DEATH SENTENCE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 95, 23 April 1931, Page 7

DEATH SENTENCE.

Dusseldorf Murderer to be Executed. NINE SEPARATE COUNTS. (Received 10.30 a.m.) DUSSELDORF, April 22. Peter Kuerten, whose confessions of murderous attacks on women and children over a period of 2-3-years have aroused a wave of revulsion throughout Germany, has been sentenced to death on nine separate charges of murder.

Kuerten was also sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment on four charges of attempted murder. He heard the sentences unmoved. The death sentence ie usually commuted.

The Government will consult with the president of the Court, and if the sentence is not commuted Kuerten will be guillotined. The condemned man begged for forgiveness of his victims' relatives.

The president stated that the evidence had proved that Kuerten was not insane but had murdered deliberately and consciouslv.

DRANK BLOOD.

MURDERER'S GHASTLY TALE,

DUSSELDORF, April 19.

Further gruesome details were revealed at the trial of Peter Kuerten, alleged to to be the "Dusseldorf murderer."

When he was 16 years of age, he told the Court, he haunted the chamber of horrors in waxworks, and became obsessed with the idea that he would figure there.

Describing his crimes, he insisted that they gave him remarkable happiness, and a consciousness of beauty. His horrible blood-drinking habits, he said, began with the murder of Rosa Ohlieer, in 1929.

An interesting feature of the case is that Kuerten always praises the people who have been witnesses against him. He paid a tribute to the loyalty and trust of his wife who, he said, was a wonderful woman, and accepted his explanations of bloodstains and his nocturnal absences.

Relating his prison experiences, Kuerten declared that lie had been punished for disciplinary offences 40 times, thus arousing feelings of hatred and lust, and a passion for murder.