JURGEN BARTSCH

Jürgen Bartsch (November 6, 1946 in Essen – April 28, 1976 in Eickelborn; original name Karl-Heinz Sadrozinski)

was a German serial killer who murdered four children and attempted to kill another.

Bartsch was born Karl-Heinz Sadrozinski in 1946 as an illegitimate child in Essen. His birth mother died of tuberculosis soon afterward, and he spent the first months of his life being cared for by nurses, until at 11 months he was adopted by a butcher and his wife in Langenberg (today Velbert-Langenberg). From then on he was called Jürgen Bartsch. Bartsch's adoptive mother, who suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder, was fixated on cleanliness. He was not permitted to play with other children, lest he became dirty. This continued into adulthood; his mother personally bathed him until he was 19. At the age of 10, Bartsch entered school. Because, in his parents' opinion, it was not sufficiently strict, he was moved to a Catholic boarding school.

Bartsch began killing at the age of fifteen. His first victim was Klaus Jung who was murdered in 1961. His next victim was Peter Fuchs who was killed four years later in 1965. He persuaded all of his victims to accompany him into an abandoned air-raid shelter, where he forced them to undress and then sexually abused them. He dismembered his first four victims. His intended fifth victim, 11-year-old Peter Freese, however, escaped by burning through his bindings with a candle that Bartsch had left burning after leaving the shelter. Bartsch was arrested in 1966.

Upon arrest, Bartsch openly confessed to his crimes. He was sentenced to life imprisonment on December 15, 1967, by the Wuppertal regional court (Landgericht Wuppertal). Initially, the sentence was upheld on appeal. However, in 1971, the Federal Court of Justice of Germany, returned the case to the Landgericht Düsseldorf, which reduced the sentence to 10 years of juvenile detention and had Bartsch placed under psychiatric care in Eickelborn. There, he married Gisela Deike of Hanover on February 15, 1973.

The forensic psychiatrists considered various therapy concepts: psychotherapy, castration and even psychosurgery. Bartsch initially refused any surgery but finally agreed to voluntary castration on April 28, 1976 in order to avoid lifetime incarceration in a mental hospital. This was about ten years after incarceration, two years after his marriage, and after his depressive condition did not improve. The doctors of Eickelborn State Hospital chose a castration methodology that accidentally resulted in Bartsch's death. An official autopsy and investigation determined that Bartsch had been intoxicated with a Halothane overdose (factor 10) by an insufficiently trained nurse.

Film and literature

The 2002 film Ein Leben lang kurze Hosen tragen (released in the U.S. in 2004, as The Child I Never Was) depicts Bartsch's life and crimes.

Bethlehem's bassist and main songwriter uses the name Jürgen Bartsch.