Silvo Plut was convicted of two murders in Slovenia and sentenced in Serbia, in his absence, for a third killing. The first came in 1990, when he was in his early twenties, and earned him a 15-year sentence, of which he served 13. The second, of a pregnant 25-year-old in the Serbian town of Aleksinac in November 2004, he always denied. The third, of Ljubica Ulčar at Dolgo Brdo near Janče, outside Ljubljana, in February 2006, brought the maximum term under Slovenian law, 30 years.
He died in custody in Ljubljana at the end of April 2007, within days of the Serbian judgment. Years later his case returned to the Slovenian courts in a different form. Ljubica Ulčar's husband and sons sued the state, and in March 2012 the Supreme Court confirmed that the state was liable for her death because a man already convicted of murder, and suspected of another, had not been stopped in time.
Plut was born in 1968 near Novo Mesto, in Slovenia, according to Telegraf and Kurir; Žurnal24 gives his birthday as May 29. He grew up with his brother in what a Kanal A report on 24ur.com called very unfavorable conditions. His father worked in Germany and came home on weekends and holidays, and those visits brought quarrels with the boys' mother, sometimes violent ones. The report said both sons suffered physical abuse from their father, and that Plut described heavy psychological abuse from his mother.
Plut later recalled that as a small boy he loved kicking a ball around and wanted to become a footballer. Once his father brought home a football from Germany. Within a few days of the father's return to Germany, Plut said, his mother punctured it, because she had work to do. At primary school his teachers repeatedly called his parents in because he picked on weaker children, the same report said, but nothing came of it. Serbian papers writing about him years later, Telegraf in 2019 and Kurir in 2021 and 2025, said he had been cruel to animals as a child.
He finished six grades of primary school and two years of vocational school, and then worked as a bricklayer. Before 1990 he had already been convicted of attempted rape, according to the Kanal A report, which gave no date or sentence.
The criminologist Mojca Plesničar, asked by Kanal A why a person becomes a serial killer, said there were no simple answers. Slovenia had too few such cases to study, she said, so researchers relied on patterns from abroad: often an absent father and a mother who was the only parent present, a relationship with the mother that was either abusive or excessively dependent, and frequently some traumatic event, all combined with the person's own psychological makeup. The same report pointed out that Plut's brother grew up in the same home and did not follow his path.
Marjanca Matjašič was a young woman and a former schoolmate of Plut's. RTV Slovenija gave her age as 22; Žurnal24 gave it as 21. Telegraf reported that she was driving to her job at a shoe factory when she was killed. RTV Slovenija placed the killing in the Metlika area, and the Kanal A report said it happened on the way to Metlika; Kurir described it as near Novo Mesto.
Plut was then about 21 or 22. She was stabbed, RTV Slovenija reported in 2008. He was caught, convicted of her murder and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Plut served 13 of the 15 years and was released early for good behavior, a point on which RTV Slovenija, Telegraf, Kurir and Žurnal24 agree. Žurnal24 dates his move to Serbia to 2002.
Telegraf and Kurir describe how he came to settle in Aleksinac, in Serbia. In prison he had met a man from Aleksinac. Soon after his release, the two robbed a post office in Ljubljana, Kurir reported. A postal worker recognized Plut and told the Slovenian police, and Plut and his companion went to Aleksinac. Kurir identified that postal worker as the man whose wife Plut would kill in 2006. In Serbia, Kurir wrote, Plut took part in several robberies before the killing of November 2004. His companion from prison was not seen again, according to Kurir.
Jasmina Djošić was 25 and lived in Aleksinac. She was pregnant, according to RTV Slovenija and Žurnal24. She was killed on November 18, 2004, near the town, Kurir reported. She was stabbed.
Serbian investigators had a cap left at the scene, and DNA taken from it was later linked to Plut, Kurir and Telegraf reported. The retired police inspector Nebojša Petkovic, who led the 2004 investigation, described to Serbian reporters how a second young woman in Aleksinac encountered Plut and survived. Cigarette ends he left behind gave a DNA profile that matched the trace on the cap, and her account helped the Serbian police, who passed the details to their Slovenian colleagues; they confirmed that the suspect was Plut. Telegraf also reported that he fired a gun at a local man in Aleksinac.
