Joachim Knychała was a coal miner from Bytom, in the industrial heart of Upper Silesia, who attacked women and girls in four neighboring towns between 1974 and 1982. On April 19, 1984, the provincial court in Katowice, the Sąd Wojewódzki w Katowicach, sentenced him to death for five murders and seven attempted murders, according to a 2019 study of the case by the forensic scholar Ewa Gruza. The Supreme Court upheld the verdict in October 1984, the Council of State did not grant clemency, and he was hanged at the Montelupich prison in Kraków on May 21, 1985.
For most of those years he lived an ordinary life. He was married, had two children, held a steady job at a mine and was an activist in the official socialist youth union. Militia detectives had his likeness on a composite sketch by 1979, and a survivor picked him out that September, but the mine's attendance lists said he had been at work on the days of the attacks, and he was released. He was arrested only in May 1982, after his 17-year-old sister-in-law died on a walk with him. The Polish press called him "Wampir z Bytomia," the Vampire of Bytom, a name taken from the case that had gripped the same region a decade earlier.
Knychała was born in Bytom on September 8, 1952. His father was Polish and his mother German, and the family was Protestant, Gruza wrote. National Geographic Polska reported in 2025 that he grew up without his father. His mother worked long hours, and much of his care fell to his grandmother, who had never accepted her daughter's relationship with a Pole.
Accounts agree that the boy paid for that resentment. Gruza wrote that the grandmother humiliated him repeatedly and that his mother did too, and that both called him "polskim bękartem," a Polish bastard. Super Express reported in 2021 that he was beaten as well as humiliated at home, and that Polish children called him a "Kraut." Gruza gives the schoolyard nickname as "Szwaba," a slur for a German.
He finished primary school in Bytom and in 1970 qualified as a górnik-cieśla, a miner-carpenter, Gruza wrote. National Geographic Polska described the same qualification as graduation from a mining vocational school. He went to work underground in nearby Piekary Śląskie, first at the "Julian" coal mine and later at the "Andaluzja" mine, according to that magazine. Rzeczpospolita, reviewing a 2013 documentary about the case, described him as a carpenter and a miner at Andaluzja.
As a teenager he was convicted in a case brought against him and two co-workers and sentenced to three years in prison. Gruza gives his age at sentencing as 18; National Geographic Polska says he was 19 when the three were accused, and that he was released after serving 16 months of the three-year term. He denied the charge, said he had been framed and considered the sentence unjust. Both Gruza and Super Express traced his lasting resentment of women to that period, as he himself later described it.
After his release he found work at another mine and married. A first child was born a few months after the wedding, National Geographic Polska reported, and a second followed later in the 1970s. At Andaluzja he was well liked, Super Express wrote. He told investigators after his arrest that he loved his wife and that she was the only woman he respected, according to Gruza. Until his arrest in 1982 he was an activist in the ZMS, the Związek Młodzieży Socjalistycznej, or Union of Socialist Youth.
Knychała's crimes cannot be separated from those of Zdzisław Marchwicki, whom the press called the "Wampir z Zagłębia." The provincial court in Katowice sentenced Marchwicki to death on July 28, 1975, for 14 murders of women and attempts on six more, and he was executed at the Katowice remand prison on April 26, 1977, Gruza wrote.
Knychała followed that trial. Super Express reported in 2022 that he watched the Marchwicki proceedings, and Rzeczpospolita wrote in 2013 that he attended them regularly and later told his own trial that Marchwicki had fired his imagination. Super Express, in a 2014 history feature, described him as a copycat who said he had been inspired by what he heard during Marchwicki's trials. National Geographic Polska wrote that in his confession he named the Zagłębie crimes as his inspiration.
The first attack came on November 3, 1974, in Bytom, according to National Geographic Polska. The woman he attacked survived and raised the alarm, and he ran. Super Express dates that first attack to October 1974.
On September 20, 1975, in Piekary Śląskie, he killed Stefania M., who was 23, National Geographic Polska reported. Her partner was charged with her death, and the killing was not linked to any series at the time. Super Express wrote that the court treated it as a crime of passion. The outcome of that case has not been reported in detail, and the partner's name was never published.
