Killers: Behind the Myth (2013–2015): Season 1, Episode 2 - Kot: The Vampire of Krakow - full transcript
For two years the baby-faced killer Karol Kot terrorised the Polish city of Krakow. Unlike many serial killers he appeared to have no fixed modus operandi when targeting his victims, which made tracking him down difficult. He began his attacks on elderly women, but after a two-year break, he moved to attacking children. An 11 year old boy is found stabbed to death: the boy's internal organs have been punctured in the frenzied attack. A young girl is targeted shortly afterwards. Witness statements link a schoolboy with the crimes. The country is horrified. The killer is finally caught when he confides in a potential partner. His attempt to impress her backfires. Instead she's horrified and goes straight to the police. Once in custody, the schoolboy Kot reveals he drank the blood of his victims as they lay dying.
The most notoriouskillers hide in plain sight,
free to kill and kill again.
But most are not the criminalmasterminds of fiction.
In their minds, theycommit the perfect murder.
In reality, it's their foolishmistakes which get them caught.
In the 1960s, teenagerssaw freedom of expression
as theirs by right, butonly in the decadent west.
Behind the Iron
Curtain, young people
could only dream of freedom.
But one of them didn't
suppress his desires,
the Vampire of Krakow.
In September 1964, rumors ofa brutal murder in a church
spread through the
Polish city of Krakow.
This is the third knife attackon elderly women in less than a
month.
By some miracle, the
first two victims
had each survived a singleknife strike from behind.
But this time, the blade piercedclose to the woman's heart.
A nun found her still alive,but it was too late to save her.
The citizens of Krakow
listened to the news
with a mixture of
horror and disbelief.
There was a
massive panic in Krakow,
especially amongst the elderly.
People didn't know thedetails on how it all happened
or where it happened.
There were rumors it
happened in a church,
but it wasn't clear which one.
Of
People werescared to go into church.
They didn't know
on what criteria
he chooses his victims.
So there was a general
fear in Krakow.
Crimescientist, Kacper Gradon,
looks back at how the police
reacted to the crimes.
After
the first attack,
the police did not
think that they had
a serial killer on the loose.
They really thought it
was an attempted robbery
or something of that kind.
But less than a week later,they have got homicide.
So because the victims are allattacked with one knife blow,
they were pretty sure that thiswas the work of one person.
Now fearing
a serial killer
could be roaming the
city, police turn
to Krakow citizens for help.
The police
had absolutely no clues,
so they were placing
ads in the newspapers
looking for witnesses.
In cities
across Poland,
news has filtered through ofKrakow's mysterious murderer,
despite communist Poland'siron grip on the press.
I was in highschool in those times.
Back then, information
about crimes
didn't see daylight
in the everyday press
because of strong censorship.
Only when police
needed help would
they publish a short story.
But only in Krakow.
And no one would read
about those stories
in Warsaw or...
However, there was a
grapevine, and that
was enough to cause panic.
People were afraid to go out.
Poland
is on high alert.
Newspapers say all the womenwere stabbed in broad daylight,
in public places, and reportthat the first victim thought
she had been knifed
by a young male.
The
only thing they knew,
was that it was a youngman attacking with a knife
from behind.
He wasn't stealing.
He didn't want
anything from victims.
He didn't say a word to them.
That was a big puzzle.
Weeks pass,there are no more attacks.
The city relaxes.
And pretty soon, the murdersbecome playground jokes.
My friends and Iwould joke about the elderly
protecting themselves
from the psychopaths
by covering their chests
with cooking pan lids,
and attaching chopping
boards to their backs.
We all used to laugh about it.
Krakow
gradually forgets
the bizarre spate of violence.
And the investigation, withnothing to go on, is shelved.
However, two years
later in February 1966,
the bloodied body of
an 11-year-old boy
is found in a park.
He's been stabbed to deathin a frenzied attack.
The
unknown offender
killed the boy with
utmost cruelty,
stabbing him numerous times.
All of them could be fatal.
In criminology, we call thattype of behavior an overkill.
The
pathology report shows
that all of the boys internalorgans were punctured.
There was absolutely noway he could have survived.
With no obvious motive for theattack, and few clues to go on,
the police investigation
was getting nowhere.
Until a taxi drivermentions he saw a young man
close to the murder scene.
