All language subtitles for 36a9923f14fb4ecea2fd3ac4ce86b5da_track3_eng

[man] heil hitler!

Sieg heil!

[crowd] heil!

[man] sieg heil!

[crowd] heil!

[man] sieg heil!

-[tense music]
-[train rumbles]

[train station announcer
speaks in foreign language]

[man speaks in foreign language]

-Sieg heil!
-[train horn blares]

Sieg heil!

-[train clattering]
-[ominous music]

-[man grunts]
-[woman gasps]

-[object thudding]
-[women groaning]

[woman speaks in
foreign language]

-[object thudding]
-[women groans]

-Sieg heil!
-[train clattering]

[suspenseful music]

[narrator] step back in time.

Discover a place.

Investigate a crime.

And reveal

A "murderous history."

-[tense pensive music]
-[train whirring]

[alexandra richie]
my name is alexandra richie.

I'm a professor of history
at the collegium civitas

University in warsaw, poland.

Berlin's a city I've
lived and worked in,

I feel a great
connection to it.

It's the capital of germany.

It's an economic powerhouse.
It's full of glamour.

It's a very exciting and
amazing capital city.

But the city has a dark past.

[crowd cheering]

[richie] this is the story

Of how the nazis twisted reign

Allowed a serial killer
to flourish in wartime berlin.

At the heart of berlin
is this massive

Over ground rail system
called the s-bahn.

It's over 200 miles long

And spans the entire city
like a giant spider web

And it's transported
berliners all over the city

Since the 1920's.

Today, berlin is an
extremely safe city.

I wouldn't think twice
about getting on the s-bahn,

Even very late at night.

In the 1920's,

It was a very different story.

After world war I,
germany was in turmoil

And berlin became
a very violent place.

[crowds yelling]

The whole society
has really collapsed

And been turned on its head,

It's racked with poverty
and rampant inflation.

You have a revolution,
you have the nazis emerging,

Fighting against the communists

And all sorts of street
violence is going on.

-[ominous music]
-[crowds yelling]

[man] sieg heil!

[narrator]
once hitler is in power,

He continues to use violence

To keep the nation
under control.

He blames foreigners,
jews, and communists

For the downfall
of the country.

Hitler uses his uniformed
mob of brownshirts

To viciously attack
these people, their property,

And anything that dares
oppose nazi ideology.

The brownshirts were the
original nazi stormtroopers

And they were
established initially

As a sort of personal
bodyguard for hitler.

They used to take on the nazi's

Political opponents
on the streets

And later graduated into
the original nazi boot boys.

[crowd chants in
foreign language]

[man] sieg heil!

[crowd] heil!

[richie] of course,
once the nazis have taken power

They wanna show that this
violence is in the past.

They wanted to
create this veneer

Of the perfect german society,
of safety and of conformity.

[suspenseful music]

But in the 1940's
world war ii is underway,

Eight murders had taken
place and dozens of attacks.

And this is about to
threaten the nazis' image

Of a perfect crimeless society.

[train rattling]

[tense music]

[birds crowing]

[richie] in the early morning
of the 21st of September,

A 29-year-old woman,
confused and in pain,

Wakes up on the side
of the s-bahn tracks.

Gerda kargoll had been
traveling on the s-bahn

The night before.

-[gerda screaming]
-[ominous music]

She vaguely remembered
somebody trying to strangle her

And then she found herself
being thrown off the train

Out onto some sand at
the side of the s-bahn tracks.

[birds crowing]

A passerby finds her
and calls the orpo,

The german order police,
to come and help.

The orpo, the ordnungspolizei,

Would deal with all, sort of,
everyday policing matters.

[ominous music]

[narrator] under the nazis,

The orpo were part of a new
centralized police force,

Uniting all of germany's
law enforcement units.

They took on the role of
regular uniformed police,

Keeping order in nazi berlin.

[phone ringing]

[moorhouse] gerda kargoll is
duly interviewed by the orpo

Who don't take too
much notice of her.

They consider that
her predicament

Is most likely an accident.

It's most likely, perhaps the
result of a drunken night out.

[train rattling]

[richie] but then just two
months after

The gerda kargoll incident,

The police are listening
to a very disturbing report

By another young berlin
woman, elizabeth bendorf.

Elizabeth was so brutally
attacked on the s-bahn

She wasn't able to make
a report to the police

For eight days.

