Born on 17 April 1933[2] as the son of a miner in Hindenburg (Zabrze), Upper Silesia, Kroll was the sixth of nine children.
This, and the fact that there were a number of other killers operating in the area at the time, helped him to evade capture.
[4] On 3 July 1976, Kroll was arrested for kidnapping and killing a four-year-old girl named Marion Ketter.
As police went from home to home, a neighbour approached a policeman and told him that the waste pipe in his apartment building had been blocked up, and when he had asked his neighbour, Kroll, whether he knew what had been blocking the pipe, Kroll had simply replied, "guts".
Kroll said that he often sliced portions of flesh from his victims to cook and eat them, claiming that he did this to save on his grocery bills.