April 22, 2025 • 25 mins
Two shockingly similar murders happened around the same time in Krakow, Poland.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hudson River Radio dot Com.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
We're so good we don't need a transmitter.
Speaker 3 (00:06):
I'm Linda Zimmerman.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
I'm Brian Harrowitz, and this.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Is Murder in the Hudson Valley on Hudson River Radio
dot Com. Welcome to our episode tonight. Brian, I believe
you are taking us to a land far away, the
land of Kilbosse.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I've never had one, and I do not plan on
ever having one.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
It's just not my thing.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Me as well, right, the two vegetarian. Isn't it interesting
the two vegetarians do a brutal murder pot.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I know that's what a kowinky dink.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
So what is tonight's episode?
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Yeah, we're going to Poland for the first time, I
believe on the show. For all the years we've we've
never made it that far. So I thought it was
time to pack up. We'll take a little trip out.
There's good going to Poland. Also me that I may
very well butcher these names, even though I have practiced and.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Done my best, but.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
There are so many consonants it's tough to know how
to pronounce them.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Yes, that is true, So I'm going to do my best.
So we are going outside of crackhout Poland and a
guy named Vladimir that one I can pronounce.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
He had moved from Russia to Poland to study medicine.
He did that for one year. He then switched to psychology,
studied that for three years, and then dropped out. Oh
kind of wasted time. Maybe, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Yeah, time and money.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Yep, So I don't know if you pay for college
in Poland. Actually, now that you mention it, I don't
know if they have reasonable like I think here we're
so used to six figures for a degree that you
know the rest of the civil world doesn't do that.
That's a conversation or an argument for another show. But anyway, so, yeah,
(02:07):
he dropped out. He was also heavily into sports training.
He loved to read, but he was now unemployed nothing eight.
His father, Vitally it is spelled w A l ij
I believe it's Vitali. Wow, that's a good one, all right.
(02:28):
He is fifty at this point. He then moved from
Russia to Poland, bringing his father, so Vladimir's grandfather along. Okay,
Vitali was quite well off financially, but he had fled
Russia after seducing a woman thirty years younger who also
happened to be the daughter of a friend of his,
(02:49):
and he was afraid of revenge. So Russia, I can
understand that, I would say, so. Yeah, you know, Russia
is known for oligarchy. I don't know if he was
at oligarchy level, but it sounds like he was at
least pretty close, So revenge was definitely something on the table.
But in doing that, Vitali abandoned his wife and his
daughter back in Russia and never did anything to support them.
(03:11):
Didn't leave him money, didn't leave them anything, just straight
up abandoned them. And this is why Vladimir hated his
father so much.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Setting this cash for what is to come.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
On May thirty first, nineteen ninety nine, Vladimir lured his
father into the basement of the house and initially tried
to electrocute him with a stun gun that didn't say, Yeah,
stun gun hurts a lot, It incapacitates you for.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
A little bit when used correctly, but it's not going
to kill you.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Yeah, it's a stun gun.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Nice. It says it right, Yeah, it says it right.
In the name that yeah, yes, yep. Well this is
what happens when you drop out of three years four
years of college without finishing.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
So that didn't work.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
So instead Vladimir him multiple times in the chest and
neck with a sharpened screwdriver.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Oh god.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
When Vitali finally died, Vladimir hung him upside down by
the legs, using the window frame as a support. He
made additional cuts on his neck and caught the blood
in a bucket. He really did that, father, No, he
(04:28):
really did.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Yeah. So, but it gets worse.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
He then used a surgical scalpel and a shovel, a
sharpened shovel to decapitate the body. Not just that, but
he cut the skin down onto the chest, down onto
the back, kind of like you know those fake turtlenecks.
They call him dickies where, Yeah, the turtlenecks up. It's
not a full long sleeve turtleneck. It just kind of ends.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Yeah yeah, chest.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yeah, so that's the shape that.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Pulled the skin down.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Uh huh, that is the shape that he cut his
father's body. Vladimir then took his father's head upstairs and
spent the night carefully scalping it, removing the skin as
carefully as possible. Vladimir then threw the rest of the
head outside into the garden. He used a needle and
(05:18):
thread to sow the skin back together into its original shape.
He used salt to dry it out to prevent decomposition.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
So I guess he'd.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Learned something in his one year of study medicine.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Do they teach that how to make shrunken heads medicine?
