Grossmann's younger brother Wilhelm was ruled insane and spent time in two mental hospitals before dying in 1911 at age 39; he was thought to have cognitive dysfunction from a head injury sustained at work and untreated syphilis. A half-brother, August Schulz, an NCO in the German army, spent 15 years in prison for raping a domestic servant, got out, almost immediately raped a child, and was returned to prison for another 15 years, dying behind bars in 1907. Both of Grossmann's parents had died by 1911, but there was no other greater trend of mental illness in the family.

Carl was unpopular and disliked by his peers for his appearance and bad smell. According to his brother Franz, he developed violent and sadistic sexual fetishes from an early age, including taking pleasure from watching livestock being butchered. When Carl was only 6 years old, he and a half-brother were assisting in butchering hogs at a local slaughterhouse. The blood from the animals was supposed to be drained and caught in bowls, but when the butcher cut the pig's neck, Carl ran over to it, and as in a fit of ecstasy, began drinking the blood as it gushed from the wound. An adult worker pushed him away. Later in life, Carl told his brother that he could only achieve sexual arousal from the sight of blood.

He sometimes assisted his father's junk-reselling business and tended to the family's goats in nearby Treskow. Carl was known to enjoy rubbing his body in salt and having the goats lick it off of him. He quit school after primary school and worked at a local fabric mill.

When Grossmann was 12, he took an apprenticeship at the meat shop of Ferdinand Kliefoth. Kliefoth believed Carl had potential as a butcher due to his handiness with a knife and his lack of aversion to the sight of blood. However, he told his brother he only took up the offer to be near his boss's wife Dorothea and that he often fantasized about raping her. When Carl was 15, he tried to carry out his fantasy for real, but Klieforth caught him, beat him, and fired him. Grossmann never actually finished a training course as a butcher. He went back to assisting his father's business and sometimes worked at the fabric mill. When Carl was 16, he was thrown out of the house for attempting to steal money from his father and left for Berlin with friends.

Grossmann's first criminal conviction happened in 1882 when he was charged with vagrancy; he was already well-known as a panhandler who had no proper form of employment. Over the next few years, he was arrested for theft, blackmail, making threats, and destruction of property. During 1886-88 Grossmann was also arrested three times for assault. He was drafted into the army in 1886, assigned to the 12th Grenadier Regiment, and posted in Frankfurt an der Oder. A year into his service, Grossmann was convicted of rape, dishonorably discharged, and served a year in jail. He was convicted of aggravated assault in 1889 and served another year behind bars.

After his release, Grossmann made a living working at various butcher shops and slaughterhouses in Berlin while making additional income as a door-to-door salesman of household wares. The latter got him in trouble several times when he was arrested for begging, fraud, and trespassing, serving a combined total of six months in jail for these offenses. Grossmann finally left the German capital in 1894 and spent the rest of the 1890s as a drifter in southern Germany, making a living from panhandling, peddling, and thefts. He was arrested several times for vagrancy, trespassing, and fraud, and also at least once each for assault, resisting arrest, and bestiality. The last happened on January 3, 1896 when a couple in the Neckar area found Grossmann in their goat's pen. Police arrested him and found that he had sodomized the animal after claiming he went in the pen to seek shelter on a cold winter evening. He was sentenced to ten months in jail.

In Bavaria, Grossmann was arrested for assault, petty larceny, and indecent acts with children younger than 13. He served 15 months in jail in Nuremberg for molesting a 12 year old girl and was released April 1, 1899. Almost as soon as Grossmann got out, he sexually abused two girls ages 10 and 4. The younger girl died shortly afterwards of an infection from her perineum being torn. A Bayreuth court sentenced him to 15 years in prison. Grossmann served his sentence at Ebrach Prison, during which time he had a reputation for violent behavior and was cited 55 times for starting fights.

