the police had little to go on to catch their killer, other than a general description that could fit a huge percentage of the male population and the possibility that he worked for the railroad company, Lüdtke thought that their best hope lay in catching the killer in the act. As this was an important case, he was able to use a large amount of manpower to pursue the S-Bahn Murderer.

In addition to deploying men to train stations, Lüdtke orchestrated massive roundups of train riders at key times. Ogorzow had established a recent pattern of attacking women during the early morning hours of Sunday on a single S-Bahn route. So around six in the morning on a Sunday, Lüdtke had his detectives and large numbers of uniformed police round up everyone riding the train and waiting on the platforms on this route. This took hundreds of policemen, as all eight stations that Lüdtke focused on needed to be checked simultaneously. The S-Bahn was halted at the platform and the police went through and checked for any signs of foul play and anyone that they found to be suspicious. They also looked for men carrying weapons, especially the heavy blunt instruments that their suspect favored.

Nothing of substance resulted from this search, other than a bunch of inconvenienced train passengers and tired policemen. Lüdtke tried a second time the following Sunday, and then again a third time, on another Sunday. Each time took a few hundred police officers and shut down a huge part of this subway line. The police found only minor offenders who did not interest the Kripo investigators. Despite these carefully planned searches of train riders, Lüdtke failed to locate his killer among the Sunday morning riders on this stretch of the S-Bahn.

In addition, Lüdtke obtained permission from higher-ups to place a newspaper article that gave more details on this case and the latest attack of February 11, on Mrs. Voigt. On February 14, Valentine’s Day, 1941, the German newspaper
Der Westen
ran an article about the S-Bahn Murderer:

WOMEN THROWN OUT OF S-BAHN TRAINS
Four Dead to Date—
Who Knows the Criminal?—
13,000 Mark Reward

As was made known by the press at the beginning of January, since late-autumn 1940, there has been an unknown man causing trouble on the S-Bahn line between Rummelsburg and Erkner, mostly near the Karlshorst area; he has attacked lone women and thrown them out of moving trains. Four of these women have died from their injuries. Mostly, women have been endangered who were riding alone in the second class. To date, the criminal has committed the crimes in the late evening or early morning, as well as on Sunday mornings.

On the 11th of February, 1941, shortly after 10
P.M.
, the body of . . . Mrs. Johanna Voigt of Berlin-Friedrichshagen, Friedrichs Straße 37, was found about in the middle of the Rummelsburg-Erkner line between Rummelsburg and Karlshorst, lying right next to the S-Bahn tracks. On this same line, about 300 meters from the place of her discovery and about 50 meters from one another, a woman’s hat and an empty market bag, as well as a bundle of lingerie, and a wash cloth wrapped in cellophane were found. Near the body, there was a glove; the other was missing.

The woman was most likely also thrown out of a moving S-Bahn train. According to the external circumstances, the incident must be related to the aforementioned ones, which have occurred on this line since last autumn and resulted in death for lone women.

The motives out of which the criminal is acting are not yet known. Despite an emphatic manhunt, he has not yet been identified. However, because he must be rendered harmless—in order to prevent future events—all German people are being asked to help in his capture. Every piece of information, even things which seem unimportant, could be decisive in solving this crime. All news which leads to the identification or capture of the criminal will be rewarded with 13,000 RM. The reward is only for people from the public and not for officials whose job it is to solve punishable deeds. The deployment of the money will follow the conclusion of the legal process.

Women traveling alone, namely those who use the second class, are being urgently asked to continue being careful. Description of the criminal: 1.60 to 1.67 meters tall, middle-physique, shoulders and head tending forward, sloppy (slouchy) gait, wrinkled face. Clothing: dark coat, and presumably a railway employee’s cap. There is also the possibility that the criminal was wearing a railway-employee uniform or a similar uniform.

Answers to the following questions are of special importance:

a. 
Who knows a person who fits the above description? (It might be that the criminal is now wearing civilian clothing)

b. 
Which people are illegally wearing railway or similar uniforms (dismissed/laid-off railway employees etc.)?

c. 
Who saw the above-described man on the line [meaning Rummelsburg-Erkner]– in particular, when and where?

d. 
Who has been harassed in the last few months by a man on the named railway line who did not report this to the police?

Written or verbal news, which will be handled completely confidentially if desired, is being accepted by the criminal commissioner’s office M I, 2 in the police headquarters, Alexanderplatz, entrance Dircksenstraße 13/14, room 902, phone number 51 00 23, extensions 699 and 738. However, also all other police headquarters are able to accept notifications with reference to these announcements.
¹

As highlighted by this article, the already very substantial reward of ten thousand reichsmarks had gone up to thirteen thousand reichsmarks. This was in addition to the thousand-reichsmark reward still unclaimed for leading the police to Mrs. Gertrude Ditter’s killer.

With the high amount of money on offer, it’s not surprising that the police received a large number of tips from the public, despite the many limits the police faced in publicizing these rewards. In all, the police received about fifteen hundred tips. Investigating these possible leads would use a tremendous amount of manpower.