Speaker 1 (05:33):
I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Actually, yeah, yeah, but by now it's early morning. Vladimir
shaved his head and put tape on his own scalp,
then pulled his father's face down over his own head
like a mask. He put on a clean set of
his father's clothes, He put on his father's glasses, he
(05:57):
put on his father's nice, clean hat, and then he
went outside to sit on a public bench and at
that point sit tight because we're going to take a break.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Hudson Riverradio dot com.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Hudson Riverradio dot com.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
We are back for better or worse. And yeah, this
sounds like something out of the Walking Dead.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Yeah, there was no build up on this case. This
went from zero to one hundred with nothing.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Right immediately, and we didn't see him doing this to
anyone else this for a possible first murder.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Wow, yep, yep.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
So, as I said before, he really didn't like his father.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
There you go, yep, all right.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
So you'll recall that Vladimir's father also brought his grandfather
to Poland when he moved. So the grandfather stopped by
the house. Vladimir was acting like his father, had his
father's face over his right and was sitting on this
bench outside. Well, the grandfather showed up, sat down on
(07:23):
the bench and had a conversation, thinking it was his son,
Vladimir's father.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Oh my god, how well he must have done this.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
So well, yeah, well, there's more to it.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
We'll get there.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
It actually got to the point where they went inside
and had breakfast together, sitting at the table across from
each other. The grandfather had terrible vision.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
He okay, that's explained.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
That explains it.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
He at first was sure he was speaking with his
own son, but after a while it was Vladimir's voice
and his speech, the speech patterns and his way of
speaking that gave it away. The grandfather went into the
basement found the decapitated corpse of his son. Vladimir's father
ran to a neighbor's house and called the crackout police.
(08:13):
He said he believed that his grandson had committed the murder.
He told him that right on the phone, right off
the back.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Okay, because he's sitting there wearing his face. M that's evidence.
I think we call it.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Yeah, yeah, I can only imagine the horror this poor
grandfather went through at that moment. Wow. So Vladimir knew
that he had been caught at this point, so he
gathered up his father's clothes, the clothes that he was
wearing during the murder, with all the blood on him
and all that, and he found a nearby hiding spot
where he just crouched down and he watched the police
(08:48):
respond and conduct their whole investigation. He was just watching
it from not that far away, I believe it or not.
As that wrapped up, Vladimir went to a nearby bus
stop and just sat down on the bench, and that's
where the police found him and placed him.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Under arrest, still wearing the masks.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
I don't know if he was wearing the maskt to
cats with you. I don't think so, but I'm not
really sure about that. So Vladimir readily admitted to everything
didn't argue it, didn't put up a fight, just admitted
to it all. He said he hated his father and
considered him immoral for his actions because he abandoned his
(09:26):
wife and the family.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
There and murder is not immoral.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
His hatred grew to the point where he decided to
murder him, and Vladimir would then testify that he had
planned the murder ahead of time, no shock there, even
preparing the tools in the basement of their house.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
He said he wanted it to.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Be quote, a work of art, which explains all the
time that he took to okay, scalped the head and
all that kind of stuff. Right, So hanging vitally by
his legs was in upside down crucifixion, and the yep,
the decapitation was because, in Vladimir's words, the head of
(10:07):
this kind of scoundrel should not hang, even on a
devil's cross.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
He really hated him.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
He was very angry.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yes, all the bad stuff was in his father's head,
which is also why he threw that into the garden
with the weeds, so like a symbolic, tossed the head.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
So he had symbolism for everything he did.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Yep, he really kind of thought this through. So he
was diagnosed by psychiatrists as borderline borderline schizoid shocker under
the Polish penal code that set legal limitations on his
capacity to understand his own actions. So he wound up
getting a twenty five year prison sentence. He petitioned to
(10:51):
have his prison term moved to Russia. I'm assuming to
move back near his mother and his sister, the ones
that were abandoned in the first place, and that grant
that request was granted. He's now coming up on twenty
five years. Who knows what's going to happen at that point. Yep,
we're hitting that twenty five year mark.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
I it's hard to believe that Russia, where they will
put you in prison for saying something wrong, would allow
this was Poland. Well, I know, but after the Soviet Union,
you know, so then who can grant him parole?
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (11:28):
I don't know, if you know the terms of the
prison sentence are still determined by Poland or is it
transferred to Russia that I have no idea. And it
seems that the privacy is much more stringent in Poland
than here because there's no last name published with this case.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
It's all first names. All right.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Well, and if it was just twenty five year sentence,
not twenty five to life yep, five, then what do
you do about it? He's going to be out.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Yeah, Well, if it's a psychiatric issue, maybe they can
hold him for that.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
I don't know. I have no idea how it works
over there.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Wow, but knowing what he's capable of, you would hope
that they would do everything they can to keep him
confined somewhere.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
And not make him angry.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
That's true, fair enough.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
I will say that the crime photos are online and
it is absolutely not something for the faint of heart.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
So wow.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
I would think two or three times before searching for those.
