In the Krakow police, the case of the murder of a 23-year-old Polish woman, Katarzyna Zovada, is codenamed "Kozha". Because this is practically all that remains of her.
In 1998, Katarzyna entered the Jagiellonian University (Krakow). She was described as a kind girl, but very reserved. After 1996, when her father died, she began to suffer from depression.
At first, the girl studied psychology, but then she switched to history. However, even there she did not last long and went into religious studies.
At the end of October 1998, something happened to the girl and she stopped going to classes, although her mother was sure that every morning Katarzhina went to study at the university.
And then Katarzhina disappeared completely. On this day, November 12, after class, she was supposed to meet with her mother for a visit to the therapist, but she never came. In the morning she left home in a corduroy jacket and black jeans.
A few days later, her mother filed a report with the police that her daughter was missing, but no trace of the girl was found anywhere.
Late in the evening of January 6, 1999, something wrapped around the propeller of the Elk tugboat sailing along the Vistula near the city and began to interfere with the propeller's operation. In the early morning of January 7, in order to clear the debris, the tug captain opened the bottom hatch and hauled an armful of debris onto the deck.
The captain thought that another car tire or branch interfered with the work of the screw, but what he found left him in a state of shock. It was pale, slimy, smelly, and determined to be organic.
Promotional video:
Only when the captain saw in the shapeless outlines of the object something that looked like a human ear, he realized what it was and called the police.
The first version of the investigators was that these were the remains of a drowned woman, which were ground by a propeller. But when the skin was unfolded and examined, it turned out that the skin had been manually removed from the woman's body, and it was only skin from the body from the neck to the legs. Everything else was missing.
Investigators found that she was removed from her body in such a way that she could be worn as a "suit". It was then that it became obvious that the police faced not just a murderer, but a copy of a maniac from the movie "The Silence of the Lambs", who sewed clothes for himself from the skin of girls.
At the same time, a DNA analysis was carried out, which showed that the skin belongs to the unfortunate Katarzyna Zovada, who had disappeared a couple of months earlier. It was also found that the skin was in the water for about 2-3 weeks.
When the search for a possible maniac began, a man was first detained, who was repeatedly seen off the banks of the Vistula near the crime scene, molesting women and insulting them. But the police found nothing on him and the man was excluded from the list of suspects.
In May 1999, a student Vladimir living in Krakow with his father, who came from Russia, brutally murdered his father and removed the skin from his head, making a kind of mask out of it. He wore this mask in front of his blind-eyed grandfather so that he would mistake him for his father, but the grandfather eventually called the police, finding the corpse of his son in the basement.
Vladimir studied at the same Jagiellonian University, so when the police arrested him, they began to look for his involvement in the murder of Katarzhina.
But no traces of the girl's presence were found in his house, and the student also denied the murder of Katarzhina in every possible way, and called the reason for the murder of his father strong hatred of him. Later, Vladimir was deported to Russia, where he received a long prison term.
After that, the Krakow police shelved the case of "Skin" for several years, as there were no new leads. Only in 2005, the body of a man was found in the park, without a head. By the nature of the cuts, the police suspected that the 1999 and 2005 cases were committed by the same person. In 2011, a local resident was convicted of murder in the park, who also had no connection with the murder of Katarzhina.
In 2012, after the discovery of plant remains and organic fibers in the analyzes, it was decided to exhume the girl's remains for re-examination. It was found out that the murder took place not near the river, but in another place, and it was also established that before her death the girl was tortured for a long time, her skin was covered with bruises and scratches.
In 2014, the best investigators from Europe and the FBI were involved in the mystery of Katarzyna's murder. According to a psychological portrait drawn up by an FBI expert, the killer was supposed to be a "harmless pervert" who had seen enough films like "The Silence of the Lambs" or read biographies of serial killers like Buffolo Bill.
It was assumed that in everyday life he had the profession of a butcher or a surgeon, and he removed the skin from Katarzhina in order to use it as a sexual fetish. This version was called into question due to the fact that sexual maniacs usually commit not single, but serial crimes. However, it is possible that something prevented the criminal from continuing to kill in Krakow, he could go to prison or leave the country.
There was another version that the girl committed suicide, and then someone came across her body and abused him. Some marks on the skin showed that it could have fallen from a great height or been hit by a car.
On October 4, 2017, the police arrested a 52-year-old Krakow resident Robert J. He very well fell under the psychological portrait of a pervert, neighbors and acquaintances called him a freak, as he loved to torture animals, previously served in the war, worked in a hospital, where he helped dissect corpses …
He also worked at one time in the zoological museum, where he processed stuffed animals. From there he was fired after he once killed all the guinea pigs.
According to psychologists, he had a penchant for sadism and was dissatisfied with women and specially came to the cemetery to the graves of girls who died a violent death.
They found women's clothes in his house, which he liked to dress in. In general, it looked like the police had detained the same maniac. However, more than a year has passed since then, and the involvement of this person in the murder of Katarzhina has not been proven.