For more than two decades, women and children were murdered across West Germany while their killer remained largely invisible.
Joachim Kroll, eventually known as the “Ruhr Cannibal” and the “Duisburg Man-Eater,” carried out his crimes between 1955 and 1976. By the time police finally arrested him, some of the murders connected to him had been unsolved for more than 20 years.
Kroll ultimately confessed to 14 murders. However, he was convicted of only eight murders and one attempted murder, creating a distinction that continues to cause confusion when discussing the number of Joachim Kroll’s victims.
Behind those numbers were real people whose lives were cut short. Some were children. Others were young women. One was a young man. In several cases, innocent people were suspected while the actual killer remained free.
This is the story of Joachim Kroll’s victims and the trail of murders that eventually exposed one of Germany’s most notorious serial killers.
How Many People Did Joachim Kroll Kill?
The most commonly accepted answer is 14.
After his arrest in 1976, Joachim Kroll admitted responsibility for Marion Ketter's murder and provided investigators with information about 13 additional killings stretching back to 1955.
But a confession is not the same as a criminal conviction.
German prosecutors were ultimately able to establish sufficient evidence for eight murders and one attempted murder. Following a lengthy trial, Kroll was convicted on those charges in April 1982 and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Therefore, the most accurate way to describe his victim count is:
14 murders confessed to; eight murders proven in court.
The enormous passage of time complicated the investigation. Some crime scenes were more than two decades old by the time Kroll confessed, evidence had disappeared, and at least one victim's body had never been recovered.
Who Were Joachim Kroll’s Victims?
The 14 victims attributed to Kroll through his confessions were:
Irmgard Strehl, 19 — 1955
Erika Schuletter, 12 — 1956
Klara Frieda Tesmer, 24 — 1959
Manuela Knodt, 16 — 1959
Petra Giese, 13 — 1962
Monika Tafel, 12 — 1962
Barbara Bruder, 12 — 1962
Hermann Schmitz, 25 — 1965
Ursula Rohling, 20 — 1966
Ilona Harke, 5 — 1966
Maria Hettgen, 61 — 1969
Jutta Rahn, 13 — 1970
Karin Toepfer, 10 — 1976
Marion Ketter, 4 — 1976
Most were women or girls, ranging dramatically in age. Hermann Schmitz appears to have been the only male victim among the 14 murders Kroll confessed to.
Their deaths stretched across more than 21 years.
Irmgard Strehl — 1955
Irmgard Strehl was 19 years old when she became the earliest known victim attributed to Joachim Kroll.
She was killed on February 8, 1955, in Lüdinghausen. Her body was discovered in a barn.
At the time, investigators had no reason to connect the crime to a serial murderer who would continue killing across the region for decades.
Kroll was not identified as the killer until many years later, after his eventual arrest and confession.
The murder of Irmgard Strehl marked the beginning of what would become an extraordinarily long period of undetected violence.
Erika Schuletter — 1956
Approximately a year later, 12-year-old Erika Schuletter was killed near Kirchhellen and Bottrop on March 3, 1956.
Once again, the murder was not connected to Kroll.
The geographic movement that characterized his crimes would become one reason the pattern was so difficult to recognize. Rather than repeatedly attacking in one neighborhood, murders attributed to Kroll occurred across numerous communities in and around the Ruhr region.
Without a clearly recognized series of connected crimes, investigators were effectively looking at individual murder cases rather than a single killer.
Klara Frieda Tesmer — 1959
On June 16, 1959, 24-year-old Klara Frieda Tesmer was killed near the Rhine meadows around Rheinhausen.
Four years had passed since the murder of Irmgard Strehl.
From an investigative perspective, that gap mattered.
Kroll did not operate according to an easily identifiable schedule. Long periods could separate murders, and his crimes occurred in different locations. That made it considerably harder for authorities of the era to recognize that individual cases might have been connected.
Manuela Knodt — 1959
Only weeks after Tesmer's death, another murder occurred.
Manuela Knodt was 16 years old when she was killed on July 26, 1959, in Essen's Stadtwald.
Her murder became particularly significant when investigators later reconstructed Kroll's crimes because he admitted to taking flesh from her body and consuming it.
It was behavior that would eventually contribute to the name by which he became infamous:
The Ruhr Cannibal.
Yet in 1959, Joachim Kroll remained unknown to investigators.
Petra Giese — 1962
Three years passed before another series of murders now attributed to Kroll began.
Petra Giese, 13, was killed on April 23, 1962, in the Dinslaken-Bruckhausen area.
Her death demonstrated one of the most disturbing characteristics of Kroll's crimes: many of his victims were children or teenagers.
He did not, however, exclusively target one age group. His confessed victims ranged from four years old to 61.
Monika Tafel — 1962
Only weeks after Petra Giese was killed, 12-year-old Monika Tafel became another victim.
She was killed in Walsum on June 4, 1962.
By this point, Kroll had allegedly murdered at least six people over approximately seven years.
Still, authorities had not identified a common offender.
The absence of modern computerized databases, combined with crimes occurring across different jurisdictions, made connecting geographically dispersed cases significantly more difficult than it would be today.
