Joachim Georg Kroll (17 April 1933 – 1 July 1991) was a German serial killer, child molester, necrophile and cannibal who murdered a minimum of 8 women and young girls in the Ruhr metropolitan region from 1955 until his arrest on 3 July 1976. He was convicted of eight murders and one attempted murder, but confessed to a total of 14. He was sentenced to life imprisonment on 8 April 1982. Early life Born the son of a miner in Hindenburg (Zabrze), Upper Silesia, Kroll was the sixth of nine children. After the end of World War II, during which his father was a prisoner of war, Kroll's family moved to North Rhine-Westphalia. Crimes He began killing in 1955, after his mother died. Around 1960, Kroll went to Duisburg and found work as a toilet attendant for Mannesmann. Afterwards he worked for Thyssen Industries and moved to Friesenstrasse 24, Laar, a district of Duisburg. At that time he resumed killing people. List of victims 8 February 1955 – Irmgard Strehl, 19, raped and stabbed to death. Her disemboweled body was found in a barn in Lüdinghausen. 1956 – Erika Schuletter, 12, raped and strangled in Kirchhellen which is now part of Bottrop. 16 June 1959 – Klara Frieda Tesmer, 24, murdered in the meadows of the Rhine, near Rheinhausen. A mechanic, Heinrich Ott, was arrested for the crime. He hanged himself in jail. 26 July 1959 – Manuela Knodt, 16, raped and strangled in the City Park of Essen. Slices of flesh were carved from her buttocks and thighs. 23 April 1962 – Petra Giese, 13, raped and strangled in Dinslaken-Bruckhausen. Vinzenz Kuehn was arrested and convicted. 4 June 1962 – Monika Tafel, 12, killed in Walsum, slices of flesh carved from her buttocks. Walter Quicker was arrested for the crime. He was later released, but was driven by neighbors to suicide in October. 3 September 1962 – Barbara Bruder, 12, abducted in Burscheid. Her body was never found. 22 August 1965 – Hermann Schmitz, 25, and his girlfriend Marion Veen were attacked as they sat in a car in a lover's lane in Duisburg-Großenbaum. Hermann—Kroll's only male victim—was killed, but Veen escaped. 13 September 1966 – Ursula Rohling, 20, strangled in Foersterbusch Park near Marl. Her boyfriend Adolf Schickel committed suicide after being falsely accused of the crime. 22 December 1966 – Ilona Harke, aged 5, raped and drowned