But they are online if you're really into that kind
of thing.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Yeah, something you can't unsee exactly.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
The face mask that he made is on there. The
father even had a mustache. The mustache is there, and
it's wow, yeah, it's it's pretty bad.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
So of course there is a portion of our listening
audience who is rushing to.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Oh, they're looking at right now, they are looking if
that's your joy yep, all right, I think we should
take another quick break because I have another case that
also took place in Poland, and.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
You're gonna notice some similar sounds. Good, yep, So we'll
be right back.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
This is Hudson River Radio dot com. This is Hudson
River Radio dot com. We are back, and I think
we are about to face another case, so take it away.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
All right.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
So we're still in Poland, We're still in Krackow. This
time we're this is a new case. We're talking about
twenty three year old college student Katasina Zevada. And I
hope I said that right. Zwada Zvada. She was, by
all accounts, a very lovely person, but she was depressed
after the passing of her father. She attended a university
(13:56):
whose name I feel like I can't even try to
pronounce jag I E L l O N.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
I A N. I think that's pronounced smith.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yeah, Gelonian.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
I feel like I'm going to insult many people by
trying to pronounce it, so I'm just going to skirt
over that. So she was in university in nineteen ninety eight.
She was switching majors from psychology to history to religious studies,
and on November twelfth, nineteen ninety eight, she was supposed
to meet her mother at a psychiatric clinic where she
(14:30):
had been getting treatment for her depression.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Which is good, but she didn't show up.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
She didn't show up that day, so that night her
mom attempted to file a missing person's report but was
apparently told to wait and see. So a lot of
misconceptions about missing persons. I can only speak for New York.
I can't speak for Poland. There is no set time
limit people have in their heads. You have to wait
twenty four hours. It is a case by case basis.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
We've seen where a child goes missing, there immediately on it, right,
but exactly, you know, a twenty three year old.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
College student who didn't show up for a doctor's appointment
is not necessarily something that's going to raise, you know,
a lot of red flags. Somebody who's a competent adult
can disappear for a little while if they just don't
want to talk to you. They may not want to
talk to you, and that's perfectly within their rights. So
I don't know the particulars in Poland, but at this
(15:28):
point you can kind of understand why they don't necessarily
think that this is a big missing case, right issue.
On January sixth, nineteen ninety nine, a tugboat crew had
to stop and the Vistula River when something got stuck
in the propeller.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Oh dear god.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
They found a large piece of skin and d NA
showed that it came from Katazina.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Okay, these poor just running a tuck down.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
It was basically the skin from her entire torso, the
midsection of her body. Then on January just the skin,
just the skin, Oh, just the skin, yep. Nothing else.
Almost a little bit about a week later, a little
over a week later, January fourteenth, her right leg was
found in the river.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Also okay.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
And it was first thought that she had just fallen
into the river and gotten mangled by a boat propeller
and that's why they were finding body parts. But upon examination,
it was determined by the forensic medicine unit in Crackout
that her skin had been deliberately and carefully removed from
her torso, and that her limbs and her head had
been cut off, manually cut off.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Okay, dismembered, dismembered.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Skinned.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
In May of nineteen ninety nine, the forensic medicine unit
received the corpse of by Tali from our last case
that we had just talked about right the same year
as investigators and his son, Vladimir the killer immediately went
to the top of the suspect list for Katterzina's case
as well as you know, same m But there was
(17:14):
no evidence to link the two together, so Vladimir was
dropped as a suspect from this second case. But they
did intersect briefly.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
There were abouts interesting yep.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
So Katzina's murder was considered a cold case after a
year long investigation didn't turn up any credible leads. By
twenty twelve, forensics had advanced to the point where the
prosecutor's office and they called it the X Files Cold
Case police unit resumed the investigation. Kattersina was exhumed and
(17:47):
re autopsied, and with the help of the rock Claw
and I know I'm saying that wrong Medical University, they
were able to create a three D model of katter
Zina and her injury, all the injuries that they had
discovered on her, and they were able to determine that
her killer had used a sharp blade to cut her neck,
(18:09):
to cut her armpit, and to cut her groin with
the intention of inflicting as much pain as possible and
to allow her to slowly bleed to death.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Oh so these were not post mortem mountains.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
This was done.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Wow yeah so yeah so yeah, place is where you
would bleed profusely.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Exactly, and it was done with the torture.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Yeah, yep.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
In twenty fourteen, the FBI assisted them and helped create
a psychological profile of the suspect Professor Duarte Nouni Vieira
of the University of Coimbra in Portugal.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
And I'm probably saying that wrong.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
Yeah, oh, you just you took on a tough one.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
I did.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
It was such a as the case pulled me down
into the rabbit hole that I couldn't pass this up
even with my terrible pronunciations. But this professor from Portugal
also contributed his expertise in forensics and torture. He was
an expert in torture.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
And they had.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Concluded obviously that the suspect had sadistic tendencies no shocker, no, yeah,
Katsina had been tortured before her death, and that the
suspect was likely trained in some type of martial arts.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Martial arts. How did they come upon that?
