Frank Gust

Frank Gust (born May 24, 1969 in Oberhausen ) is a German serial killer who was sentenced to life imprisonment with subsequent preventive detention and who committed his acts in the mid-1990s. The then still unknown serial killer became known in the media as the Rhein-Ruhr-Ripper .

development

childhood

Gust belongs to the type of sexual sadists among serial killers. At the age of eight he already showed a pronounced tendency towards cruelty to animals . When Gust was nine years old, he bought a guinea pig from a classmate, but he was not allowed to keep it because his stepfather was allergic to animal hair. At the behest of his grandmother, he was supposed to kill the animal. He tied it to sticks rammed into the ground with bast and tried to kill the immobile animal with a concrete slab. However, the concrete slab hit the guinea pig's body rather than its head, causing its entrails to bulge out. This sight gave Gust great pleasure and he began to dig with his hands in the guinea pig's belly cavity. In doing so, [Gust] “felt the bowels” of the killed animal, “liked the feeling, the warmth when he put his hands into the abdominal cavity.” Gust later described this formative event, which was experienced with great intensity, as a kind of “key experience”.

Puberty and adolescence

In order to feel the pleasure he felt at the sight of the dying guinea pig again, Gust repeatedly tortured and killed rabbits that he stole in the neighborhood. With the onset of puberty, this pleasure increased and he began to masturbate at the sight of the tortured animals, so that the sex drive, sadism and violence began to combine ominously with one another. At the age of 13 Gust tried to satisfy his necrophilic tendency by breaking into morgues and sexual acts on the corpses kept there, which he slit open for this purpose. However, since the bodies had already cooled, he did not get the satisfaction he had hoped for. At this point his fantasies also revolved around killing horses, but Gust only put this idea into practice at the age of 24. After his arrest, Gust reported that his "greatest wish" was "to touch the beating heart of a dying woman".

Similar acts also show the biographies of other sadistically motivated serial offenders. From forensic this slowly increasing violent behavior is regarded as a typical "try phase" of serial killers, which later is used as in the case Gust of this in humans.

Serial murders

Between 1994 and 1998, Frank Gust murdered at least four women. His first victim in 1994 was a 28-year-old South African hitchhiker named Katherine Th. In 1996 and 1998 he killed two prostitutes (Svenja D. and Sandra from W.) aged 30 and 26, whom he picked up at Essen Central Station . His allegedly last victim, Gerlinde N., was his 47-year-old aunt by marriage.

The name "Rhein-Ruhr-Ripper" was given to him by the tabloid media because his acts were mainly committed in the Rhine-Ruhr area and these parallels with the murders of Jack the Ripper showed. Frank Gust usually placed the corpses of his severely mutilated and partly gutted victims in easily visible places so that they were found immediately after the crime. Only his aunt's body was missing.

Clarification of the deeds and judgment

In 1999 Frank Gust indicated to his mother that he had committed a murder. She shocked a friend who told the police about the serial killer. Gust was arrested a short time later. However, he revoked the admission. It was only found through research by an editor of file number XY and through DNA traces. In his subsequent confession, he insisted that his wife be present.

On September 21, 2000, he was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Duisburg jury court for fourfold murders . This was linked to the requirement to face therapy . Gust had previously been certified as having limited liability . He started his sentence in a forensic detention center immediately after the verdict. After just six months, he stopped the therapy and allowed himself to be transferred to the normal prison. He justified the termination by stating that he could not be treated and expressed the wish to be kept until his death, since in freedom he would be a permanent danger to others.

Medial aftermath

The Frank Gust case has been discussed in various documentaries. 2001 in the 37 ° broadcast of ZDF Die Hölle in mir , later in the three-part documentary The Mask of Evil . It was also featured in the documentary Das Böse next door, which was first broadcast on VOX in 2010 - when people are treated as beasts . In October of the same year his mother Dagmar Eichhorn was a guest on the ZDF talk show Markus Lanz . On April 24, 2012, his mother appeared in the show People at Maischberger - Greed, Hate, Jealousy: Can Everyone Become a Murderer? on. Dagmar Eichhorn was also dealt with in the 37 ° episode My Son, the Murderer - Parents Between Love and Horror on April 2, 2013 on ZDF. In the documentary Jack the Ripper - What really happened on the station Sat.1 on November 29, 2016, parallels were drawn between Gust and the deeds of Jack the Ripper . In a special edition of file number XY on November 28, 2018, the crime was explained again, with the criminal psychologist Lydia Benecke responding to the perpetrator as an invited expert.

literature

• K. Engler / H. Ensink: The "Rhine-Ruhr Ripper". Report on highlights, frustration, coincidences and forced luck in 17 months of investigative work up to the conviction of the serial perpetrator Frank Gust . In: Der Kriminalist (born 2000), pp. 491–498; ibid. (2001), pp. 17-22 and 67-71.
• Petra Klages: The Rhine-Ruhr Ripper Frank Gust: Interviews. Kirchschlager, Arnstadt 2017, ISBN 978-3-934277-71-7 .

Web links

• Hauke ​​Goos: A useful killer . Der Spiegel from August 22, 2005.
• Monster or human . Spiegel TV , specialty program about Frank Gust.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Philip Eppelsheim: Security Custody: The Bad Wolf (Part 5). Frankfurter Allgemeine , July 11, 2011, accessed November 15, 2014 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Philip Eppelsheim: Safekeeping: The bad wolf (part 4). Frankfurter Allgemeine , July 11, 2011, accessed November 15, 2014 . 
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Hauke ​​Goos: A useful killer. Spiegel Online , August 22, 2005, accessed November 16, 2014 . 
4. ↑ Video broadcast by Markus Lanz: “Das Böse im Menschen” (October 5, 2010, 76 minutes)  in the ZDFmediathek , accessed on January 26, 2014. (offline)
5. ↑ The Investigative Odyssey. The "Frank Gust" case. zdf.de from November 28, 2018.
6. ↑ File number XY ... solved! zdf.de from November 28, 2018, video from 30:57. Available until January 6, 2019.