[SPEAKER_02]: Warning, this episode contains details that some listeners may find disturbing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Directly after the first World War, women were known to disappear in and around Berlin.
[SPEAKER_02]: Over time, body parts were discovered in the waters of the Lucent Stat canal and the Engelbeck and Reservoir.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then in 1921,
[SPEAKER_02]: Screams were heard coming from local beggar and butcher Carl Grossman's apartment.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was not uncommon for such sounds to emanate from this one room flat in the slums of Berlin, but neighbors had had enough.
[SPEAKER_02]: Police were called and they busted in and they caught Grossman in the act of dismembering a woman's body.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there were signs that this was not his first
[SPEAKER_02]: This is a study of... strange.
[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to the show, I'm Michael May.
[SPEAKER_02]: And today I'm joined by Sarah Love it from True Crime ABC's podcast.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hi Sarah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hi!
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, thank you so much for being on you, uh, you probably know more about true crime than I do.
[SPEAKER_02]: I like strange stories, but you guys have really dived into a lot of stuff on your podcast.
[SPEAKER_02]: Can you tell the audience some, some info about true crime, maybe, seas?
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure, my best friend from childhood and I talk about all of the true cram things that kept us, you know, that occupied our fears as children.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I feel like it's like our coping mechanism, like if you're super afraid of something, you learn all about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, we're both like nerds for knowledge and it's just been a fun thing to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just imagine this like logo of nerds for knowledge, like flashing
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, the more you know, but nerds for knowledge.
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, I love your show when you guys have gone through the ABCs hints to the title of the podcast.
[SPEAKER_02]: What letter are you up to right now?
[SPEAKER_00]: So we recorded V last week.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: It goes up tomorrow.
[SPEAKER_00]: and what it was for vampire.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my god.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was always obsessed with Elizabeth Faltre, the blood count is late 1500s and Danny did a more modern Canadian story about
[SPEAKER_00]: a young girl who was preyed on upon by a not young guy and they claimed they were well he claimed he was aware wolf she claimed she was a vampire it was a big thing and they like march some familiar side occurred it was a wild ride
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, yeah, so everybody check out true crime ABCs.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a very good show.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it ties in nicely because I got a true crime slash murdery story to share today about Carl Grossman from the early 20th century in Germany.
[SPEAKER_02]: He was also known as the Berlin butcher.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a few other nicknames that came across too.
[SPEAKER_02]: But the Berlin butcher, I think, is the main one that he's often
[SPEAKER_00]: I am well aware that Carl Grossman is aptly named and trigger mourning if you like hot dogs people.
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: Or I guess it wouldn't be hot dogs in Germany.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is one of the things about my research.
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't like, it's like, he had a hot dog stand.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, I don't know exactly, he had like a real sausage stand, I'm sure, but it sounds like you feminism for something, but it's not.
[SPEAKER_02]: it's not it's not.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so we're going to dive into some Carl Grossman talk today.
[SPEAKER_02]: He was a serial killer as we've already mentioned.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's often thought of and referred to as him being a cannibal or serving human meat to patrons.
[SPEAKER_02]: Whether that was real or not, there's actually some debate and we'll discuss that throughout the episodes because there is a lot of
[SPEAKER_02]: not true facts about Carl Grossman floating around out there, which is my favorite thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's one of the reasons why I wanted to do this story.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and I think, too, with like old-timey stories, you fall into that wrong, too, of like, there was nothing else to do, so they were just put in wild stuff into the newspapers.
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, clickbait is a term we use now, but it's very true for back then too.
[SPEAKER_02]: They wanted the clickbait title.
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't click on it.
[SPEAKER_02]: You would pay money and get a newspaper for it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, a lot of that comes from back then and in nowadays my listeners have probably heard me talk about this way too much.
[SPEAKER_02]: but everything's at echo chamber.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you read an article about Carl Grossman and it says that he was a cannibal or served human meat, then you'll find another article that references the first article instead of like going back to real historical record or old newspapers of the time and it just becomes this cyclical thing of everybody confirming each other but no one's actually an expert on the on the subject.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, good old fashion confirmation bias.
