death bunker
In Velbert, Germany, in North Rhine-Westphalia, all primary school-aged boys aged 8 to 14 have been missing for several years. The parents contacted law enforcement, but the search was unsuccessful. Parents prepared for the worst: most likely, the children died.
But unexpectedly, one of the missing children, 14-year-old Peter Frese, returned home. The boy was injured and very scared. He later told law enforcement that he was lured into a cave by an unknown young man who promised to show him the lost treasures. The boy added: The criminal seemed decent and friendly at first, but when they entered the cave, he began to hit his face, stomach and groin, screamed, then ordered him to strip naked and tie him up.
After that, the criminal raped Peter. After the attacker finished torturing the victim, he put the gag in the boy’s mouth, tied his hands, and left him in the dark.
He managed to free himself, escape and return home. Moreover, Frese remembered the road to the place where he nearly died, and he soon led the police there.
The cave turned out to be an abandoned military bunker. The remains of four children’s bodies were found there.
A few days later, the “owner” of the bomb shelter, 20-year-old Jurgen Barch, was also detained. At the station, the young man did not deny it and confessed to the crime. He also admitted: Peter Frese is not the first victim, and the remains found in the bunker belong to his other victims.
In his conversation with the police, the young man claimed that he “could not do otherwise”: He had long wanted to inflict pain to get rid of his own pain.
Adoptive family, beating and corruption in convent school
Barch was born in 1946, grew up in a foster family from infancy: his biological mother died of tuberculosis, he did not know his father. The 11-month-old was adopted by a wealthy childless couple, Gertrude and Gerhard Barch. Jurgen loved his adoptive parents very much, but as a child he always felt lonely due to a lack of love and support.
According to the maniac, the mother often changed her mood, she could attack him with her fists immediately after a gentle hug. Also, the woman had a strong hatred for filth and disorder. She meticulously cleaned all the corners of the house and forbade her adopted son from playing with other children so that he would not get dirty.
Gertrude bathed Jurgen herself in the bathroom and checked the cleanliness of her body until her son was 19 years old. Dirty shoes or crumbs on the boy’s table caused him to throw tantrums, during which he beat the boy hard with a coat hanger.
Over time, Barch got used to the behavior of his adoptive mother and, turning into an exemplary son, learned to fulfill his needs perfectly. He did his homework himself, kept the room tidy, and obeyed his parents in everything. But most of the time he felt overwhelmed.
“Sometimes I even wanted to go out the window from the torture. My parents were nice, they gave me gifts often but I didn’t get love from them,” Jurgen shared.
At the age of 10, the boy was sent to the school of Don Bosco, a Salesian monastery in Marienhausen. There, at the age of 13, he was sexually abused by a teacher, after which the boy escaped from boarding school with his only friend named Dieter, with whom he managed to become close during his studies.
Jurgen admitted: already at school, he began to realize that he was attracted to boys. The educational institution strictly controlled all relations between students, the topic of sex and masturbation was taboo. Barch began to annoy his friend Dieter, but often resisted.
After escaping from boarding school, Jurgen had a random thought of killing a friend. The two children walked along the railway, and Bartsch pushed Dieter under the oncoming train, but did not calculate his strength – he fell half a meter from the tracks.
Later, Barch claimed that he acted on some kind of impulse, thinking that a dead comrade could undress and be touched without hindrance.
“Then I thought for the first time that I was sick,” reasoned Jurgen.
“I was not able to give up the crimes”
After this incident, the criminal decided to look for a secluded place where he could attract children. And I found an abandoned bomb shelter near the house. Barch often dreamed of bullying, beating and raping boys; He wanted to be feared. But at the same time, these thoughts tormented and disgusted him.
The maniac could not immediately realize his plans: some children refused to go with him, sometimes passers-by interfered with the teenager. At times he made friends with the neighborhood kids and later persuaded them to play a game: “undress and examine each other’s bodies.”
Many told their parents what had happened and, outraged, they came to their Barch wives, threatening the police. However, Gertrude cried and begged her adopted son not to report his crimes, explaining that there was already too much trouble.
As a result, they forgot what it was, and sometimes cases were characterized as child hooliganism. Jürgen’s parents often did not even believe in his guilt.
He committed his first murder at the age of 15, the victim was eight-year-old Klaus Jung. The criminal lured him to the bunker, ordered him to undress, strangled and engaged in sexual acts with the boy’s body. After that, the teenager dismembered the victim’s body.
What happened shocked Barch greatly. He decided to confess, but the priest said that it would be possible to forgive the sin only if he confessed his act.
“I decided that God would not forgive me if I did not confess: I could not confess because I was too cowardly and could not refuse offenses – the call was too strong. That’s why I had to move on, ”the maniac said during interrogation.
The next time he went hunting after 3 years. In Essen, Jurgen noticed that 13-year-old Peter Fuchs, who was lost and did not know who to turn to, was coming towards him in a car and offered to take the boy to Gelsenkirchen.
But he took me to the forest, to the shelter. The killer stood in a bush, forced the boy to undress, put a gag in his mouth and tied him up. Barch took care of him already in the cave: he abused and dismembered the body.
13-year-old Ulrich Kalweis and 12-year-old Manfred Grassmann shared the same fate. According to the maniac, he only managed to have intravital sexual intercourse with the last victim, the only surviving child, Peter Frese. At the same time, Jurgen experienced both disappointment and relief when he learned that the boy had escaped: Jurgen was allegedly preparing to be detained, but “could not stop himself.”
Judgment and death
Shortly after his arrest, Bartsch was tried as an adult and sentenced to life imprisonment. But then Munich lawyer Rolf Bossi appealed and won. As a result, the maniac had to serve 10 years in prison, and then go to a private hospital.
In 1972, Jurgen was placed in a psychiatric clinic in the city of Lippstadt, two years later he married a medical student. She said she often remembered her crimes and even called everything she did with children despicable.
“Before all this started, I was always a good kid. Sadism excited me, I wasn’t always good enough. The emotions that overwhelmed me made me unfit for a normal life, but I was ready to die rather than stop,” he said.
According to criminologist Britta Bannenberg, unlike many other similar maniacs, Jurgen was capable of empathy and understood the peculiarities of his tendencies, suffering from his own actions and fantasies and wanted to get rid of them.
Moreover, since the killer did not want to stay in the clinic forever, he even made plans for the future: he wanted a chemical castration. The surgery took place at Eckelborn hospital, but when Jurgen was given anesthesia, he lost consciousness and died shortly afterwards.
It turned out later: during the procedure, the drug was chosen incorrectly, which caused such a reaction. Bartsch was given ten times anesthetic, the incident allegedly accidental. The doctor responsible for preparing for the operation was given a suspended sentence.
As Paul Moor later noted in his book “Self-Portrait of Jurgen Bartsch”, many things in the biography of the young maniac went unnoticed by adults and led to a real tragedy.
Parents chose to ignore her pathological attraction to boys, problems in relationships with peers and coldness towards girls, not reporting the crime that the confessor Barch personally spoke about. School teachers did not pay attention to the excessive irritability of the boy and other peculiarities of character.
“Until parents understand the importance of early sex education and get rid of the naive belief that the child has neither instincts nor sexuality, society will always raise new child killers who want to take revenge on the innocent,” the author wrote.