[2] Additional information is provided by the diaries of Hermann von Weinsberg, a Cologne alderman, and by a number of illustrated broadsheets, which were printed in southern Germany and were probably based on the German version of the London pamphlet.

[citation needed] Contemporary reference was made to the pamphlet by Edward Fairfax in his firsthand account of the alleged witch persecution of his own daughters in 1621.

Being threatened with torture, he confessed to killing and eating 14 children and 2 pregnant women, whose fetuses he ripped from their wombs and "ate their hearts panting hot and raw,"[7] which he later described as "dainty morsels.

[8] Not only was Stumpp accused of being a serial murderer and cannibal, but also of having an incestuous relationship with his daughter,[7] who was sentenced to die with him, and of having coupled with a distant relative, which was also considered to be incest according to the law.

[8] The execution of Stumpp, on 31 October 1589, alongside his daughter Beele (Sybil) and mistress, Katherine, 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.

As a warning against similar behaviour, 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.