Abstract
IN “Peter Kürten”, George Godwin has given us an account of one of the most horrible series of crimes in history. Peter Kürten, who was a sadist of the worst type, kept Düsseldorf in a state of terror. His record of crime went back to his childhood, when he pushed two boy friends off a raft on the river and drowned them. When tried, he was charged with ten murders and convicted of nine of them. The medico-legal experts came to the conclusion that the Düsseldorf 'monster' was suffering from no organic mental disease or from any functional mental disease, and was therefore responsible in law for his crimes.
Peter Kürten:
a Study in Sadism. By George Godwin. Pp. 60. (London: The Acorn Press, 1938.) 5s. net.
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Peter Kürten. Nature 141, 997 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/141997b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/141997b0