By then Plut had left Serbia. Niš police searched for him, Telegraf reported, but he made his way back to Slovenia through Bujanovac and Kosovo.
He never admitted killing Jasmina Djošić, the Kanal A report said. Telegraf reported that he later told Slovenian media he had been framed.
Plut was arrested in Slovenia in April 2005 over two armed robberies and released in December 2005 for lack of evidence, RTV Slovenija reported in 2014; the same chronology appears in later summaries by the Slovenian Press Agency (STA), carried by N1 Slovenija in 2021, and by Žurnal24 in 2016. RTV Slovenija's 2008 account described the outcome as an acquittal on a post office robbery charge for lack of evidence.
The suspicion over the killing in Serbia was known to the Slovenian authorities, but they did not arrest him over it, according to the STA summary and Žurnal24. RTV Slovenija, citing the newspaper Delo, reported in 2014 that the authorities knew of the suspicion but neither arrested him nor started criminal proceedings. Slovenia could not extradite him, because its own law did not allow it, according to an RTV Slovenija report on the family's later lawsuit; he therefore stayed free.
In February 2006 he appeared in the Slovenian media, RTV Slovenija recalled in 2008. About two weeks later he killed Ljubica Ulčar.
Ljubica Ulčar lived with her husband and their two sons at Dolgo Brdo, near Janče, outside Ljubljana. Her age was reported differently: RTV Slovenija gave 32 in 2009 and Žurnal24 gave 33 in 2025.
Plut went to Dolgo Brdo on February 24, 2006, seeking revenge on her husband, according to Kurir, which wrote that the husband had reported him over the post office robbery. Telegraf reported that the husband was due to testify in that robbery case. He stabbed Ljubica Ulčar to death. Her husband escaped and called the police.
Plut was arrested the next day, RTV Slovenija reported; Žurnal24 put the time at about 18 hours after the killing. RTV Slovenija wrote in 2008 that the hunt for him and the trial that followed filled the Slovenian media.
Žurnal24 reported in 2025 that before the killing Plut left a message for a close friend, a man with whom he had shared a makeshift shelter in Ljubljana, saying they would see each other "at Satan's".
On October 2, 2006, the court in Ljubljana found Plut guilty and sentenced him to 30 years in prison, the maximum under Slovenian law, RTV Slovenija reported. Prosecutors had asked for 45 years. The judges agreed that he had also intended to kill her husband, who escaped, RTV Slovenija reported in 2009; the conviction therefore covered attempted murder as well as murder.
His defense lawyer, Andrej Žabjek, argued that a person who commits such crimes cannot be sane, as he later told Kanal A's program Svet. Plut himself blamed everything bad in his life on alcohol, according to the same report, but no court ever ordered him into compulsory treatment.
Kanal A's report described his manner in the courtroom: he appeared to mock his victims and the people who heard his crimes described, and smirked at those who believed he had at last been stopped. It ran under a headline about his blue eyes and his "Mona Lisa smile".
Serbia tried him in his absence. In April 2007 the criminal panel of the Niš District Court sentenced Plut to 40 years in prison for the killing of Jasmina Djošić, Kurir reported. He learned of the sentence while held in pretrial detention in Ljubljana, according to the Kanal A report. RTV Slovenija and Telegraf both report that he died within one or two days of the Serbian judgment. Whether the Serbian judgment became final was not reported.
Plut was found dead on April 28, 2007, in the detention prison on Povšetova Street in Ljubljana, Žurnal24 reported in 2025; he was 38. The Kanal A report said he was found unresponsive, alone, in late April. His death was reported as a suicide. RTV Slovenija's 2008 report located the death at the Dob prison; the other reports place it in Ljubljana.
Facing decades in prison, which he understood well, he chose to end his life, the Kanal A report said, and so escaped the remainder of his sentences.