The description matches a youngman seen close to the spot
where the old lady was
attacked two years ago.
The press announce that the oldlady killer is on the rampage
again--
this time, targeting children.
The police refer to the killeras a young man, and again,
hope the publicity
will give them
the breakthrough they need.
But many take the newspaperreports with a pinch of salt,
convinced a youngster couldn'tevade the police for so long.
We
knew that there must
have been a madman out there.
One wouldn't normally
associate a psychopath
with a young person.
You would rather picturehim as a middle aged person,
someone who would stand out, whowould look like a psychopath.
To the public, thekiller seems unstoppable.
The entire
case, at that time,
was surrounded by some
kind of mythology.
To the general public, hewas probably considered
to be a criminal mastermind.
Nobody knew who he was.
He was able to do what
he did and escape,
without leaving anyincriminating evidence behind.
But it was thekiller's choice of victim
that was most alarming.
He attacked bothlittle children and old ladies.
So people would be scared togo to the church in the evening
when it was empty.
If he was attacking
old ladies, that would
mean he is after old people.
But he was attacking
both young and old.
I mean, the police couldn'tfind out his motives.
Whoever this killeris, the residence of Krakow
kept a close eye on
their youngsters.
But their cautiousness
is not enough.
A young girl is running anerrand, collecting mail,
from the apartmentpigeonholes for her mother.
Two monthslater, he attacked again--
attacking a 7-year-old girl.
He stabbed her, numerous times.
The furious assault isalmost identical to the attack
on the boy.
But miraculously, the
girl is found alive.
She is rushed to hospitalwith severe internal injuries.
Surgeons fight to save her life.
Against the odds, the
little girl survives.
Police decide to release moreinformation about the attacker,
they hope to getwitnesses to come forward.
They reveal that
the murdered woman's
dying words were that herattacker was a schoolboy.
The citizens of
Krakow are horrified.
And despite the new revelation,there are still no new leads.
And behind the scenes,police contact psychologists
in the hope of
getting an insight
into the killer's identityand motives before he
strikes again.
They
knew that this was
a boy, so based on that theycame up with some hypotheses.
How big was he.
What were his skills.
Where he might have lived.
What was his
psychological makeup.
But before police
can act on their
new psychological
profile, they receive
some startling information.
A young woman comes forward.
She knows who the killer is.
A certain Karol Kot is chargedwith the attacks and murders.
When his photograph hits thenewspapers, the city shudders.
The baby faced killer,
really is a schoolboy.
Astonishingly, Kot hadbrought about his own downfall
by boasting of his attacks
to the young woman.
And she had told the police.
The arrest stuns
Kot's schoolmates.
When
he was arrested,
everyone was shocked and
could hardly believe it.
We felt powerless.
We felt sort of sickened that wehadn't been able to stop this.
Kot proves tobe no ordinary schoolboy.
A picture of a knife
obsessed loner,
with an unpredictabletemper, starts to emerge.
His schoolmates had evenjoked that Kot was the killer,
never thinking it was true.
I remember aboutafter the murder of that boy.
When we got to school, we joked,Karol, it must have been you.
And he didn't reveal anyemotions at all, nothing.
We didn't have a clue.
Nobody suspected
anything before.
Grisly
details of Kot's crimes
spread across Poland.
I found
out during the trial
that he was nearly myage, from a good family--
not a pathological family.
I wondered why such a
young and intelligent
person turned into a vampire.
The public's
fear turns to horror
when Kot proudly admits that hedrank the blood of his victims
as they lay dying.
When themedia heard from the police
that he enjoyed drinking
blood, Kot was referred
to as the Vampire from Krakow.
That was the
nickname that stuck,
and that's how he's beenknown for the last 50 years.
Karol as a
vampire, as a murderer,
We didn't think that itcould be somebody so young.
We were 19 years old.
But after connecting
all the facts,
we were able to see
the whole picture.
We got very scared.
Karol Kot,
the baby-faced killer,
relished his notoriety asthe Vampire from Krakow.
But his killing spree wasalmost much, much worse.
In 1968, 21-year-old
Karol Kot is
charged with two
murders and a series
of attempted murders and arson.
Dubbed the Vampire ofKrakow because of his taste
for the blood of his
victims, he offers
no defense and no apology.
I remember
the Vampire from Krakow.
According to the press, heloved blood and killing.