Speaker 1 (19:32):
I don't know. Interesting these forensic.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Excerpts, maybe because those are points the you know, points
so that your body is most vulnerable.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
It could be, it could be I don't know.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Ye if anybody has martial arts training and knows what
that's all about.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Yeah, it didn't say specifically what type of martial art.
And okay, you know, when they.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Put these profiles together, there's a lot to it, a
lot more than I know about.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Oh, I'm sure they know what they're doing.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Yeah, yeah, it's impressive. So back in nineteen ninety nine,
a man named Robert Jenkewski was considered a person of
interest because he knew Katazina and he had a history
of harassing women. But there wasn't enough for an arrest
at that time. But jumped to October fourth in twenty seventeen,
(20:23):
nineteen years after the murder, Wow, he was finally detained
by police. He fit the profile. He was trained in
martial arts. He had worked in a lab that dealt
with human corpses for a while. He later worked at
the Crackout Institute of Zoology, where he learned the process
of preserving animal skins.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
Oh boy, okay, he's ticking all the boxes. He is.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
He was fired from that job in zoology after he
decided to kill all the rabbits without reason or explanation.
He went into work and killed all the rabbitson just
I don't know wen explain why he did.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
It seemed like the thing to do.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
No, we have talked about animal cruelty before being a
giant red flag.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Well here you go.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
He also visited Katsina's grave several times, something we've talked about.
They go back to the scene of the crime, they revisit,
and so here we have somebody revisiting her. The police
also received a letter from a friend of Robert, but
they haven't released the contents of the letter, but the
letter seemed to be the final building block and the
(21:35):
cause for arrest. So we don't know what was in
the letter, but apparently that was enough to give the
police what they needed to place Robert under arrest. It
is believed that Robert had abducted Katsina and held her
captive in his house in Crackout. He tortured and stabbed
her repeatedly, and while she was still alive, he removed
(21:57):
the skin from her torso from the.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Whole oh my god, and.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Left her exposed to die.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
That's well, you have gotten two amazing cases here. I
didn't think you could top the first one. Yeah, but
skinning her alive is about as brutal as you can get.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
That is true.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
It's believed that Robert made a suit from her skin
and wore it before he tossed it into the river.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
What is going on in Poland? What's in the water there?
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Piece of skin?
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Yeah? A piece of skin? Yeah. I shouldn't have said that.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Unfortunately, after she died, he dismembered her and tossed the
skin in the leg into the river, which tug bow
crew found it, and then the leg was found later.
It's not known what happened to the rest of her.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Nobody knows.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Police searched his apartment and found her blood in the
bathroom and that's all that they were able to recover.
So okay, we don't know what happened to the rest
of her.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
His detention was.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Extended a few times as police continued to gather evidence,
so he was being held while the investigation was still going. Again,
this is Poland, this isn't the US, so laws.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Are going to be a little different.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
I am, by no means a legal expert on Polish law,
but he was being held, He was arrested, and he
was being held okay while the investigation was.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Still going on.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
In twenty twenty two, Robert Jankevski was found guilty of
aggravated murder with particular cruelty and he was sentenced to
life in prison. And he's still okay parole, no parole.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
So there you go.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Wow, very nasty cases that happened at just about the
same time, in just about the same location in Poland.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
What are the others?
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Yeah? Did we had some case I can't bring it
to mind where someone had cut off a face and
tried to get away wearing it.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Yeah, I did.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
It was yeah, where the Westchester police officer, Westchester County
Police officer was Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
That is so rare though, And here we've got two
of them in Poland in the same year.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Yep, yep, Wow that's what. That's what got my attention
and pulled me in.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
I can see that.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Wow. Well I don't know what to say.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Not much to say, you know, Like I said, this
went from like there's very little build up.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
These went from nothing.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
To right and no indication they ever victimized anyone else.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Just these the animal cruelty on Robert's case, well, right,
a lot of anger on Vladimir's.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Case, right, yep.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
Right, So there you go. Enough, I've had more than enough,
all right, Thank you everyone for joining us. I hope
you're not too traumatized and join us again next time
on Murder in the Hudson Valley on Hudson River Radio.