Grossmann completed his sentence and was released from prison in August 1914, just as World War I was beginning. Since he was 50, he was above the draft age and did not have to worry about being sent into the great conflict. He resumed his old habit of making a living from peddling, and then rented out the kitchen in the third floor apartment of Mannheim Itzig a Lange Strasse 88 in the Ostbahnhof area of Berlin, known as a skid row district with flophouses, crime, and prostitution. Since the Itzig family were usually away, he had the apartment to himself most of the time. Grossmann was quiet and rarely interacted with his neighbors, who mostly remembered his rough looks and terrible smell. Sometimes they heard noises and screaming coming from the apartment, but just assumed he was having a rough sex session with a prostitute. Grossmann sold black market meat and operated a sausage stand at Andreas Square outside the train station. He managed to accumulate savings of around 10,000 RM from his income as a peddler.

Starting in 1918, he used his location near Ostbahnhof to approach women, usually job-seekers arriving in Berlin from the countryside, and luring them to the apartment by offering them jobs as a domestic servant. Some surviving victims believed they were there for that purpose, others thought he was using a code word for prostitution. At the apartment, Grossmann would attack and rape the women, although sometimes he'd let her do housework for some days or weeks first. Some women were released after promising not to tell anyone, others were killed. He dumped the remains in Luisenstadt Canal and the adjoining Engelbecken Basin. After each encounter, Grossmann would go to police and report that the women had run away from him after stealing to either explain away their disappearance or disparage potential accusations made by surviving victims.

Sometimes Grossmann also targeted local women of various kinds; laborers, housewives, and prostitutes, all of them poor. With Germany facing far bigger concerns during 1918-20, police paid little attention to his activities. A few reports were made, but no action was taken. On March 24, 1920, Grossmann's 66 year old neighbor Gertrud Grabowski heard crying from his apartment and called a social worker. She thought he had a prostitute over, but quickly realized the voice belonged to a young girl. The social worker found a 15 year old girl in the apartment and called police. The girl, when questioned, said Grossmann let her stay in the apartment and then fondled her genitals as she slept while he claimed he tried to undress her for a bath. Since the girl was a runaway, she did not press the matter further, but the social worker insisted that police search the apartment when she noticed women's clothing inside which Grossmann falsely claimed belonged to a deceased wife, but they did not take any action.

On October 21, just under seven months later, police searched the apartment when one surviving victim, Martha Baltzer, reported that Grossmann had murdered her friend Frieda Schubert, a 33 year old prostitute who went missing three weeks ago. She was backed up by Schubert's boyfriend Otto Tannerbaum, who also said she was last seen with Grossmann. The police found two women in the apartment with him, but no sign that he had anything to do with Schubert's disappearance.

In the first week of August 1921, Grossmann picked up a homeless woman, offered her lunch, and let her stay at the apartment for the night. He then offered to pay her for a BDSM session which wouldn't involve sexual penetration; all she had to do was let him tie her up and he would masturbate to the sight. Instead, Grossmann tried to rape her, but she got away from him and tried to escape out the door. He hit her over the head with a pestle and knocked her out, dragged her back to the bedroom, and gagged and asphyxiated her with a towel. As Grossmann watched her die, his landlord's wife Helene Itzig unexpectedly showed up at the apartment. She assumed at first that he just had a prostitute over, but when she removed the blanket, she was horrified to find the woman not moving and having a broken, bleeding nose.

Mrs. Itzig ran out of the apartment, but came back without informing police. Grossmann explained that he had drugged her unconscious to get more time out of his sex session with her. He offered Itzig a bribe of 50 RM to keep quiet about the whole thing. Grossmann fell asleep next to the body for two hours, then got up and dismembered her. He claimed he only knew the victim as "Martha" but she was later proven to be 30 year old Elisabeth Barthel. On August 14, Grossmann was arrested after getting into a street fight with a man who accused him of causing the disappearance of his sister, 29 year old Johanna Sonsnowski, whom he later confessed to killing on the 3rd. He was released after a few hours in jail and the matter was dropped.

Two other females known only as Emma and Frieda reported Grossmann for rape, but as they were known prostitutes, their claims were not taken seriously. Another woman, known simply as "Polish Anna", was jailed until well after Grossmann's arrest when she was found with four 100 RM notes marked by Grossmann and hidden in her stocking.