When they caught
him, they made out
that it was a big achievement.
There were reports
in all the newspapers
about this great police success.
Jubilant policefilm a reconstruction
of Kot's attacks.
And the killer appears onlytoo happy to cooperate.
But Karol Kot's
cheerful accounts
of his murderous exploits sent achill through communist Poland.
Nearly five decades later,British criminal psychologist,
David Holmes, sees
beyond the headlines
to the underlying
significance of Kot's
crimes, and the
disturbing psychological
basis for his actions.
Oddly enough, Karol
Kot doesn't really
attract that criminologicalinterest because of the kind
of vampiristic side to it.
It's the very impersonal
nature of the killings,
almost killing by
numbers approach
to it, which seems to give me,at least, the sense of intrigue
to look further into this case.
Kot was born
in 1946 in the ruins
of post-war Krakow.
He was an only child,
doted on by his parents.
But when he was eight years old,his mother gave birth to a baby
girl, and his life changed.
Kot claimed thathe really loved his sister.
But at the same time, he wasalso very jealous of her.
He said that their parents lovedher more than they loved him.
And when they were
alone at home,
and their parents
were at work, he would
beat her and make her cry.
Most people have some
idea of sibling rivalry,
a little bit of competition.
But this is extreme.
Kot later
described how he also
attacked his sister's pets.
They represented, if youlike, his hatred for sister.
This is the kind of thing thatyou would associate with a very
fledgling psychopath.
This is someone
who does not have
the normal restraints of
the average individual,
the same empathies.
Kot's fascinationwith animals and violence
went much further.
In police interviews, Kotdescribed that as a young boy,
he started to visit the
local slaughterhouse.
He saw the
animals being killed,
and he really liked watching it.
He said that he tastedblood, first of all, for fun.
But at the same time,
he noticed that he
really enjoyed doing it.
Kot's fascination
with the slaughterhouse
provided him, I believe,with some of his earliest
sexual experiences.
He actually began to becomeexcited in the presence
of the death of animals,
the spelling of blood,
within the slaughterhouse.
Kot took what helearned from the slaughter
house and began killing animalshimself using his growing
collection of knives.
Gradon believes Kot's
world has spiraled
far away from the norm.
This addsup to a complete portrait
of a psychopath, but withvery obvious sadistic traits.
But even as a youngster,Kot is well aware that what
makes him tick is taboo.
And he goes to
extraordinary lengths
to conceal his urges
from his parents.
Kot described how
he feigned revulsion
when his mother preparedfish for the family supper.
Kot realized what hedesires, sadistically, is
not acceptable to his parents--
the only people in theworld who have accepted him.
Crime writer,
Mark Billingham,
sees a boy playing the system.
He sees how they behave,and he knows that's not him.
So he pretends.
He tells his parents that hehates it when he has to gut
a fish and this sort of stuff.
But actually, some
switch has been thrown.
By the time
Kot had finished school,
he had developed asophisticated, if eccentric,
persona.
He was aloner, bit of an outcast.
He looked a bit like
an office worker.
He had characteristic
nervous movements,
and looked a tiny bituncoordinated and strange
at the same time.
Kot's
schoolmates found
his quick temper
and weird obsessions
enough to make them wary.
Karol alwayssmiled when he heard stories
about violence and killings.
Even at school, he loved it.
Kot made no secretof his love of weapons,
and often took some of
his knives to school.
I remember,
once, Carol pulled out
the knife he used
to carry with him,
and he stabbed
the table with it.
It went through the table, andhe couldn't pull the knife out.
I think each of us,
if we think about it,
has probably met
somebody or knows
somebody a little bit likehe would have been at school.
You know, the one who's
into kind of--
he's the one that loves knives,and talks about how he could
kill you with his bare hands.
You know, I've met
characters like that.
And what that was, in a way,was his way of disguising
his true personality.
Despite hisshort fuse and a fixation
on weapons and death, Kot'sfellow students accepted him--
albeit at arm's length.
In
everyday life, even
though he played with theknives, he was a good pupil.
He did what he was told
to do by his teachers.
They just wanted him tobe fitting in with the pack.
They didn't want him to be asodd as he really was at core.
Kot's
obsession with weapons
led him to join a rifle club,where he became a crack shot--
winning several competitions.
At the gun club,
at least, Kot was
recognized as a model citizen.