On April 11, 1976, he attacked another woman in Bytom; she survived. Less than a month later, on the evening of May 6, 1976, in Chorzów, he killed Mirosława Sarnowska, who was 38. National Geographic Polska reported that she had been the main witness in the murder of Jadwiga Kucianka, regarded as Marchwicki's last victim. Super Express gave her full name and age and recorded that she had identified Marchwicki as Kucianka's killer. The death of a witness in the Zagłębie case, while Marchwicki was awaiting execution, led the militia to consider for the first time that someone was imitating him, National Geographic Polska wrote.
On October 30, 1976, he killed Teresa Ryms, 26, in Bytom, as she returned home. Super Express gave her name; National Geographic Polska gave her age.
Little is known of these women beyond their names, ages and the towns where they died. Stefania M. was 23; Mirosława Sarnowska was a woman who had done her civic duty by testifying in a murder case; Teresa Ryms was coming home at the end of a day. Their families have not been named.
On January 20, 1977, he attacked a 20-year-old woman in Siemianowice Śląskie, near the route of the region's tram line 6, according to National Geographic Polska. She survived. Super Express places this attack in 1978.
That attack changed the investigation. National Geographic Polska wrote that the militia then formed an operational group codenamed "Szóstka," the Six. Super Express explained the name: all the attacks had happened along the route of tram line 6. From the young woman's account, investigators produced a composite sketch of a man with thick hair in a checked men's coat of a style known locally as a "burdysówka," Super Express reported, and they also built a mannequin dressed to match the description.
The attacks went on. On February 8, 1978, in Bytom, he attacked another woman, who survived, National Geographic Polska reported. About five months later, in Chorzów, he attacked two 15-year-old girls, who escaped.
On June 23, 1979, in Piekary Śląskie, he attacked two young girls. One of them, reported by National Geographic Polska as Halinka S., aged 11, and by Super Express as Halina S., aged 10, was killed. Her companion survived. Both girls were found the next day.
The surviving girl first described her attacker as a bald man. Super Express wrote that she appears to have confused him with a militiaman who had checked on her after she was found.
After the attack on the girls, the militia set up a second investigative group, codenamed "Frankenstein," National Geographic Polska reported. The magazine wrote that the press later used that codename as one of his nicknames.
In September 1979 the militia detained Knychała for the first time as a murder suspect, Gruza wrote. A woman who had survived one of the attacks recognized him, and he bore a strong resemblance to the composite portrait. Super Express wrote that the composite pointed to him after the Piekary attack.
He was released anyway. The attendance lists at the Andaluzja mine showed him at work on the dates of the attacks, and investigators accepted that as an alibi, according to both Gruza and National Geographic Polska. It was not true. As a youth-union activist he often worked overtime, and his foreman recorded him as present for full shifts on days he was not there, Gruza wrote; the militia learned this only in 1982. Super Express described the practice as an illegal arrangement at the mine under which employees appeared on the lists for overtime they had not worked.
On November 16, 1979, he attacked a woman who was walking with a child in the street while he was drunk, National Geographic Polska reported. The court that dealt with that incident punished him only for a hooliganism offense, and it was not connected to the series.
Then the attacks stopped. Gruza wrote that the political situation, and especially the martial law imposed in December 1981, turned the militia's attention elsewhere, and that he made no attacks for about two years, apparently because he feared he was being watched. Super Express wrote that the investigation stalled.
On May 8, 1982, during a walk, Knychała killed his sister-in-law, Bogusława Ludyga, who was 17. Gruza calls it his last murder. National Geographic Polska reported that she had threatened to reveal a secret he was keeping from his wife and his sister.
He reported the death himself. Super Express wrote that he went to the militia and said the girl had died after a fall on a walk, and National Geographic Polska wrote that he told the ambulance crew and the militia the same story. At first the death looked like an accident. Investigators did not believe it: the examination of her body showed signs of a deliberate blow, and forensic evidence led to his arrest, Super Express reported.