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: So Carl Grossman was a German in the early 20th century.
[SPEAKER_02]: We refer to this era of Germany as the Vimar Republic.
[SPEAKER_02]: I found, I didn't know this until recently in this episode.
[SPEAKER_02]: That is actually a term that came about later because it's what Hitler would refer to Germany as from this era.
[SPEAKER_02]: They did not call themselves a Vimar Republic.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, lovely.
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of the story crosses over with World War One, and we'll discuss how the war torn country and the standard of living and how hard life was at the time may have contributed to some grizzly crimes from Mr. Carl Grossman.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the goal today, I just wanted to learn more about Grossman because I've read a little bit about him over the years and try to confirm or not confirm some information about the gentleman, although I shouldn't call him a gentleman because he's a terrible terrible person.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's an awful awful human.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: So who is Carl Grossman here?
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll give a little background on this guy.
[SPEAKER_02]: Carl Friedrich,ville him Grossman, was born on December 13th in 1863.
[SPEAKER_02]: in the German Empire, Grossman grew up in a time of significant industrial and social change in Germany, details about his early life are somewhat sparse, but it's known that he displayed disturbing behavior at a young age and may have had a lot of siblings.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've read like 10 siblings, 11 siblings, which honestly was not super uncommon for people born in 1863.
[SPEAKER_02]: By the time he was 20, he had his first known run-in with the law when he was arrested for pegging.
[SPEAKER_02]: When he was 23, he was arrested for a nude sexual act with a sheep.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, good for you, Carl.
[SPEAKER_02]: Good for you, Betty.
[SPEAKER_02]: And at 24, he sexually assaulted a 12-year-old girl, and it gets worse from there, ladies and gentlemen.
[SPEAKER_02]: Before he was 30, he had been convicted of crimes 25 times, and the last convictions sent him to prison for 15 years, and that was for two more sexual assaults of young children.
[SPEAKER_02]: With World War I began years later, the context of that were the state of Europe provided the perfect Petry dish of sorts for a serial criminal to become a serial killer.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't mean like he would eat a lot of cereals.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was killing that cereal.
[SPEAKER_02]: He would become a serial killer.
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you have any questions so far, Sarah?
[SPEAKER_02]: Anything I'm missing or questions?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if you're going to mention this later or if even you know it or if even it's noble but as far like so he got 15 years at one point did he serve that full 15 or I don't know how German jails but I assume it's not great.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now it can't be great.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: I actually couldn't find any corroborating evidence to find any information about any of his convictions.
[SPEAKER_02]: So how long he was in jail was he really convicted for 25 crimes?
[SPEAKER_02]: I actually can't confirm it is one of those it is commented on so many times including in some German media that I think since I'm closer to it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I do trust that he did go to prison and and those crimes he committed are very real.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just don't know for how long or anything like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think it was right around 1900.
[SPEAKER_02]: He went to prison for that conviction.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if he did service full time, he's getting out right when the first World War is commencing in Europe.
[SPEAKER_01]: Great.
[SPEAKER_02]: and that time period does kind of line up with everything else that we know because there are varying accounts about him being associated with the military during the First World War.
[SPEAKER_02]: One is that he was kicked out because he was so weird and gross that they're just like, we're like, no dude, get out of here.
[SPEAKER_02]: But the other account which I believe is that because of his criminal record, he wasn't actually allowed to join the military.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I do think during the war he did not fight.
[SPEAKER_02]: He was not on the front.
[SPEAKER_02]: He may have been associated with the military in some capacity, but he did not fight.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's kind of key for the story because around this time is apparently when he became a butcher by trade.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't know when he started his quote unquote hot dog stand that they talk about, but it's around this time that he's he's probably selling meat around Berlin and actually working as comfortable with knives comfortable with knives cutting meat.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and the butcher thing it had some pezzazz to this story, for reasons that are probably very evident that we will get into the more we go forward.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is important to note here that food during the war.