He found his
home, if you like.
He found people
who had recognized
his skills with weapons.
And that to show
prowess with weapons
was to have some status in life.
Well, I guess it's the
only place he could be.
I mean, there was no
kind of knife club.
There wasn't a meeting placewhere lots of like minded souls
could get together
and butcher animals.
So, you know, rifle club waspretty much all he could do.
But far from being asafe outlet for Kot's passions,
the rifle club is his
feeding Kot's fantasies.
You've got someone who has asadistic interest in killing.
And in that
particular situation,
his fantasies and the
realities of his skills
were becoming dangerously close.
Today, Kot's brazeninterest in death and weaponry
would immediately single him outas a potential school shooter.
But in 1966, he was
just another weird kid.
And nobody recognized the signs.
By the time Karol Kot
is 17, he's ready to put
his obsessions into practice.
After attacking the
elderly, Kot goes
for defenseless youngsters.
This was a very kind of almostnerdy approach to killing.
Choosing victims who are lesslikely to struggle or fight
back, therefore there's goingto be less interaction and more
fantasy, because it
would rather disrupt
his fantasy if
somebody turned round
and grabbed him by the neck.
For two years,Kot evades the authorities.
But then he makes an
unbelievable blunder.
He tells a friend at therifle club about his attack
on the 7-year-old.
She doesn't believe
him, until she
reads about the
attack in the news,
and immediately
goes to the police.
Kot is arrested.
When questioned, Kot
denies everything.
But police would soon findout the horrifying truth.
Not only was Kot
the murderer, he
also drank his victim's blood.
For almost two
years, police have
tried in vain to catchthe killer of an old woman
and a young boy.
Crimes also linked to
a series of attempted
murders, which left
traumatized survivors
with horrific knife wounds.
Then, in 1966,
19-year-old Karol Kot
is arrested after
he tells a friend
that he has stabbed a child.
Karol Kot openlytold her that he hates people.
That he enjoys killing.
And that he attacked
a little girl.
Luckily,
Kot's horrified friend
told the police.
The police
weren't on Kot's trail.
Nobody was observing him.
He wasn't in the
circle of suspects,
so it would have taken
a while to catch him.
If his girlfriend hadn't
have helped the police,
I don't know when they
would have caught him.
This is
the breakthrough
police had hoped for.
But when police
interview their suspect,
he denies having anything to dowith the murders or the attack
on the girl.
Kot is brazen about everything.
But when confronted
with the fact
that his surviving victimshave all identified him,
he immediately confesses.
And the police tell
the nation that they
have caught the attacker.
Catching theculprit, or the vampire,
we had a sense of triumph.
When we
found that it was Karol,
we were wondering where
his aggressive habits
and his motives come from.
Nobody could find a
rational explanation.
Gradually, the
truth about Karol Kot's
murderous rampage
begins to unfold.
Far from being the mastercriminal that some had
imagined, Kot had madeone big mistake, allowing
some of his victims to survive.
This meant the
police could link him
to both the old lady killing andthe more recent child attacks.
And the survivors
could identify him,
confirming the friend's story.
Mark Billingham
tries to make sense
of the blunder that came backto haunt Kot after his arrest.
The big question
for me is, why does
he leave these victims alive?
He's got a fantasy, whichhe wants to live out,
which involves killing
people, which involve
butchering them with knives.
He does that, and then
leaves them alive.
What's going on there?
That is baffling to me.
Kot had intendedto kill his victims,
but had failed to
do it properly.
Crime scientists,
Kacper Gradon, puts
Kot's failure to finishoff his eventual accusers
down to simple naivety.
With
the first attacks,
Kot was still an
inexperienced murderer.
He's not even 18
years at the time.
His only violent experiencesare with animals,
and he's never killed
a human being before.
He's still a rookie.
Rookie or
not, in Kot's mind,
he had killing
down to a fine art.
He applied what he thought wasthe correct technique, actually
penetrating the person throughthe rib cage at the most
direct route to the heart.
This should have
been a sure kill.
It arcs back to Kot's experiencein the slaughterhouse,
where it was always a singleblow to kill the animals.
And he would expect
that, of course,
to be a single blow
for killing humans.
Kot's total confidence
in his killing abilities
could be the reason
he left witnesses, who
would later point the finger.
Perhaps he genuinelythought, they're gonna die.
