Jürgen Bartsch was born on November 6, 1946, in Essen, Germany. He was an illegitimate child. His birth mother died of tuberculosis just five months after he was born. Because of this, Jürgen spent the first part of his life being cared for by nurses. When he was 11 months old, he was adopted by a butcher and his wife who lived in Langenberg. They gave him the name Jürgen Bartsch.

Jürgen's adoptive mother had obsessive-compulsive disorder. She was very focused on cleanliness and would not let him play with other children because she was worried he would get dirty. This strict behavior continued even as he grew older. His mother bathed him herself until he was 19 years old.

At the age of 10, Jürgen started school. However, his parents thought the school was not strict enough for him, so they moved him to a Catholic boarding school. During his early years, Jürgen faced significant abuse. He was physically abused as a baby, and he often had visible scars and bruises. His adoptive mother would beat him, sometimes in the same room where his father worked as a butcher.

For six years, Jürgen was kept in an underground cellar. His mother also sexually abused him during his bathing sessions. When he was eight years old, his cousin, who was thirteen at the time, abused him. Later, when Jürgen was thirteen years old, he was also abused by a teacher.

Jürgen Bartsch began his series of murders when he was just fifteen years old. His first victim was Klaus Jung, an eight-year-old boy he killed on March 31, 1962. Three years later, on August 6, 1965, he murdered Peter Fuchs, who was thirteen years old. Bartsch lured them and his other victims into an abandoned air-raid shelter. There he forced them to undress and sexually abused them.

Later that same month, on August 14, he killed another boy named Ulrich Kahlweiss, who was twelve years old. His fourth victim was Manfred Grassmann, also twelve, on May 6, 1966. Bartsch dismembered all four of these boys. His intended fifth victim, Peter Frese, who was fifteen years old, managed to escape on June 18, 1966. Frese burned through his bindings with a candle after Bartsch had left the shelter.

Bartsch was arrested later in 1966. When caught, he confessed to his crimes openly. On December 15, 1967, he was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Wuppertal regional court. His sentence was upheld on appeal. However, in 1971, the Federal Court of Justice of Germany returned the case to a lower court. They reduced his sentence to ten years of juvenile detention and placed him under psychiatric care.

While in a psychiatric facility, Bartsch married Gisela Deike on January 2, 1974. After about ten years of being incarcerated, he agreed to voluntary castration on April 28, 1976. This decision was made to avoid life imprisonment in a mental hospital. Unfortunately, the procedure went wrong. The doctors made a mistake that resulted in Bartsch's death due to an accidental overdose of halothane during the surgery.