[SPEAKER_02]: it was rationed, as you would expect, and meat, especially, was really hard to come by during the war.
[SPEAKER_02]: The meat that was available, they'd want to use it for soldiers and protein and all that stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: So selling meat on a black market of sorts could become a lucrative business model for a butcher,
[SPEAKER_02]: and killing people and selling meat as a human meat, as a sausage or whatever, that's where that kind of comes into this story because it actually makes sense.
[SPEAKER_02]: Even though there's no evidence for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but it makes sense.
[SPEAKER_02]: It makes sense.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, it's unclear when exactly Carl Grossman moved to his apartment that he's famous for, but it was around the same period as World War I or during the end of it, but he lived in the slums of Berlin on Longa, Strasse.
[SPEAKER_02]: By the way, I will mispronounce everything.
[SPEAKER_02]: I do work at it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I still mispronounce everything, but I do try.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep, same.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so he lived on on longest rasa in a one-room apartment.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is near the Celestean train station.
[SPEAKER_02]: Again, I'm probably saying that terribly terribly wrong.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I mean, no offense by that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I will point this out.
[SPEAKER_02]: I found this out yesterday, because I was like, let me do my deep dive on these extraneous details that I like to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I'm super nerdy.
[SPEAKER_02]: That train station, if I have my information correct, I have been to this train station.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's got a different name now and it's been rebuilt and it looks nothing like it did back then you can find pictures of what it looked like back then.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's a train station I have been through in Germany about right before COVID, I think the year before COVID hit us all so.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, so I've been in this area.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's very different nowadays, and I love Berlin.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to go back.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's an amazing city.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, although he was a butcher by trade, I will say that after the war, he actually preferred to just beg.
[SPEAKER_02]: He was a beggar, and that's what he preferred to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: And even though you hear stories of him being a butcher during the time of his murders, and he's called the Berlin butcher, there's actually no evidence to say that he was still a butcher at the end of the war.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, maybe he was a beggar in search of a beggar is also a literative.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why didn't they just go here and beggar the Berlin beggar
[SPEAKER_02]: Butcher and Berlin beggar, you can combine them, even though it kind of ruins the whole point of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: What's interesting to me is that even though he was primarily begging, he was making enough money to pay his rent.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he was even known to loan money to his neighbors when they needed help covering rent.
[SPEAKER_02]: So he was doing it.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's no wonder he wanted to beg instead of butchering, because he seemed to be doing okay by it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, at this time as well, he was known to hang out at the train station and he would find women who were single, needed money, needed work, needed a place to stay and he would try to convince them to come work for him, be as housekeeper and in return they would have a place to live, sometimes he would offer them money, sometimes it was just a place to stay in some food, in part of this arrangement was that he also wanted sex with them as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he was known to bring a lot of women home.
[SPEAKER_02]: Neighbors and witnesses talk about this a lot.
[SPEAKER_02]: He would come home later.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which he would have been saying because he was not a good-looking fella.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a good point, Sarah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think everybody, if you're able to, if you're not like driving a car or something, I think Google, Carl Grossman, he is not a good looking dude.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think part of that goes into this backdrop of postwar Berlin.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like poverty and necessity for sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm sure he was, I'm sure he was not praying on wealthy put together looking whoop other people.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure he was looking for
[SPEAKER_00]: people who looks like they needed help.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, that's a gross car, all still gross.
[SPEAKER_02]: Still gross and if you think about that post-war thing, there are a lot of desperate people that need help.
[SPEAKER_02]: Some of these women may have lost their families, they don't have parents, I don't have brothers, they don't have sisters anymore, there's nowhere to work.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it is very real that this situation,
[SPEAKER_02]: It all really gave the perfect situation for a for a killer like Grossman to commit crimes Now neighbors as much as he did loan money to them He also would sometimes hang out at bars.
[SPEAKER_02]: He was a heavy drinker.