On the night of her attack,

She just finished working her
shift as a ticket salesperson.

[train rattling]

[dramatic music]

[moorhouse] women like
bendorf and kargoll

Where increasingly brought
into the german economy,

To make up for the
large number of men

Who had conscripted and
taken into the german army

To fight on the front
for adolf hitler.

[train bell ringing]

And that meant, of course,

That they are traveling
in and out of the city

Perhaps at times they
wouldn't necessarily

Have been doing so before.

So that opened them up

To a potential risk
from an attacker.

[tense music]

[richie] elizabeth bendorf
tells the police

That she was traveling
home on the s-bahn

From the friedrichshagen
station in eastern berlin.

But just as she
was about to board

The third-class compartment
a man beckoned to her

To come to the nicer
second-class compartment.

Elizabeth explains
to the police

That in this pitch darkness,

She sat very close
to this stranger

Who'd invited her there.

[train rattling]

[elizabeth gasps]

[elizabeth speaks
in foreign language]

-[object thudding]
-[elizabeth screaming]

She was struck many times in
the head and fell unconscious.

[elizabeth screaming]

She remembered somebody
pulling at her feet

And swinging her off the train.

And she woke up
dazed and baffled

At the side of
the s-bahn tracks.

The orpo start to compare this

To the gerda kargoll
attack a month earlier.

What they thought was
a drunken incident,

Starts to look more sinister

Because neither of the victims
were sexually assaulted

And neither of them
were robbed.

So why were they attacked?

The orpo come to the conclusion

That both cases sound
like attempted murder.

And this is far too big

For the ordinary
orpo police to handle.

And so the kriminalpolizei,
the criminal police department,

Is brought in to handle
this very serious case.

[narrator]
the kriminalpolizei or kripo,

Were plainclothes detectives.

They handled serious crime
like rape and murder.

They and the orpo
worked with the gestapo,

The secret political police.

By 1940, all three were
controlled by the ss,

The nazis paramilitary
state police.

The head of the kripo,
is detective wilhelm ludtke

Who is brought in
to investigate the case.

[suspenseful music]

[lars von lennep] ludtke was
one of the leading detectives

In germany of this time.

He was an old,
classic policeman.

He doesn't have a law degree
but he has much experience.

He was a detective. He wanted
to investigate crimes.

Ludtke was not a party member

And he was not a true believer
in the nazi ideology.

In spite of that, the nazis
needed experienced policemen

To solve crimes.

They cannot do it with
untrained party members.

They need real pros for
that and ludtke was a pro.

[richie]
but ludtke's reputation

As one of germany's
top investigators

Was about to be put
to the test.

[ominous music]

Just a month after
the bendorf case,

The bodies of two women are
found in the karlshorst area

Of eastern berlin.

Elfriede franke is discovered

On the railway tracks.

And irmgard frese on the street
close to the station.

[thunder crashing]

Frese is initially found alive

But dies a few hours
after her discovery.

[tense music]

The autopsies on
both those victims

Revealed that both of them
had died from fractured skulls.

But the second of those
victims, irmgard frese,

Had also been raped

And this was a new departure
in the investigation.

[richie] the autopsies show
that both women

Suffered similar attacks
to kargoll and bendorf,

The two women who'd
miraculously survived attacks

A month earlier.

These four attacks
are the latest

In what seems to be
a spate of violence

Taking place near what's
known as the garden colony,

Right next to the s-bahn.

-[traffic rumbles]
-[car horn blares]

[narrator]
garden colonies are small,

Single-family plots of land
in the middle of the city.

Today in berlin there
are approximately 71,000

Of these garden allotments.

[tense music]

[birds chirping]

But in the 1940's,

There were three times
that many.

As food became scarce,

Berliners would grow
their own produce

To feed their families.

Some 25,000 people lived
in these garden colonies

During the war.

[baby cooing]

[von lennep] the garden colony
don't have proper streets,

They only had pathways.

It was dark, it was lonely.

The garden colony was
the ideal field for attacks.

[suspenseful music]

[richie] the attacks in
the garden colony,

Around the s-bahn area,
and around the city

Seemed to have increased
since the blackout

Which was imposed in 1939.

[moorehouse] the blackout
was put into force

Right at the
beginning of the war

To try and prevent
the city falling victim

To too much aerial bombing.

