It's often said that war is hell, and it turns out that it provides the perfect cover for
doing something just as awful – committing serial murders.
Here are the serial killers who committed their crimes under the cover of war.
The S-Bahn is a railway system that runs through Berlin, and during the very darkest times
of World War II — literally — it was the dumping ground of a serial killer who stalked
the city during the blackouts designed to foil Allied bombers.
The first bodies were discovered in late 1940.
Multiple victims were thrown from moving trains; most had fractured skulls and bore signs of
assault.
As more victims were identified, BBC Collections says that Berlin police knew they were dealing
with a single killer.
They suspected a railway worker, but with more than 5,000 employed within the network,
it took a long time to narrow the list of possible suspects.
By the time the last victim was discovered in July of 1941, one name was standing out
— Paul Ogorzow . Coworkers regularly called him misogynistic, and half of the killer's
eight victims were found within a mile of his home.
Ogorzow was ultimately arrested, and after confessing to the crimes, he was executed
via the guillotine .
In hindsight, it seems like he should have been caught well before his eighth victim,
but Ogorzow hunted under the cover of blackouts and used the darkness to escape police pursuit
at least once.
Also, the possibility of a German serial killer wasn't even on the German police radar for
a long time.
Instead, they investigated foreign laborers, Jewish locals, and the possibility of British
agents in the area.
Ted Bundy definitely didn't invent the idea of the charming, charismatic serial killer.
Take Marcel Petiot, or Doctor Satan as he became known in the media.
Historian and author David King — who wrote Death in the City of Light based on Petiot's
story — described him this way:
"Here's a guy [...] Obviously very intelligent, charismatic, has a respected position, is
into collecting antiques, interested in the arts.
[He] seemed like the nicest guy."
It took King years of research to piece together Petiot's story, and here's the basics.
It started with occupied Paris and a huge number of people who wanted nothing more than
to escape the Nazis.
Petiot — who was an established Parisian doctor — sought out people wishing to flee
and told them he was a member of France's underground resistance.
Once he lured his victims into his home with promises of helping them to freedom, he had
them write letters to loved ones saying that they were escaping and absolutely fine.
Then, he gave them an injection that he claimed was a vaccine but definitely wasn't.
Bodies were then dismembered, incinerated, and spread in the courtyard of one of his
homes.
It's not definitively known how many people he killed.
Although the official count is 27, it's believed it's closer to 150.
Petiot was eventually captured after his house caught on fire and police discovered the remnants
of some of his victims.
He was found guilty and executed.
Arthur Shawcross had about as many names as he had victims — he was known as the Genesee
River Killer, the Rochester Strangler, and the Monster of the Rivers.
According to ThoughtCo.
, Shawcross was ultimately linked to 14 murders in the area of Rochester, New York.
The worst part?
Most could have all been avoided.
Shawcross killed two children in 1972, and in 1987 he was released on parole for "good
behavior," before killing at least 11 more.
“After I admitted to eleven, it was like a big weight fell off.”
Shawcross was also a veteran.
Peter Vronsky , an author and researcher on serial killers, told Oxygen that part of the
reason he was paroled in the first place was because he claimed to be suffering from PTSD.
Shawcross had served time in the Vietnam War, and claimed that the trauma he'd experienced
there was one of the root causes of his later killing sprees.
Shawcross — who also cannibalized several of his victims — claimed that he had not
only started killing in Vietnam, but also that it's where he started to get a taste
for human flesh.
Just what happened to Shawcross in Vietnam hasn't been proven – records suggest he
was in a non-combat role during his deployment – but his tale was convincing enough to
get him back on the streets.
He was convicted again in 1990 and died in prison in 2008, according to NBC News.
In 1942, living in London was terrifying stuff.
There were the regular bombings and blackouts, and in early February, those blackouts brought
something else — the horrifying deaths of four women, killed in a single week and left
savagely mutilated in a way reminiscent of Jack the Ripper.
The killing started on February 9, with the death of Evelyn Hamilton.
Fingerprints on a bloody can opener were then found alongside the body of Evelyn Oatley,
discovered the next day.
Margaret Florence Lowe was killed the day after that, then Doris Jouannet According
to the Old Police Cells Museum, it was then that the press started describing a "Blackout
Ripper", but the killings didn’t stop.
Cummins attacked two more women who were able to fight him off, carrying two clues from
the scene of their attack — a gas mask with a serial number and the belt from his uniform.
This led investigators straight to Gordon Frederick Cummins, a member of the Royal Air
Force ground crew who had recently been transferred to London for more training as an airman.
He was arrested on February 16, and the jury took 35 minutes to bring back a guilty verdict.
He was hanged in June of the same year.
First, we’ll tell the story that was told for ages.
It started in 1943, when Welt says the naked body of a 51-year-old woman, who had been
assaulted and strangled, was discovered.
Suspicion fell on a man from the nearby village of Kö
penick , and during interrogation, Bruno Lüdke admitted to having not only killed Frieda
Rosner but to many more.