In a note to the prison governor he asked to be buried with a Bible, Kurir reported. His relatives refused to claim his body, and the state paid for his cremation, according to Kurir and Telegraf. Žurnal24 reported that the authorities arranged a church funeral but did not grant his request to be buried with the Bible he carried, and that his ashes were placed in an anonymous grave at Žale cemetery in Ljubljana that is hard to find. Some people had objected to a plan to scatter them, the same report said.
Her husband sued the Republic of Slovenia, arguing that the state had contributed at least as much to his wife's death as Plut had. He sought about 125,000 euros for himself and his sons for their mental suffering, together with an annuity, RTV Slovenija reported. The family was represented by the lawyer Luka Devjak of the Čeferin law firm. The state attorney, Valerija Šter, rejected any liability, arguing that police and prosecutors had acted with due diligence.
In August 2009 the Ljubljana District Court ruled that the state was not responsible. It found that police and prosecutors had had no grounds to seek Plut's detention before the killing at Dolgo Brdo. Devjak disagreed and announced an appeal. He argued that the Slovenian authorities had failed to act against Plut for more than a year before the killing.
The appeal succeeded. In March 2012 the Supreme Court confirmed that the state was liable, because Plut, already a convicted murderer, had not been stopped in time, RTV Slovenija reported. Citing Delo, the broadcaster said the courts found that Slovenia should have started a criminal case over the Serbian killing and sought Plut's detention, given the evidence, his way of life and his character, in order to protect people and property. The higher court found police and prosecutors jointly responsible for failing to act as required.
The amounts were modest. At first instance the husband was awarded 5,000 euros and each son 6,500 euros. On appeal the higher court raised these to 7,000 euros for the husband and 13,000 euros for each son, and rejected the claim for an annuity. By February 2014 the state had paid the family 33,000 euros including interest, RTV Slovenija reported.
The STA, in a 2021 roundup of the heaviest sentences handed down in Slovenia, listed the case alongside the 30-year term and noted the Supreme Court's 2012 finding on the state's responsibility.
Several claims about Plut rest on press reports rather than court findings.
RTV Slovenija wrote in 2008 that in Serbia he was believed to have committed several murders. Kurir wrote in 2025 that he may have been responsible for further disappearances and that he took the truth about them to his grave. No other killing was charged against him in either country, and none of those reports named a further victim.
Telegraf's 2019 report included claims from fellow inmates about his conduct in prison, and Kurir and Telegraf described cruelty to animals in his childhood. These were reported accounts, not findings of any court.
Telegraf reported in 2019 that he received fan letters in prison and that a woman who visited him intended to marry him. Žurnal24 reported that some admirers have sought out his grave.
He denied the Serbian killing to the end. The Niš court's 40-year sentence was passed in his absence, and he died within days of it.
1968: Born near Novo Mesto, Slovenia (Žurnal24 gives May 29).
Before 1990: Convicted of attempted rape (date not reported).
1990: Kills Marjanca Matjašič, a former schoolmate, in the Metlika area; convicted of murder and sentenced to 15 years.
After 13 years: Released early for good behavior.
2002: Moves to Serbia, according to Žurnal24.
After release: Accused in press reports of robbing a post office in Ljubljana with a prison acquaintance; goes to Aleksinac, Serbia.
November 18, 2004: Jasmina Djošić, 25 and pregnant, is killed near Aleksinac; a cap left at the scene later yields DNA linked to Plut.
April 2005: Arrested in Slovenia over two armed robberies.
December 2005: Released for lack of evidence.
February 2006: Appears in the Slovenian media.
February 24, 2006: Kills Ljubica Ulčar at Dolgo Brdo, near Janče, Ljubljana; her husband escapes.
The next day: Arrested.
October 2, 2006: Convicted in Ljubljana of murder and attempted murder; sentenced to 30 years.
April 2007: Sentenced in absentia to 40 years by the Niš District Court for the killing of Jasmina Djošić.
April 28, 2007: Found dead in custody in Ljubljana, aged 38; reported as suicide.
August 2009: Ljubljana District Court rules that the state is not liable for Ljubica Ulčar's death; the family appeals.
March 2012: Supreme Court confirms the state's liability.
February 2014: The state has paid the family 33,000 euros including interest.