If you're skin isn't torn from your body, this is
(25:05):
Hudson River Radio dot com MHM
Hudson River Radio dot Com.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
We're so good we don't need a transmitter.
Speaker 3 (00:06):
I'm Linda Zimmerman.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
I'm Brian Harrowitz, and this.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Is Murder in the Hudson Valley on Hudson River Radio
dot Com. Welcome to our episode tonight. Brian, I believe
you are taking us to a land far away, the
land of Kilbosse.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I've never had one, and I do not plan on
ever having one.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
It's just not my thing.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Me as well, right, the two vegetarian. Isn't it interesting
the two vegetarians do a brutal murder pot.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I know that's what a kowinky dink.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
So what is tonight's episode?
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Yeah, we're going to Poland for the first time, I
believe on the show. For all the years we've we've
never made it that far. So I thought it was
time to pack up. We'll take a little trip out.
There's good going to Poland. Also me that I may
very well butcher these names, even though I have practiced and.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Done my best, but.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
There are so many consonants it's tough to know how
to pronounce them.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Yes, that is true, So I'm going to do my best.
So we are going outside of crackhout Poland and a
guy named Vladimir that one I can pronounce.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
He had moved from Russia to Poland to study medicine.
He did that for one year. He then switched to psychology,
studied that for three years, and then dropped out. Oh
kind of wasted time. Maybe, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Yeah, time and money.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Yep, So I don't know if you pay for college
in Poland. Actually, now that you mention it, I don't
know if they have reasonable like I think here we're
so used to six figures for a degree that you
know the rest of the civil world doesn't do that.
That's a conversation or an argument for another show. But anyway, so, yeah,
(02:07):
he dropped out. He was also heavily into sports training.
He loved to read, but he was now unemployed nothing eight.
His father, Vitally it is spelled w A l ij
I believe it's Vitali. Wow, that's a good one, all right.
(02:28):
He is fifty at this point. He then moved from
Russia to Poland, bringing his father, so Vladimir's grandfather along. Okay,
Vitali was quite well off financially, but he had fled
Russia after seducing a woman thirty years younger who also
happened to be the daughter of a friend of his,
(02:49):
and he was afraid of revenge. So Russia, I can
understand that, I would say, so. Yeah, you know, Russia
is known for oligarchy. I don't know if he was
at oligarchy level, but it sounds like he was at
least pretty close, So revenge was definitely something on the table.
But in doing that, Vitali abandoned his wife and his
daughter back in Russia and never did anything to support them.
(03:11):
Didn't leave him money, didn't leave them anything, just straight
up abandoned them. And this is why Vladimir hated his
father so much.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Setting this cash for what is to come.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
On May thirty first, nineteen ninety nine, Vladimir lured his
father into the basement of the house and initially tried
to electrocute him with a stun gun that didn't say, Yeah,
stun gun hurts a lot, It incapacitates you for.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
A little bit when used correctly, but it's not going
to kill you.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Yeah, it's a stun gun.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Nice. It says it right, Yeah, it says it right.
In the name that yeah, yes, yep. Well this is
what happens when you drop out of three years four
years of college without finishing.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
So that didn't work.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
So instead Vladimir him multiple times in the chest and
neck with a sharpened screwdriver.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Oh god.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
When Vitali finally died, Vladimir hung him upside down by
the legs, using the window frame as a support. He
made additional cuts on his neck and caught the blood
in a bucket. He really did that, father, No, he
(04:28):
really did.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Yeah. So, but it gets worse.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
He then used a surgical scalpel and a shovel, a
sharpened shovel to decapitate the body. Not just that, but
he cut the skin down onto the chest, down onto
the back, kind of like you know those fake turtlenecks.
They call him dickies where, Yeah, the turtlenecks up. It's
not a full long sleeve turtleneck. It just kind of ends.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Yeah yeah, chest.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yeah, so that's the shape that.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Pulled the skin down.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Uh huh, that is the shape that he cut his
father's body. Vladimir then took his father's head upstairs and
spent the night carefully scalping it, removing the skin as
carefully as possible. Vladimir then threw the rest of the
head outside into the garden. He used a needle and
(05:18):
thread to sow the skin back together into its original shape.
He used salt to dry it out to prevent decomposition.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
So I guess he'd.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Learned something in his one year of study medicine.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Do they teach that how to make shrunken heads medicine?
