On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we talk about little known serial killer who did his thing during the reign of the Third Reich in Berlin. His name was Paul Ogorzow, and he was a Nazi serial killer. He started with sexual assault and rape, but like most serial killers he grew in desire and comfortability with his crimes. Eventually, he graduated to murder, and he had the perfect environment to do so. He committed his crimes during war-time black outs intended to keep bombing raids from finding targets. He also did it on a rail line that saw as many as 29 accidental deaths per month due to the dangers of the blackout.

There isn’t a whole lot known about his childhood. He was born to a single mother who was a farm worker during World War One. He was eventually adopted by a farmer named Ogorzow and moved near Berlin. As a young man, he joined the Nazi Party and eventually became a member of the its paramilitary branch called the SA. For some reason, he never went off to war, but he was instead hired to help run the metro trains through Berlin called the S-Bahn. He excelled at his job, and he rose in ranks in the SA. He married and had two kids and was living the Nazi dream.

But somewhere along the way, something broke in him. He started to use blackout conditions to scare and berate women who couldn’t identify him in the dark. Then he started to sexually assault them, and he eventually devolved to rape. With some of his rapes, he tried to kill either by bludgeon or knife or throwing them from moving trains. He left several victims for dead (which later caught up to him since they were eye witnesses). Eventually, he started to kill.

He killed a total of eight women, most of them on or around the S-Bahn train line where he worked.

Eventually, the head of Berlin’s homicide division (Wilhelm Lüdtke) started an investigation. But the blackouts made it hard as did media control. Goebbels wanted to keep morale high in Berlin. Therefore, the cops weren’t able to give any real info about the murders to people they questioned, and the media wasn’t allowed to print much of anything. This meant women traveled on the serial killer’s train line without fear.

So, what measures did Lüdtke take to try and capture him? What finally got him caught? What was his life like with his wife and kids through all of this? What went down at the trial, and what was the time between arrest and execution? Listen, laugh, learn.

 

Visit Our Sources:

https://killerpedia.com/serial-killers/paul-ogorzow/

https://www.ranker.com/list/paul-ogorzow-facts/cat-mcauliffe

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-serial-killer-in-nazi-berlin-the-chilling-true-story-of-the-s-bahn-murderer-b-y-scott-andrew-selby/2014/02/07/1fd0b510-69a6-11e3-ae56-22de072140a2_story.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ogorzow

https://www.macleans.ca/culture/books/a-serial-killer-in-nazi-berlin-the-chilling-true-story-of-the-s-bahn-murderer/

http://www.the13thfloor.tv/2016/07/18/the-horrific-true-story-of-nazi-germanys-s-bahn-killer/

Book: A Serial Killer in Berlin