I've killed them.
I know how to butcher an animal.
But he never actually
considered the fact
that these victims
were not dead yet,
and could possibly turn
round and identify him.
Despite his
youthful inexperience,
Kot repeatedly managed
to avoid arrest.
Gradon believes it'smore than just pure luck.
Kot is
choosing his victims
from a segment of populationthat poses no threat to him.
He's choosing the locationsthat are safe for him.
There are too many
people around.
And he disappears.
He uses his own weapon.
He takes his weapon
from the crime scene.
And he disappears.
After
Kot's first kill,
the knife attacks stoppedas suddenly as they began.
But the mystery deepens
when, after 17 months,
Kot re-emerges with adifferent style of attack.
Kot Struckagain in the winter of 1966.
This time, he attacked
an 11-year-old boy.
In that attack, he
uses much more force.
He stabs many more times thanis needed to kill his victim.
This is the overkill.
He had destroyed virtuallyevery organ in the boy's body.
The boy was certain to die froma tiny number of those blows.
To carry on what
we call overkill,
and it showed a certain amountof control and confidence.
Kot's original
method was to kill
with a single knife strike.
So this frenzy representsa profound escalation.
Something builds in thosetwo years, that then manifests
itself in the horrendous
killing of the boy,
the overkill murder.
And at that point, he
is gripped by a frenzy
and there's no going
back from there.
He's not going to take
another two years off.
The full horrorof Kot's warped world
was only revealed when
he detailed his exploits
to police interrogators.
Kot confessedthat after each and every one
of his attacks, no matterwhether his victims lived
or died, he would take his knifeand lick the drops of blood
from the blade.
He learned that
as a young child,
watching animals
being slaughtered.
And he recreated the
same circumstances
when he was killing people.
Billingham wondersif Kot's vampiristic fantasy
sheds more light on his failureto finish off his victims.
What was important tohim, so important to him,
was just that moment
of drinking the blood
and the enjoying that.
He's so taken up withmaking this fantasy real,
he doesn't ensure
that they're dead.
Whatever hismotives, and despite failing
to kill all his
victims, Kot is still
beyond the reach of the police.
But then, he makes
a fateful decision--
to confide in a friend.
Why, at the point where
he's kind of unstoppable
as a killer and thisfrenzy has got hold of him,
does he completely turn around
and confess to the girl.
That is baffling to me.
Maybe he confesses to
this girl because he
does want to get caught.
When policefinally do catch up with him,
they discover Kot had a sinisterplan to kill even more people.
This time, not with
knives, but poison.
19-year-old Karol Kot
was arrested in 1966
after terrorizing
the city of Krakow
with a string of
brutal knife attacks.
The bizarre circumstancesthat lead to his downfall
have captured the imaginationof generations of experts.
Kot's biggest blunder, andfor which he is somewhat famous,
is actually confessing hiscrime to a female friend
at the rifle club.
Up to that point, he's avery difficult killer to catch.
He then goes and tell
somebody, it's insane.
Kot's balmy confessionto his friend made police
suspicious that he
might have been planning
to plead insanity at
his trial as a way
to avoid the death penalty.
They were so concerned, theywaited until Kot had sat
his final school exams
before arresting him,
as a way of proving he was sane.
The fact that he passed themenabled the police to say,
well, he's clearly not insane.
Look at how well he's
done in his exams.
There's no way on God's earththat would happen today.
Nevertheless,
the reason
for Kot's boast to the girl mustlie in his warped world view.
Kot is kind of associatingthe rifle club as a safe haven.
And he had the confidenceto actually believe
that this female
friend of his was
going to be accepting
of this very
alien and bizarre behavior.
I think that hewas still thinking that he's
so smart, so intelligent,that he's going to manipulate
that girl and make her his.
Maybe his partner in
crime, or an accomplice.
The girl
had socialized
with Kot a few times.
But then, he decided
to share some
of his weird, violent
fantasies with her.
For him, it's
very much like a cat
bringing home a dead
bird to its owner
and expecting the
owners to be incredibly
sort of grateful and impressed.
I don't think
he was confessing.
He was kind of showing off.
He's making a move
on her, you know.
He's hoping she's
going to go,
really, that's a bit naughty.
Let's, you know, let's go tomy bedroom and have some fun.
And actually, she
just told the police.
