evafiore
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Breakthrough in Skin enquiry
29th November 2013
Police in Krakow believe that they have taken a huge step forward in trying to solve a case dating back to 1999 that was dubbed The Silence of the Lambs murder.
Mutilated human remains had been spotted floating in the Vistula river by the crew of a ship in January 1999. It was originally believed that the corpse must have been mutilated from being struck by ships sailing on the river. It was only after further investigation that police were horrified to discover the limbs had been removed and the torso skinned before the body had ended up in the water. In one of the first instances of DNA testing being used in a criminal case in Poland, it was discovered that the body was that of a 23-year-old woman who had gone missing from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow.
The body was in such a dreadful state that forensic experts at the time could not be certain that the victim had been murdered, been involved in a fatal accident or committed suicide. The only thing they could be certain of was that the attacker had used the body after death. I remember that not just I, but also the colleagues with whom I worked at the scene, we were aware that we are dealing with a continuation, or with some version of the movie Silence of the Lambs, said Mateusz Ciarka of the Malopolska Police.
Police psychologists tried to build a profile of the attacker and even consulted with the FBI in their pursuit of an answer to the mystery. Together they built the profile of someone with specialist skills such as a butcher or someone who had worked in forensic medicine.
The case looked to be heading for a dead-end when another macabre incident took place in Krakow. A male student murdered his father, removed the skin from the head and sewed it into the form of a balaclava before appearing in front of his grandfather pretending to be the father he had murdered. Investigators thought they were close to solving the mystery of the body in the Vistula but enquiries ruled the student out.
After a year the case was closed because of a lack of evidence but re-opened in 2011 by a specialist police department nicknamed Archiwum X (X Files). They exhumed the remains of the young woman and new forensic tests have revealed traces of plants not found in the river where the body was discovered. This has led police to believe that they can pinpoint the place where the body was prior to being dumped in the river.
Evidence, which we recovered after the exhumation carried out 13 years after the crime, exceeded the expectations of all the prosecutors, police and scientists Mr Ciarka told reporters while cautioning them We have to remain secretive, as the case has been since the beginning.
29th November 2013
Police in Krakow believe that they have taken a huge step forward in trying to solve a case dating back to 1999 that was dubbed The Silence of the Lambs murder.
Mutilated human remains had been spotted floating in the Vistula river by the crew of a ship in January 1999. It was originally believed that the corpse must have been mutilated from being struck by ships sailing on the river. It was only after further investigation that police were horrified to discover the limbs had been removed and the torso skinned before the body had ended up in the water. In one of the first instances of DNA testing being used in a criminal case in Poland, it was discovered that the body was that of a 23-year-old woman who had gone missing from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow.
The body was in such a dreadful state that forensic experts at the time could not be certain that the victim had been murdered, been involved in a fatal accident or committed suicide. The only thing they could be certain of was that the attacker had used the body after death. I remember that not just I, but also the colleagues with whom I worked at the scene, we were aware that we are dealing with a continuation, or with some version of the movie Silence of the Lambs, said Mateusz Ciarka of the Malopolska Police.
Police psychologists tried to build a profile of the attacker and even consulted with the FBI in their pursuit of an answer to the mystery. Together they built the profile of someone with specialist skills such as a butcher or someone who had worked in forensic medicine.
The case looked to be heading for a dead-end when another macabre incident took place in Krakow. A male student murdered his father, removed the skin from the head and sewed it into the form of a balaclava before appearing in front of his grandfather pretending to be the father he had murdered. Investigators thought they were close to solving the mystery of the body in the Vistula but enquiries ruled the student out.
After a year the case was closed because of a lack of evidence but re-opened in 2011 by a specialist police department nicknamed Archiwum X (X Files). They exhumed the remains of the young woman and new forensic tests have revealed traces of plants not found in the river where the body was discovered. This has led police to believe that they can pinpoint the place where the body was prior to being dumped in the river.
Evidence, which we recovered after the exhumation carried out 13 years after the crime, exceeded the expectations of all the prosecutors, police and scientists Mr Ciarka told reporters while cautioning them We have to remain secretive, as the case has been since the beginning.
