Władysław Mazurkiewicz was a currency dealer, gambler and man about town in Kraków who, a court found in 1956, had robbed and killed six people over twelve years, beginning under the German occupation and ending in the Stalinist years. Four of the dead were men who had come to him to do business in dollars, gold or goods; the last two were a widow who wanted her savings back and her sister. He also tried to kill two other men, both of whom lived.
He was well known in the city long before he was arrested. He dressed with care, ate in the best restaurants, drove his own car at a time when few people could, and played bridge well. Kraków called him "Piękny Władzio", handsome Władzio, and the press, once the case broke, called him the elegant murderer. His trial in August 1956 filled the largest courtroom in the city and drew crowds into the street outside. He was hanged in January 1957. Rumor put his victims at about thirty, and stories that he had worked for the Gestapo and later for the communist security police followed him to the gallows and beyond. Historians at the Institute of National Remembrance have reported finding nothing in the files to support the second claim.
Mazurkiewicz was born in Kraków in 1911, Histmag and Interia report. His mother left the family when he was a small boy and moved to Warsaw, and RMF FM, drawing on Cezary Łazarewicz's 2015 book about the case, reports that she later took her own life while he was still a child. His father and stepmother, by the same account, treated him harshly. Łazarewicz told Radio Kraków in 2015 that he saw in this early rejection a possible key to the man's later life, while stressing that he had no firm answer: no psychologist ever examined Mazurkiewicz.
Interia's account says the boy liked reading crime stories and wanted to become a lawyer. He enrolled in law at the Jagiellonian University but did not finish, RMF FM reports, although he later liked to be addressed as "pan inżynier". Before the war he worked in a printing house, according to Interia, and stayed there until 1939.
How Mazurkiewicz lived under the German occupation is told mainly through the later investigation and through stories that circulated in Kraków. Interia reports that he befriended a captain of the Kraków Gestapo, who obtained for him a card identifying him as a hairdresser to the secret police, and that this gave him freedom of movement. RMF FM adds that the occupation authorities issued him a bicycle permit and that he traded in gold, currency and food, and both outlets report that valuables taken from Jewish owners passed through his hands. Przemysław Słowiński, in a 2017 book on unexplained killings in communist Poland summarized by the Polish Press Agency, wrote that some of these deals, and the first killings linked to them, appear to have taken place with German tolerance. Magazyn TVN24 judged a Gestapo connection probable but found no proof that the Gestapo protected him.
The first crime the court later tried came in March 1943. According to the indictment, on March 16, 1943, he tried to kill an army officer who was hiding from the Germans and who had brought him 200 dollars to exchange. The man was poisoned but survived. He did not report it, Magazyn TVN24 explains, because he was himself in hiding from the occupation authorities, and the attempt came to light only twelve years later, in the second investigation.
Wiktor Zarzecki was a card partner and business acquaintance. On December 15, 1943, according to the indictment summarized by Tygodnik Powszechny, Mazurkiewicz poisoned him and took the 1,200 dollars he had brought. RMF FM reports that Mazurkiewicz lost the money at poker. Zarzecki's wife reported him missing in 1946, Magazyn TVN24 reports, and a court declared him dead that year. He was the only one of the six whose death the court attributed to poison; the later victims were shot.
After the war Mazurkiewicz built a respectable public life. Focus reports that he worked as an instructor for the League of Friends of Soldiers (Liga Przyjaciół Żołnierza) and for the Kraków branch of the Polish Motoring Association, and that he served as an expert on road accidents for a penal-administrative board and for the courts, which earned him the nicknames "the engineer" and "the judge". Magazyn TVN24 describes him as a licensed car appraiser. RMF FM reports that he taught driving, that the work gave him access to people in the new elite, and that he came to own apartments in Sopot and Zakopane. Histmag describes his Opel Olympia, his holidays in the mountains, his manners and his bridge.
Władysław Brylski was killed on July 26, 1945. He had set out with money to buy leather, which he had been told was being sold by a monk, and he was shot. Tygodnik Powszechny gives the sum taken as 160,000 złoty; RMF FM gives a far smaller figure.
Józef Tomaszewski, a currency dealer, was shot in October 1945. He had agreed to sell Mazurkiewicz 500 dollars, Magazyn TVN24 reports. Tygodnik Powszechny gives the money taken as 225,000 złoty and a watch; Magazyn TVN24 gives 220,000 złoty, and Focus more than a million.