But Kot's clumsy,romantic approach to the girl
just reveals his naivety
with the opposite sex.
Something Billingham
believes may
be the motive for his crimes.
There's an interview with himwhere the interviewer says, is
this about sexual satisfaction?
This killing that you did?
And he said, well,
it was satisfying.
I enjoyed it.
I enjoyed watching
my victims suffer.
I can't tell you whetherit was sexual satisfaction
because I've never really
known what that's like.
And that really leapt
out at me,
there's your kind ofmotive behind everything.
Whether it was
an irrational impulse
or a bizarre attempt toimpress, boasting to the girl
was Kot's downfall.
And as the police
interviews continued,
the surprises didn't stop.
Kot's 17 month long breakbetween murdering the old woman
and attacking the
children had baffled
investigators at the time.
And is almost unprecedented inany serial killer's profile.
The first attackson the old ladies happened
on almost a daily basis.
And then something changed.
And the perpetrator
changed his behavior.
But the
mystery is solved
when Kot reveals he had notretired from killing at all.
In those 17 months, he
had been experimenting
with the deadly
art of poisoning.
We know,
from Kot's statements
during his interviews,
that he was
planning to kill many people.
And he was even
explicitly referring
to poisoning as a militaryway of disposing of enemies.
He wanted to show off
his skills in weaponry.
And poison was one of these.
Kot begins hispoisoning campaign by, once
again, selecting easy targets.
This time, it's his schoolmates.
Jan Ksiazek was 17-years-oldwhen he went on work experience
with Kot.
And a tea break nearly
cost him his life.
I poured
myself some tea
and tried to drink it, whenI smelt the pungent chemical.
I took a sip and spat it out.
I simply thought,
my tea had gone off.
In that moment, I looked athim as I felt him watching me.
He looked suspicious.
As he later
confessed, he poisoned
my tea with potassium arsenate.
Kot, again, went for
the overkill thing,
thinking he did not
want to mess up.
But used so much poison thathis friend found it repugnant.
And it failed because of that.
Unfazed by
his abortive attack
on his school friend, Kotrolled out his toxic assault
across Krakow.
In an incredible piece
of film, Kot himself
shows police exactly how hewent about his murderous scheme.
In that
year and a half,
he had tried to poison people--
collecting poisons and pouringthem into lemonade or beer
bottles that he'd leavehere and there in Krakow,
hoping that somebody wouldget thirsty, drink, and die.
Luckily, he only
failed because nobody
was interested in drinkingfrom open bottles.
By some miracle,it seems nobody was killed
by Kot's poisoning spree.
It was like it didn't
really matter to him.
He'll cut them.
He'll poison them.
He'll bludgeon them.
He'll shoot them.
It's all about the
power over life.
It's all about being
able to take human life.
Whether Kot wasmotivated by the simple impulse
to kill, or a cocktail of urgesthat included drinking blood,
the people of Krakow
got the chance
to make up their
minds when Kot was
put on trial in spring of 1967.
The trial waswidely publicized by the media,
as the court was
open to the public.
It went on for about twoweeks, if I remember correctly.
And all of Krakow
was buzzing about it.
Throughout
his trial, Kot
remained unnervingly cheerful.
It's a very odd situationwhen you have someone who
has a deficit of this type,but looks to the world
as if they are
reasonably normal.
It's a very difficult
thing for the public
to actually take on board.
I kept looking athim when he was in the dock,
and he had this
characteristic smirk
on his face, which
had made me so
suspicious of him in the past.
He also had this cold,glazed stare, which reminded
me of some images of Hitler.
It was the kind of look thatsaid a lot, like, I'm going
to do this and that to you.
And so what are you going
to do about it, then?
His schoolmatestestified that they had been
extremely wary of the
knife obsessed Kot,
but had not assumed he wasthe murderous schoolboy
the police were looking for.
What he did, so brilliantly,was hide in plain sight.
He wasn't, like,
that's the quiet kid
that never says anything.
It's like, he's the nuttykid that loves guns and knives
and, you know--
so couldn't possibly be anythingwrong with him, could there?
Kot's
school friends could
be forgiven for not spottingthe murder in their midst.
But to the court, it was clearthat this strange and alienated
young man had made littleeffort to conceal or control
his murderous instincts,
yet had appeared
to run rings around the police.
It became rather embarrassing,for the authorities,
because this series
of blunders emerged.
