Keywords
serial killer
sadism
psychopathy
criminal mind
How to Cite
Abstract
On July 2, 1931, German citizen Peter Kürten was guillotined in Cologne prison after being found guilty of nine murders, although it was suspected that there
may have been many more. The social impact of his crimes and Kürten's own statements after his arrest led to the development of the first truly influential psychological and criminological study on the motivations of serial killers in Europe. In fact, it was during his police investigation that the German police first
coined this term to refer to those who committed sequential murders. It thus replaced the previous term used for this type of crime: "stranger murder." After his death, his brain continued to be the subject of scientific study, in an attempt to find possible anomalies that would help understand the cruelty of his crimes. All of this demonstrates that Peter Kürten was a key figure in the psychological and criminological study of modern European serial killers and in the development of future similar police investigations. This article will analyze Kúrten's figure from a criminological perspective, to understand why he can be classified, with all scientific conviction, as the first European serial killer of the modern era.
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