Famous Serial Killers — Uncle Tick Tock

In my novels, I write about serial killers. Sometimes I let real murderers inspire myself. I write about these killers here now. I start with Adolf Seefeld, also known as Uncle Tick Tock.

The Murders

Adolf Seefeld was a watchmaker, which later earned him his nickname Uncle Tick Tock.

He committed his murders between 1933 and 1935 in Germany, the darkest time in German history.

His victims were without exception boys between the ages of four and twelve. He was proved guilty of twelve murders, but some experts assumed at the time that he could have up to one hundred deaths on his conscience.

The scene of finding the corpses was always spooky. The murdered boys Seefeld dumped in woods, and each of them was dressed in a sailor’s suit.

Disturbing was the fact that none of the corpses showed traces of external violence. Forensic medicine, which was not very developed at the time, had great difficulty in determining the cause of death.

To this day, the experts disagree as to how Seefeld killed his victims. The speculations at that time ranged from poison and strangulation to the assumption that the murderer had sedated the boys in the wild and left them to die of hypothermia.

The most likely variant today is the strangulation of the victims, because two contemporary forensic doctors, Willhelm Hallermann and Victor Müller-Heß, committed themselves to this form of death. The basis of this conviction was the autopsy of one of the victims, in which microscopic traces were found that indicated strangulation.

To conclude from one case to another may be daring, but when one knows that most serial killers hardly vary their approach, this generalization seems at least plausible.

The culprit

Adolf Seefeld was what one would call a classic loser. He came from a broken family. Adolf had six siblings.

The father was an alcoholic and died in an asylum. Seefeld’s only son, who came from a marriage that lasted only two years, also ended up in a mental hospital at the age of nineteen because of sex crimes.

After his divorce, Adolf Seefeld lived without permanent residence for almost forty years. He was a loner. Between 1892 and 1896, Seefeld went to jail twice — once for stabbing a boy and then for three years for a sex crime against a boy he had abused.

Further prison sentences and legal proceedings followed later. It was always about sex crimes against young boys. In 1909 he was imprisoned again for four years.

Seefeld can, therefore, be described as a habitual offender. A further escalation of his crimes does not seem surprising from today’s point of view. Seefeld may have already killed during this time without being caught.

The widespread assumption that he committed considerably more murders than the twelve finally brought to trial seems plausible.

The hunt for the culprit

The investigators in charge proved little skill in the search for the murderer. First, an innocent man was arrested and accused of murder. The unfortunate man hanged himself in his cell out of desperation.

The only approach they had to the investigation was the testimony of witnesses who repeatedly claim to have seen a “strange man with a straw hat” near the crime scenes.

Also, the judges, who had to deal with Seefeld for many years, made mistakes. For his sex crimes, for which he spent three and later four years in prison, he later received much milder punishments. In one case, he got away with one month in prison, in another with six months.

The breakthrough came when the Schwerin homicide department published a report in a criminal journal. They described the suspect man with a hat, who approaches little boys and tries to lure them to remote places.

A detective from Grabow and two policemen from Bad Doberan reported to the police in Schwerin. All three reported cases were matching the one in the Schwerin article. In Bad Doberan, Seefeld had even been caught red-handed and interrogated. The wanted murderer now had a name.

Tragically, Seefeld was even arrested in Grabow, but then let go again. Shortly after that, the investigating officer learned that Seefeld had been investigated elsewhere for similar acts, but by that time, Seefeld had already disappeared again.

Had the exchange of information within the police been more effective at that time, it might have been possible to prevent some murders. But Seefeld was able to continue murdering for a while without being bothered.

The responsible investigator from Grabow, Wagenknecht, was, of course, frustrated that Seefeld had escaped him. But years later he found Seefeld’s trail again. In Bad Doberan, he found out about a sex crime and recognized similarities to Adolf Seefeld’s actions.

Shortly before, a murder report had been received. A dead boy had been found. Wagenknecht did not doubt that Adolf Seefeld was the murderer — and he was very close. Wagenknecht turned to the public prosecutor’s office with his findings.

Now all the pieces of the puzzle suddenly joined together to form a picture. The public prosecutor made inquiries about Seefeld, contacted numerous police stations, and came to the conclusion that Adolf Seefeld was most likely the serial killer he was looking for. The search for Seefeld began.

Seefeld was found with a farmer, in whose kitchen he repaired clocks. He was also taken for interrogation. The officials had to find out that Seefeld had become hardened and self-confident through his many years of experience with the judiciary.

He admitted nothing and played the interrogating officers off against each other. Sometimes he only wanted to talk to one officer, then again only to another. He tried to sow a quarrel between the officers.

A confession of murder seemed a long way off. All he could be proven to have done was to commit moral offenses in less severe cases.

The policeman Lobbes, who led the interrogations, nevertheless managed to connect Seefeld with the murders gradually. At that time, two missing boys had not yet been found, but Lobbes did not doubt that they had also fallen victim to Seefeld.

To prove this, he had to find the bodies and connect Seefeld to the crime scenes at the same time.

Instead of asking the suspect directly about the missing bodies, Lobbes created what we call a motion profile from the interviews.

When it became clear where Seefeld had been in the recent past, Lobbes initiated an extensive search in the surrounding forests. They also used sniffer dogs.

Both boys were found dead during the large-scale search. They were buried about thirty centimeters deep in the now frozen forest soil, and the graves had been neatly covered with moss.

But Seefeld didn’t confess yet. Lobbes didn’t give up and proved to him based on records found at Seefeld’s arrest that he had been in the places where a total of twelve boys had disappeared at the time in question.

The verdict

Adolf Seefeld, to whom the policemen had meanwhile given his nickname Uncle Tick Tock, denied until the end that he had anything to do with the murders.

The trial was meticulously conducted over four weeks.

In the end, it resulted in a guilty verdict based on circumstantial evidence and testimony.

Adolf Seefeld was sentenced to death and executed on 23 May 1936 in Schwerin by the guillotine.

Sources: https://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-44439050.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Seefeldt

https://ediss.sub.uni-hamburg.de/volltexte/2009/4297/

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