[SPEAKER_02]: He would sometimes hang out with his neighbors So he wasn't as much of a loner as some accounts may come out to be but his neighbors were quick to point out that the dude is weird Like they would tell cops as later.
[SPEAKER_02]: I like it strange guy.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was not my favorite guy
[SPEAKER_02]: he also I read this in only one article and I couldn't find more information about it but apparently because he would come home late and usually with different women he created a second entrance into his apartment and I couldn't find out what that meant like did he knock down a window and put in a door or did he just know how to like get in a window like he would just come in through a window instead of using the front door I don't know what exactly it means but apparently he would try to come in a different way to not disturb neighbors
[SPEAKER_00]: As a woman, I would assume it would have to be another door, because if somebody took me home and took me through a window, I'd be like, it's a no for me sir, and then I'd go home.
[SPEAKER_02]: But like, it's true, and I have, there are pictures of his apartment, but there's only two angles, so you can't see everything, so there could be a door or something.
[SPEAKER_02]: So around this time, the sort of the year to after the war,
[SPEAKER_02]: a number of women with missing in the area, which you can also say, hey, it's Berlin post-war of course that's missing women.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: But nowadays it's important to point to South because almost every article you read about Grossman is there's all these missing women because he killed them all.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no there's no reason to say that he killed all these women.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's just there's missing women and the theory is nowadays that he would bring all these women home that he'd made at the train station and you know they can be as housekeeper whatever and he would chop them up dump them in other into the water.
[SPEAKER_02]: The reason we think that that is a possibility.
[SPEAKER_02]: is it's a very real fact that there were women's pieces of bodies.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no good way to say.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm trying to find like a nice, I like what way to say.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's just, there's no nice way.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, there's body parts being found in the canals and the loosened stout canal and the reservoir.
[SPEAKER_02]: And one such missing woman, this is in October of 1920, 33-year-old free-to-shobert went missing.
[SPEAKER_02]: She had traveled to Berlin from Dresden in witnesses saw her propositioning men desperate, you know, for money.
[SPEAKER_02]: She's she's asking everybody to help her out.
[SPEAKER_02]: And she needed also a place to stay on between October 7th and 9th, 19th, 19th, 20th, same year, remains were found in loosens.com, canal, excuse me.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was later confirmed to be Frida Schubert.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so I'm going to have Sarah read something I wrote about Frida Schubert.
[SPEAKER_02]: Go for it when you're ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I got it, zoom in because these guys are old now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: On October 16th, the Berliner Morgan Post reported that the killer had saw through her bones with such brutality that her arm had been pulled from the shoulder and her heart had been pulled from her ribcage.
[SPEAKER_00]: As police investigated this horrific murder, a witness reported that they saw Frida with Carl Grossman the night she disappeared.
[SPEAKER_00]: Police hurried to question him and search his apartment.
[SPEAKER_00]: On October 21st, they searched his apartment and found Frida's handbag.
[SPEAKER_00]: Though this confirmed Grossman had interacted with Frida and invited her to his apartment, Grossman had an excuse for her handbag, Grossman had an excuse for her handbag being in his home.
[SPEAKER_00]: And without more evidence to prove otherwise, Grossman was let off the hook.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so we know Grossman killed her.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I think we can jump to that conclusion.
[SPEAKER_02]: it's so interesting to think that they, the police literally had him in their side, found the handbag in his apartment and just nothing happened with it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've read different accounts of what his excuse was.
[SPEAKER_02]: One was that she liked.
[SPEAKER_02]: She had to go so she like she came in to be my housekeeper and she was like late for something.
[SPEAKER_02]: So she just left and forgot about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd like listen to a podcast a long time ago about it and one of them was like He had he saw a woman drop it and we he was trying to be like the hero and try and find her to give it back.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, Carl, we definitely believe you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's a very believable person.
[SPEAKER_02]: Good for him.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it is weird to think about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that that also made me think about this.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's 1920.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is what 30 years after Jack the Ripper.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, because I was 1889.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think 18.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep, late 1880s.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's only about 30 years.