[footsteps tapping]

The blackout has
a very profound effect.

The number of deaths
by accidents

-Goes through the roof.
-[car tires screeching]

[car thudding]

But also crime did spike

Noticeably during
the blackouts.

Over 30 attacks, both assaults
and sexual assaults

Had been reported in
the garden colony,

Since the beginning of the
blackout the previous year.

Also, a murder had been
committed in the same period,

So it was clear that there was

Some considerable
criminality going on.

[richie] violent crime is
still a problem in berlin.

But the nazi
propaganda machine,

Headed by joseph goebbels,

Wants to protect
the image of a pure,

Idyllic germany.

Goebbels ensures any
news of the murders

Is kept out of the press.

Detective ludtke

Is forced to conduct the
investigation in secret.

He decides to review
the case of gerda ditter,

A woman who was murdered
in the garden colony

On October 4th, 1940.

[ominous music]

[von lennep] gertrude ditter
lived in the garden colony

With her two children
in a wooden shack,

Her husband was in the army

So he was away most of the time

And she was found one
morning killed by a knife.

[richie] her husband,

Who was stationed in military
barracks near the city,

Was interrogated soon after
the body was discovered.

But he was let go because
he was able to prove

That he'd been in the barracks

During the time of the attack.

With no obvious connection

Between the two
garden colony attacks,

Ludtke expands his search.

A tenacious detective,

He's taking an analytical
approach to solving the crime.

He checked all the older
files about murder attempts,

About sexual crime attempts
and sexual crimes,

And they made a map.

And when they marked
the crime scenes

They found out that the
proximity to the s-bahn tracks

And to the railway
station rummelsburg,

That was the
connecting element.

[richie] what seemed
like random crimes

In a bad neighborhood,

Now appears to have a pattern.

So next, ludtke looks
at the method of attack

And realizes that
most of the victims

Have been hit on the head.

So he sends his detectives

To search the
second class carriage,

Where elizabeth bendorf
has been attacked.

And they find a crucial
piece of evidence.

[moorehouse]
police discovered

The length of
telephone cabling,

Which is a length of, probably
about 18 inches of lead cable

Which was used to hit
her over the head.

It would have been
very effective as a weapon.

[richie] they found a serial
number on the lead cable.

And it showed that
it had been installed

At the rummelsburg
railway station.

For police, this was
another piece of evidence

Clearly connecting the crimes
to the rummelsburg area.

Ludtke starts to believe
that the s-bahn killings

And garden colony killings

Have been carried out
by the same person.

That a serial killer
is stalking berlin.

[ominous music]

Rumors that a serial killer
is on the loose

Are spreading by word of mouth.

But propaganda
minister josef goebbels

Doesn't want the
story made public.

[moorehouse]
the nazi regime covered up

The crimes that were
occurring on the s-bahn,

It was considered,
for propaganda purposes,

A very difficult case
to publicize killings like this

Because it reflected very
badly on the regime itself.

And this hindered any sort of
public information campaign,

Any sort of dissemination
of greater awareness

Amongst berlin's women.

So this not only hampered
the police operation

But also meant more
women fell victim,

Ultimately,
to this perpetrator.

[tense music]

[richie] they do nothing
to warn berlin's women.

And in preparation for
attack from raf bombers,

Berlin remains under
blackout restrictions

Providing the killer
with the perfect cover

To commit more murders.

Meanwhile, detective ludtke
discovers a potential clue.

In surviving victim
bendorf's testimony,

She remembers that the
man is wearing a uniform,

But she was so dazed that
she can't remember what type.

And there are plenty
of possibilities

For different uniforms
in nazi berlin.

Ludtke is looking for
a wolf in wolf's clothing.

Detective ludtke needs to jog
elizabeth bendorf's memory.

So he decides to present her

With a number of different
types of uniforms

That both military
and civilians wore

In berlin at the time,

Each had a different
color and insignia.

Bendorf was asked,
"do you recognize the uniform?"

Bendorf remembers
that the uniform

Was not a party uniform,

It was not a policeman uniform,

It was not a
fire fighter's uniform.

She picked the
railway worker's uniform.

[ominous music]

This is the breakthrough
that ludtke needs,

He can now focus
the investigation

On railway workers who are
working in the rummelsburg area

And near the garden colony.

But this immediately puts
him in a difficult position

With the nazi regime, as all
railway workers were german

And some were even
nazi party members.