The Tomaszewski killing very nearly ended Mazurkiewicz's career. Villagers west of Kraków wrote down the registration of a car they had seen that day, and it belonged to Mazurkiewicz, Tygodnik Powszechny reports. Focus reports that Mazurkiewicz was arrested; Łazarewicz told Radio Kraków that he was held briefly in military detention and quickly released.
The inquiry went nowhere. An acquaintance testified that the two of them had driven that day to Alwernia to buy fruit from a priest, suggesting that the witnesses had noted the wrong car. Magazyn TVN24 reports that the prosecutor handling the case was a friend of Mazurkiewicz and of his lawyer, that witnesses were questioned in a village pub, and that Mazurkiewicz was cleared. Tygodnik Powszechny writes that he escaped through contacts among Kraków militia officers and prosecutors and afterward gave a lavish reception for those who had helped him. Łazarewicz later said that a man able to walk free after evidence of that strength must have had wide connections.
Jerzy de Laveaux was Mazurkiewicz's neighbor and a wealthy man; Magazyn TVN24 and RMF FM report that he had made money supplying the German army. On May 29, 1946 (Focus and Magazyn TVN24 give May 28) he set out with Mazurkiewicz on what he had been told was a deal for sole leather, and he was shot. The indictment, as Tygodnik Powszechny summarizes it, lists 1,000 dollars, a watch, rings and several hundred złoty as taken. Focus reports that de Laveaux had earlier given Mazurkiewicz a 1,000-dollar note as an advance.
For nine years after that, no killing was charged against him. Histmag notes that in the years after the war people often vanished without trace and that few wished to ask questions, and in Kraków the talk was that Mazurkiewicz was protected.
Jadwiga de Laveaux, Jerzy's widow, had stayed in touch with her late husband's acquaintance. In 1950, Focus reports, she gave Mazurkiewicz 470 dollars in paper money and eight gold twenty-dollar coins to keep for her; RMF FM reports that he had persuaded her that the security police planned to search her home. When she asked for the money and valuables back, he had already sold them.
On May 16, 1955, according to the indictment summarized by Tygodnik Powszechny and the account in Focus, Mazurkiewicz shot Jadwiga de Laveaux and her sister, Zofia Suchowa, in Kraków. Magazyn TVN24 gives the year as 1953. Zofia, the reports say, was killed because she was the one person who knew of her sister's meeting with him; she was the only one of his victims from whom nothing was taken. Their bodies were found in Kraków on December 13, 1955.
The case broke because of a trader from Warsaw who came to Kraków in September 1955 to buy watches brought from the West by a sailor, Tygodnik Powszechny reports. Mazurkiewicz acted as go-between. On September 24, 1955, he shot the man, who survived and did not at first realize what had happened. Mazurkiewicz gave an innocent explanation, apologized, admitted he had spent the trader's money, and handed over his car and a watch as security, Focus and Tygodnik Powszechny report.
Days later the trader, troubled by headaches, went to a hospital, where doctors found and removed a bullet. Doctors told the militia, Magazyn TVN24 reports, and the Kraków militia opened an investigation on October 3, 1955, according to Focus.
Mazurkiewicz went into hiding in a guesthouse in Zakopane, Focus and Tygodnik Powszechny report. A wanted notice was issued on October 12, 1955, and he was detained on November 1, 1955, in a hotel café, according to Focus. His lawyer at the time met the trader and urged him to withdraw his evidence, arguing that it would also expose his own part in the watch deal, Tygodnik Powszechny reports. The same lawyer gave up the defense after the bodies of the two women were found, Focus reports.
The two women were found in Kraków on December 13, 1955, after a second search of Mazurkiewicz's property, RMF FM reports. Focus reports that experts found they had been killed with the same weapon used against the trader.
He denied everything at first. RMF FM, drawing on Łazarewicz, reports that he confessed in March and April 1956, after his wife and his half-sister were arrested and threatened with charges of complicity, and after investigators threatened his sick father. Focus reports that he first admitted killing the two sisters and shooting the trader, and later the earlier crimes. The officer who survived in 1943 was found only through this second investigation. Histmag reports that investigators first drew up just over 30 charges, most of which were dropped for lack of evidence; the indictment that went to court contained eight, six of murder and two of attempted murder. Most of the confessed crimes had no supporting evidence beyond his own statements, RMF FM reports, and the confession became the backbone of the indictment.
