July 28, 1877 - Béla Kiss
His method was methodical rather than impulsive — matrimonial advertisements, carefully selected victims with few close ties, and airtight metal drums that preserved the evidence of each killing for years before anyone looked. The discovery of twenty-four bodies in Cinkota in 1916 placed him among the most prolific documented killers of his era in Central Europe, yet he was never apprehended, having disappeared into the chaos of the First World War. What makes him a recurring subject of criminological study is not only the scale but the system: the correspondence with seventy-four women, the financial fraud that preceded each murder, the deliberate selection of those least likely to be missed.
From Wikipedia
Béla Kiss (; Hungarian: [ˈbeːlɒ ˈkiʃ]; c. 1877 – after 4 October 1916) was a Hungarian serial killer. He is thought to have murdered at least 23 young women and one man, and conserved their corpses in large metal drums that he kept on his property.
Early life
In 1877, Béla Kiss was born in Izsák, Austria-Hungary, to János Kiss and Verona Varga.
Since 1900, Kiss lived in Cinkota (then a town near Budapest, now a neighbourhood of the 16th district within the city itself). According to Magyar Nemzet in 1907: "Béla Kiss, a tinsmith in Cinkota, unmarried, lives in a furnished apartment, has his own business as a tinsmith, is regularly employed by his business partners. He is of good character, he is not in debt, he was not insolvent, he always fulfils his obligations, his lifestyle is solid, can be offered for credit."
In 1912, Kiss hired a housekeeper, Mrs. Jakubec. She noticed that Kiss corresponded with a number of women, typically through advertisements he would place in newspapers offering his services as either a matrimonial agent or a fortune teller, and sometimes brought the women individually to his home. However, his housekeeper had little contact with the women.
Kiss was never on intimate terms with his neighbours, even though he was well-liked. Townsfolk also noticed that Kiss had collected a number of metal drums. When the town police questioned him about the drums, he told them that he filled them with fuel in order to prepare for rationing in the oncoming war.
When World War I began in 1914, he was conscripted and left his house in Jakubec's care.
Criminal case
According to an article published in Népszava on 10 May 1916, referring to a "police inspector's report", Márton Kresinszky, the owner of the house rented by Kiss, wanted to renovate the building, so he went to Cinkota, where Kiss's neighbour, an old acquaintance of Kresinszky, pharmacist Béla Takács, told him that Kiss had gone to war in 1914. In search of material for redecoration, the two men went to the chamber next to Kiss's workshop, where Takács said there had been a large quantity of reeds. In the chamber they found seven tin drums, stacked one metre long and fifty centimetres wide. After they pried the airtight lead-sealed lid of the top barrel open with an axe, a terrible stench emanated from it. The lid was removed and a bag was found, which was pulled out of the cylinder. A woman's body was found inside a bag. After opening another barrel, again a corpse smell emanated and a lock of blonde hair fell out. Kresinszky and Takács then informed the authorities. Gyula Huszka, the chief notary, together with police officers, found a female body in each of the seven barrels. A search of Kiss' property resulted in a total of 24 bodies. Famed Austria-Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy was present and described the following:
I stood there in the cemetery in Czinkota, in front of the tin barrels, and watched one by one as the contents of the opened barrels were poured out onto the autopsy table. Tin barrels of different heights: equally tinned, precisely, with conscientious work. Those who opened the first barrel did not doubt for a moment that the other contents were the same, although this assumption meant an unimaginable horror. And those of us who were there at the opening, all of us took it for granted that a small woman fell to the ground from the smaller barrel, and a larger one from the larger one. And after the second barrel, we also knew how to turn the barrel, how deep to reach, and where to grab the string on the neck of the emerging female head, where the loop would be, how it leads down to the legs, and it is knotted. This is how a proper, precise collector works, one who understands his craft and "likes order."
Charles Nagy, head of detectives in Budapest, informed the military that they should arrest Kiss immediately, if he was still alive; there was also a possibility that he was a prisoner of war. His name, unfortunately, was very common. Nagy also arrested Jakubec and asked the postal service to hold any possible letters to Kiss, in case he had an accomplice who could warn him. Nagy initially suspected that Jakubec might have had something to do with the murders, especially since Kiss had left her money in his will. Jakubec assured police that she knew absolutely nothing about the murders. She showed them a secret and locked room that Kiss had told her never to enter. The room was filled with bookcases and had a desk, which held a number of letters, Kiss' correspondence with 74 women, and a photo album. Many of the books were about poisons or strangulation. From the letters, Nagy discerned several things. The oldest of the letters were from 1903, and it became clear that Kiss was defrauding the women —usually middle-aged— who had been looking for marriage. He had placed ads in the marriage columns of several newspapers and had selected mainly women who had no relatives living nearby and knew no one who would quickly notice their disappearance. He wooed them and convinced them to send him money. Police also found old court records that indicated that two of his victims had initiated court proceedings, because he had taken money from them. Both women had disappeared, and the cases had been dismissed.
Each woman who came to the house was strangled. Kiss conserved their corpses in alcohol inside sealed airtight metal drums. Police found that the bodies had puncture marks on their necks and that their bodies were drained of blood, which led them to believe that Kiss may have been practicing vampirism.
Escape
On 4 October 1916, Nagy received a letter that stated that Kiss was treated in a Serbian hospital. However, Nagy arrived at the hospital too late; Kiss had fled and left the corpse of another soldier in his bed. Nagy alerted all the Hungarian police, but all the alleged sightings police investigated were false.
Sightings
On several later occasions, speculation arose that Kiss had perhaps faked his death by exchanging identities during the war with a dead soldier named Mackaree. He was reportedly sighted numerous times in the following years. Various rumours circulated as to his actual fate, including that he had been imprisoned for burglary in Romania or he had died of yellow fever in Turkey. In 1920, a soldier in the French Foreign Legion reported on another legionnaire named Hoffman, the name Kiss had used in some of his letters, who had boasted how good he was at using a garrote and who fit Kiss' description. "Hoffman" deserted before police could reach him.
The last known supposed sighting occurred in 1932 in New York City, USA. That year, homicide detective Henry Oswald was certain he had observed Kiss emerging from the New York City Subway at Times Square. There were also rumours that Kiss was living in the city and working as a janitor, although these could not be verified. When the police went to interview the janitor, he had already left.
Kiss' eventual fate and exact number of victims remain unknown.
- Last updated on .