The Monster of the Lower Rhine

A brutal serial killer whose trademark was to cut off his victims’ penises with a sharp knife wreaked havoc in the Rhineland from 1974 to 1983, earning him the nickname “The Monster of the Lower Rhine” from the media. During this period, six innocent people fell victim to the Monster of the Lower Rhine. For a long time, the police were completely in the dark as to the identity of the brutal serial killer, for whose murders two innocent people were even convicted by the court. After the dismembered body of 13-year-old Andrew Robinson, the son of a British officer in the Rhine Army, was found in an abandoned house in the town of Willich in the fall of 1978, the case was even featured on the TV show “Aktenzeichen XY … ungelöst” (File Number XY … Unsolved) on June 1, 1979. However, no leads to the perpetrator were found. Years passed until, in February 1984, a forester found a skeleton in a forest not far from Mönchengladbach. He alerted the police. The remains were those of 22-year-old Willy F., a patient from the Süchtelen psychiatric hospital. When investigator Hennes Jöris inquired about the dead patient at the clinic, he received a crucial tip from a nurse that led him to the monster of the Lower Rhine. After Willy’s disappearance, a fellow patient had claimed that he was dead. The investigator drove to Willy’s former fellow patient. This was Kurt-Friedhelm Steinwegs, whom he took to the police station for questioning. During the interrogation, he voluntarily confessed to being responsible for the six murders. Kurt-Friedhelm Steinwegs was the fifth of eight children, born on December 5, 1960, in Viersen. His father kept his head above water with odd jobs. His mother died when he was 10 years old. From then on, his father took care of the children. At the age of 14, Kurt-Friedhelm was sent to a youth center in Gifhorn. During this time, Kurt-Friedhelm committed his first murder. He killed 59-year-old Ernst Dorf with a stone, but this only came to light later. In October 1976, Kurt-Friedhelm was sent to a therapeutic education facility in Burglengenfeld, Bavaria. He left this facility after three years. In July 1972, he returned to live with his father in Willich, where he killed 13-year-old Andrew Robinson. However, no one even suspected Kurt-Friedhelm, who was admitted to the State Psychiatric Clinic in Viersen shortly afterwards due to his mental state, where he committed four more murders, which were only discovered later. After Kurt-Friedhelm confessed, he recanted his confession. However, the burden of proof was simply overwhelming, which is why Kurt-Friedhelm Steinwegs, who lived in his own fantasy world, was sentenced by the Mönchengladbach Regional Court to 10 years in juvenile detention, followed by preventive detention in a psychiatric clinic. He was acquitted in two cases because he was not criminally responsible at the time of the crimes due to his “mental retardation.” Kurt-Friedhelm Steinwegs remains in the forensic psychiatric clinic in Bedburg-Hau to this day.