He was arrested at Bogusława Ludyga's funeral and taken straight from the cemetery to the headquarters of the Milicja Obywatelska, the civic militia, Gruza wrote. National Geographic Polska also places the arrest at the funeral.
He denied everything at first, Gruza wrote. A polygraph examination indicated that he had killed his sister-in-law and that he had killed before, National Geographic Polska reported, and after the test he confessed to the earlier crimes, Super Express wrote. Under pressure in questioning and during visits to the scenes, he gave detailed testimony about the killings of the 1970s, according to Gruza.
He admitted five murders and seven assaults, National Geographic Polska reported. He spoke about his childhood and his hatred of women and said the Zagłębie crimes had inspired him. Archival footage of his questioning was later used in a television documentary, Rzeczpospolita wrote; in it he says "Nienawidziłem kobiet," I hated women, and that he wanted to live, but not after everything he had done.
Gruza wrote that he showed what she called a peculiar kind of remorse. He admitted the killings but was ashamed of them, especially in front of his wife, and asked to tell her about the crimes himself. Her answer, as Gruza quotes it, was that she could not forgive him for the little girls, and that for them he deserved to hang. Super Express gives the same account of her reply and links it to the attack in Piekary.
While in custody he began writing memoirs. Gruza wrote that he hoped a large fee for them would ease his family's finances. Super Express quoted a line from his diary: "Chciałem być najlepszy we wszystkim," I wanted to be the best at everything, which it presented as his wish to be counted among the great killers of the postwar era.
His trial opened before the Sąd Wojewódzki in Katowice on October 18, 1983, National Geographic Polska reported. Rzeczpospolita wrote that he testified there that Marchwicki had sparked his imagination.
On April 19, 1984, the court sentenced him to death for five murders and seven attempted murders. Gruza quotes the judgment's opening, "Wyrokiem Sądu Wojewódzkiego w Katowicach z dnia 19 kwietnia 1984 roku," by the judgment of the provincial court in Katowice of April 19, 1984. Death sentences in the Polish People's Republic were carried out by hanging, Infor.pl noted in a 2008 overview.
In October 1984 the Sąd Najwyższy, Poland's Supreme Court, upheld the sentence, and the Rada Państwa, the Council of State, did not grant clemency, Gruza wrote.
Knychała was hanged on May 21, 1985, in the prison at ul. Montelupich 7 in Kraków, according to Gruza and National Geographic Polska. Gruza describes his execution as one of the last carried out in Poland. The Polish Press Agency recorded in 2013 that the last execution in the country took place at the same Kraków prison in April 1988; a few months later the government declared a moratorium on executions, and the 1997 criminal code abolished the death penalty.
Knychała's confessions became the basis of a book, "Pamiętnik wampira," The Vampire's Diary, Super Express reported. The paper wrote that psychologists quoted in the book concluded that he despised women and respected only his wife.
In 2013 the director Marcin Koszałka made a television documentary about the case, broadcast by TVP 2. Rzeczpospolita's reviewer, Małgorzata Piwowar, wrote that the film had two central figures: Knychała, seen in archival footage from his questioning, and Edward Kozak, then a television journalist known for a book based on his conversations with a man condemned to death. According to the review, Kozak persuaded Knychała to talk by promising him a million dollars and never paid any part of that sum. The film also includes monologues by Knychała's wife, who tries to understand how they had been happy together and how she had noticed nothing.
Kozak spoke frankly in the film about what he had done. Rzeczpospolita quoted him as saying that he had used the condemned man once again and might become famous again through him. Colette de Castro, reviewing the film for the East European Film Bulletin in 2014, quoted the journalist as saying he had used Knychała and sold him, that Knychała regretted everything, and that "they hanged him." The Rzeczpospolita review noted that some people had compared Knychała to the American killer Ted Bundy because of his good looks.
Gruza, in her study of five Polish criminals called "vampires," argues that the word was a media label, often used for effect and probably borrowed from journalistic habits of the 1930s. It suggested something supernatural and made ordinary offenders seem exceptional. The men, she stresses, did not drink blood and had no fangs or special powers; she uses the word only as a metaphor for people who draw energy from harming others, and she links their shared traits to psychopathy as defined by the psychologist Robert D. Hare.