Speaker 1 (05:33):
I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Actually, yeah, yeah, but by now it's early morning. Vladimir
shaved his head and put tape on his own scalp,
then pulled his father's face down over his own head
like a mask. He put on a clean set of
his father's clothes, He put on his father's glasses, he
(05:57):
put on his father's nice, clean hat, and then he
went outside to sit on a public bench and at
that point sit tight because we're going to take a break.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Hudson Riverradio dot com.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Hudson Riverradio dot com.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
We are back for better or worse. And yeah, this
sounds like something out of the Walking Dead.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Yeah, there was no build up on this case. This
went from zero to one hundred with nothing.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Right immediately, and we didn't see him doing this to
anyone else this for a possible first murder.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Wow, yep, yep.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
So, as I said before, he really didn't like his father.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
There you go, yep, all right.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
So you'll recall that Vladimir's father also brought his grandfather
to Poland when he moved. So the grandfather stopped by
the house. Vladimir was acting like his father, had his
father's face over his right and was sitting on this
bench outside. Well, the grandfather showed up, sat down on
(07:23):
the bench and had a conversation, thinking it was his son,
Vladimir's father.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Oh my god, how well he must have done this.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
So well, yeah, well, there's more to it.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
We'll get there.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
It actually got to the point where they went inside
and had breakfast together, sitting at the table across from
each other. The grandfather had terrible vision.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
He okay, that's explained.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
That explains it.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
He at first was sure he was speaking with his
own son, but after a while it was Vladimir's voice
and his speech, the speech patterns and his way of
speaking that gave it away. The grandfather went into the
basement found the decapitated corpse of his son. Vladimir's father
ran to a neighbor's house and called the crackout police.
(08:13):
He said he believed that his grandson had committed the murder.
He told him that right on the phone, right off
the back.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Okay, because he's sitting there wearing his face. M that's evidence.
I think we call it.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Yeah, yeah, I can only imagine the horror this poor
grandfather went through at that moment. Wow. So Vladimir knew
that he had been caught at this point, so he
gathered up his father's clothes, the clothes that he was
wearing during the murder, with all the blood on him
and all that, and he found a nearby hiding spot
where he just crouched down and he watched the police
(08:48):
respond and conduct their whole investigation. He was just watching
it from not that far away, I believe it or not.
As that wrapped up, Vladimir went to a nearby bus
stop and just sat down on the bench, and that's
where the police found him and placed him.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Under arrest, still wearing the masks.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
I don't know if he was wearing the maskt to
cats with you. I don't think so, but I'm not
really sure about that. So Vladimir readily admitted to everything
didn't argue it, didn't put up a fight, just admitted
to it all. He said he hated his father and
considered him immoral for his actions because he abandoned his
(09:26):
wife and the family.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
There and murder is not immoral.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
His hatred grew to the point where he decided to
murder him, and Vladimir would then testify that he had
planned the murder ahead of time, no shock there, even
preparing the tools in the basement of their house.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
He said he wanted it to.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Be quote, a work of art, which explains all the
time that he took to okay, scalped the head and
all that kind of stuff. Right, So hanging vitally by
his legs was in upside down crucifixion, and the yep,
the decapitation was because, in Vladimir's words, the head of
(10:07):
this kind of scoundrel should not hang, even on a
devil's cross.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
He really hated him.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
He was very angry.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yes, all the bad stuff was in his father's head,
which is also why he threw that into the garden
with the weeds, so like a symbolic, tossed the head.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
So he had symbolism for everything he did.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Yep, he really kind of thought this through. So he
was diagnosed by psychiatrists as borderline borderline schizoid shocker under
the Polish penal code that set legal limitations on his
capacity to understand his own actions. So he wound up
getting a twenty five year prison sentence. He petitioned to
(10:51):
have his prison term moved to Russia. I'm assuming to
move back near his mother and his sister, the ones
that were abandoned in the first place, and that grant
that request was granted. He's now coming up on twenty
five years. Who knows what's going to happen at that point. Yep,
we're hitting that twenty five year mark.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
I it's hard to believe that Russia, where they will
put you in prison for saying something wrong, would allow
this was Poland. Well, I know, but after the Soviet Union,
you know, so then who can grant him parole?
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (11:28):
I don't know, if you know the terms of the
prison sentence are still determined by Poland or is it
transferred to Russia that I have no idea. And it
seems that the privacy is much more stringent in Poland
than here because there's no last name published with this case.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
It's all first names. All right.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Well, and if it was just twenty five year sentence,
not twenty five to life yep, five, then what do
you do about it? He's going to be out.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Yeah, Well, if it's a psychiatric issue, maybe they can
hold him for that.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
I don't know. I have no idea how it works
over there.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Wow, but knowing what he's capable of, you would hope
that they would do everything they can to keep him
confined somewhere.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
And not make him angry.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
That's true, fair enough.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
I will say that the crime photos are online and
it is absolutely not something for the faint of heart.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
So wow.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
I would think two or three times before searching for those.
