He killed himself while awaiting the end of his trial without giving a full confession. His father was an alcoholic and locally regarded as an ill-tempered brute, who was often arrested for starting fights with other townsfolk, also regularly beating his wife and children in drunken rages using a fire poker.
In , he took an apprenticeship as a slaughterhouse worker at the meat shop of Ferdinand Kliefoth, who took the troublemaking youth in despite his unpopular reputation, having seen his potential as a slaughterer given his deftness with a knife and lack of aversion to blood.
He returned to selling cloth with his father, occasionally working as a laborer at the fabric factory. His criminal record during this time included assault, trespassing, petty burglary, bestiality , and sex crimes against young girls, for which was jailed at least 24 times. A court in Bayreuth sentenced him to 15 years imprisonment for the rapes on 4 October ; the four-year-old died of an infection from a complete tearing of the perineum inflicted during the attack shortly after the judgement.
Despite the start of World War I just a few days earlier, he was not drafted due to his age. Some surviving victims said that they interpreted this as a code for solicitation while others genuinely believed they would be given employment.
He would dump his victims' remains in Luisenstadt Canal and the adjoining Engelbecken basin. On 24 March , year-old downstairs neighbour Gertrud Grabowski called a social worker when she heard crying from upstairs.