[SPEAKER_02]: You have the slums of Berlin post world war.
[SPEAKER_02]: life is not very different than white chapel and inject the ripers era.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, and if you think about slums of towns, it's even same in modern world.
[SPEAKER_02]: Please don't care.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I honestly think maybe one of the reasons they let them go is like he has an excuse.
[SPEAKER_02]: We can't really prove otherwise.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's just good enough lunch and do what we need to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because it's a lonely woman.
[SPEAKER_02]: She was poor.
[SPEAKER_02]: She was propositioning men recently.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like we don't care about her.
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't care about this weird dude in the slummy apartment.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's likely that they just made not have actually given it enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, there's like that current kind of theory in true crime of like the people who are worthless.
[SPEAKER_00]: according to society or law enforcement or whatever, but I'm not at all getting political or anything, but like, you know, a lot of serial killers prey on people that they think are less important.
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can I, that's just kind of human nature?
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think it's, you know, the, the history of policing also tells us that they just don't provide enough resources to investigate those, those people as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think that may have gone into the handbag situation in this case.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now in 1920 and 1921, there were 23 unsolved missing women's cases.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you read blogs and read it about this story, you would imagine there's like 800 missing women.
[SPEAKER_02]: But they're 23, which is still a lot, guys.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's still a lot missing, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And now that we have this free-to-situation
[SPEAKER_02]: It's no wonder people just assume all these women were chopped up and and fed as a river by Carl Grossman again at his highly unlikely that all of them were so there are reports of other body parts not just freedom being found in in the angle back in reservoir loosens that canal and Grossman around this time this is this is fun gross men becomes well known at the police station.
[SPEAKER_02]: and not because of the free to Schubert handbag, not because he's the weird guy that picks up women and could be killing them, but because he would go in and complain about these women that would work for him and say that they were all stealing from them and then disappearing, high-tailing at a time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hmm, convenient convenient.
[SPEAKER_02]: He did this so much the police got annoyed with him.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're like, don't, don't, don't do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, so that's one of my favorite parts of this story that he was actually going to the police throughout this time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Neighbors had reported that Grossman was being violent with women when he would bring them back to his apartment, but Neighbors, or excuse me, not Neighbors, police didn't do anything.
[SPEAKER_02]: Again, related to the, it's the slums, no one cares about these people.
[SPEAKER_02]: Also, the period of time, violence against women, not as,
[SPEAKER_02]: cared about as as it should be in 1929 or excuse me 1921 29 would be crazy in 1921 things changed for Carl Grossman a woman named Marie Nietzsche similarly young desperate need of food and money in a place to stay she meets Grossman.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if she met her at the train station or just around around this neighborhood.
[SPEAKER_02]: But they meet apparently he takes her out to like get some food and drinks.
[SPEAKER_02]: They return to his apartment late one night and later Grossman's neighbors began hearing screens.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I imagine not a good sign.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I guess they've already complained about like him being violent and hearing noises.
[SPEAKER_02]: I imagine this had to be louder and crazier than anything that had happened so far or they're just fed up with it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And his landlord, Gertrude Grabowski, who lived in the apartment right above Grossman, actually called the police.
[SPEAKER_02]: They showed up, they busted into his apartment, and what they found is unique in the annals of serial killer stories, which is they actually caught him in the act.
[SPEAKER_02]: He was in there.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, nice.
[SPEAKER_02]: dismembering Marie's body.
[SPEAKER_02]: She was already dead, unfortunately.
[SPEAKER_02]: Some accounts claim he was nude, but I don't always read that, so I'm not sure if that's true or not.
[SPEAKER_02]: I wouldn't doubt it by any means.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, don't have any evidence to hide of, I guess, if you just have to take a shower and not like hide clues.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if look, if we think about his history of sexual assault, I think part of this could be, you know, like a lot of serial killers, there could be a sexual aspect to his violent acts.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I wouldn't be surprised, but I just could not confirm that he was actually new when they showed up.
