Adolf Gustav Seefeldt (March 6, 1870 – May 23, 1936), known as The Sandman, was a German serial killer.
Life
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 traveler 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 (April 16, 1933), Wolfgang Metzdorf (October 8, 1933), Ernst Tesdorf (November 2, 1933), Alfred Prätorius (November 12, 1933), Hans Korn (January 16, 1934), Günter Tieske from Oranienburg (October 2, 1934), 11-year-old Erwin Wishnewski from Brandenburg (October 8, 1934), 4-year-old Artur Dill and 5-year-old Edgar "Eipel" Dittrich (October 16, 1934, both found in Neuruppin), 10-year-old Hans-Joachim Neumann (killed February 16, 1935; found on June 20, 1935), 10-year-old Heinz Zimmerman (February 23, 1935) and 11-year-old Gustav Thomas (March 22, 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 councilor Kreisleiter Buhr from Ludwigslust, negotiating the case on January 21, 1936. Chief prosecutor was Wilhelm Beusch, to 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 defense lawyer was Rudolf Neudeck. August Brüning (1877–1965) was a participating expert in the trial.