[crowd cheering]

It was considered that a german

Wouldn't be committing
such heinous crimes

As attacking german women
on berlin's railways.

[train clattering]

The thinking in 1940,

As regards who this possible
perpetrator could be,

Was very much influenced
by concepts of nazi justice.

Certain groups, foreigners,
and jews, particularly,

By definition, have a
predetermined propensity

Towards criminal activity.

And this meant that the
investigation into these crimes

Initially focused
on foreigners.

[narrator] in early 1941,

74,500 jews still
lived in berlin.

They are stripped
of their rights

And banned from public places.

The nazis have another
use for them, slave labor.

[man] sieg heil!

[narrator] hitler has
ordered berlin rebuilt

And rebranded as germania,

The supreme capital at the
heart of his new aryan empire.

[man] sieg heil!

[narrator] berlin's jews,
and thousands of prisoners

From the recent invasions
of eastern europe,

Are forced to work,

Building hitler's gleaming
new aryan capital.

[suspenseful music]

As news of the murder
spread across berlin,

Joseph goebbels,
the minister of propaganda,

Continues to keep the
story out of the press,

To protect the image of
the nazi's idyllic society.

[man] sieg heil!

If they'd managed to pin
the murders on a jew

I'm sure they would have
been widely publicized,

But if it was a german,

It would've been
counter to everything

That they were trying to
persuade the public to believe.

I mean, fighting a war,

You don't want your
civilian population

To think that they're being
attacked from within as well.

[richie] but ludtke was
a very good policeman

And he very quickly understood
that slave laborers

Weren't exactly free to go
on the s-bahn all the time.

And the jews in berlin
are traced and followed

And people are aware
of their whereabouts.

So ludtke dismisses
these racial prejudices

And starts to look
at all germans

Including nazi party members
as potential suspects.

[tense music]

Unable to ask the
public for information,

He looks for another way
to catch the killer.

Detective ludtke was
gathering evidence

From the crime scene,

Trying to create a psychological
picture of the killer.

He was using a technique
used since the mid-1920's

Called criminal profiling.

It's generally believed
that criminal profiling

Started with the fbi,
but, in fact,

It started in germany.

[vicky desai]
criminal profiling is a means

To try and collate data,

Any information from
crime investigations,

To derive an understanding
of the type of individual

That is committing
the offenses.

What are the
behavioral indicators?

What might be
psychological attributes

Associated with the perpetrator?

[narrator]
berlin law enforcement

Was advanced in criminology

And in the 1930's,
the term serial killer

Was coined here
by ernst gennat,

Director of the
berlin criminal police.

Ernst gennat set up the first
homicide task force in berlin

In the 1920's.

[dramatic music]

His techniques centered
around gathering data,

Collecting evidence
from the crime scene,

And using psychology

To better understand
the killer's motives.

[richie] ludtke worked
with gennat

And used his methods when
investigating this case.

He begins assembling the facts

And looking at it holistically.

[desai] detective ludtke is
hypothesizing that the offender

Is familiar with the area.

The offenses were happening in
pure pitch-black conditions.

So the blackout meant
that his identity

Couldn't be picked
up by the victims.

[ominous music]

What ludtke does know

Is this person is likely
to be a rail worker.

He uses a blunt object to
hit the women on the head.

He attacks mainly between
11 and 12 in the evening,

Indicating a
possible shift break.

He always attacks in
the second-class carriage,

On or near the s-bahn line.

And he's definitely taking
advantage of the blackout.

Ludtke also knows the
perpetrator preys on women.

[train station announcer
speaks in foreign language]

So he sets up a sting operation

In the killer's hunting ground.

[carriage door clunks]

[train horn blaring]

[gentle suspenseful music]

The kripo use male
kriminalpolizei officers,

Dressed in women's clothing,

To act as bait
for the attacker.

[von lennep] but this great plan
of the police was a failure

Because the policemen
disguised as women

Looks too tall maybe

And it was not dark
enough in the carriages.

[richie] so ludtke decides
to take a different tack.

He sends a lone undercover
kripo policewoman

To sit on the s-bahn in
a second-class compartment,

Hoping that she'll be able
to lure the killer to her.

-[tense music]
-[train rattling]

The officer becomes
aware of a man

Acting suspiciously near her.

