The police learned that he had gone back to visit only one of his victims. After he’d killed the first woman on the train, he’d gone to work. Then, when he was off duty, he’d returned to her body. Instead of getting the rush he’d expected, he’d felt sickened by being confronted with what he’d done. Since then, he’d avoided seeing his handiwork. This was why it was so hard for him to see the two living victims in the garden area and the five skulls in the interrogation room. While many serial killers enjoy visiting their victims’ remains, Ogorzow could not handle it.
As for his two modi operandi—one, attacking women on the S-Bahn and then tossing their bodies off the train while it was between stations, and two, attacking women in the garden area adjacent to the S-Bahn—he explained that he switched between them based on where he believed it to be safer for him to operate. The train had the advantage that no one could sneak up on him, he could see that a compartment was empty before he attacked, and he could dispose of the body en route, while the garden area had the advantage that he could take his time with his victims.
Serial killers are generally thought of in terms of a single modus operandi, and this made things harder for the police. For example, his moniker as the “S-Bahn Murderer” only referred to one of Ogorzow’s two hunting grounds. Of the eight murders he committed, five were on the S-Bahn and three had been in the garden area.
Now that the police had their man, the limits imposed by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels regarding the press were lifted. From his perspective, this case no longer made the Nazi state look bad. Instead, it showed the resourcefulness of the German Police in being able to solve a difficult crime.
On July 18, a major Berlin newspaper, Berliner Morgenpost, ran a front-page article with the definitive headline of THE BERLIN S-BAHN MURDERER CAUGHT!5 The article stated, “No previous crime had occupied the Berlin public as completely as the series of murders committed by the 28-year-old Paul Ogorzow.”6
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Excuses
Even while making a full confession in writing, Ogorzow still had one last idea for how to avoid being executed for his crimes.
He thought that if he somehow blamed all his attacks on a Jew, this combined with his party and SA membership might be enough to obtain some leniency from the Nazi criminal justice system.
If convicted for his various crimes, he faced the death penalty. So he desperately needed a compelling reason for the German state not to take his life. He was in a tough position, as he had murdered eight women. And not just any women, but German housewives and young women who were working in factories that produced the goods needed to keep the war going. Some of these women had men serving in the German military machine. In Nazi Germany, these were victims the state would feel the need to avenge.
Ogorzow had also taken advantage of the blackout to commit his crimes. This alone was reason enough for the state to take his life. In November 1939, the Berlin Special Court had sentenced a man to death for committing a single, nonviolent property crime during the blackout. The defendant had snatched a woman’s purse and been caught. The prosecutor in that case successfully argued to the court that it “had to set an example” as “the Special Court was a kind of drum-head court on the home front, with responsibility to protect it from criminals. . . . The front soldier must absolutely be assured, that the solid wall of the inner front cannot be worn down by sub-humanity.”1
With such a decision in the case of a purse-snatcher taking advantage of the wartime darkness in Berlin, Ogorzow faced a near certainty of death for his own much, much worse blackout misdeeds.
The Reich minister of justice wrote an open letter to all German judges that discussed blackout criminals. Although this letter was written about a year after Ogorzow’s trial, the reasoning in it regarding how to treat those who took advantage of the blackout conditions was not a new development. It articulated sentiments that the Special Court in Berlin already held regarding the need to protect the home front through the use of the death penalty.
Reich minister of justice Otto Thierack wrote in this letter:
At a time when the best of our people are risking their lives at the front and when the home front is tirelessly working for victory, there can be no place for criminals who destroy the will of the community. Those in the administration of justice must recognize that it is their job to destroy traitors and saboteurs on the home front. The law allows plenty of leeway in this regard. The home front is responsible for maintaining peace, quiet, and order as support for the war front. This heavy responsibility falls especially to German judges. Every punishment is fundamentally more important in war than in peace. This special fight is targeted especially against those designated by law as “pests.” Should a judge decide after conscientious examination of the criminal act and of the perpetrator’s personality that a criminal is a “pest,” then the seriousness of this determination must also be firmly expressed in the harshness of the verdict. It is a matter of course that a plunderer, who reaches for the possessions of another after a terror attack [bombing] by the enemy, deserves only death. But every other culprit who commits his crimes by exploiting the circumstances of war also sides with the enemy. His disloyal character and his declaration of war [on the German people] therefore deserve the harshest punishments. This should especially be applied to criminals who cowardly commit their crimes during blackouts. “I don’t want,” the Führer said, “a German woman to return from her place of work afraid and on the lookout so that no harm is done to her by good-for-nothings and criminals. After all, a soldier should expect that his family, his wife, and relatives are safe at home.”
