Sylvestre MATUSCHKA

Classification: Mass murderer
Characteristics: Derailment of several trains - Caused the crashes in order to obtain sexual gratification
Number of victims: 22
Date of murders: September 12, 1931
Date of arrest: October 10, 1931
Date of birth: January 24, 1892
Victims profile: Men, women and children (Vienna Express passengers)
Method of murder: Explosives
Location: Bia-Torgaby, Hungary
Status: Sentenced to death in 1934. Commuted to life in prison. Escape from jail in Vác in 1944. Never recaptured and his fate is unknown

Sylvestre Matuschka (born 1892, date of death unknown) (in Hungarian publications: Matuska Szilveszter), a former officer in the Austro-Hungarian army, was arrested in October 1931 and charged with arranging the derailment of several trains. It is conjectured that he caused the crashes in order to obtain sexual gratification.

Matuschka's most notorious crime was the derailment of the Vienna Express headed towards Vienna as it was crossing the Biatorbágy bridge near Budapest at 12.20am on 13 September 1931. The incident resulted in the death of 22 people and the wounding of 120 others, 17 of them severely.

Matuschka carried out his crime by blowing up a portion of the bridge, causing the engine and nine of the eleven coaches forming the train to plunge into a ravine 30 meters deep. Matuschka was discovered at the scene of the crime but, having passed himself off as a surviving passenger, he was only arrested one month later, on 10 October 1931.

At his trial, Matuschka claimed to have been ordered to derail the express by God. He was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted and the former army officer reportedly escaped from jail in Vác in 1944. According to some reports, he served as an explosives expert during the latter stages of World War II; he was never recaptured and his fate is unknown.

Matuschka has been quoted as explaining his crimes by saying: "I wrecked trains because I like to see people die. I like to hear them scream." It was reported that he achieved orgasm while watching the trains he had sabotaged crash.

In 1990 Matuschka became the subject of a song, Sylvestre Matuschka, by the band Lard. In 1982 a Hungarian/German TV film based on the case, titled The Viaduct, was broadcast.

Szilveszter Matuska (January 29, 1892, Csantavér (now Čantavir, Serbia) - disappeared circa 1945), was a Hungarian mass murderer and mechanical engineer who made two successful and at least two unsuccessful attempts to derail passenger trains in Hungary, Germany and Austria in 1930 and 1931.

Crimes

Matuska made at least two failed attempts to derail trains in Austria in December 1930 and January 1931.

Matuska's first successful crime was the derailment of the Berlin-Basel express train south of Berlin on August 8, 1931. Scores of people were injured, but there were no deaths. Because of the discovery of a defaced Nazi newspaper at the scene of the crime, among other things, the attack was believed to have been politically motivated. A bounty of 100,000 reichsmark was put on the perpetrator.

Matuska's second and more notorious successful crime was the derailment of the Vienna Express headed towards Vienna as it was crossing the Biatorbágy bridge near Budapest at 12.20am on 13 September 1931. 22 people died and 120 others were injured, 17 of them severely.

Matuska carried out his crime by blowing up a portion of the bridge, causing the engine and nine of the eleven coaches forming the train to plunge into a ravine 30 meters deep. Matuska was discovered at the scene of the crime but, having passed himself off as a surviving passenger, he was released. Investigators in the three countries were on his trail, however, and he was arrested in Vienna one month later, on 10 October 1931, whereupon he soon confessed.

Matuska was tried and convicted in Austria for two unsuccessful attempts. He was later extradited to Hungary on condition that he not be executed. He was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment as agreed with Austria.

Matuska reportedly escaped from jail in Vác in 1944. According to some reports, he served as an explosives expert during the latter stages of World War II; he was never recaptured and his fate is unknown. Rumours have circulated that he appeared on the communist side in the Korean War, but there is no evidence to support this.

Matuska's motives remain unclear. His first attack was initially thought to have been politically motivated. At his trial, Matuska claimed to have been ordered to derail the express by God. Matuska has also been quoted as explaining his crimes by saying: "I wrecked trains because I like to see people die. I like to hear them scream." It was reported that he achieved orgasm while watching the trains he had sabotaged crash.

In 1990 Matuska became the subject of a song, Sylvestre Matuschka, by the band Lard. In 1982 a Hungarian/German TV film based on the case, titled The Viaduct, was broadcast.

Wikipedia.org

Sylvester Matuschka

On the 12th September 1931, at late night, the rails were blown up in front of the Orient Express as it crossed the bridge - the train fell into the abyss, 23 dead.

The culprit was Sylvester Matuschka (or, with Hungarian spelling, Szilveszter Matuska - he was a typical multilingual, multi-identity subject of the Habsburg monarchy), a mine owner then with residence in Vienna, who served in a railway sabotage unit in Hungary during WWI - i.e., plenty of explosives experience. He mingled among the injured passengers, and boarded a train home unharrassed - but in Vienna he was arrested: Austrian police was already looking for him, in connection with two previous derailing attacks which were his 'exercises' for the big one (the last day of 1930 at Anzbach near Vienna, and August 1931 between Jüterbog and Kloster Zinna near Berlin).

And from here it gets strange. In Hungary, the government announced the state of emergency, and implemented a pre-planned crack-down on the communists (helped by the fact that Matuschka - or, in more tinfoil-hat versions, police conspirators - left behind misleading anonymous letters praising a 'revolution'). They held a communist suspect, and even while the trial of the real culprit went on in Austria, executed the two leaders of the communist party as the brains behind that communist. Eyewitnesses were listened to only in a second trial.

There are speculations based on some pecularities that Matuschka had cover from the authorities and was allowed to escape - at any rate, he was the member of a far-right ex-officers' association. Likewise, from the right-wing press of the time, new theories were spun forth that Matuschka was a super-secret communist agent, planted by the Soviets into a right-wing background years earlier (a bit incoherent: if so, why leave letters behind that make the communist motivation explicit?...).

In the trial itself, Matuschka behaved in a very eccentric way, and after originally confessing to the crime, he even began to blame an imaginary friend. The expert conclusion then and now was that he was not insane, he was acting over-the-top. In the end he got life inprisonment - and things get even more mysterious at this point.

Matuschka disappeared during WWII. There are two versions of what happened to him - and both with documentary evidence and testimonies! One has him staying in prison until the Russians came, when he'd welcome the soldiers as the last inmate, then disappears. But the other has him offering his bombing expertise to the army in November 1942, when the Russians began to push back the fascist invaders - and disappearing or getting killed on the Eastern Front two years later. At any rate, some people claim that they met him in the seventies when he re-visited Hungary, of course under false name - while others speculate that he was taken by the Russians and made to work for them.

The viaduct itself was disused two-three decades ago, when the railway line was realigned - but in 1982, they were used in a spectacular re-creation of the trainwreck for the US-West German-Hungarian movie The Train Killer (Der Fall MatuschkaViadukt), starring Michael Sarrazin.