Axel Petermann

Axel Petermann (born October 6, 1952 in Bremen ) is a German criminalist , profiler and author .

Life

Axel Petermann originally only went into the police service for a limited period as a substitute for military service. A criminology lecturer, however, aroused his interest in crime solving, so that he aspired to use the criminal police . He completed his training with the police in Bremen and was a member of the criminal police from 1975 to 2014. After training as a commissioner , he was head of the homicide squad and deputy head of the violent crime commissariat. Until 1999 he worked on a large number of cases of unnatural death or led investigations into homicides .

From 1999, Axel Petermann dealt with the FBI methods of profiling and began to set up the operational case analysis department , of which he was head until his retirement in 2014. He represented the interdisciplinary criminalistic approach of profiling, according to which the key to the clarification of a homicide offense is to be found through the interpretation of the traces at the crime scene and the analysis of the victim's personality. Since the selection of the victim and the traces of the crime scene are based on the perpetrator's decisions, the motive for the crime becomes clear and allows conclusions to be drawn about his profile.

Petermann has been a consultant to various crime scene productions since 2001 (including Bremen, Frankfurt, Leipzig, Münster) and supported well-known authors such as Thea Dorn and Nele Neuhaus with criminalistic considerations in their publications. He also taught as a lecturer in criminology at various universities in Bremen and Mittweida. In 2005 he was a co-founder of the iFF. - Interdisciplinary forum forensics, an association of experts to promote communication between forensic sciences and practice, as well as to interpret perpetrator behavior. Axel Petermann also published scientific literature at the iFF conferences. He is a member of the Syndicate group of authors .

His on true based cases Books On the trail of evil , in the face of evil , and the profiler came up with the mirror - bestseller list and established there for many weeks.

In 2015, his cases from his first work On the Trail of Evil served as a template for a production in the Bremen Criminal Theater . Four episodes from his books served as templates for Tatort film adaptations by Hessischer Rundfunk with Nina Kunzendorf and Joachim Król .

Since 2016 he has been the moderator and case analyst of the program Autopsy - The Profiler , a spin-off on Autopsy - Mysterious Deaths . In 2017 he began as a moderator together with the psychologist Katinka Keckeis in the ZDF info series Aufklärt to discuss spectacular crimes of the post-war period. He also appeared as the protagonist of the RTL series Grab the money . He is a forensic expert advisor to various documentary and news programs from public and private radio and television companies. He also regularly writes comments for national print media. He also had appearances on various talk shows.

With his work The Elements of Death , Axel Petermann first created a true crime thriller together with co-author and novelist Claus Cornelius Fischer at the beginning of October 2018 . The case was then also known as "The Furnace Murderer". The fictional detective chief inspector Kiefer Larsen acts as the investigator and uses profiling methods to solve the series of murders.

On October 1, 2019, the follow-up volume of the series was published around the investigating commissioner Kiefer Larsen and also based on a true story in which a serial killer kills several prostitutes and draws so-called fantasy diagrams about his feelings about the crimes.

Petermann has three sons with his wife Anna and lives near Bremen.

Publications

• with Luise Greuel: power, fantasy, violence (?): perpetrator fantasies and perpetrator behavior in cases of (sexual) violence. Pabst, Berlin et al. 2006, ISBN 3-89967-286-0 .
• with Luise Greuel (Ed.): Power - Proximity - Violence (?): (Sexual) violent and homicidal offenses in the social environment. Pabst, Berlin et al. 2007, ISBN 978-3-89967-345-6 .
• with Luise Greuel (ed.): Power - Family - Violence (?): Intervention and prevention of (sexual) violence in close social areas. Pabst, Berlin et al. 2009, ISBN 978-3-89967-454-5 .
• with Lothar Strüh: On the trail of evil. A profiler reports. Ullstein, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-548-37325-6 .
• In the face of evil. Unusual case reports from a profiler. Kindler, Reinbek 2012, ISBN 978-3-463-40610-7 .
• with Dietmar Wunder: On the trail of evil. 4 CDs (= Vox Crime Edition). Audio Media, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-86804-627-4 .
• The Profiler - An unsolved homicide specialist reports. Heyne Verlag, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-453-60359-2 .
• with Claus Cornelius Fischer : The Elements of Death - True Crime Thriller. Droemer Knaur, Munich 2018, ISBN 978-3-426-52313-1 .
• with Claus Cornelius Fischer : The Diagrams of Death - True Crime Thriller. Droemer Knaur, Munich 2019, Droemer Knaur, ISBN 978-3-426-52468-8

Filmography

• 2011: The dead on the night train ( crime scene )
• 2012: It's Bad (Tatort)
• 2012: In the name of the father (crime scene)
• 2013: Whoever breaks the silence (crime scene), based on What Happened in Cell 26?
• 2016: Autopsy - The Profiler

Web links

• Official website of Axel Petermann
• Literature by and about Axel Petermann in the catalog of the German National Library
• Axel Petermann in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Carola Padtberg: It's about murder : In: Zeit Online ( Die Zeit , No. 26), June 23, 2005
• Hans Hütt : The Profiler Axel Petermann - He works on the trail . In: FAZ.net , April 22, 2012

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Julia Schaaf: The dead and the commissioner. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. March 11, 2012, p. 67.
2. ↑ Axel Petermann: How do you develop understanding for a murderer? In: Deutschlandfunkkultur.de. June 26, 2014, accessed November 14, 2018 . 
3. ↑ Author profile of Axel Petermann ( memento from November 14, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) on the Syndicate Association's website.
4. ↑ Petermann premiere: "On the trail of evil" in the Bremen crime theater: Relentless and exciting. Kreiszeitung.de of February 21, 2016 ; accessed on July 26, 2019
5. ^ Profile of Axel Petermann on the website of the program Autopsy - Der Profiler .