April 3, 1941 - Vinko Pintarić
Over seventeen years, he killed five people, repeatedly escaped custody, and became a figure of regional notoriety — a fugitive whose longevity in the field gave him an almost folkloric status that complicated public perception of his crimes. The comparison to Čaruga, a celebrated outlaw of an earlier era, reflected how media coverage framed his evasions and violence as something closer to defiance than criminality. That romanticization, unearned as it was, is itself part of what makes his case historically notable.
From Wikipedia
Vinko Pintarić (3 April 1941 – 25 May 1991) was a Croatian serial killer and outlaw who murdered five people over the course of 17 years and escaped from prisons and police stakeouts on multiple occasions. His violent, vindictive nature and proficiency with firearms struck fear into inhabitants of Hrvatsko Zagorje, a region of northern Croatia where he spent years at large, hiding from law enforcement and engaging in various crimes, until his 1991 death in a shootout with the police.
Protracted media coverage of his exploits made Pintarić a household name in Croatia and Yugoslavia and even brought him a degree of sympathy from the general public, who saw him as a Robin Hood-like figure, and dubbed him "Čaruga of Zagorje", after an infamous post-World War I outlaw Jovo Stanisavljević Čaruga.
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