Kot might as well have
just given his victims
his name and address.
He was leaving them alive.
He was seen.
He was sneaking out
during breaks in school
to commit these attacks.
So the big question at
the end of the trial,
almost more
important than was he
sane was he not
sane, was how did he
get away with it for so long?
Why wasn't he caught earlier?
As soon as
the police had realized
they had a serial
killer on the loose,
they made newspaper
appeals for witnesses.
But they received little help
Poland, at thattime, was a communist country.
And the police was
a paramilitary arm
of the government, so
the people generally
thought any kind of cooperationwith the police force
to be totally unacceptable.
But policeobtained little information
of any significance.
When it comesto trusting the police,
it was much worse at the time.
It was well known
that you would not
know how it's going to be used.
Often, if a crime was
unsolved, that person
would be in a lot of trouble.
And then they would be invitedfor further cooperation.
I'm afraid even if someoneactually saw what he was doing,
they would not report it.
Krakow's then
secretive, and perhaps
politically motivated,
police force
was no match for the
bungling teenage killer.
He was his own worst enemy.
Before he was executed,
Kot made a statement--
I don't regret anything.
If I could, I
would murder again.
Suffering of the victims
gave me happiness.
I had grand criminal goals thatI deeply regret not achieving.
I planned to kill
adults and children.
He acceptedthe death penalty calmly.
He didn't repent.
We felt relief that it wasn'tgoing to happen any more.
Thankfully,there's not much trace of him
in Polish history.
It proved that it was possibleto get away with murder, right
under people's noses.
I think that hepurely enjoyed hurting people.
And that was not a sign
of a mental illness,
but rather of a deep sadismand a very clear psychopathy.
That might be a scarythought, but at the same time,
it's very important to remember
that serial homicide is
one of the rarest
crimes you can think of.
Karol Kot's
murderous rampage
still reverberates throughPoland, almost 50 years
after his death.
And the baby-faced killerwill always be remembered
as the Vampire of Krakow.
free to kill and kill again.
But most are not the criminalmasterminds of fiction.
In their minds, theycommit the perfect murder.
In reality, it's their foolishmistakes which get them caught.
In the 1960s, teenagerssaw freedom of expression
as theirs by right, butonly in the decadent west.
Behind the Iron
Curtain, young people
could only dream of freedom.
But one of them didn't
suppress his desires,
the Vampire of Krakow.
In September 1964, rumors ofa brutal murder in a church
spread through the
Polish city of Krakow.
This is the third knife attackon elderly women in less than a
month.
By some miracle, the
first two victims
had each survived a singleknife strike from behind.
But this time, the blade piercedclose to the woman's heart.
A nun found her still alive,but it was too late to save her.
The citizens of Krakow
listened to the news
with a mixture of
horror and disbelief.
There was a
massive panic in Krakow,
especially amongst the elderly.
People didn't know thedetails on how it all happened
or where it happened.
There were rumors it
happened in a church,
but it wasn't clear which one.
Of
People werescared to go into church.
They didn't know
on what criteria
he chooses his victims.
So there was a general
fear in Krakow.
Crimescientist, Kacper Gradon,
looks back at how the police
reacted to the crimes.
After
the first attack,
the police did not
think that they had
a serial killer on the loose.
They really thought it
was an attempted robbery
or something of that kind.
But less than a week later,they have got homicide.
So because the victims are allattacked with one knife blow,
they were pretty sure that thiswas the work of one person.
Now fearing
a serial killer
could be roaming the
city, police turn
to Krakow citizens for help.
The police
had absolutely no clues,
so they were placing
ads in the newspapers
looking for witnesses.
In cities
across Poland,
news has filtered through ofKrakow's mysterious murderer,
despite communist Poland'siron grip on the press.
I was in highschool in those times.
Back then, information
about crimes
didn't see daylight
in the everyday press
because of strong censorship.
Only when police
needed help would
they publish a short story.
But only in Krakow.
And no one would read
about those stories
in Warsaw or...
However, there was a
grapevine, and that
was enough to cause panic.
People were afraid to go out.
Poland
is on high alert.
Newspapers say all the womenwere stabbed in broad daylight,
in public places, and reportthat the first victim thought
she had been knifed
by a young male.
The
only thing they knew,
was that it was a youngman attacking with a knife
from behind.