She tells him
that she's a policewoman.

[moorehouse] he is spooked

And he manages to jump
from the train

And disappear into the night

Using the blackout
for his escape.

Though this operation to
catch the murderer failed,

It actually spurred him on
to a new spate of attacks.

Between the 22nd of December
and the 5th of January,

He murders three more
women in just 14 days,

Bringing the total
number now up to six.

The sudden escalation
in body count

Prompts propaganda
minister joseph goebbels

To react for the first time.

January 7th, a small
article is published

In berlin's 12 o'clock journal.

It says, "the s-bahn murders.

Who knows the criminal?"

[moorhouse] there is
the offer of a reward

Of 13,000 reichsmark
for any information offered

On the identity of
the perpetrator,

And this comes from
goebbels himself.

[richie] the regime
also offers a solution,

They decide to
send party members

Specifically the brownshirts

To chaperone women
traveling on the s-bahn.

-[tense music continues]
-[men laughing]

[moorhouse]
they are men from the street,

They are people who are very
often uneducated, uncultured.

They are side-lined by the ss
which is considered much more

Loyal to the nazi regime.

But still has large
numbers of personnel

And in a case like this one,

It was quite easy for the regime
to draft those numbers in

To act effectively as
auxiliary policemen.

[richie] ludtke's now
under extreme pressure

To stop these attacks.

Despite help from the regime,
the killings continue.

[ominous music]

On February 11th,
in the rummelsberg area,

Pregnant, 31-year-old,
johanna voigt, mother of three,

Is found dead.

Believing the killer must
be a german railway worker,

Ludtke responds by launching
the biggest operation yet.

[moorehouse] they have
a sweep bringing in

5,000 employees of the railway
to be interrogated

About shift patterns, alibis,
and about their workmates.

[suspenseful music]

[richie] the police activity
and the publicity

Seemed to spook the killer
and the attacks stop.

-[guns blasting]
-[tank rumbling]

[narrator] while the killer
has gone underground,

On June 22nd, 1941,

Hitler attacks the soviet union

With the largest invasion
force ever assembled

In the history of warfare.

[man] sieg heil!

[narrator]
the nazis seem invincible.

[pensive music]

It's been four months
since the last attack.

[ominous music]

[flies buzzing]

Another body is found
in the garden colony.

35-year-old frieda koziol.

The eighth victim
killed in eight months.

Like the others,
she's been hit on the head,

But she's also been raped.

But this attack produces
a very significant lead.

[tense music]

[von lennep]
when frieda koziol was murdered,

It was a rainy and wet night

And so they found
some footprints

Very close to her body.

And they could
follow the footprints

In the direction of
the railway tracks.

[richie] the police go in,
they take photographs,

They do a plaster cast
and they discover

That this is the sole of a shoe

With a very distinctive
tread pattern.

And they manage to trace it
to a very well-known

Shoe manufacturer
called salamander.

[von lennep] the footprint comes
from a sole of a working shoe

And working shoes
were on the ration

And you only received them
with a special ration card.

[crowd chattering]

[richie] because of the
rationing system at the time,

It's quite easy for the police
to go to all the shoe shops

And find out exactly
who purchased shoes

At a specific time
and from a specific shop.

Using these cards,
they have a set of names.

They narrow it down
to one person

Within walking distance
of the crime scene

In the garden area.

[von lennep]
his height was matching,

His working place was matching,

Many things were matching.

[richie]
the suspect, mr. Heimann,

Lives only 300 feet
from the crime scene,

And the police records show
that he has a conviction

For a previous sex offense.

So this looks very promising.

Then they confront him with
the evidence of the shoe

[dramatic music]

And this breaks him.

He confesses that he was
at the scene of the murder.

[tense pensive music]

[richie] heimann confesses to
seeing frieda koziol's dead body

But says that
he did not murder her.

On this particular evening,

He saw a woman
lying on the ground

And he went in
for a closer look.

But then he realized
she was dead

And he ran away in panic,

Knowing full well that
he was caught on the spot,

He would face
a severe punishment.

Even to commit
a minor criminal act

During the blackout
had severe consequences.

The nazi regime was very keen

To maintain order
on the home front.

In the first instance,

If you failed to blackout
sufficiently well

In wartime berlin,

You could even end up
in a concentration camp.

And any crime committed
under blackout conditions

Could be interpreted
as undermining the war effort

Which, potentially,
could bring the death penalty.

