https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Stumpp

Peter Stumpp (died 1589) (whose name is also spelled as Peter Stube, Pe(e)ter Stubbe, Peter Stübbe or Peter Stumpf) was a Rhenish farmer, accused of being a serial killer and a cannibal, also known as the "Werewolf of Bedburg". Stumpp was born at the village of Epprath near the country-town of Bedburg in the Electorate of Cologne. His date of birth is not known, as the local church registers were destroyed during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). He was a wealthy farmer of his rural community.[citation needed] During the 1580s he seems to have been a widower with two children; a girl called Beele (Sybil), who seems to have been older than fifteen years old, and a son of an unknown age. During the years before his trial he had an intimate relationship with a distant relative named Katharina Trump (also spelled "Trumpen" or "Trompen").

During 1589, Stumpp had one of the most lurid and famous werewolf trials of history. After being stretched on a rack, and before further torture commenced,[2] he confessed to having practiced black magic since he was twelve years old. He claimed that the Devil had given him a magical belt or girdle, which enabled him to metamorphose into "the likeness of a greedy, devouring wolf, strong and mighty, with eyes great and large, which in the night sparkled like fire, a mouth great and wide, with most sharp and cruel teeth, a huge body, and mighty paws." Removing the belt, he said, made him transform back to his human form.

For twenty-five years, Stumpp had allegedly been an "insatiable bloodsucker" who gorged on the flesh of goats, lambs, and sheep, as well as men, women, and children. He reportedly confessed under threat of torture that at age 12, making him 37 at the time of his capture if these reports are accurate, he’d engaged in the art of black magic and succeeded in summoning the devil.

Being threatened with torture he confessed to killing and eating fourteen children, two pregnant women, whose fetuses he ripped from their wombs and "ate their hearts panting hot and raw," which he later described as "dainty morsels." [3] One of the fourteen children was his own son, whose brain he was reported to have devoured.

Not only was Stumpp accused of being a serial murderer and cannibal, but also of having an incestuous relationship with his daughter, who was sentenced to die with him, and that he had coupled with a distant relative, which was also considered to be incestuous according to the law. In addition to this he confessed to having had intercourse with a succubus sent to him by the Devil.

The execution of Stumpp, on October 31, 1589, and of his daughter and mistress is one of the most brutal on record: He was put to a wheel, where "flesh was torn from his body", in ten places, with red-hot pincers, followed by his arms and legs. Then his limbs were broken with the blunt side of an axehead to prevent him from returning from the grave, before he was beheaded and burned on a pyre. His daughter and mistress had already been flayed and strangled and were burned along with Stumpp's body. As a warning against similar behavior, local authorities erected a pole with the torture wheel and the figure of a wolf on it, and at the very top they placed Peter Stumpp's severed head.

References

• http://werewolftheory.blogspot.com/2012/05/trials-damnable-life-and...
• http://modernfarmer.com/2013/08/peter-stubbethe-werewolf-of-bedburg/
• http://paranormal.about.com/od/werewolves/a/The-Werewolf-Of-Bedburg...