Witch Trials, Serial Predators and a Modern Murder from Baden-Baden to Freiburg | Profiling Evil

About this episode

The episode explores historical and modern crime cases in beautiful German locations, revealing the darker stories behind them.

I’m continuing my true crime travels through Europe, this time through Baden-Baden, the Black Forest, Triberg and Freiburg. These are some of the most beautiful places you can visit in Germany, but each one carries a darker story beneath the scenery. In Baden-Baden, we look at the witch trials of 1627 to 1631, when fear, religion, politics and forced confessions helped turn accusation into execution. In the Black Forest and Triberg, we talk about Heinrich Pommerenke, the violent West German serial offender known as the “Beast of the Black Forest,” whose 1959 crimes showed how predators can use roads, railways, stations and public spaces to move across a region. Then in Freiburg, we examine the 2016 murder of 19-year-old medical student Maria Ladenburger, a case built through careful police work, DNA, transit surveillance and phone data. We’re talking more than just crime cases. We’ll dig into evidence, fear, geography, victimology and the way beautiful places disguise criminal horror stories. How justice systems can replace proof with panic or how offenders move discretely through ordinary spaces and how good investigations come together one fact at a time. #ProfilingEvil…

Topics covered

• true crime
• witch trials
• serial predators
• murder investigation
• European crime history
• victimology

Keywords

• Baden-Baden
• Black Forest
• Heinrich Pommerenke
• Maria Ladenburger
• witch trials
• true crime
• victimology
• crime history

Mentioned in this episode

Places: Baden-Baden, Black Forest, Triberg, Freiburg

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