Barbara Bruder — 1962
The case of 12-year-old Barbara Bruder is different from many of the other murders attributed to Kroll.
Barbara disappeared from Burscheid on September 3, 1962.
Her body was never recovered.
Years later, Kroll claimed responsibility for her death during his confessions.
The absence of a body illustrates one of the major problems prosecutors faced after his arrest. Although Kroll could describe old crimes, proving every confession in court decades later was another matter entirely.
Barbara Bruder remains one of the most haunting names associated with the case because her remains were never found.
Hermann Schmitz — 1965
Hermann Schmitz, 25, stands out among Joachim Kroll's victims because he was the only known man among the 14 murders Kroll confessed to.
Schmitz was killed on August 22, 1965, near Duisburg-Großenbaum.
Reports of the case describe Schmitz and his fiancée being attacked while together. His fiancée survived the attack.
The existence of a survivor makes this incident especially important in the history of Kroll's crimes.
Yet he still was not identified.
Another year would pass before another murder later attributed to him.
Ursula Rohling — 1966
Ursula Rohling was 20 years old when she was killed on September 13, 1966.
Her murder became one of the cases illustrating another tragic consequence of Kroll remaining unidentified: suspicion sometimes fell on innocent people.
Rohling's fiancé came under suspicion following her death. Accounts of the investigation report that he later died by suicide after being wrongly suspected.
Years later, Kroll's confessions provided an entirely different explanation for Ursula's murder.
The damage caused by the Ruhr Cannibal therefore extended beyond the people he directly attacked. Families lived without answers, and innocent people could find themselves drawn into murder investigations while the actual killer remained free.
Ilona Harke — 1966
Only months later came one of the youngest victims attributed to Kroll.
Ilona Harke was five years old.
She was killed on December 22, 1966, in Wuppertal. Her body was recovered from a canal.
Ilona's age underscores the enormous range among Kroll's victims.
There was no narrow age profile that could easily define his targets.
His victims included small children, teenagers and adults.
Maria Hettgen — 1969
Nearly three years passed before the next murder attributed to Kroll.
Maria Hettgen was 61 years old when she was killed on July 12, 1969, near Baldeneysee.
She was the oldest of Kroll's confessed victims.
The contrast between Maria and victims such as five-year-old Ilona Harke demonstrates how difficult it would have been for investigators to create a traditional victim profile linking the murders.
The crimes involved people of dramatically different ages and occurred across multiple communities.
Jutta Rahn — 1970
Jutta Rahn, 13, was killed on May 21, 1970.
She was reportedly returning from a railway station when she encountered her killer.
By this point, approximately 15 years had passed since the first murder attributed to Joachim Kroll.
He had allegedly killed people across numerous locations, yet authorities still had no single suspect connecting the crimes.
And after Jutta's death, another unusually long gap followed.
For almost six years, no additional murder appears on the generally accepted chronological list of Kroll's confessed victims.
Then, in 1976, the killings resumed.
Karin Toepfer — 1976
Karin Toepfer was 10 years old when she was killed on May 8, 1976, in Voerde.
Her death came nearly six years after Jutta Rahn's murder and only weeks before the crime that would finally bring Joachim Kroll to the attention of police.
For more than two decades, he had escaped identification.
That was about to change.
Marion Ketter — 1976
The final known victim was four-year-old Marion Ketter.
Marion disappeared in Duisburg on July 3, 1976.
The investigation into her disappearance quickly led police toward Joachim Kroll's apartment building.
A plumbing problem had developed there. Human remains were discovered in the drainage system, and the investigation subsequently led authorities into Kroll's apartment.
Inside, police discovered additional evidence connecting him to Marion's murder.
Kroll was arrested.
After more than 21 years, the Ruhr Cannibal's killing spree was over.
But Marion's murder did something investigators had been unable to accomplish for decades:
It gave them Joachim Kroll.
One Arrest Reopened Decades of Unsolved Murders
Kroll's arrest transformed the investigation almost immediately.
Police were no longer dealing solely with the murder of Marion Ketter.
During questioning, Kroll began discussing other killings.
He eventually admitted Marion's murder and provided details about 13 additional murders and one attempted murder extending back to the 1950s.
Investigators suddenly had to revisit cases that were years—or even decades—old.
Kroll reportedly helped authorities reconstruct aspects of the crimes and identify locations associated with them.
But investigators faced a serious problem.
A confession alone did not necessarily mean prosecutors could prove a murder beyond a reasonable doubt.
Why Was Joachim Kroll Convicted of Only Eight Murders?
If Joachim Kroll confessed to 14 murders, why was he convicted of only eight?
The answer largely comes down to evidence.
Some of the murders had occurred approximately 20 years before Kroll was arrested. Physical evidence could be missing or degraded, witnesses could be unavailable, and memories could fade.
In the case of Barbara Bruder, investigators did not even have a recovered body.
Prosecutors therefore focused on crimes they believed could be established in court.
Kroll's trial began in Duisburg in 1979. After a lengthy proceeding, the court convicted him of eight murders and one attempted murder on April 8, 1982.
He received life imprisonment.
