A Serial Killer in Nazi Berlin by Scott Andrew Selby

Author:Scott Andrew Selby [Selby, Scott Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-11-07T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Uniforms, Decoys in Drag, and Another Murder

Police Commissioner Wilhelm Lüdtke focused in on the attacker’s uniform. His men interviewed two women from the garden attacks who saw their assailant wearing a uniform, along with the women who had survived being attacked on the S-Bahn.

However, due to the darkness, the speed of the assaults, and the problems with eyewitness testimony generally, the police were not able to pinpoint who the attacker was from his uniform. For example, the two women who survived being thrown from the train said different things about what their attacker wore. One said that it was a blue uniform; the other said it was black. They both testified that he wore a hat pulled forward to partially conceal his facial features, but they could not agree on what kind of hat it was.

The police found this incredibly frustrating, as they desperately wanted to know more about their suspect. A basic fact like whether his uniform was blue or black could point the investigation in a totally different direction. The last thing the police wanted to do was interview thousands of people who had blue uniforms if the killer actually had a black uniform.

As much as the police wished it was otherwise, it was to be expected that there would be so little useful information that their witnesses could agree on. Eyewitness evidence can be problematic under the best of conditions, as people are nervous when they are victims of a violent crime, and the human mind generally does not retain as many useful details as we think it does. As such, it is not surprising that the police did not gain much useful information from those whom Paul Ogorzow attacked.

The police had a pool of five thousand active train workers whose uniforms could match their composite description. And this did not even include someone with a similar-looking uniform who did not work for the railroad, or someone who only impersonated a railroad employee, or a former railroad employee, for that matter. Checking out all these potential suspects and whether they had alibis for the times of the crimes would be a huge undertaking.

Besides, Nazi Germany was awash in different kinds of uniforms, many of them in dark colors that would look the same in blackout conditions.

If it was not an S-Bahn-related uniform, then the other main possibility the Kripo considered was that the uniform belonged to a member of the SS paramilitary organization. The SS had a number of uniform changes over the years, most notably going from all-black uniforms to a field-gray color.

If it was an SS uniform the assailant wore, then the accompanying hat was not part of it. Although it was dark, and witnesses had not seen much that could help the police, what they had noticed of the perpetrator’s headwear did not match an SS cap. The SS had a peaked cap with an eagle and an ominous-looking skull and crossbones insignia, known as a death’s head, on it.

The National Railroad hat Paul Ogorzow wore looked similar to many other German uniform caps during World War II.

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