Adolf Gustav Seefeldt (March 6, 1870 – May 23, 1936), known as The Sandman, was a German serial killer. Life Early life Born as the seventh and last child of his parents, Adolf was first trained as a locksmith then as a watchmaker who repaired grandfather clocks and pocket watches. He came to Lübeck in 1890 and married Katarina Seefeldt, who divorced him in 1910. His son was sent to a lunatic asylum for moral crimes, at the age of nineteen. Seefeldt is said to have been abused by two men at the age of 12. He was first imprisoned at 25 years for sexual harassment of a boy. Psychiatrists diagnosed him as mentally unstable, which is why he spent most of his life in mental hospitals and prisons. Serial murders The traveler and watchmaker Adolf Seefeldt, also called "Sandman" or – because of his profession – "Uncle Tick Tock" and "Uncle Adi", abused and killed at least twelve boys during the reign of the Third Reich. As a crime scene he usually chose pine preservations with one exception. A commonality was found in the victim's clothing, who consistently wore sailor suits. Since all children were "sleeping peacefully" and showed no signs of external violence, the police were mystified by the circumstances of death. It is therefore possible that Seefeldt committed more murders that were considered natural deaths. Contemporary experts speculated that Seefeldt had used his own homemade poison, chloroform or smothered his victims. According to Hans Pfeiffer, a well-known author of popular science books on authentic criminal cases, these theories were disproven with little effort. Pfeiffer suspected, however, that Seefeldt had put his victims into a hypnotic sleep, then probably performed oral sex on them and let them lie asleep in the woods, where he failed to awaken them from hypnosis. The children later died of hypothermia, which Seefeldt had accepted or intended. The victims His victims ranged from toddlers to 12-year-old boys: Kurt Gnirk (April 16, 1933), Wolfgang Metzdorf (October 8, 1933), Ernst Tesdorf (November 2, 1933), Alfred Prätorius (November 12, 1933), Hans Korn (January 16, 1934), Günter Tieske from Oranienburg (October 2, 1934), 11-year-old Erwin Wishnewski from Brandenburg (October 8, 1934), 4-year-old Artur Dill and 5-year-old Edgar "Eipel" Dittrich (October 16, 1934, both found in Neuruppin), 10-year-old Hans-Joachim Neumann (killed February 16, 1935; found on June 20, 1935), 10-year-old Heinz Zimmerman (February 23, 1935) and 11-year-old Gustav