Tadeusz Grzesik was convicted in Poland of murders committed in separate events between 1991 and 2007. He was a farmer from the Górno area near Kielce, in the Świętokrzyskie region, and described himself as a strawberry grower. His date of birth is not on record.
On the evening of September 19, 1991, three people were killed at Cedzyna, near Kielce. For almost two decades the case stayed unsolved.
A man named Janusz T. was arrested in the late 1990s and later acquitted of the Cedzyna murders and of a related killing in Stalowa Wola in October 1991; he was convicted of other offenses.
DNA evidence later led investigators to name Grzesik and a second man, Stanisław T., 18 years after the crime. Stanisław T. died by suicide in April 2011, before a verdict. Grzesik was tried in Kielce. On November 21, 2012, the Regional Court in Kielce convicted him of the murder of the three people and sentenced him to 25 years in prison. The Court of Appeal in Kraków upheld the sentence in July 2013, making it final. The court imposed 25 years for each murder as a combined sentence of 25 years.
In the second case, Kraków prosecutors charged Grzesik, Wojciech W. and Jacek P. with killing five people between 2005 and 2007 in Kraśnik, Tarnów, Myślenice and Piotrków Trybunalski, and with attempting to kill two more people in Sosnowiec and Piotrków Trybunalski. The last of the offenses attributed to the group occurred in Myślenice in February 2007, when Grzesik and Jacek P. were detained. Jacek P. confessed and cooperated with prosecutors, and he was sentenced to 15 years in July 2010.
In July 2010 a Kraków court sentenced Grzesik and Wojciech W. to life imprisonment. In December 2011 the appeal court set those sentences aside, chiefly for formal reasons, and sent the case back for retrial, while upholding Jacek P.'s sentence and adding six years' loss of public rights. At the retrial in April 2015 the prosecutor asked for life imprisonment with release possible only after 30 years, and ten years' loss of public rights for Grzesik; the defense asked for acquittal. The Regional Court in Kraków again sentenced Grzesik and Wojciech W. to life imprisonment. In December 2016 the Court of Appeal in Kraków upheld the sentences. Cassation motions were filed in August 2017, and in February 2018 the Supreme Court dismissed the defense appeals. In the sentencing, the judge said that only this penalty was adequate to the extent of the defendants' guilt. For Wojciech W. the appeal court lifted the bar on release before 30 years; whether any bar applies to Grzesik is not on record.
In 2017 prosecutors in Kraków brought a second indictment against Grzesik and Wojciech W. The case was moved to the Regional Court in Tarnów, where the first hearing took place on March 5, 2018, with 14 defendants. Prosecutors alleged that Grzesik led the group. He was charged with four murders and two attempted murders committed in 2006 and 2007 in the Podkarpackie, Małopolskie and Świętokrzyskie regions. Wojciech W. fully admitted the charges against him; most of the other defendants denied guilt. For the murders the law provided a term of at least eight years, 25 years or life imprisonment.
A verdict came on September 20, 2021. The court sentenced Grzesik and Wojciech W. to life imprisonment, and found that Grzesik took part in the offenses. It was Grzesik's third life sentence. The Supreme Court later set aside a life sentence in this case because the panel of judges had been improperly composed, a formal rather than substantive defect, and returned it to the Court of Appeal. The date and the later outcome are not on record.
On June 29, 2018, the National Prosecutor's Office in Kraków sent a further indictment to the Regional Court in Kielce, naming seven defendants. Grzesik was charged with "kierowanie zabójstwem, dokonanie 5 innych zabójstw oraz trzech rozbojów": directing a murder, committing five other murders and three robberies. The murders were dated in the indictment between August 1997 and June 1999, in the Świętokrzyskie region, with the robberies in 2000 and 2001.
On March 17, 2021, the Regional Court in Kielce sentenced him to life imprisonment in this case, for offenses dated 1997 to 2001. He was already serving a final life sentence for the murder of five people and the attempted murder of two others, and a final 25-year sentence for the Cedzyna murders. Whether this sentence is final is not on record.
By 2018 prosecutors were pursuing Grzesik over at least 18 killings, and investigators suspected more; these were charges and suspicions, not findings. Of these, only the Cedzyna murders and the 2005 to 2007 case had final convictions by 2018.
In September 2021 Grzesik was serving life sentences in Poland. His present location and any later decisions in the Tarnów and Kielce cases are not on record.
September 19, 1991: three people killed at Cedzyna, near Kielce.
2005 to 2007: five murders and two attempted murders later charged against Grzesik.
February 2007: Grzesik and Jacek P. detained in the Myślenice case.
July 2010: life sentences in Kraków; Jacek P. sentenced to 15 years.
December 2011: life sentences set aside on appeal; retrial ordered.
November 21, 2012: Regional Court in Kielce convicts Grzesik for the Cedzyna murders; 25 years.
July 2013: Court of Appeal in Kraków upholds the 25-year sentence; final.
April 2015: life imprisonment on retrial in Kraków.
December 2016: Court of Appeal in Kraków upholds the life sentence.
February 2018: Supreme Court dismisses the appeals.
March 5, 2018: Tarnów trial opens.
June 29, 2018: indictment in Kielce on charges of directing a murder, committing five other murders and three robberies.
March 17, 2021: life sentence at the Regional Court in Kielce.
September 20, 2021: life sentence at the Regional Court in Tarnów.
Later: Supreme Court sets aside a life sentence in the Tarnów case on procedural grounds.