Taneski was born in 1952 in Kicevo, in western Macedonia, and worked as a journalist for the Skopje papers Nova Makedonija and Utrinski Vesnik. He was married with two children and was known as a quiet, conscientious local correspondent.
Between 2005 and 2008 three elderly women who had worked as cleaners were killed in Kicevo: Mitra Simjanoska, sixty-four; Ljubica Licoska, fifty-six; and Zivana Temelkoska, sixty-five. Each was raped, strangled with a telephone cable, and wrapped in plastic bags and dumped. A fourth woman survived.
He reported the killings for his papers. His articles included details that had not been released and that the police had not disclosed to anyone, the specific manner of the binding, particulars of the bodies, and a prosecutor reading them recognised the problem. DNA taken from him matched semen recovered from the victims. He was arrested on June 22, 2008.
On June 23, 2008, the day after his arrest, he was found dead in a cell at Tetovo prison with his head in a bucket of water. It was recorded as suicide.
There was no trial. All three victims resembled his own mother in age and occupation, she had worked as a cleaner, a point the Macedonian coverage made much of and which rests on no evidence beyond the resemblance itself.
The case is unique in this archive: a man who wrote the newspaper record of his own crimes, and whose writing convicted him without a court.