The majority of German judges have recognized the immediate needs of the moment. The death sentence that the Special Court handed out to the 18-year-old assailant of the defenseless soldier’s wife, and to the “work-shy” purse-snatcher, placed the protection of the people above all other interests. There are, however, still cases in which the personal circumstances of the culprits are placed above the interests of the necessary protection of the community. This is shown in the comparison of the judgments listed above. The cunning, nighttime handbag robbery perpetrated by a culprit with prior convictions and the 21 thefts committed by the 19-year-old worker were wrongly punished with four years in prison. The decisive factor [in sentencing] is not whether stealing the handbag was legally theft or robbery (which, by the way, does not depend upon whether the bag was carried tightly or loosely); it is not whether the sex offender caused a specific damage with his offense. That he cowardly and cunningly attacked a defenseless woman, and endangered the security of the darkened streets, makes him a traitor. The protection of the community, above all, requires that punishment in such cases serve as deterrence. Prevention here is always better than reparation. Every sentence given a “pest” that is too lenient sooner or later damages the community and carries in itself the danger of an epidemic of similar crimes and the gradual undermining of the military front lines. It is always better for the judge to quell such epidemics early than to stand helpless later against an infected majority. In the fourth year of his prison sentence the criminal should not get the impression that the community’s fight against him is waning. On the contrary, he must always feel that German judges are fighting just as hard on the home front as the soldiers are with the foreign enemy on the military front.2
While some purse snatchers who committed their crimes during the blackout received death, others received a few years in prison. As this open letter to German judges explains, the government wanted judges to focus on the impact of crimes on the home front as opposed to the personal circumstances of the perpetrator. As the German state had Ogorzow dead to rights for these crimes, his only hope was to try to get the court to overlook the danger he posed to the women of Berlin and instead contemplate his personal circumstances.
And so Ogorzow wrote in his confession, “A few years ago I had sex with a stripper and t
hen went to a Jewish doctor. The Jew, who knew that I was a party member, has, out of hatred of the Nazis mistreated my gonorrhea. The consequence of which affected my state of mind. I would like this considered for sentencing purposes. Therefore, I am not responsible for my actions. Also, please bear in mind that I’m a party member.”3
By his own account, Paul Ogorzow contracted sexually transmitted diseases on three different occasions. Each time occurred during his marriage but involved consensual sex with a woman who was not his wife. The first time had been in Berlin in 1934. The second occurrence was in Poland in 1940, during the German occupation of that country. This third, and final, incident happened in German-occupied Paris in 1940.
The German authorities took Ogorzow’s multiple infidelities and related contractions of sexually transmitted diseases as reflecting poorly on his moral character. They noted that he was only away for short times, a matter of weeks, in Poland and France, yet managed to contract venereal disease during both trips. Combining this with his earlier STD, they felt that he did not care about keeping his marriage vows and was unable to control his sexual impulses.
Ogorzow claimed to have first contracted gonorrhea in 1934 and, when he noticed that he was sick, to have been referred to a Jewish doctor by the name of Wilhelm Schwarzbach.4 According to Ogorzow, he did not know this doctor was Jewish when he first went to him. When he found this out six months later, he had already undertaken expensive treatments that the doctor had promised would cure him and he’d felt that it was “unfortunately too late to let go of him.”5
In Ogorzow’s self-serving recounting of these events, the doctor prescribed injections and pills that not only did not cure his gonorrhea but also made his health worse. He claimed the doctor intentionally treated him poorly because he knew Ogorzow was a party member, and this then caused his various hospital stays for all sorts of different conditions.
Gonorrhea is an ancient and very common sexually transmitted disease. Commonly known as “the clap,” it produces symptoms that Paul Ogorzow probably noticed when he went to urinate and felt a tremendously painful burning sensation. The disease is now usually treated with a course of antibiotics. However, in the 1930s, German doctors commonly used a form of colloidal silver, sometimes in conjunction with other forms of treatment. Antibiotics were in use then, but they were not at the point of easily curing this disease.
While gonorrhea does cause terrible damage to the human body, this does not include creating in someone an irresistible compulsion to kill women. Perhaps this excuse would have worked better if Ogorzow had had an advanced case of another sexually transmitted disease, syphilis, which can make someone crazy. Even tertiary-stage syphilis, however, while it is commonly referred to as turning brains into Swiss cheese, does not result in someone becoming a highly organized serial killer.
In addition to blaming this doctor, Ogorzow also brought up various head injuries he’d sustained over the course of his life while suggesting that they could have contributed to his compulsion to attack and kill women. These included suffering a blow to the head from a fall on the ice in his youth. He claimed to suffer from bad headaches, which he now interpreted as signs that there was something wrong with his brain. He also brought up a stomach condition that had been attributed to nerves. And so, according to Ogorzow, his criminal actions toward women were the result of a drive, a compulsion, arising from an untreated derangement.
He asked in writing for placement in a mental hospital: “The offenses which I committed and admitted to in protocol are all based in this unendurable sickness. I remorsefully acknowledge that I was not supposed to do it, but an impulse arose and during the situation I had a sudden blackout because of the sickness. I ask to please be taken to a psychiatric clinic. Signed, party member Paul Ogorzow.”6
Ogorzow hoped that his various medical excuses, blaming a Jew, and his party membership would combine to save his life.
