Werner Boost

 VICTIMS: 6+

The illegitimate son of an East German peasant woman, Boost had entered the world of crime early; a child thief who later earned a dishonest pfennig guiding parties of East Germans safely, if illegally, over the border into the West. Only in the light of subsequent revelations were a number of unsolved homicides around the border area at the same time laid to Boost's account. By 1950 Boost had transferred his crooked career to Dusseldorf, where he served a prison sentence for plundering metal fittings from graves. But if he was an indifferent thief, then Werner Boost was at least an accomplished marksman; by the end of the decade his deadly accuracy in firing 'Wild West' style, from the hip, would make headlines throughout both Germanys.

On 17 January 1953, a lawyer named Bernd Serve was sitting with a young male companion in his stationary car on a quiet road leading out of Dusseldorf. As they talked, two masked figures appeared out of the night, one bludgeoning the nineteen-year-old with the butt of his gun, the other shooting Dr Serve through the head. It was later remarked by ballistics experts that the bullet had taken an unusual trajectory, entering the body below the left jaw and leaving through the right temple, seemingly fired from below the victim as he sat in the driver's seat of the car.

The crime that was to earn Werner Boost the soubriquet, the 'Dusseldorf Doubles Killer', was discovered in November 1955. A twenty-six-year-old baker, Friedheim Behre, and his girlfriend Thea had been missing for four weeks when villagers from Kalkum, just beyond Dusseldorf, found two battered bodies trapped in their car in a water-filled gravel pit. Like Dr Serve and his friend, this couple had been robbed.

With no light yet illuminating either case, the second 'doubles murder' was committed on 7 February 1956. A twenty-year-old secretary and her companion, Peter Falkenberg, had been reported missing, and police found their extensively bloodstained car the following day. On the day after that, the 9th, two bodies later identified as the missing couple were found badly burnt in the smouldering remains of a haystack. Both victims had been bludgeoned, and Falkenberg had been shot through the head from the same odd angle that had been observed in the case of Dr Serve. A further abortive attempt at a 'double murder' took place in May of the same year in some woods near Dusseldorf. Luckily for the potential victims the young woman alerted passersby with her screams for help and the two attackers fled. By plain coincidence, or perhaps divine irony, it was in this same wood at Meererbusch that a forest ranger on patrol saw and apprehended an armed man who appeared to be tracking a young couple. The man's name was Werner Boost.

Boost had surrendered to the ranger without a struggle because, he said, he had been committing no offence. He indignantly denied any part in the recent series of attacks and murders, and defied the police to prove otherwise. And they might have had a much more difficult job doing so if Boost's unwilling partner in crime, Franz Lorbach, had not made a statement in which he confessed his own part in the murders and implicated Werner Boost. Boost, he said, had 'hypnotised' him into complicity on pain of his life. He exposed the bizarre fantasy world into which Boost had dragged him - the drugs and poisons with which Boost dreamed he would find the perfect method of murder; Lorbach told police of one plan to float cyanide-filled balloons into prospective victims' cars. There was also a string of non-fatal rapes and assaults against courting couples who, for reasons best known to himself, Boost considered immoral and degenerate.

Werner Boost was eventually brought to trial in 1959, and sentenced to life imprisonment. For his contribution, Franz Lorbach was put away for six years.

This bio was taken from "The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers," by Brian Lane and Wilfred Gregg.
 

MY OPINION

I've been wanting to add Boost to this site for ages, and now have finally gotten around to it. The whole German serial killers scene exploded in the 40's and for me Boost just continued the trend of truly heartless men from this area of the world. I've always had a thing for guys who kill in doubles, and this may be the reason Boost does it for me. One problem that I do have with this case is that his accomplice, Franz Lorbach, only got six years for turning grass. This is nothing more than a joke, but I guess the police will stop at nothing in their attempt to create monsters out of at least one perpetrator, even letting a guy just as guilty off with nothing more than a slap on the wrists.