The trial opened on August 6, 1956, before the Voivodeship Court in Kraków, in the largest courtroom of the court building, newly renovated, Tygodnik Powszechny reports. Magazyn TVN24 notes that it was the room where Rita Gorgonowa's second trial had been held in 1933, that it held 350 people, and that the free admission cards were sold on the black market at high prices. Spectators brought opera glasses. Crowds gathered outside, and militia officers guarded the accused, chiefly against a lynching; at one point Mazurkiewicz asked the court to have the crowd cleared, Magazyn TVN24 reports. The presiding judge was Tadeusz Migdał. The prosecution was led by Zygmunt Piątkiewicz, who told the weekly Przekrój that no earlier defendant in his jurisdiction had faced so many robbery murders. An inventory record of the Institute of National Remembrance in Kraków lists, among the papers of a second prosecutor, Jan Brandys, the indictment, the closing speeches of both prosecutors, a list of the victims and admission passes for the first, second and sixth days of the trial.
Mazurkiewicz came to court elegant and freshly shaved, his hair combed back. Asked whether he admitted guilt, he said yes and that he stood by what he had told the investigators, Tygodnik Powszechny reports; Focus quotes him as admitting the charges "in their entirety". Witnesses followed over the next weeks. On August 8 the officer who had survived the 1943 poisoning described what had happened to him and said that Mazurkiewicz had been rumored to be a security police officer. On August 10 villagers testified about the car in the Tomaszewski case, and on August 15 the Warsaw trader gave his evidence. Many witnesses gave evasive answers, and some did not appear. Several accounts, including Histmag's and Magazyn TVN24's, report that witnesses were afraid to speak.
On the twelfth day, August 27, Mazurkiewicz asked to speak, withdrew his earlier statements and declared himself innocent, asking the court to treat what he had said before as marginal, Tygodnik Powszechny reports. Łazarewicz told Radio Kraków that in court Mazurkiewicz claimed he had never hidden what he did, which the author read as a provocation aimed at the authorities.
Few lawyers wanted the case. Zygmunt Hofmokl-Ostrowski, a Kraków advocate known for major trials, took it on, Łazarewicz told Radio Kraków, knowing he was putting his career at risk. Magazyn TVN24 describes him as theatrical in court; he once tested how fast rumor traveled by saying that Charlie Chaplin would attend the trial, and within hours the story had grown into a delegation leaving for Paris. He sent a questionnaire about the case to fellow lawyers and received five replies.
His first line, Histmag and Magazyn TVN24 report, drew on anthropological theories of the born criminal: Mazurkiewicz, he argued, was a born killer unable to master his instincts, and he pointed to the accused's squint as a sign. When that failed, he argued that the victims, former landowners, businessmen and illegal dealers in gold and currency, were of little value to a socialist society, so that killing them did less harm than killing a worker and did not merit death. The officer who had survived the poisoning objected in court to the suggestion that Mazurkiewicz had only removed people harmful to society, Tygodnik Powszechny reports. The Polish Press Agency, writing in 2017, described this reasoning as the communist justice system's leniency toward a killer whose victims did not count for much in the eyes of the state; the court was not persuaded.
The trial was covered across the Polish press. Tygodnik Powszechny cites reports by Lucjan Wolanowski in Echo Krakowa, Władysław Cybulski in Dziennik Polski, who contrasted the card-playing circle around the accused with ordinary working people, and Anna Strońska in Gazeta Krakowska, who criticized attempts to undermine the investigation. Marek Hłasko reported on the trial for Po prostu, Magazyn TVN24 notes, and later wrote about it in his memoir Piękni dwudziestoletni, calling the trial a disgrace. Histmag quotes his line that everyone knew "pan Władzio" was a murderer but assumed he was carrying out the sentences of his masters in the security police. Słowiński's book notes that street ballads about Mazurkiewicz were sung in Kraków in the 1950s.
The prosecutor asked for the death penalty eight times, Focus reports, and in closing called for a catharsis that would morally cleanse the city's air of what he called "mazurkiewiczszczyzna", Tygodnik Powszechny reports.
On August 30, 1956, the Voivodeship Court in Kraków sentenced Mazurkiewicz to death, Histmag and Focus report. Magazyn TVN24 reports that the sentence rested on six murders and two attempted murders. RMF FM reports that he received eight death sentences and that people applauded when the verdict was read.
Mazurkiewicz was hanged at Montelupich prison in Kraków on January 29, 1957, Histmag and Tygodnik Powszechny report; Interia gives the same date, and Magazyn TVN24 marked the sixtieth anniversary on January 29. Focus gives the date as January 27. On the last day Hofmokl-Ostrowski visited him to perform his final duty and asked whether he had poison; Mazurkiewicz said he did not. He walked to the scaffold calmly, smoking a cigarette, and a doctor pronounced him dead at 7:40 in the evening, Tygodnik Powszechny reports. His last words, as Histmag, Focus and RMF FM give them, were a farewell to the gentlemen present and a remark that they would all meet there before long. Focus reports that Hofmokl-Ostrowski later said his client had entrusted him with a terrible secret, which the lawyer never revealed.