Ironically, the police publicizing the fact that the killer struck in the second-class compartments may have worked in Ogorzow’s favor. The more aware the public was of the dangers of riding in second-class during the blackout, the fewer people would do so. While this would protect those travelers who changed their plans from traveling second class to riding in third class, it meant that second-class compartments would be even emptier. Ogorzow only struck when second class was empty of everyone other than his female victim and himself.

While Ogorzow might have to wait longer for a woman to ride in second class than he had before his attacks began, there still were women in Berlin who did not know that they should avoid riding in second class by themselves.

Another plus from Ogorzow’s perspective was that fewer people riding second class meant that he was less likely to have someone enter the train as he was leaving it after one of his attacks. If someone boarded a second-class S-Bahn compartment just after Ogorzow had attacked a woman and thrown her from the train, then there was a small chance that even in the darkened conditions they might notice something amiss, perhaps some sign that a bloody struggle took place. And they might apprehend Ogorzow, or at least report what they saw to the police, along with a better description of him.

The description the police had so far was not a good one. The details listed in this news article could be any one of thousands of men who worked for the railroad company. And the police were not even certain that the killer actually worked for the S-Bahn. As they noted in a question in this article, they were looking into the possibility that he could be someone who was not supposed to have a National Railroad uniform, such as a former worker who had kept his uniform. They did not even know for certain that it was a genuine railway uniform—it could have been a fake that someone made. It also could have been stolen; during the blackout, thefts had become more common. And with the bombings of Berlin by Britain’s Royal Air Force, when someone’s house was bombed, sometimes those clearing the rubble or passing by stole things like clothing.

The police hedged their words regarding this uniform, as they were well aware that it might not be an S-Bahn uniform at all. They knew it could belong to another civilian or military service. It was a dark-colored, not particularly distinctive uniform, and the conditions in the train were not ideal for noting details.

As for harassment on the train, that was a good question, but it did not generate usable leads. Ogorzow did not harass women on the train other than when he was attacking them. And even then, he suddenly attacked; he did not spend time first bothering them. He was very focused on the tight timetable on which the S-Bahn forced him to operate. He only had a few minutes to attack his victims and then throw them from the train before it entered the next station.

Ogorzow continued to serve as a volunteer who escorted women to and from the S-Bahn during blackout hours. He never bothered any of these women. So he clearly was able to control himself enough not to harass women other than when he was actually attacking them.

In addition to responding to any other leads that came in on this case, the Kripo proceeded to investigate the possibility that the killer worked for the S-Bahn. Detectives interviewed thousands of S-Bahn workers—there were five thousand of them, in twenty-eight departments. Roughly a quarter of these could be eliminated based on their age, height, and other factors. The rest had to be questioned in person—a process that started in February 1941 and ended that July.

The police examined time cards to see who would have had the opportunity to commit these crimes. They had difficulty finding a viable suspect who was free to ride the rails for the times of the attacks. Going through all these records by hand was a huge task—most workers had irregular shifts, which made it hard to determine who could have committed these crimes.

Many of the attacks happened around the change in shifts, either from eleven at night to midnight, or from six to seven in the morning. So that seemed to suggest that the killer might be a train worker who was either starting or ending his work then.

According to his time card, Ogorzow worked during some of these times at a fixed location, so it appeared that he could not have been on the S-Bahn. When the police combed through the S-Bahn workers for potential suspects, he was eliminated as a possible perpetrator because, according to his work records, he could not have been present when these crimes were committed.

Although Nazi Germany generally kept very thorough and accurate records that were of tremendous use to the police during investigations such as this one, the paperwork for workers kept by the
Reichsbahn
was a mess.

Professor Laurenz Demps discussed the nature of this problem in relation to the investigation into the S-Bahn Murderer: “The structure of the
Reichsbahn
office in Berlin was complicated. At the beginning of World War II, the
Reichsbahn
was ordered to send employees into the occupied areas of Poland. These employees needed to be replaced and so employees from other duty stations were relocated—specifically, they were also relocated to Rummelsburg. So, what is complicated about this is that the displaced train worker had a new post, but his original post headquarters had his personnel file.”
²

It would take time to access all these records, which were kept in different locations, and try to find viable suspects within the large pool of men who worked for the S-Bahn in Berlin.

The police also talked with people who lived in the garden area. This population included roughly eight thousand people who needed to be interviewed. And the police also searched inside of people’s residences there. It was an overwhelming and slow task.

Manfred Woge, a longtime resident of this area, remembered when the police came to his home to ask about this matter when he was a child. He recalled a ring of the doorbell and a family member opening the door, “and there was a detective who wanted to ask about a murder. In these times, if the police were at your door, even if they seemed to be harmless, it was a reason to be uneasy.”
³

With all the police activity on the trains, the killer stopped his attacks. Commissioner Lüdtke became convinced that he knew of their activities. He did not believe it to be a coincidence that just as they stepped up their surveillance on the S-Bahn, the murderer stopped killing women on it. Lüdtke later said, “Now I could not allow myself to be distracted from the fact that the perpetrator has a detailed knowledge of all our operations.”
⁴