STRANGE BUT TRUE? DONALD TRUMP COULD BE RELATED TO 16TH CENTURY CANNIBAL SERIAL KILLER 'THE WEREWOLF OF BEDBURG'

Donald Trump could be related to a 16th century cannibal serial killer.

Academics investigating the infamous tale of Peter Stumpf, nicknamed the 'Werewolf of Bedburg', turned up shock evidence that may point towards the US President's German ancestry.

Stumpf was a farmer convicted of murdering at least 13 children and two pregnant women before devouring parts of their corpses.

He was also said to have mutilated cattle, had incestuous relationships with his daughter and sister, and murdered his own young son before eating his brain.

Stumpf was executed in 1589 and the case has fascinated scholars for centuries as one of the earliest examples of werewolf mythology.

Dr Kevin Pittle, an anthropologist at Biola University in Southern California, was re-examining it ahead of a talk on Halloween when he made a startling discovery.

According to surviving documents, Stumpf was put to death alongside his lover 'Katharina Trump' who was convicted of aiding his grisly crimes.

Intrigued by the famous name, Dr Pittle decided to examine Katharina's story further with colleagues.

His team now believes evidence including ancestry records and socio-linguistic factors mean it is "possible" that Katharina Trump can be traced all the way back to the US President.

Donald Trump's German ancestors

Trump's grandfather Friedrich was born in the tiny village of Kallstadt, 60 miles south of Frankfurt, in 1869 before emigrating to the United States as a teenager.

In New York, he had two sons, John and Fred who founded the successful property business that Donald went on to inherit.

Following the Second World War, both Fred and later his son Donald, were uncomfortable with their German heritage and used to say they were Swedish.

But the truth is the Trump family goes back generations in Kallstadt.

Many are buried in the local cemetery and the owners of the house where Friedrich was born have become so fed up by people ringing the doorbell they put it up for sale.

Donald even appeared in a documentary entitled 'Kings of Kallstadt' last year made by local filmmaker Simone Wendel.

She was intrigued by the fact that both the Trump family and the Heinz dynasty come from the hamlet.

It is one of Donald's earliest ancestors in Kallstadt, Hans Trumpf II, born around 1559, who may link the stories of both Donald Trump's German ancestry and the 'Werewolf of Bedburg'.

Did Peter Stumpf and Katharina Trump produce Donald's earliest ancestor?

The story of Peter Stumpf is generally considered to have happened in Bedburg, a small town near Cologne.

But Dr Pittle has found no legal records of anyone named Stumpf or Trump living in the area at that time.

This is likely because most records were destroyed in the 30 years war of 1618.

However, other factors suggested the tale may have happened somewhere else in Germany.

Dr Pittle says ancestral records show a Katharina Trump and Peter Stumpf lived in the Kallstadt area at the time of the 'werewolf' murders.

Could they have produced a child called Hans Trump whose distant relative would go on to become the 45th President of the United States?

"We started looking through these databases to find Trumps and Stumpfs in the same place," said Dr Pittle.

"We have no legal records, family records to support this happening in Cologne.

"What I did stumble across, was people working on Donald Trump's genealogy - and there were several Katharinas early on."

"Kallstadt is in southwest Germany, where the werewolf panic was centred.

"If you were going to expect a werewolf story, you would expect it down there."

In the local dialect of the time, Cologne was spelt 'Colle' while the German word for city is 'stadt'.

"So if you were going to say 'Cologne city' you would say 'Colle-stadt', which is very close phonetically to Kallstadt," Dr Pittle explained.

"Kallstadt is a little no name town, whereas everybody knows Cologne.

"What if something happened in Kallstadt but it got heard as Colle-stadt?"

Most details of the Stumpf legend can be traced to a pamphlet brought to London from Germany by an English postman called George Bores in 1590.

It remains in the British Library where it is described as a document which "greatly influenced early modern ideas about werewolf behaviour".

It also one of the earliest examples of sensational tabloid news.

In the pamphlet, Katharina's surname is spelt 'Trompin'.

Dr Pittle says this feminine suffix is generally used in the 'High German' dialects toward the South.

It's another geographical anomaly in the story.

"There are inconsistencies in the scholarly accounts of historians," Dr Pittle went on.

"We didn't start this project looking for someone related to Donald Trump."

"We're asking questions about language, how it coalesced and when it was written down.

"We're investigating - is it possible that the Katharina Trump named in the werewolf narrative - is it the same Katharina Trump that Donald is descended from?

"There's no way to support it at the moment.

"But is it entertaining to consider? Yes."

'My kids are hoping I get flamed in a Trump tweet'

Dr Pittle is hoping fellow researchers will now take his 'speculative hypothesis' and examine it further.

"We want other people to do the digging, we're not the experts," he said.

"We're trying to crowdsource the research.

"If there's some scholar in Germany we don't know who's been deeply researching this and has stumbled across family records in Cologne - we will kiss it goodbye very quickly.

"We're not attached to this theory."

And what does he think Donald Trump will think of being linked to a cannibal serial killer?

"For me, I'm just a curious researcher," he said.

"My kids are hoping I get flamed in a Trump tweet by the end of the week!

"I guess I'd be honoured..."

What was the macabre tale of Peter Stumpf?

According to the few surviving documents, the macabre story of Peter Stumpf began when villagers in Bedburg, near Cologne, began finding cows dead in the pastures, ripped apart as if attacked by some savage beast.

Then young women and children began to disappear.

Some were found murdered and their bodies horrifically disfigured.

The killings and disappearances continued for decades before they finally came to an end.

The 'wolf' tried to attack a little girl but was disturbed by some nearby cattle who charged and the beast fled.

A group of local men then went out to hunt the killer with a pack of dogs.

They caught sight of what they believed was a wolf and gave chase.

But when the animal was cornered they arrived to find Peter Stumpf, a wealthy local farmer, cowering in fear.

'A deal with the Devil'

At his trial, Stumpf was put onto a rack and confessed all fearing torture.

He admitted he was born with an unnatural bloodlust and when he was just 12-years-old made a deal with the Devil so that "he might work his malice on men, women, and children, in the shape of some beast."

The Devil gave him a "girdle" of wolf fur which transformed him into "the likeness of a greedy, devouring wolf, strong and mighty, with eyes great and large, which in the night sparkled like unto brands of fire, a mouth great and wide, with most sharp and cruel teeth, a huge body and mighty paws."

Stumpf said he had been murdering and eating human flesh for at least 25 years.

He confessed to murdering 13 young children and two pregnant women "tearing the children out of their wombs, in most bloody and savage sort, and after ate their hearts panting hot and raw, which he accounted dainty morsels and best agreeing to his appetite."

A gruesome end

Stumpf was executed on October 31, 1589, in equally gruesome fashion.

He was strapped to a rack where executioners pulled flesh from his bones with red-hot pincers.

His arms, legs and head were chopped off with an axe before his remains were burned at the stake.

Crucially, documents mention that magistrates discovered that Stumpf's daughter 'Beell' and lover 'Katharina Trump' were both accessories to the murders.

They were also burned at the stake with Stumpf's 'carcass'.