Lüdke — who had severe mental disabilities stemming from a childhood fall — was found
guilty of 53 of those murders, and another three attempted murders.
He wasn't sent to jail, though.
Under the direction of Heinrich Himmler , he was sent to the Central Medical Institute
of the Security Police and subjected to numerous Nazi-run experiments.
He died there the following year.
For decades, Lüdke has been called one of Germany's worst serial killers... but now,
that's highly doubted.
Not only has new research determined that it was impossible for him to have committed
the crimes, but that Lüdke — who had already been forcibly sterilized under the so-called
Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Offspring — had been goaded into his confession by
a detective who fed him names, places, and dates, then asked him to say he'd done it.
Why?
Historian Axel Dossmann says that Ludke’s case was meant to support Nazi ideals about
the ultimate extermination of the, quote, “maladjusted” population.
Leonarda Cianciulli had already lost 13 children of her... get this...
17 children, to either miscarriage or childhood deaths by the time World War II began.
Four survived, and when son Giuseppe was drafted into the Italian army in 1939, it seemed like
just one more step toward fulfilling the prophecy an old fortune teller had told her years before
— she would live to see all her children die.
Cianciulli became convinced that if she offered a sacrifice, the powers-that-be would spare
her son's life.
So, that's what she did.
Over the course of two years, she drugged and killed three middle-aged women from her
village, but it gets even more gruesome than that.
According to the BBC, Cianciulli wrote extensively about how she disposed of the bodies.
Faustina Setti, Francesca Soavi , and Virginia Cacioppo were dismembered and butchered.
What’s more, at least some of their blood was collected, dried, turned into cakes, then
served to friends and family.
She kept the fat as well, writing:
"When it had melted, I added a bottle of cologne, and after a long time on the boil I was able
to make some most acceptable creamy soap.
I gave bars to neighbors and acquaintances.
That woman was really sweet."
The so-called Soap-maker of Correggio was captured when the sister-in-law of her last
victim went to authorities.
Cianciulli confessed immediately.
She was given a 30-year sentence, and died in an asylum in 1970.
It was his charming air and his captivating charisma that allowed Henri Desire Landru
to lure in victims from all over France, says L'est Republicain . He spent most of his life
making ends meet by doing odd jobs, but by the time his fourth child came around, that
was getting harder and harder.
So, he hatched a plan and started preying on the lonely, heartbroken women of World
War I.
Landru took to newspaper classifieds and ran a series of ads where he claimed to be looking
for a wife.
He was really looking for a certain sort of woman — someone isolated, someone lonely,
and someone who was decently wealthy.
After convincing them to buy a one-way ticket to meet him in his countryside home, and getting
them to sign over all their assets, he killed these women.
Then, he got his son involved.
Telling him that he was a dealer of second-hand goods, they would visit the home of the newly
deceased and take anything of value.
Landru wasn't arrested until 1919, and Crime Traveller says that when he was finally caught,
police also found all the evidence they needed, thanks to Landru's penchant for journaling.
Landru's high-profile trial didn't start until 1921, and he was found guilty and sent to
the guillotine just three weeks later.
It's unclear how many he killed, but he made contact with 283 women during his killing
spree.
When women started turning up dead the morning after WWII brownouts in Melbourne, Australia,
it wasn't long before witnesses came forward claiming to have seen the women with an American
GI, one of 250,000 stationed in Australia at the time.
One such serviceman would soon be a suspect: Private Eddie Leonski , a New Jersey native
with a personal and familial history of violence, substance abuse, and mental illness, says
The Guardian.
Those he served with knew him as an angry drunk who craved attention, and his ways didn't
change in Australia.
After the third body was discovered strangled and in various states of undress after a brownout
lifted, it didn't take long for Leonski's reputation to make him a person of interest.
He confessed, saying that he had done it to stop the voices singing in his head.
Leonski went through the United States military's court martial system, was found guilty, and
hanged after his request for an appeal was denied.
According to The Radio Times, John Christie's first brush with death came when he was 8
years old.
That's when he stood at the side of the open coffin of his grandfather and reported that
he was gripped by a "fascination."
Christie would go on to have repeated run-ins with the law, but it wasn't until World War
II that he found himself in a position to get away with murder.
Having already been kicked out of the Royal Air Force, Christie got accepted into the
police force — in spite of already having served time in prison for things like causing,
quote, "grievous bodily harm," and a series of petty crimes.
That was in 1936.
In 1943, he killed his first confirmed victim.
Still in the police department, it's thought that Christie used his clout to put him in
a position above suspicion — and even when he resigned, he could keep killing.
His victims included Beryl Evans and her 13-month-old daughter, Geraldine, and here's where things
get extra sad.
“Timothy John Evans, the court has found you guilty of willful murder.”
Beryl's husband, Timothy Evans, was charged with her murder, found guilty, and hanged.
While on the stand, he pointed the finger at Christie... but was ignored.
Christie was able to keep killing until 1953, when he was finally arrested, found guilty
of killing at least 8 women, and hanged.
According to the BBC, Timothy Evans was posthumously pardoned in 1966.
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