Thomas "Pinocchio" Rung (born 3 January 1961) is a German

serial killer A serial killer (also called a serial murderer) is a person who murders three or more people,An offender can be anyone: * * * * * (This source only requires two people) with the killings taking place over a significant period of time in separat ...

, who is considered to be the most dangerous of his kind since the end of the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

Life

Rung was born on 3 January 1961, as the sixth of seven children. His father drank heavily and reigned with much violence and severity, while his mother left the family when he was two years old. The stepmother, Aunt Hilde, "sat on a throne, she was the judge" and ordered punishments that the father performed.Berlin district court imposed a double life imprisonment
in: Berliner Zeitung on March 6, 1996 The household lacked love, warmth and care. Rung attended a special school and was observed committing burglaries and assaults during his schooling. Before being arrested for murder in 1995, Rung was imprisoned many times for various crimes. Between 1983 and 1995 he killed a total of six women and his stepbrother in cold blood. His victims were raped, strangled, drowned or suffocated and then robbed. Due to the different methods and without the availability of

DNA profiling DNA profiling (also called DNA fingerprinting and genetic fingerprinting) is the process of determining an individual's deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) characteristics. DNA analysis intended to identify a species, rather than an individual, is cal ...

for a long time, no connection could be made between the crimes. Two of the victims - his 77-year-old landlady and a 22-year-old student - were murdered in 1983 in the Silbersteinstraße in

Neukölln Neukölln (), officially abbreviated Neuk, is one of the twelve boroughs of Berlin. It is located south-east of Berlin's center and stretches from the inner city southward to the border with Brandenburg, encompassing the eponymous quarter of Neu ...

. For Rung's first murder, 23-year-old Michael Mager briefly confessed to the police, was falsely sentenced in 1984 and imprisoned for six years.Sigrid Averesch
"The retrial for the murder of a retiree begins today/Innocent served the today 33-year-old six years imprisonment: Justice Michael Mager must now believe

Berliner Zeitung The ''Berliner Zeitung'' (; ) is a daily newspaper based in Berlin, Germany. Founded in East Germany in 1945, it is the only East German paper to achieve national prominence since Reunification of Germany, reunification. It is published by Berl ...

, August 8, 1996 Rung was arrested in 1995 and quickly confessed. A year later, the Landgericht Berlin sentenced him to life imprisonment followed by two years of preventative detention. The forensic psychiatrist Wilfried Rasch rated him in his report as someone who "committed his actions despite his normality." In 2001, he tortured a prisoner at Tegel Prison and was sentenced by the Berlin court to an additional two years and eight months in prison. In 2003 Rung once again injured a prisoner - this time lethally - the district court of Berlin sentenced him to 10 more years and second preventative detention for attempted manslaughter in 2004. Rung was first detained in Berlin-Moabit, because Tegel Prison refused to take him in again, and was then transferred to JVA Celle in Lower Saxony.

Literature

* Peter Niggl: ''I am a monster. The confessions of Thomas Rung''. Das Neue Berlin, 1999. . * Stephen Harbort: ''The Hannibal Syndrome. Serial murder phenomenon''. Militzke, Leipzig 2001. .

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rung, Thomas 1961 births Criminals from Baden-Württemberg German rapists German serial killers German people convicted of murder German people convicted of torture German prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment People convicted of murder by Germany Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by Germany 21st-century mass murder in Germany 20th-century mass murder in Germany Living people

Life

Literature

See also

References