Adolf Seefeldt

Adolf Gustav Seefeldt (6 March 1870 – 23 May 1936), known as The Sandman, was a German serial killer.

Early life
Born as the seventh and last child of his parents, Adolf was first trained as a locksmith then as a watchmaker who repaired grandfather clocks and pocket watches. He came to Lübeck in 1890 and married Katarina Seefeldt, who divorced him in 1910. His son was sent to a lunatic asylum for moral crimes, at the age of nineteen.

Seefeldt is said to have been abused by two men at the age of 12. He was first imprisoned at 25 years for sexual harassment of a boy. Psychiatrists diagnosed him as mentally unstable, which is why he spent most of his life in mental hospitals and prisons.

Serial murders
The traveller and watchmaker Adolf Seefeldt, also called "Sandman" or – because of his profession – "Uncle Tick Tock" and "Uncle Adi", abused and killed at least twelve boys during the reign of the Third Reich. As a crime scene, he usually chose pine preservations with one exception. A commonality was found in the victim's clothing, who consistently wore sailor suits. Since all children were "sleeping peacefully" and showed no signs of external violence, the police were mystified by the circumstances of death. It is therefore possible that Seefeldt committed more murders that were considered natural deaths.

Contemporary experts speculated that Seefeldt had used his own homemade poison, chloroform or smothered his victims. According to Hans Pfeiffer, a well-known author of popular science books on authentic criminal cases, these theories were disproven with little effort. Pfeiffer suspected, however, that Seefeldt had put his victims into a hypnotic sleep, then probably performed oral sex on them and let them lie asleep in the woods, where he failed to awaken them from hypnosis. The children later died of hypothermia, which Seefeldt had accepted or intended.

The victims
His victims ranged from toddlers to 12-year-old boys: Kurt Gnirk (16 April 1933), Wolfgang Metzdorf (8 October 1933), Ernst Tesdorf (2 November 1933), Alfred Prätorius (12 November 1933), Hans Korn (16 January 1934), Günter Tieske from Oranienburg (2 October 1934), 11-year-old Erwin Wishnewski from Brandenburg (8 October 1934), 4-year-old Artur Dill and 5-year-old Edgar "Eipel" Dittrich (16 October 1934, both found in Neuruppin), 10-year-old Hans-Joachim Neumann (16 killed February 1935; found on 20 June 1935), 10-year-old Heinz Zimmerman (23 February 1935) and 11-year-old Gustav Thomas (22 March 1935). The investigative authorities assumed that the actual number of casualties was much higher, possibly claiming up to 100 lives.

Gustav Thomas case
The lawyer Wilhelm Hallermann summed the murder case of 11-year-old Gustav Thomas (found in a pine forest near Wittenberge), that due to microscopic examinations, the bloodshot pressure indicated strangulation.

The medical examiner Victor Müller-Heß came in the murder trial against Seefeldt with the claim that the murder victims were not poisoned but instead strangled.

Trial and execution
The Schwerin jury under the chairmanship of the district court director Karl Friedrich Sarkander and the advisory district court councils of Wilms and Weise consisted of butcher Ernst Hahn from Crivitz, secretary Wilhelm Schneeweis from Schwerin, Ortsgruppenleiter Friedrich Jahnke from Parchim, Mayor Ernst Dubbe from Leussow, engineer Otto Arpke from Lübtheen and city councillor Kreisleiter Buhr from Ludwigslust, negotiating the case on January 21, 1936. The chief prosecutor was Wilhelm Beusch, whom Bishop Bernhard Schräder recalled in connection with the case of Vicar Leo Wiemker.

In the presence of later war criminal and Reichsstatthalter of Mecklenburg, Friedrich Hildebrandt, railed against the accused in order to justify the eradication of such behaviour. Adolf Seefeldt's defence lawyer was Rudolf Neudeck. August Brüning (1877–1965) was a participating expert in the trial.

After the closing arguments of 21 February, the verdict for the murder cases was announced the following day. Seefeldt was sentenced to death. According to the Niederdeutschen Beobachter, on 29 February 1936, Seefeldt is to have brought in an appeal. Neither a revision nor a revision procedure is historically documented; the judgment was enforced after legal force and refusal of the pardon occurred on 23 May 1936. The records of Seefeldt's conviction are poor. In addition to newspaper reports of his execution, there are only two memory protocols of conversations conducted in April 1936 at his cell in Schwerin. The case of Adolf Seefeldt was discussed by J. Fischer and Johannes Lange in the Monthly Journal of Forensic Biology and Penal Reform.

Execution
Earlier, the executioner Carl Gröpler had visited him and "recognized the expected difficulty of the execution". Seefeldt was allegedly eager to be beheaded the next morning by the guillotine.

Literature

 * Matthias Blazek: Executions in Prussia and the German Reich 1866–1945. ibidem-Verlag, Stuttgart 2010. ISBN 978-3-8382-0107-8
 * P. Böttger: Dogs in the service of the criminal police with special consideration of the Seefeldt murder case. Leipzig 1937
 * Kerstin Brückweh: Mordlust – serial murders, violence and emotions in the 20th century. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2006. ISBN 978-3-593-38202-9 Auszugsweise online – Digitalisat
 * Erich Ebermayer: „Uncle Tick Tack. The boy murderer Adolf Seefeldt“. In: Robert A. Stemmle [Hrsg.]: Sexual crime (The New Pitaval; Bd. 13). München [u. a.] 1967, p. 11–38
 * Jens Haberland: „Adolf Seefeldt – an unsolved mystery“. In: ders.: Serial killers in the 20th century. Berlin 1997. ISBN 3-930057-38-7, p. 125–129
 * Hans Peiffer: „The Sandman – Adolf Seefeldt (1933–1935)“. In: Wolfgang Schüler [Hrsg.]: Serial murder in Germany. Leipzig 2005. ISBN 3-86189-729-6. S. 16–36 (online (S. 146 ff.)), Retrieved on May 30, 2014
 * Ulrich Zander: "The hunt for the 'Sandman'" The trial of serial killer Adolf Seefeldt began 80 years in Schwerin. Wandering clockmaker killed twelve boys. In: Schweriner Volkszeitung / Mecklenburg-Magazin (29. Januar 2016), p. 24.
 * Frank-Rainer Schurich, Michael Stricker: The serial killer Adolf Seefeldt and modern criminals. Verlag Dr. Köster, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-89574-875-2
 * Frank-Rainer Schurich, Michael Stricker: The beast from the forest. Historical criminal case. Verlag Dr. Köster, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-89574-887-5