The authorities did not care about these excuses. They did however have a doctor examine him to see if he was mentally ill or if this claim of an STD making him attack women had anything to it. The doctor reported that Ogorzow was physically and mentally fit and that there was nothing to his excuse of an STD treatment gone wrong having caused him to stalk and murder women. Of course, this doctor may not have been a disinterested expert. He may have been inclined to produce the result that the authorities wanted to hear. But even a completely objective doctor would have had a hard time believing Ogorzow’s self-serving excuses.
Ogorzow also claimed to have desired not to kill women, but only to stun them so he could sexually assault them. He wrote in a short addendum statement to the police, “I would add that I have not beaten the women in my mentally ill state (that I have already put on record) with a piece of lead wire and a piece of iron with the intention to kill them but for the purpose of sexual intercourse.”7
He tried to make use of the blackout as part of his excuse, saying that he could not see if the women he attacked were “young, old or pretty.” He somehow thought this might make him appear more sympathetic to the court and perhaps persuade the judges that his actions were those of someone who was not mentally well and not the actions of a normal sexual offender.
He also tried blaming women as a whole, saying that “he had a certain hatred of women” owing to his having contracted sexually transmitted diseases from them. While he referred to his wife as “a little frigid,” he did not blame her for his attacks. And he did point out how much he loved his son. It appears he was trying to play the family man card as well.
Paul Ogorzow would find out soon what the court thought of his excuses. Justice, such as it was in Nazi Germany, moved swiftly in this case. Ogorzow’s trial was scheduled for only two weeks after his initial arrest.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The Trial
On July 20, 1941, the Nazi Party officially revoked Ogorzow’s membership. The next day, the Kripo mailed to the NSDAP office for Berlin, on Hermann Göring Street, Ogorzow’s party member book (NSDAP card number 1,109,672). Also on July 21, the Kripo transferred Ogorzow from their direct control to a detention center in Moabit, Berlin.
On July 22, the Kripo concluded their work in this case. They named it after the final victim in the case, so it became “Homicide Koziol.” Lüdtke and his detective Georg Heuser signed their final report and sent it by messenger to the prosecutor’s office.
The Berlin Special Court (Sondergericht) would try Ogorzow. Ironically, the general amnesty decree for imprisoned Nazis that freed Paul Ogorzow from prison back in 1933 was followed by a decree that set up the special court that would now try him. On March 21, 1933, Chancellor Adolf Hitler and Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen signed into law the special courts. Unlike with the amnesty decree, then-President Paul von Hindenburg did not sign this document.
The idea of the special courts was to try political offenses, as opposed to purely ordinary criminal offenses. Inspired by the brutal efficiency of military court-martials, these courts were to proceed quickly, without the use of juries. The need of the Nazi-controlled state to quickly deal with what its organs considered to be internal threats greatly outweighed the rights of the accused.
The jurisdiction of these courts continued to expand as the Nazis solidified control over the state and, later, as they waged war throughout Europe. Those accused of committing crimes generally were much better off if they were able to appear before more traditional criminal courts. Unfortunately for Paul Ogorzow, although he’d committed what we would now consider to be ordinary crimes, as opposed to political crimes, his terrible deeds fit numerous criteria used to determine if the special courts should handle a case. These included crimes that threatened the public order, took advantage of the blackout, or involved violent assaults, among other criteria.
There were no appeals from this kind of court, so whatever judgment and sentence the court handed to Ogorzow would be final.1 The judges would
decide his fate, not a jury of his peers. The court would appoint a defense attorney without input from the accused, and his powers would be extremely limited. As one author put it, “The characteristics of the [special courts] thus violated the legal principle of due process and fulfilled the desire of National Socialist authorities for pronouncing harsh sentences rapidly.”2
Moreover, unlike in the contemporary American criminal justice system, a death sentence meant a life measured in a matter of hours or, at most, days. There would be no long stays on death row, for years or even decades, while appeals worked their way through the court system.
The attorney general at the Court of Justice, as the prosecutor at the Special Court, indicted Paul Ogorzow on July 23, 1941. The prosecutor for the case would be Deputy Prosecutor Neumann. The prosecutor indicted Ogorzow for crimes “in Berlin in the years 1939 to 1941 by 14 independent acts in serious acts of violence, namely, eight murders and six attempted murders by dangerous means.”3 The specific charges were from “§ 1 of the regulation against violent criminals from 5 December 1939 in connection with § 211, 43, 73, 74 of the Criminal Code.”4
In a press statement released by the chief of police in Berlin on the same day as this indictment, the police explained why Ogorzow was only being tried for these fourteen crimes and not for any of the many sexual assaults and other crimes he’d committed in the garden area near the Karlshorst S-Bahn station before he started attacking women on the S-Bahn.
A Serial Killer in Nazi Berlin Page 20