[richie] detectives search
heiman's house,

But fail to find anything
to connect him to the crimes.

He wasn't a rail worker,
he was a carpenter.

Ludtke realizes that heimann
is not the s-bahn killer.

[von lennep] in the end,
they discovered he had an alibi,

And they discovered
he was only a peeping tom,

He was walking around at
night in the garden area,

Spotting through the windows

And he hoped to see some women,
maybe, inside the shacks.

[suspenseful music]

This person was not
the right person.

So they had to
start over again.

[moorehouse] this was a very
difficult situation for ludtke

Because this was
an embarrassment

To the nazi regime.

It was something that
the regime would have felt

Was crucial that they
produce a perpetrator.

[von lennep]
ludtke, took the decision,

"okay, we go back
to the beginning,

Let's see what suspicions
we had in the last months."

And they found a couple of
people and they said, "okay,

Let's invite them again,
we will interrogate them again."

[richie] so they bring
the railway workers back in.

On July 10th, a week
after the last murder,

One of the workers
says something

That makes the police
really take notice.

[moorhouse] one employee
suggests that one of his

Fellow members of
berlin's railways

Is someone who disappears
while he's on duty.

And also this man is someone
who has many times before

Expressed rather
misogynistic sentiments,

Very prejudicial against women

And this is something
that naturally

Is of interest to ludtke.

[von lennep]
and the police asked him,

"okay, can you drop
the name of this person?"

And he said, "yeah, I don't
remember the name, right?

But I can look it
up in the duty book.

The name of my co-worker,

The suspicious person
is paul ogorzow.

He's living in a street,
there in karlshorst."

And the police checked
the address and they realized

His home is right next
to the s-bahn tracks

And it's very close
to rummelsburg

And the garden allotment area.

They had already interviewed
him as part of that sweep,

That interrogation of
5,000 railway personnel.

Ogorzow had initially been
dismissed by the investigators.

[richie] looking at his file,

Ludtke doesn't see
anything to suggest

That this is the serial
killer he's looking for.

But he knows he needs to bring
this man in for questioning.

-[tense music]
-[footsteps tapping]

[door clunking]

Ogorzow had been an
assistant signaler

On the s-bahn since 1938.

He was also a member
of the nazi party

And of the brownshirts.

He had even served as one
of goebbels' volunteers,

Protecting women on the trains.

[suspenseful music]

[moorhouse] ogorzow's excuse
for leaving work at odd times,

Which is what he was
accused of having done,

Was that he was
carrying out an affair

In the garden colony
with a local woman.

[von lennep]
they take his uniform

From his home in karlshorst

For a forensic examination.

Forensics was very
advanced in this time.

[liquid solution trickling]

They had modern techniques
of examination of fabrics.

And they checked
the uniform of ogorzow

For bloodstains using
the luminol test.

Invented by a very
famous german.

The luminol test
is a chemical test

That is when you
treat a fabric,

And there are invisible
bloodstains on it,

The bloodstains will
become visible in darkness

Because they're starting
a light blue glow.

And this is what they found
on ogorzow's uniform.

[moorhouse]
when ogorzow is questioned

About the presence
of that blood,

The excuse he gives
is that he and his wife

Had been having sex while
she was menstruating.

[von lennep] but it's
not explainable with that

Because the police understood

The pattern of the bloodstains.

It was spray bloodstains.

And this leads to the idea

That these bloodstains
come from hitting someone.

[richie] but in an era
before dna testing,

They can't prove who
the blood belongs to.

Ludtke can't be sure that he
has the man he's looking for.

He now knows the only way
he can convict orgorzow

Is to get him to confess
to the crimes.

[tense music]

On the 15th of July 1941,

Despite revisiting
the crime scene

And three days of
intense interrogation,

The criminal police still
don't have a confession.

Ogorzow requests to speak
to someone higher up,

The head of the
serious crime unit,

Believing that somebody
at the highest level

Would be able to help him,

Given the fact that
he was a nazi

And he was a member
of the brownshirts.

[moorhouse] the idea
that the serial killer

Who was responsible for
these killings in berlin

Could have been an ordinary
german and more than that,

A member of a nazi organization
like the brownshirts,

Was almost unthinkable
to the nazi authorities.

