investigation in the right direction, but there were thousands of people who worked for the railroad, and the police were not even sure that the perpetrator would have needed to be a railway worker to obtain this weapon.
It would take tremendous amounts of manpower and other resources to comb through all the people who worked for the railroad, and so far that was not justified. There had been only two attacks on the S-Bahn to date and both women survived. Only as Ogorzow’s criminal attacks continued, and the body count added up, would the police expend the resources necessary to look at all the railroad workers in Berlin.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Death on the Train
It was now December and Ogorzow had yet to actually kill anyone on the S-Bahn.
He’d tried twice, and each time at first mistakenly thought he’d succeeded. But somehow these two women had survived both the brutal attacks and being thrown from a moving train.
Ogorzow had killed, though, just not on the train. He’d strangled and stabbed Mrs. Gertrude Ditter. Since this occurred in the privacy of her home with only her small children present, sleeping nearby, he was able to wait long enough to make sure that she was actually dead.
On the S-Bahn, he was operating on a very strict timetable, with little time to attack his victims and dispose of their bodies. He couldn’t risk having someone he’d attacked still inside the compartment when it entered a train station. While not many people rode the second-class compartment late at night, there was always a chance that someone would board this part of the train at the next station.
As December 3, 1940, turned into December 4, Ogorzow rode the S-Bahn, looking for a new victim. It had been a month since he’d thrown Elizabeth Bendorf from the train. The thrill had not lasted that long, but he’d fought his desire to strike again so that he could see what the repercussions were to his last attack. He worried about getting caught, and so he took his time between attacks at this stage to make sure it was safe before he struck again.
Ogorzow carried with him a new blunt, heavy object to use as a weapon, an iron rod about fifteen inches long. It weighed a few pounds, and as with his old weapon, he’d found it during his work at the railroad company. It was the sort of thing that is still found at construction sites around the world. These days this sort of rod is usually made of steel, though, not cast iron. Kids often pick up such reinforcing bars, known as rebar, and play-fight with them. Ogorzow carried his concealed inside the left sleeve of his jacket uniform.
At the Karlshorst station, Ogorzow saw that there was already a female passenger sitting in the second-class train compartment. She was alone. He boarded the train, and it was just the two of them in this section as the train started to move.
With every assault Ogorzow committed on the S-Bahn, he became more confident in his actions. This translated into less and less hesitation before his attacks, as well as the increasing use of overwhelming force at the start of each attack. This evolution in Ogorzow’s assaults was the result of a combination of overcoming any internal barriers to using violence, such as societal norms and fear of being caught, and learning from past mistakes to become a more efficient criminal. Whereas before he first made small talk or waited a station or two before taking action, now he struck right away, as soon as the train was under way.
Like with many things in life, the more he did these attacks, the more comfortable he became with them. As with his early days as a Brownshirt, when he first took part in pitched street battles against Communists and other rivals to the Nazis, he grew desensitized to using violence. After the Nazis had seized power, when Ogorzow and his fellow Storm Troopers beat up German Jews and destroyed their property as part of Kristallnacht , he shed any inhibitions he may have had against attacking
It would take tremendous amounts of manpower and other resources to comb through all the people who worked for the railroad, and so far that was not justified. There had been only two attacks on the S-Bahn to date and both women survived. Only as Ogorzow’s criminal attacks continued, and the body count added up, would the police expend the resources necessary to look at all the railroad workers in Berlin.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Death on the Train
It was now December and Ogorzow had yet to actually kill anyone on the S-Bahn.
He’d tried twice, and each time at first mistakenly thought he’d succeeded. But somehow these two women had survived both the brutal attacks and being thrown from a moving train.
Ogorzow had killed, though, just not on the train. He’d strangled and stabbed Mrs. Gertrude Ditter. Since this occurred in the privacy of her home with only her small children present, sleeping nearby, he was able to wait long enough to make sure that she was actually dead.
On the S-Bahn, he was operating on a very strict timetable, with little time to attack his victims and dispose of their bodies. He couldn’t risk having someone he’d attacked still inside the compartment when it entered a train station. While not many people rode the second-class compartment late at night, there was always a chance that someone would board this part of the train at the next station.
As December 3, 1940, turned into December 4, Ogorzow rode the S-Bahn, looking for a new victim. It had been a month since he’d thrown Elizabeth Bendorf from the train. The thrill had not lasted that long, but he’d fought his desire to strike again so that he could see what the repercussions were to his last attack. He worried about getting caught, and so he took his time between attacks at this stage to make sure it was safe before he struck again.
Ogorzow carried with him a new blunt, heavy object to use as a weapon, an iron rod about fifteen inches long. It weighed a few pounds, and as with his old weapon, he’d found it during his work at the railroad company. It was the sort of thing that is still found at construction sites around the world. These days this sort of rod is usually made of steel, though, not cast iron. Kids often pick up such reinforcing bars, known as rebar, and play-fight with them. Ogorzow carried his concealed inside the left sleeve of his jacket uniform.
At the Karlshorst station, Ogorzow saw that there was already a female passenger sitting in the second-class train compartment. She was alone. He boarded the train, and it was just the two of them in this section as the train started to move.
With every assault Ogorzow committed on the S-Bahn, he became more confident in his actions. This translated into less and less hesitation before his attacks, as well as the increasing use of overwhelming force at the start of each attack. This evolution in Ogorzow’s assaults was the result of a combination of overcoming any internal barriers to using violence, such as societal norms and fear of being caught, and learning from past mistakes to become a more efficient criminal. Whereas before he first made small talk or waited a station or two before taking action, now he struck right away, as soon as the train was under way.
Like with many things in life, the more he did these attacks, the more comfortable he became with them. As with his early days as a Brownshirt, when he first took part in pitched street battles against Communists and other rivals to the Nazis, he grew desensitized to using violence. After the Nazis had seized power, when Ogorzow and his fellow Storm Troopers beat up German Jews and destroyed their property as part of Kristallnacht , he shed any inhibitions he may have had against attacking
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