[SPEAKER_02]: He was arrested this time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Luckily, he wasn't just like, oh, she was in a hurry and tripped and fell.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to blame them all day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Into pieces, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So he was arrested and the investigation found more evidence of more murders that I take in place in his apartment based on blood stains.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they suspected for total murders.
[SPEAKER_02]: and press cut wind of this and soon because of Grossman's history as a butcher, stories begin to spread that he was hacking up the bodies, turning him into brought worst, selling him at a hot dog stand by the train station.
[SPEAKER_02]: Again, as we've already talked about earlier, I think a lot of that is clickbait, the version of clickbait back then.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're just being sensational because as we already know, he likely was not working as a butcher anymore.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, Grossman's trial comes up, it's a sensation, press is all over this, and Grossman didn't show much emotion.
[SPEAKER_02]: He claimed he killed people because they were stealing from him.
[SPEAKER_02]: That was his excuse, and the exact number of his victims remains unknown.
[SPEAKER_02]: There are estimates ranging wildly from four to 25, and then I think soon after 25, it became like 50.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the truth is that we don't know because he committed suicide.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think right before he was sentenced, he committed suicide, hanging himself in his prison cell in 1922.
[SPEAKER_02]: Also at the same time,
[SPEAKER_02]: And then other serial killer from the same time in Germany, he was killing homeless people and eating them, so it's not hard for me to make the jump of like newspapers having that going on, so also like, oh Carl Grossman obviously had to be like eating people in the neater, all of the above, because that's just what these killers do right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't, I feel like I'm defending Carl Grossman.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just, I'm trying to correct thoughts that he, I mean, cannibalism sells.
[SPEAKER_00]: It does, why you're about cannibalism is gross and awful and horrific.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, we, we love a good horror moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like there's a reason the business is what it is, man.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the suspected victims of Carl Grossman.
[SPEAKER_02]: are the ones that are most likely his victims are a woman named Joanna Saznowski, who was 24, Melanie Sump Somer, who was 21, Elizabeth Barthol, who was 25, Franziska Shamkovsky.
[SPEAKER_02]: I did a little better with that than I thought I would.
[SPEAKER_02]: He was 20.
[SPEAKER_02]: And of course, Marie Nietzsche, who I mentioned, he was she was the one he was killing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Those are the ones that most people say, he definitely killed these women or most likely killed these women, but there are several misconceptions in myths that we have alluded to today that have surrounded the life and crimes of Carl Grossman, partly due to this sensational nature of the newspaper accounts and the era he lived in.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I thought I'd go over some of
[SPEAKER_02]: And we've already hit upon all these, but just because I love doing this stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: Here's what we're going to go with the exact number of his victims.
[SPEAKER_02]: Please, if you're reading about serial killers, as I've been known to do for fun, and I know there are others like me, Sarah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sure you're yep, those.
[SPEAKER_00]: Raise on top over here.
[SPEAKER_02]: When you hear he killed 25, he killed 50 people.
[SPEAKER_02]: The police at the time suspected for.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so it it's we don't we don't know that he killed any more than that.
[SPEAKER_02]: He very well could have, but we just don't know and he is definitely linked to a few of those murders that I've mentioned.
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, there's just no there's no thing also you read that there's all these all these body parts being found in the rivers.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know of like two women with body parts being found in the river at the time.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's all I could like firm.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you think too back then, like they didn't have DNA analysis, they didn't, they didn't have like finger printing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think until, oh, maybe by the time by then they did, but it's like they just, this wasn't part of police investigation.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like, how do you even know what foot belong to who or was it like a run off foot from the war who knows, like it just.
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_02]: So just don't believe that all these women were chopped up and all of them were found and all of them were killed by Carl Grossman.
[SPEAKER_02]: The other misconception is the cannibalism and meat selling, which we've already alluded to, there's no evidence that any of this ever happened that he put your people and made food out of them.