This explains why sources sometimes give different answers for Joachim Kroll's victim count.
Legally proven murders: eight.
Murders Kroll confessed to: 14.
When discussing the complete history of the case, the larger number generally represents the victims attributed to him through his confessions.
The Innocent People Caught in the Investigation
One of the lesser-known aspects of the Joachim Kroll case is what happened when investigators pursued the wrong suspects.
Because his murders remained disconnected for so long, police repeatedly investigated individual cases without knowing that a serial offender might be responsible.
German accounts of the case document wrongful suspicion and judicial errors connected with crimes later associated with Kroll. One innocent person reportedly spent three years imprisoned for a crime connected to the series.
Ursula Rohling's case was especially tragic because her fiancé came under suspicion after her murder and later died by suicide.
These cases reveal another dimension of Kroll's 21 years of freedom.
Every unsolved murder created uncertainty.
Families waited for answers.
Investigators pursued suspects.
And in some instances, people who had nothing to do with the crimes suffered devastating consequences.
Why Were Joachim Kroll’s Murders So Difficult to Connect?
Looking backward, it may seem surprising that one person could commit murders over more than two decades without authorities identifying the pattern.
But several factors worked in Kroll's favor.
His crimes occurred across multiple cities and communities rather than a single neighborhood. There could be long gaps between murders. His victims varied dramatically in age. Some investigations developed alternative suspects. And police agencies of the 1950s and 1960s did not have the interconnected digital databases available to modern investigators.
Most importantly, investigators initially had no reason to assume that every murder belonged to the same series.
One department might investigate the murder of a teenager while another investigated the death of an adult woman elsewhere.
Only after Kroll's arrest could investigators look backward and see the larger pattern.
Remembering the Victims Instead of the Killer
Serial murder cases frequently become defined by the person responsible.
The killer receives a nickname. Their photograph appears in documentaries. Their behavior is analyzed for decades.
Eventually, the victims can become little more than a number attached to the killer's name.
The Joachim Kroll case demonstrates why that can be misleading.
Saying that the Ruhr Cannibal “killed 14 people” compresses more than two decades of individual tragedies into a statistic.
Those victims had names:
Irmgard Strehl.
Erika Schuletter.
Klara Frieda Tesmer.
Manuela Knodt.
Petra Giese.
Monika Tafel.
Barbara Bruder.
Hermann Schmitz.
Ursula Rohling.
Ilona Harke.
Maria Hettgen.
Jutta Rahn.
Karin Toepfer.
Marion Ketter.
They ranged from a four-year-old child to a 61-year-old woman.
Some cases remained unresolved for decades. One victim was never recovered. Innocent people came under suspicion while the actual killer remained unidentified.
Their stories are what turned the name Joachim Kroll from that of an ordinary resident of Germany's Ruhr region into one associated with one of the country's most disturbing serial murder investigations.
Frequently Asked Questions About Joachim Kroll’s Victims
How many victims did Joachim Kroll have?
Joachim Kroll confessed to 14 murders committed between 1955 and 1976. He was ultimately convicted of eight murders and one attempted murder.
Who was Joachim Kroll's first victim?
The earliest murder generally attributed to Kroll was that of 19-year-old Irmgard Strehl, who was killed in Lüdinghausen on February 8, 1955.
Who was Joachim Kroll's last victim?
Kroll's final known victim was four-year-old Marion Ketter, who was murdered in Duisburg in July 1976. The investigation into her disappearance led directly to Kroll's arrest.
Who was Joachim Kroll's youngest victim?
Marion Ketter was four years old, making her the youngest of the 14 murder victims attributed to Kroll.
Did Joachim Kroll kill only women?
No. Although almost all of his confessed victims were women or girls, 25-year-old Hermann Schmitz was male. He is generally identified as Kroll's only known male murder victim.
Why was Joachim Kroll called the Ruhr Cannibal?
Kroll became known as the Ruhr Cannibal because he admitted consuming flesh taken from some of his victims. His crimes occurred primarily in and around Germany's Ruhr region.
He was also called the Duisburg Man-Eater, a reference to the city where he lived when he was finally arrested.
Was every murder Joachim Kroll confessed to proven?
No.
Kroll confessed to 14 murders, but prosecutors were able to obtain convictions for eight murders and one attempted murder. Some of his confessions concerned crimes committed many years before his arrest, making them considerably more difficult to establish in court.
The Legacy of Joachim Kroll’s Victims
Joachim Kroll remained free from 1955 until 1976.
During those years, murders occurred across the Ruhr region and surrounding communities without investigators realizing that many of the cases could be connected to the same offender.
His eventual arrest did more than solve the murder that immediately brought police to his apartment.
It forced investigators to reopen the past.
Old files suddenly had a possible explanation. Families who had waited years for answers finally learned what may have happened. And crimes once treated as isolated incidents became pieces of a much larger series.
Kroll was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment and remained incarcerated until his death in 1991.
But the most important part of the story is not the nickname “Ruhr Cannibal.”
It is the people behind the victim count.
Fourteen names representing more than two decades of murder—and the lives that ended while their killer continued to move unnoticed through West Germany.
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