A Serial Killer in Nazi Berlin: The Chilling True Story of the S-Bahn Murderer

In Berlin during World War II, nightly blackouts were necessary owing to Allied bombing raids. However, this total darkness protected criminals as well as citizens. One of the most horrifying—and most successful—of these was Paul Ogorzow, a mild-mannered railroad employee who at night became a sexual predator, raping and often murdering female factory workers who were coming home in the dark. Though he initially attacked them close to their homes, a near capture caused him to rethink his strategy, and he started to terrorize women in the cars of the S-Bahn commuter trains, taking sexual satisfaction in brutalizing them and then throwing them off the train. Selby (The Axmann Conspiracy; Flawless) follows the police investigation, noting that the police overlooked the Aryan and Nazi Party man Ogorzow, expecting a Jew or other undesirable to be the culprit. Nonetheless, the notorious case inspired Joseph Goebbels to commission a series of crime novels to inspire faith in the German police.