The figure of about thirty victims has followed the case since the 1950s. Later accounts repeat it as a suspicion or a rumor; Magazyn TVN24 calls it Kraków legend and notes that the court proved six murders. Histmag's figure of "more than 30" deaths between 1940 and 1955, and its account of a first killing around 1940, are not reflected in any charge. The killings beyond the six on which he was convicted remain unproven and were never tried.
The claim that Mazurkiewicz was a Gestapo informant, and later an agent of the communist Ministry of Public Security protected by its leadership, was widely believed in Kraków. Hłasko wrote that he was probably a security police collaborator. Łazarewicz told Radio Kraków that he checked the files of the Institute of National Remembrance and found no trace of such work, and the Polish Press Agency and Magazyn TVN24 report the same finding. Histmag suggests that Mazurkiewicz may have started the rumor himself, and Magazyn TVN24 reports that he spread it and that fear kept people from testing it. Słowiński's 2017 book takes the opposite view, describing ties with the security service in the early 1950s that helped shield him. The 1945 inquiry, in which he was cleared despite eyewitnesses, is the episode most often cited by those who believe he was protected.
Focus reports two other stories that circulated after the execution: that a double had stood trial in his place, with Mazurkiewicz himself living in the United States, and the lawyer's claim of an undisclosed secret. Neither has been substantiated.
Writers who studied him differ on what drove him. Łazarewicz described killings that were planned, without emotion and for money, by a man who remembered which victim had carried which watch, wallet or ring but not their names; he told Radio Kraków that he did not classify him as a serial killer. Witold Horwath, another author on the case, told RMF FM that Mazurkiewicz was a weak man with a weak psyche, who sometimes could not finish what he had begun when a victim looked at him.
Cezary Łazarewicz's Elegancki morderca (W.A.B., 2015), built on the case files, premiered at the Kraków International Book Fair in 2015; Łazarewicz told Radio Kraków that only two earlier books had described the case briefly. Magazyn TVN24 also cites Bogusław Sygit's Kto zabija człowieka (Wydawnictwo Prawnicze, 1989), and RMF FM mentions a book by Witold Horwath and the documentary Seryjni mordercy: Król miasta, in which the IPN historian Paweł Skorut appeared.
Krzysztof Lang's feature film Ach śpij kochanie (released in English as Lullaby Killer), written by Andrzej Gołda and shot in Kraków in November 2016, stars Andrzej Chyra as Mazurkiewicz and Tomasz Schuchardt as Karski, a young militia officer who pursues him. Its title comes from a melody Mazurkiewicz used to hum, Radio Kraków reported. FilmNewEurope reported a budget of 5.3 million złoty, with 2 million from the Polish Film Institute, and a release by Monolith Films on October 20, 2017. Lang told the Polish Press Agency that he had wanted to say something about the communist era through the case.
1911: born in Kraków.
March 16, 1943: attempted poisoning of an army officer in hiding (attempted murder, convicted 1956).
December 15, 1943: murder of Wiktor Zarzecki.
July 26, 1945: murder of Władysław Brylski.
October 1945: murder of Józef Tomaszewski; Mazurkiewicz is detained and released after a short inquiry.
1946: Zarzecki's wife reports him missing; a court declares him dead.
May 29, 1946 (some accounts May 28): murder of Jerzy de Laveaux.
1950: Jadwiga de Laveaux leaves dollars and gold coins in his keeping.
May 16, 1955 (Magazyn TVN24: 1953): murders of Jadwiga de Laveaux and Zofia Suchowa.
September 24, 1955: attempted murder of a Warsaw trader on the road from Zakopane; he survives.
October 3, 1955: Kraków militia open an investigation.
October 12, 1955: wanted notice issued.
November 1, 1955: Mazurkiewicz detained.
December 13, 1955: the two women are found in Kraków.
March to April 1956: confession.
August 6, 1956: trial opens before the Voivodeship Court in Kraków.
August 27, 1956: he withdraws his confession in court.
August 30, 1956: sentenced to death.
January 29, 1957 (Focus: January 27): hanged at Montelupich prison, Kraków.
2015: Cezary Łazarewicz publishes Elegancki morderca.
October 20, 2017: Ach śpij kochanie released in Polish cinemas.