January 23, 1929 - Romulus Vereș
Vereș carried out a series of hammer attacks in Romania during the 1970s that left five people dead and others severely injured, yet he never faced criminal imprisonment — a psychiatric determination of schizophrenia redirected his case entirely into the forensic and institutional system. The investigation that followed was unusually extensive for its era, involving thousands of witnesses over three years, suggesting authorities understood the gravity even as state media largely suppressed public coverage. That suppression created a vacuum filled by rumor, inflating the victim count dramatically in popular memory and obscuring the documented record for decades.
From Wikipedia
Romulus Vereș (23 January 1929 in Cluj – 13 December 1993 in Ștei) was a notorious serial killer from Romania, known as "The Man with the Hammer".
During the 1970s, he was charged with five murders and several attempted murders, but never imprisoned on grounds of insanity; he had schizophrenia, blaming the Devil for his actions. Instead, he was institutionalised in the Ștei psychiatric facility in 1976, following a three-year-long forensic investigation during which four thousand people were questioned.
Urban myths brought the number of victims up to 200 women, but the actual number was much smaller. This confusion probably is explained by the lack of attention this case received, despite its magnitude, in the Communist press of the time.
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