[SPEAKER_02]: It really became an urban legend, like that is that is part of the legend of Carl Grossman, but none of it is substantiated.
[SPEAKER_02]: his motive and psychological profile is also talked about a lot of times some people paint him it's this purely evil evil figure he was just all evil and but a lot of this comes from that time period with people writing about him because we didn't know a lot about criminal psychology or criminal profiling back then
[SPEAKER_02]: So we actually don't know what is true makeup or psychological makeup is.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's very much like in the 30 years after Jack the Ripper, we're all still debating the profile of Jack the Ripper.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think Carl Grossman is in that same batch.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, we just don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't know what his motives were.
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't know what happened to him over his life to turn him into this evil, evil person.
[SPEAKER_02]: The last thing is this isn't a misconception.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just worth noting that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Grossman's background in his upbringing.
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't know very much.
[SPEAKER_02]: I basically shared all of what we know tonight, which is not a lot.
[SPEAKER_02]: He may have had a lot of siblings and may have been poor growing up.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's kind of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like we don't actually know much else about his upbringing, his education, his family.
[SPEAKER_02]: All of it is very speculative.
[SPEAKER_02]: And none of that is to say that he was in a freaking awful nasty terrible gross gross min serial killer gross again, aptly named.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and Carl Grossman is interesting to me because I believe as I've mentioned again, but this like Petri dish of the perfect scenario for a serial killer to exist.
[SPEAKER_02]: which is the war and post war area like Berlin at the time like societal chaos yeah like it's easy to fall through to slip through the cracks when there's so many other things that need fixing so many other things need fixing easy to find victims so many desperate lonely people looking for a place to stay needing food put their life back on track
[SPEAKER_02]: Also where he lived, not just the time period, but where he lived, he was able to get away with it because the neighbor is pretty much left him alone, like people don't want to see it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that neighbor took him a long time before they really got super concerned.
[SPEAKER_02]: Good that one night.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's always a perfect for a dude like him to get away with it for a while.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I was the thing that always.
[SPEAKER_00]: baffles me about situations like these where there is being people being chopped into pieces or whatever like the smell.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like if he was truly butchering people in his apartment,
[SPEAKER_02]: There are some anecdotal accounts where he people did complain about the smell and he would claim that it was like a rotting chicken Yep, that he had But you can only do that so much like what every day you got a rotting chicken like that's right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not a bizarre Also, maybe while he was a butcher he could have maybe said oh, yeah job, you know Absolutely, what the job, but
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a good boy like you and like he had been arrested many times I assume at some point prior to the murders and thing or prior to him being taken for the murders like police had to have gone to his house right now maybe not I don't know yeah I don't know because he he it's all of his criminal activity was pre war
[SPEAKER_02]: And even like I've already mentioned, it's actually hard to even confirm all of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I don't know what kind of records are being shared.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't, you know, the Berlin police not thinking about an X-Cron.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're thinking about crime and rebuilding a city.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, so I could see how they never did until the free to shoot, Shoebert, her handbag situation, which they found evidence of at least four killings.
[SPEAKER_02]: They suspect from bloodstains after they caught him in the act.
[SPEAKER_02]: So how nice was his apartment when Schubert's handbag was found like it was not a nice apartment.
[SPEAKER_02]: Did they just not pay attention to anything and they're like, did they not look like a man bag?
[SPEAKER_00]: That area if he was living is that was that just the expectation that everybody was just living in filth and squaller?
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe, maybe, could very well be.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was a one room, little apartment that did not look very nice, so that could be it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so what did you learn in anything today, Sarah?
[SPEAKER_02]: Now that we're not proud of this, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I had very limited knowledge of Carl Grossman other than the sort of silly, like, sausage stand stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, and then I did, when you said this was who you're going to do, I was like, I'm going to Google them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I can see his face.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's perfect nightmare fuel, like he just has strange looking fella.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's not.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, like, I just, who I would not go, I would not have gone home or near a man that looks like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I was going to murder you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it does.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, session hand, like obviously he looks like he's going to murder you.