But they are online if you're really into that kind
of thing.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Yeah, something you can't unsee exactly.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
The face mask that he made is on there. The
father even had a mustache. The mustache is there, and
it's wow, yeah, it's it's pretty bad.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
So of course there is a portion of our listening
audience who is rushing to.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Oh, they're looking at right now, they are looking if
that's your joy yep, all right, I think we should
take another quick break because I have another case that
also took place in Poland, and.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
You're gonna notice some similar sounds. Good, yep, So we'll
be right back.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
This is Hudson River Radio dot com. This is Hudson
River Radio dot com. We are back, and I think
we are about to face another case, so take it away.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
All right.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
So we're still in Poland, We're still in Krackow. This
time we're this is a new case. We're talking about
twenty three year old college student Katasina Zevada. And I
hope I said that right. Zwada Zvada. She was, by
all accounts, a very lovely person, but she was depressed
after the passing of her father. She attended a university
(13:56):
whose name I feel like I can't even try to
pronounce jag I E L l O N.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
I A N. I think that's pronounced smith.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yeah, Gelonian.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
I feel like I'm going to insult many people by
trying to pronounce it, so I'm just going to skirt
over that. So she was in university in nineteen ninety eight.
She was switching majors from psychology to history to religious studies,
and on November twelfth, nineteen ninety eight, she was supposed
to meet her mother at a psychiatric clinic where she
(14:30):
had been getting treatment for her depression.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Which is good, but she didn't show up.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
She didn't show up that day, so that night her
mom attempted to file a missing person's report but was
apparently told to wait and see. So a lot of
misconceptions about missing persons. I can only speak for New York.
I can't speak for Poland. There is no set time
limit people have in their heads. You have to wait
twenty four hours. It is a case by case basis.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
We've seen where a child goes missing, there immediately on it, right,
but exactly, you know, a twenty three year old.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
College student who didn't show up for a doctor's appointment
is not necessarily something that's going to raise, you know,
a lot of red flags. Somebody who's a competent adult
can disappear for a little while if they just don't
want to talk to you. They may not want to
talk to you, and that's perfectly within their rights. So
I don't know the particulars in Poland, but at this
(15:28):
point you can kind of understand why they don't necessarily
think that this is a big missing case, right issue.
On January sixth, nineteen ninety nine, a tugboat crew had
to stop and the Vistula River when something got stuck
in the propeller.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Oh dear god.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
They found a large piece of skin and d NA
showed that it came from Katazina.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Okay, these poor just running a tuck down.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
It was basically the skin from her entire torso, the
midsection of her body. Then on January just the skin,
just the skin, Oh, just the skin, yep. Nothing else.
Almost a little bit about a week later, a little
over a week later, January fourteenth, her right leg was
found in the river.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Also okay.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
And it was first thought that she had just fallen
into the river and gotten mangled by a boat propeller
and that's why they were finding body parts. But upon examination,
it was determined by the forensic medicine unit in Crackout
that her skin had been deliberately and carefully removed from
her torso, and that her limbs and her head had
been cut off, manually cut off.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Okay, dismembered, dismembered.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Skinned.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
In May of nineteen ninety nine, the forensic medicine unit
received the corpse of by Tali from our last case
that we had just talked about right the same year
as investigators and his son, Vladimir the killer immediately went
to the top of the suspect list for Katterzina's case
as well as you know, same m But there was
(17:14):
no evidence to link the two together, so Vladimir was
dropped as a suspect from this second case. But they
did intersect briefly.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
There were abouts interesting yep.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
So Katzina's murder was considered a cold case after a
year long investigation didn't turn up any credible leads. By
twenty twelve, forensics had advanced to the point where the
prosecutor's office and they called it the X Files Cold
Case police unit resumed the investigation. Kattersina was exhumed and
(17:47):
re autopsied, and with the help of the rock Claw
and I know I'm saying that wrong Medical University, they
were able to create a three D model of katter
Zina and her injury, all the injuries that they had
discovered on her, and they were able to determine that
her killer had used a sharp blade to cut her neck,
(18:09):
to cut her armpit, and to cut her groin with
the intention of inflicting as much pain as possible and
to allow her to slowly bleed to death.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Oh so these were not post mortem mountains.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
This was done.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Wow yeah so yeah so yeah, place is where you
would bleed profusely.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Exactly, and it was done with the torture.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Yeah, yep.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
In twenty fourteen, the FBI assisted them and helped create
a psychological profile of the suspect Professor Duarte Nouni Vieira
of the University of Coimbra in Portugal.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
And I'm probably saying that wrong.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
Yeah, oh, you just you took on a tough one.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
I did.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
It was such a as the case pulled me down
into the rabbit hole that I couldn't pass this up
even with my terrible pronunciations. But this professor from Portugal
also contributed his expertise in forensics and torture. He was
an expert in torture.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
And they had.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Concluded obviously that the suspect had sadistic tendencies no shocker, no, yeah,
Katsina had been tortured before her death, and that the
suspect was likely trained in some type of martial arts.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Martial arts. How did they come upon that?