Around the same time, dismembered body parts were being found almost daily in the Spree River, mainly the Luisenstadt Canal, but only two victims, Frieda Schubert and Johanna Sosnoswki, were identified. Some of the remains were estimated to have been in the water 1-2 weeks. There were enough remains for at least 23 women, but investigators wondered if Grossmann had not killed at least 100 people; it was hard to be sure because a number of Reichswehr officers' bodies were thrown in the river during the Kapp Putsch. A reward of 5,000 RM was offered for any information on identifying the victims. Police put out columns in the newspapers asking for help and in August 1921, twelve persons answered the request, leading to the possible identifications of Else Thiese, Margarete Simon, and Wilhelmine Poppell. A man known as Ernst Brandt was also named as a possible suspect, although police did not look into it. There were rumors that Grossmann put the remains of victims in meat he sold, but this is believed a falsehood peddled by tabloid newspapers.

On August 21, Robert Iglitzki, a neighbor of Grossmann's, was awoken by his wife, who heard shouting and banging from his apartment, followed by silence. She convinced him to go to police and ask them to investigate. Two officers, Karl Klahn and Ernst Engesser, knocked on Grossmann's apartment, but he refused to open the door, so they kicked it down and forced their way inside. Klahn found Grossmann, his hands stained with blood, attempting to drink cyanide-laced coffee, but he grabbed the cup away from him, after which Engesser handcuffed him. The officers found a nude, unconscious woman on the bed. She was still breathing, but expired minutes later. The victim was identified as 34 year old Marie Nitsche, a sometimes prostitute from Dresden who had just gotten out of jail that morning. Witnesses reported seeing Grossmann picking her up at Koppenstrasse and that they went to a carnival together.

When word got out, a large crowd gathered outside the building and police had to restrain angry people from trying to lynch him. He was charged with murder in connection with six, later five victims. Most of the victims had been suffocated or killed with a blow to the head while tied to the bed. Neighbors reported that he frequently had women, mostly young, destitute women, to his apartment, by some estimates as many as 150 different females. It is not known exactly how many Grossmann killed, and he only gave police victims' first names when he reported the women fro thefts. Only the body of his final victim was found along with blood stains indicating that two other individuals were recently killed in the apartment.

About 50 women had been in the apartment and survived. The first to come forward, Gertrud Haag, appeared on August 22, saying that Grossmann drugged and raped her. Most claimed to have been raped, but others said they did housework or had consensual sex with him in exchange for money and lodging. Grossmann variably gave them money, food, drunks, or paid for other expenses. Some longtime prostitutes knew him as "Mysterious Karl" since they did not know what his intentions were and distrusted him; they advised newcomers to avoid associating with him. The surviving rape victims said he tied them to the bed and tortured him. The earliest identified survivor was Marie Felz, who met Grossmann on New Year's Day 1918. He did not assault her and instead merely invited her to have a beer with him and offered her a new pair of shoes.

A victim killed August 13, 1920 was rumored to be the Russian Grand Duchess Anastasia, but a Butow family later claimed she was their daughter who'd left home to pose as Anastasia. Grossmann was connected to three murders and suspected in a fourth, thought to be 19 year old prostitute Emma Baumann from Mecklenburg. He insisted he killed Nitsche, an unemployed cook, because she stole from him and believed he should only be charged with manslaughter. Nitsche did have 100 RM bills on her person, but their origin is unknown. Grossmann stopped his pleas when several women described to police the interior of his apartment.

He eventually confessed to several murders--Marie Nitsche, "Martha", and Johanna Sonsowski. Grossmann admitted that they didn't steal from him and he just had an uncontrollable urge to kill. In a six hour confession, he described how he killed, dismembered, and dumped two of the victims, but would not admit to any further murders. Grossmann then requested the defense counsel of attorney Erich Frey, who had become famous for his vigorous if ultimately unsuccessful defense of serial killer Friedrich Schumann. He confessed to murdering Frieda Schubert after police pointed out that they found her purse in the apartment as well as another victim named Albertine Asche, but insisted he did not plan the murders out, but they were spontaneous bursts of anger when the women refused sex or didn't tell him if they had a boyfriend or husband. He was charged with the murders of Nitsche Sosnowski, and Asche, but not Martha as her identity was unknown.