[richie] but ludtke
is certainly not gonna let

Party hierarchy get in the way

Of him solving
this horrific crime.

He has one more idea
that he hopes

Will trigger
a confession from the man

Who's using the city's s-bahn

To viciously murder
women in eastern berlin.

-[tense music]
-[door creaks]

Ludtke brings ogorzow
into a darkened room.

[door creaks]

[door clunking]

[light switch clicks]

[ominous music]

[people voices whispering]

These are the fractured skulls

Of some of the murder victims.

Ludtke showed the skulls
to ogorzow and said,

"you have killed these people.

Some months before

The skulls have been
human beings.

That's what you've done.
That's your work."

[richie] ludtke asks him what
he used to kill these women?

Finally, the cold-blooded
killer breaks.

Ogorzow blurts out that
he used a lead cable.

[lead cable thudding]

This is followed by
a full confession

To all eight murders
on the s-bahn

And in the garden colony.

Ogorzow knows
he's facing execution.

Even to commit a minor
criminal act during the blackout

Is grounds for execution
in nazi germany.

[suspenseful music]

In a desperate bid to avoid
the death penalty,

He uses his status
as a loyal nazi

To try and get him
off the hook.

He comes up with all sorts
of excuses for his actions.

He tried to use nazi prejudices
to his advantage

By blaming prostitutes

For the sexually transmitted
diseases he'd contracted.

And the other
thing was, he said,

"I was treated the wrong
way by a jewish doctor

And the jewish doctor,
he knew that I'm a party member.

I'm good party member".

And as a jewish doctor,
he wanted to harm me.

And he treated me bad
and this is the reason

Why, from time to time,
I need to go out

And have this feeling
I need to rape a woman."

Ludtke never believed
all his excuses.

They don't believe that

He was treated bad
by a jewish doctor.

[desai] orgozow was
part of the brownshirts,

It was their job
to bring about violence

And control weaker
members of society.

And it's highly
likely that ogorzow

Became desensitized
to using violence.

He liked to dominate
and take control.

The act of control
and dominance

Led him to feel more superior.

[door clunking]

Ludtke finally had his man.

But it took seven months
and eight murders.

[moorhouse] one key obstacle
the police faced

Was the racial blinkers

That they were obliged to wear.

They effectively had
dismissed the possibility

That the perpetrator could
be an ordinary german.

[richie] the censorship
imposed by the nazi regime

Also meant that
unsuspecting women

Continued to ride on
the s-bahn,

Allowing ogorzow
to continue to prey on them

During the blackout.

The nazi authorities
are relieved

That the murderer
has been caught

And goebbels
breaks his silence,

Writing in a very
prominent newspaper,

"the s-bahn murderer
has been caught."

[von lennep]
justice worked very quickly.

The war was going on so there
was no time for long trials.

The nazi party was not
interested having a killer

Or a gangster or a
criminal element in their rows.

This is why they recalled
his party membership

After the trial began.

On the 23rd of July 1941,

Paul ogorzow is found
guilty of eight murders

And six attempted murders.

[door clanking]

The nazi regime declares

Ogorzow as an enemy
of the people

And he's sentenced to death.

[ominous music]

12 days after his arrest and
just one day after his trial,

He is executed by guillotine.

[guillotine thuds]

[train whooshing]

Solving this case really
is the pinnacle

Of ludtke's career
and it makes him famous.

[von lennep] after he solved
this orgozow crime,

He was told, or forced maybe,

To join the nazi party.

And so, he joined
the nazi party,

And some months later,
he received his promotion

As a chief commissioner.

[dramatic music]

In 1941, many things changed
because nazis melting together

Of the gestapo and of
the kripo was very wide,

And many policemen had
to serve in the war areas.

[richie] in a bid to create
hitler's vision

Of a perfect society

And a superior aryan race,

Some of ludtke's
kripo detectives

Who worked on the
s-bahn murder case,

[guns blasting]

Became part of the
nazi's killing squads.

[gun blasting]

Some of them worked
in death camps

To implement
the final solution.

They were mass murderers
on a vast scale,

A terrible reminder
of the horrific crimes

Committed in the name
of the third reich.

[sirens blaring]

In the end, it was
a unique combination

Of nazi racial
ideology, censorship,

And the blackout
during wartime berlin

That enabled the brutal
s-bahn killer, ogorzow,

To claim so many victims.

[dramatic music continues]