[SPEAKER_00]: He murdered people.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, Gary.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's also just one more sort of interesting factors.
[SPEAKER_02]: There are some women that we're not killed that worked for him and stayed with him for a while and we're as housekeeper, but because after she was caught, they went through, tried to find as many witnesses and testimonies as it could.
[SPEAKER_02]: And some women were like, oh yeah, I worked for him and I stayed with him one night and I thought it was weird.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I left.
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, you know, another people being like I did and I just told him it wasn't, you know, going to work out and more and got away.
[SPEAKER_02]: So he wasn't killing every woman that came into the apartment.
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, some people were able to actually whether it be they escaped just in time, like they had a nice excuse or they got kind of lucky.
[SPEAKER_02]: That could be very well be true.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, but that also goes to show you that not everybody was as scared of him as I would be just by looking at the dude.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I also wondered too, like, yes, he eventually was a murderer, but his early things were all like child molestation and things like that one and the sheep situation, but I wonder like, did that just pass?
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like that's not like, no, it's just don't just typically like, I'm good now, like it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a good point.
[SPEAKER_02]: He could have been doing a lot of other stuff that we just don't know about that was never.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: found out and that's a really good point because you know there's a progression with serial killers.
[SPEAKER_02]: They start with like animal mutilation generally worse.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what's all there's things like that in frozen grows and grows until that first victim, the first kill victim.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then it goes from there.
[SPEAKER_02]: So he could I think he was likely committing a lot of crimes.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the war, he's easy to get away with it during the war.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then he somehow, at some period of time, progress is actually killing people and and it could have been those 19, 20, 21 right and there when he was caught it could have been all within that time period I don't know I don't know, but it could have started before that as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: So.
[SPEAKER_02]: We just don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: He was not around long enough to find out.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I do think he would have admitted stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because he's like, oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I did normal.
[SPEAKER_02]: I do think he would have admitted to what he had been doing.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's definitely strikes me as someone that would have done that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, fun times.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we got through Carl Grossman faster than I thought I would today.
[SPEAKER_02]: But looking back on it, it kind of makes sense because so much of it is speculative that there's not a lot of angles to dive down.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's not a little kind of where somebody parked around to go down.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I really appreciate your time Sarah being here and joining me for this and everybody should check out true crime ABC's podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, come on.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, is there anything else you want people to know about the show or anything else you're doing?
[SPEAKER_00]: not real.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we're, if you guys want to check us out on social media or whatever, we're at True Crime ABC podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is, again, my childhood best friend and I talking about murders and stuff and it's usually pretty funny.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, and you are going to, you are going to start the outfit over again once you get through correct?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, we are.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we've got four more episodes this season and then the plan is to restart with, again, still the alphabet obviously because it's like
[SPEAKER_00]: The plan is to come at it with a different theme for the next season, and obviously you're invited to come join us.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would love to.
[SPEAKER_00]: Never let her ever let her.
[SPEAKER_00]: You so choose.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, so our next season where.
[SPEAKER_00]: Make me thinking locations.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe see locations.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's true crime.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's sort of just like the game plan for right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: probably end of May early June.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sweet.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're excited.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, well, I am too.
[SPEAKER_02]: Everybody please check that out.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you again for coming on the show.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks so much for having me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for listening to a study of strange.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you enjoy the show, please take a quick second to make sure that you subscribe, rate and review on your favorite podcast platform.
[SPEAKER_02]: Another way to support the show and also just if you enjoy strange content is to check out our new sub-stack, which you can find through our website, a study of strange.com.
[SPEAKER_02]: In the support tab, we'll take you right over to that.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you subscribe, you get additional content, audio content, and a lot of articles, blogs, whatever you the kids call those things nowadays, that cover all sorts of strangeness, and the library on that side is only gonna grow week by week, so I really encourage you to check it out.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much, until next time, I'm Michael May.
[SPEAKER_02]: Good night.