Grossmann insisted he should be ruled insane and that he had done nothing non-consensual to the victims, their deaths were accidental, and the surviving women had lied or exaggerated. He tried to assault a jail guard, after which he was chained up during meetings with his lawyer. By the following summer, Grossmann began working on a memoir in which he claimed he killed the victims as they were of low social and moral standing.

He went on trial at Moabit Criminal Court on July 3, 1922. One witness for the prosecution threw a set of keys at him in the courtroom, nearly hitting his public defender, while another tried to attack him and yelled that he'd accused her of lying. Others broke down in tears during their testimony. Grossmann himself insisted he only killed because the victims stole from him and said the witnesses were liars and ungrateful for his hospitality. On July 5, the third day of the trial, Grossmann was found dead in his jail cell. He had hanged himself with the bedsheet. A death mask of Grossmann's head was cast, but it was thought to have been destroyed when Berlin was bombed during World War II.

>>18706334
Pepe is getting buttfucked in hell

>>18706334
Germany has had some quite insane serial killers that the Anglo world hasn't heard of, but the interwar years were especially bad due to the political conditions then and an entire generation brutalized by World War I.

>>18706334
>>18706339
just a normal, average Ossi family. nothing to see here, people.

Good old days I guess at least they didn't have trannies and interracial marriage

>>18706436
homosexual sodomy was illegal in Germany back in that time, incidentally

>>18706436
as he said, Großmann's crimes happened during an extreme era of chaos in Germany so it was expected that people would be somewhat insane in that era

>>18706419
this guy was in his 50s and probably didn't fight

>>18706447
that was established in the OP text. he was 50 when the war began so he was too old to be drafted.

>>18706386
>but others said they did housework or had consensual sex with him in exchange for money and lodging

lol these women were desperate to willingly sleep with this old, ugly guy who apparently never bathed and smelled like shit

>>18706445
have you read what he did to animals and underage girls before that ?

>>18706419
The most extreme serial killers in relatively modern history were mostly Brazilian or Slavs. Nothing from the US comes close to some of those guys.

>Under the criminal code of the German Empire, homicide carried the death penalty and the standard method of execution was beheading. This was usually done by a hand axe, but some German states used the guillotine instead, while firing squad was used for military executions. The Weimar Republic largely retained the existing criminal code, but under the Nazis it was expanded to include a few dozen other capital crimes--beheading by guillotine was established as the standard execution method by 1937.

>The constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949 abolished capital punishment. It was retained in East Germany; the last execution there (and by extension the last in German history) was performed in 1981 and the GDR abolished capital punishment in 1987, three years before its collapse.

>>18706348
>rape, release
>assault, release
>theft, release
i'm kind of surprised at how much stuff this guy got away with before his final crime spree and never served long jail sentences

>>18706458
And Colombians and Peruvians and Ecuadorians. Andean countries got pretty crazy psychos

>>18706469
the Western world generally had quite soft criminal justice after the Enlightenment when medieval punishments went out of style. the emphasis was on reform and rehabilitation.

>>18706464
Beheading was a common execution method in many European countries, but it was never used in the United States because the justice system here was influenced mainly by the British one, and the British customarily used hangings for common crimes while beheading was reserved for treason and lese majesty (this was abolished in 1870). Also, France carried out its final execution (by guillotine) in 1977.

>>18706445
partially correct. Weimar Germany had an epidemic of serial killers similar to 1970s USA.

>>18706379
>Around the same time, dismembered body parts were being found almost daily in the Spree River, mainly the Luisenstadt Canal, but only two victims, Frieda Schubert and Johanna Sosnoswki, were identified
pretty normal day in Berlin tbqh

>>18706431
the German general election results map from 1932 tells you everything you need to know

>>18706431
>>18706458
Ossis have a high Slav admixture in them incidentally.

also, spelling, people. unless you're Swiss it's Großmann and Straße, not Grossmann or Strasse.

>why did they keep lettting him out!

Abolish prisons, incels