Peter Woodcock
Canadian serial killer (1939-2010)
David Michael Krueger (March 5, 1939 – March 5, 2010), best known by his birth name Peter Woodcock, was a Canadian serial killer, child rapist and diagnosed psychopath. He gained notoriety for the murders of three young children in Toronto in the late 1950s, as well as for a murder in 1991 on his first day of unsupervised release from the psychiatric institution in which he had been incarcerated for his earlier crimes.
An adopted child, Krueger lived in numerous foster homes as an infant and showed signs of severe emotional trauma when he found a permanent foster home at the age of 3. Unable to adjust to social situations, he was bullied by his peers. Krueger would often wander from his home by foot, bicycle or train to parts of Toronto, where he would molest dozens of children and ultimately murder three. Found not guilty by reason of insanity, he was sent to a psychiatric facility. Psychiatrists placed him in experimental treatment programs for psychopathy, but those treatments proved ineffective when he murdered a fellow psychiatric patient in 1991; after his death in 2010, he was described in the Toronto Star as "the serial killer they couldn't cure."
Early life
Peter Woodcock was born in Peterborough, Ontario, to a 17-year-old factory worker, Waita Woodcock, who gave him up for adoption after breastfeeding him for a month. Adoption agency records report that the newborn showed feeding problems and cried constantly. As an infant, he stayed in various foster homes, unable to bond with any of his foster parents. After his first birthday, he became terrified of anybody approaching him, and his speech was incoherent—described as strange whining animal noises.
“Peter Woodcock” enters the record as canadian serial killer (1939-2010). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Peter, Woodcock and Canadian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Peter Woodcock” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.