execution

Peter Kürten, known as 'The Vampire of Düsseldorf', was a German serial killer who committed at least nine murders and numerous other crimes in Düsseldorf between 1929 and 1930. His brutal methods and sexually motivated attacks sent the city into mass panic. Kürten was executed by guillotine in Köln on 2 July 1931.

In 1851, a gang led by Hans Jacob Mortensen—a glovemaker by trade—murdered a Danish farming couple and burned their homestead to cover the crime. The case exposed the violent underbelly of rural 19th-century Denmark and remains a landmark in Scandinavian criminal history.