The common features she found are close to what the reports describe in Knychała's case: a difficult childhood in a troubled family, an event that turned him against women, attacks with simple tools, and a confession during the pretrial investigation. National Geographic Polska wrote that the media called him both the "Wampir z Bytomia" and "Frankenstein," the second taken from the militia's codename for the Piekary investigation. Rzeczpospolita referred to him as the "śląski wampir," the Silesian vampire.
The reports differ on several points.
The number of murders. Gruza, quoting the judgment, gives five murders and seven attempted murders, and National Geographic Polska writes that he confessed to five murders and seven assaults. Rzeczpospolita (2013) and Super Express (2022) also say he killed five women. A 2014 Super Express history feature said he was sentenced in 1984 for six murders and seven attempted murders, and a 2008 Infor.pl list of death sentences in the Polish People's Republic described him as sentenced for the murder of six women. The court's figure is five.
The date of execution. Gruza and National Geographic Polska give May 21, 1985. Super Express wrote in 2021 that he was executed on October 28, 1985, and the 2008 Infor.pl list gave October 28, 1985, as a sentencing date. The academic study and National Geographic Polska agree on May 21.
The first attack. National Geographic Polska dates it to November 3, 1974; Super Express to October 3, 1974.
The Siemianowice attack. National Geographic Polska dates it to January 20, 1977; Super Express to 1978.
The girl killed in Piekary. National Geographic Polska gives her age as 11 and her name as Halinka S.; Super Express gives Halina S., aged 10.
The place of Mirosława Sarnowska's death. National Geographic Polska places it in Chorzów; Super Express in Katowice.
His age at the earlier conviction. Gruza gives 18; National Geographic Polska gives 19.
The span of the crimes. Rzeczpospolita dates the murders to 1975 to 1982; the East European Film Bulletin review gives 1975 to 1985, which does not match the court record or his execution in May 1985.
September 8, 1952: Joachim Knychała is born in Bytom.
1970: Qualifies as a miner-carpenter.
Age 18 or 19 (accounts differ): Convicted with two co-workers and sentenced to three years in prison; released after 16 months.
November 3, 1974: First attack, in Bytom; the woman survives.
July 28, 1975: Zdzisław Marchwicki is sentenced to death in Katowice; Knychała had followed the trial.
September 20, 1975: Stefania M., 23, is killed in Piekary Śląskie; her partner is charged.
April 11, 1976: A woman is attacked in Bytom and survives.
May 6, 1976: Mirosława Sarnowska, 38, a witness in the Zagłębie case, is killed in Chorzów.
October 30, 1976: Teresa Ryms, 26, is killed in Bytom.
January 20, 1977: A young woman is attacked in Siemianowice Śląskie and survives; the militia forms the "Szóstka" group.
April 26, 1977: Marchwicki is executed in Katowice.
February 8, 1978: A woman is attacked in Bytom and survives.
1978, about five months after the February attack: Two 15-year-old girls escape an attack in Chorzów.
June 23, 1979: Two girls are attacked in Piekary Śląskie; Halinka S. is killed and her companion survives. The "Frankenstein" group is formed.
September 1979: Knychała is detained, identified by a survivor and released on the strength of mine attendance lists.
November 16, 1979: Punished for hooliganism after a street attack.
December 1981: Martial law; the attacks have stopped.
May 8, 1982: Bogusława Ludyga, 17, is killed.
May 1982: Arrested at her funeral; confesses after a polygraph examination.
October 18, 1983: Trial opens before the Sąd Wojewódzki in Katowice.
April 19, 1984: Sentenced to death for five murders and seven attempted murders.
October 1984: The Supreme Court upholds the sentence; the Council of State does not grant clemency.
May 21, 1985: Hanged at the Montelupich prison in Kraków.
2013: Marcin Koszałka's documentary "Zabójca z lubieżności" is broadcast on TVP 2.