Speaker 1 (19:32):
I don't know. Interesting these forensic.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Excerpts, maybe because those are points the you know, points
so that your body is most vulnerable.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
It could be, it could be I don't know.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Ye if anybody has martial arts training and knows what
that's all about.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Yeah, it didn't say specifically what type of martial art.
And okay, you know, when they.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Put these profiles together, there's a lot to it, a
lot more than I know about.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Oh, I'm sure they know what they're doing.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Yeah, yeah, it's impressive. So back in nineteen ninety nine,
a man named Robert Jenkewski was considered a person of
interest because he knew Katazina and he had a history
of harassing women. But there wasn't enough for an arrest
at that time. But jumped to October fourth in twenty seventeen,
(20:23):
nineteen years after the murder, Wow, he was finally detained
by police. He fit the profile. He was trained in
martial arts. He had worked in a lab that dealt
with human corpses for a while. He later worked at
the Crackout Institute of Zoology, where he learned the process
of preserving animal skins.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
Oh boy, okay, he's ticking all the boxes. He is.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
He was fired from that job in zoology after he
decided to kill all the rabbits without reason or explanation.
He went into work and killed all the rabbitson just
I don't know wen explain why he did.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
It seemed like the thing to do.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
No, we have talked about animal cruelty before being a
giant red flag.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Well here you go.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
He also visited Katsina's grave several times, something we've talked about.
They go back to the scene of the crime, they revisit,
and so here we have somebody revisiting her. The police
also received a letter from a friend of Robert, but
they haven't released the contents of the letter, but the
letter seemed to be the final building block and the
(21:35):
cause for arrest. So we don't know what was in
the letter, but apparently that was enough to give the
police what they needed to place Robert under arrest. It
is believed that Robert had abducted Katsina and held her
captive in his house in Crackout. He tortured and stabbed
her repeatedly, and while she was still alive, he removed
(21:57):
the skin from her torso from the.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Whole oh my god, and.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Left her exposed to die.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
That's well, you have gotten two amazing cases here. I
didn't think you could top the first one. Yeah, but
skinning her alive is about as brutal as you can get.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
That is true.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
It's believed that Robert made a suit from her skin
and wore it before he tossed it into the river.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
What is going on in Poland? What's in the water there?
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Piece of skin?
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Yeah? A piece of skin? Yeah. I shouldn't have said that.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Unfortunately, after she died, he dismembered her and tossed the
skin in the leg into the river, which tug bow
crew found it, and then the leg was found later.
It's not known what happened to the rest of her.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Nobody knows.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Police searched his apartment and found her blood in the
bathroom and that's all that they were able to recover.
So okay, we don't know what happened to the rest
of her.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
His detention was.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Extended a few times as police continued to gather evidence,
so he was being held while the investigation was still going. Again,
this is Poland, this isn't the US, so laws.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Are going to be a little different.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
I am, by no means a legal expert on Polish law,
but he was being held, He was arrested, and he
was being held okay while the investigation was.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Still going on.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
In twenty twenty two, Robert Jankevski was found guilty of
aggravated murder with particular cruelty and he was sentenced to
life in prison. And he's still okay parole, no parole.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
So there you go.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Wow, very nasty cases that happened at just about the
same time, in just about the same location in Poland.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
What are the others?
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Yeah? Did we had some case I can't bring it
to mind where someone had cut off a face and
tried to get away wearing it.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Yeah, I did.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
It was yeah, where the Westchester police officer, Westchester County
Police officer was Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
That is so rare though, And here we've got two
of them in Poland in the same year.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Yep, yep, Wow that's what. That's what got my attention
and pulled me in.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
I can see that.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Wow. Well I don't know what to say.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Not much to say, you know, Like I said, this
went from like there's very little build up.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
These went from nothing.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
To right and no indication they ever victimized anyone else.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Just these the animal cruelty on Robert's case, well, right,
a lot of anger on Vladimir's.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Case, right, yep.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
Right, So there you go. Enough, I've had more than enough,
all right, Thank you everyone for joining us. I hope
you're not too traumatized and join us again next time
on Murder in the Hudson Valley on Hudson River Radio.
If you're skin isn't torn from your body, this is
(25:05):
Hudson River Radio dot com MHM
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.