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Joachim Kroll: The 'Ruhr Cannibal' Who Killed for 21 Years Unnoticed

Jun 16
3 min read

Updated: Jun 25

For more than two decades, a quiet lavatory attendant moved through the towns of Germany's industrial Ruhr region, known to neighbours as a harmless, simple man who gave sweets to children. In reality he was one of the most prolific killers in postwar German history. Joachim Kroll — the “Ruhr Cannibal” — murdered women and girls over twenty-one years and ate parts of his victims, all while drawing almost no suspicion.

This article looks at the deprivation that shaped him, his decades of undetected killing, the mundane plumbing problem that finally exposed him, and why his case still disturbs criminologists today.

Joachim Kroll: The 'Ruhr Cannibal' Who Killed for 21 Years Unnoticed

Key Facts at a Glance

Full name: Joachim Georg Kroll
Born: 17 April 1933, Hindenburg, Upper Silesia (then Germany)
Known as: The Ruhr Cannibal; the Duisburg Man-Eater
Active: 1955–1976, across the Ruhr region
Victims: Convicted of eight murders; confessed to around fourteen
Sentence: Nine life terms (1982); died in prison in 1991

Shaped by a Shattered Germany

Kroll was born in 1933, the youngest of eight children of a miner in what was then eastern Germany. He was a slow, withdrawn child — psychiatrists later assessed his IQ at around 76 — and his education barely progressed. After the Second World War his family resettled in the Ruhr, the dense industrial heartland of West Germany, where he eventually found work as a toilet attendant.

He began killing in 1955, around the time of his mother's death, and would continue, with long gaps, for the next twenty-one years.

Two Decades of Murder

Kroll's method was consistent and savage: he would strangle a victim, then mutilate the body, slicing away the fleshiest portions to take home and cook. He later told investigators, with chilling practicality, that he did this because meat was expensive. His victims were overwhelmingly women and young girls.

The span of the killings was extraordinary. Kroll’s confirmed and confessed victims ranged from the mid-1950s through to 1976, and included both grown women and very young children. He typically surprised victims and strangled them quickly before mutilating the bodies; psychiatric examination after his arrest described an emotionally stunted man with the maturity of a child but instincts centred on violence and possession.

Hidden Among Many

Several factors let Kroll evade capture for so long. He killed in scattered locations and rarely returned to the same place, so individual murders were not linked. The Ruhr was also home to other active killers during those years, which muddied investigations. Tragically, innocent men were suspected of crimes Kroll had committed; one, hounded over a murder he did not commit, took his own life.

Locally, Kroll was regarded as a simpleton rather than a threat — in Duisburg he was even treated as a kind of harmless “town idiot.” That underestimation was itself part of his camouflage: nobody imagined the gentle lavatory attendant who handed sweets to children could be the killer the region feared.

The Blocked Drain of 1976

Kroll's twenty-one-year run ended on 3 July 1976, after he abducted and killed four-year-old Marion Ketter. As police went door to door searching for the missing child, a neighbour in Kroll's apartment building mentioned that a shared lavatory was blocked — and that Kroll had said the obstruction was “guts.” Officers searching his flat found human remains, including a child's hand cooking on the stove.

Trial and Death

Kroll cooperated readily, apparently convinced he would be given a simple operation to cure his urges and then released. Instead he was charged with multiple murders. His trial lasted 151 days, and in April 1982 he was convicted of eight murders and one attempted murder and given nine life sentences. He died of a heart attack in Rheinbach prison in 1991, aged 58.

Why the Case Endures

The Kroll case is a study in how an ordinary, even pitiable exterior can mask sustained atrocity. His apparent emotional emptiness — confessing to murder as casually as reciting a shopping list — continues to trouble those who study him, and stands as a warning about how long violence can go unnoticed when the perpetrator seems harmless.