Frank Gust, the serial killer known as the 'Rhine-Ruhr Ripper', is due for release this year after being arrested in 1999. Gust derived sexual pleasure from handling his victims' entrails and held the heart of one victim after her death. His methods were compared to the Victorian-era Jack the Ripper murders.
Gust's violent tendencies began at age nine when he killed a guinea pig with a paving stone after being told he could not keep it. He later said, 'I like the feeling and the warmth when I reached inside the abdominal cavity.' He progressed to stealing and dissecting rabbits and cats while still alive, stating that torturing animals made him feel in control.
In his early 20s, Gust obtained a hunting license and a legal gun license, allowing him to kill larger animals. On one occasion, he shot a horse and crawled inside its still-warm body. As a teenager, he broke into a cemetery to violate corpses awaiting burial.
Gust's first murder was 28-year-old South African hitchhiker Catherine Thompson. He shot her in the head in a forest, then sexually assaulted her corpse, slit open her stomach, and touched her organs. He severed her hands and head to hinder identification, keeping the head for sexual pleasure before disposing of it in a river.
Gust left Thompson's mutilated body near a road, wanting others to find it and be shocked. He boasted to his girlfriend Elsa about the murder, showing her the victim's ID card and the burial site, but she thought it was a sick joke. Gust later confessed to investigators, detailing his crimes.
