19. The Gruesome Grave Digger
In 1971, West German police were disturbed when they began receiving reports that somebody was robbing graves, exhuming bodies from cemeteries, and gnawing on them. The female corpses were sexually abused as well. In May, 1972, a morgue attendant came across somebody kissing a cadaver. When he tried to stop him, the culprit pulled out a pistol and fired, but missed.
The morgue worker gave police a description of the assailant, and they threw a dragnet. It eventually caught Kuno Hofmann, a deaf and mute laborer who had lost the powers of speech and hearing after his alcoholic father beat him in childhood. Hofmann had a rap sheet, including nine years in prison for theft. When the cops interrogated him, he readily confessed to a bizarre crime spree.
