EVIL PSYCHOPATHS (True Crime) by Gordon Kerr Read Free Book Online Page B

and, indeed, most of his friends and advisors ended up dead.
    It has been said that he probably suffered from syphilis. One treatment for the disease was the ingestion of mercury and it is known that he kept that metal bubbling away in a cauldron in his bedroom. A later exhumation of his body confirmed signs of syphilis and provided evidence of mercury poisoning.
    Towards the end of his life, he had to be carried everywhere on a litter. He was in a terrible condition – he became obese, his skin peeled and flaked and a terrible smell emanated from his body.
    In 1584, this tyrant who had done so many terrible things in his life, fainted and died during a quiet game of chess. Russia breathed a sigh of relief.

Peter Stubbe

     
    Towards the end of the 16th century, there appears to have been an outbreak of strange hysteria in parts of Germany, at that time a collection of small states and principalities, unlike the homogenous country we know today. Shape shifters – people who could transform themselves into creatures – were believed to stalk the countryside, tearing people and cattle limb from limb, sucking the very blood out of them. Even as late as 1794, a creature, known as the Beast of Gevaudon – a vicious wolf-like creature that could walk on two legs – was said to be attacking women and children and created a widespread panic in France that lasted for three years.
    Peter Stubbe was born around 1549 – the date is uncertain as the local church registers were destroyed during the Thirty Years’ War – and lived his life in the town of Bedburg, in the Electorate of Cologne. He became a wealthy farmer and an upright member of the community. By the 1850s, he was a widower who lived with his two children, a girl of fifteen, named Beele, and a son whose age is unknown. He is said to have enjoyed a relationship with a distant relative, Katharina Trump.
    He is also believed to have been a serial killer, cannibal and practitioner of incest who had practiced black magic since the age of twelve.
    However, some commentators think that he may have been no more than the victim of the religious upheaval that Germany and much of Europe was experiencing at the time. Since Martin Luther had nailed his ninety-five Theses to the doors of the Castle Church at Wittenberg in 1517, announcing the birth of Protestantism, Germany had been a hotbed of debate about the new approach to religion. Sometimes that debate erupted into violence. The period during which the majority of Peter Stubbe’s heinous acts were carried out was a period of internal religious warfare in the Cologne Electorate. Archbishop Gebhard Truchess had attempted to introduce Protestantism and failed. He had been supported in this by Adolf Count of Heuenahr von Waldburg, the Lord of Bedburg. There were invasions by armies from each side and these were followed by an outbreak of plague. Some say that in this time of violence and madness an example was possibly made of Peter Stubbe because he was a Protestant.
    In 1857, the castle at Bedburg had been taken by the Catholic mercenaries who were commanded by Bedburg’s new lord, Werner, Count of Salm-Reifferscheidt-Dyck and he was determined to re-establish the Catholic faith in the area. Thus, the capture of Peter Stubbe and the ensuing trial may have been no more than a political trial, with trumped-up charges that were designed to persuade the Protestants in the town to return to the Catholic faith.
    Of course, through the centuries others have believed what reports from the time suggest – that Stubbe actually did a deal with the devil and was a werewolf.
    In a twenty-five year period, from 1564 to 1589, he is said to have murdered thirteen or fourteen children and two pregnant women. For years children disappeared and limbs and body parts would be found scattered all over the fields surrounding the town because not only did he kill his victims, he is also said to have raped them and to have eaten their hearts