He wasn't stealing.
He didn't want
anything from victims.
He didn't say a word to them.
That was a big puzzle.
Weeks pass,there are no more attacks.
The city relaxes.
And pretty soon, the murdersbecome playground jokes.
My friends and Iwould joke about the elderly
protecting themselves
from the psychopaths
by covering their chests
with cooking pan lids,
and attaching chopping
boards to their backs.
We all used to laugh about it.
Krakow
gradually forgets
the bizarre spate of violence.
And the investigation, withnothing to go on, is shelved.
However, two years
later in February 1966,
the bloodied body of
an 11-year-old boy
is found in a park.
He's been stabbed to deathin a frenzied attack.
The
unknown offender
killed the boy with
utmost cruelty,
stabbing him numerous times.
All of them could be fatal.
In criminology, we call thattype of behavior an overkill.
The
pathology report shows
that all of the boys internalorgans were punctured.
There was absolutely noway he could have survived.
With no obvious motive for theattack, and few clues to go on,
the police investigation
was getting nowhere.
Until a taxi drivermentions he saw a young man
close to the murder scene.
The description matches a youngman seen close to the spot
where the old lady was
attacked two years ago.
The press announce that the oldlady killer is on the rampage
again--
this time, targeting children.
The police refer to the killeras a young man, and again,
hope the publicity
will give them
the breakthrough they need.
But many take the newspaperreports with a pinch of salt,
convinced a youngster couldn'tevade the police for so long.
We
knew that there must
have been a madman out there.
One wouldn't normally
associate a psychopath
with a young person.
You would rather picturehim as a middle aged person,
someone who would stand out, whowould look like a psychopath.
To the public, thekiller seems unstoppable.
The entire
case, at that time,
was surrounded by some
kind of mythology.
To the general public, hewas probably considered
to be a criminal mastermind.
Nobody knew who he was.
He was able to do what
he did and escape,
without leaving anyincriminating evidence behind.
But it was thekiller's choice of victim
that was most alarming.
He attacked bothlittle children and old ladies.
So people would be scared togo to the church in the evening
when it was empty.
If he was attacking
old ladies, that would
mean he is after old people.
But he was attacking
both young and old.
I mean, the police couldn'tfind out his motives.
Whoever this killeris, the residence of Krakow
kept a close eye on
their youngsters.
But their cautiousness
is not enough.
A young girl is running anerrand, collecting mail,
from the apartmentpigeonholes for her mother.
Two monthslater, he attacked again--
attacking a 7-year-old girl.
He stabbed her, numerous times.
The furious assault isalmost identical to the attack
on the boy.
But miraculously, the
girl is found alive.
She is rushed to hospitalwith severe internal injuries.
Surgeons fight to save her life.
Against the odds, the
little girl survives.
Police decide to release moreinformation about the attacker,
they hope to getwitnesses to come forward.
They reveal that
the murdered woman's
dying words were that herattacker was a schoolboy.
The citizens of
Krakow are horrified.
And despite the new revelation,there are still no new leads.
And behind the scenes,police contact psychologists
in the hope of
getting an insight
into the killer's identityand motives before he
strikes again.
They
knew that this was
a boy, so based on that theycame up with some hypotheses.
How big was he.
What were his skills.
Where he might have lived.
What was his
psychological makeup.
But before police
can act on their
new psychological
profile, they receive
some startling information.
A young woman comes forward.
She knows who the killer is.
A certain Karol Kot is chargedwith the attacks and murders.
When his photograph hits thenewspapers, the city shudders.
The baby faced killer,
really is a schoolboy.
Astonishingly, Kot hadbrought about his own downfall
by boasting of his attacks
to the young woman.
And she had told the police.
The arrest stuns
Kot's schoolmates.
When
he was arrested,
everyone was shocked and
could hardly believe it.
We felt powerless.
We felt sort of sickened that wehadn't been able to stop this.
Kot proves tobe no ordinary schoolboy.
A picture of a knife
obsessed loner,
with an unpredictabletemper, starts to emerge.
His schoolmates had evenjoked that Kot was the killer,
never thinking it was true.
I remember aboutafter the murder of that boy.
When we got to school, we joked,Karol, it must have been you.
And he didn't reveal anyemotions at all, nothing.
We didn't have a clue.
Nobody suspected
anything before.
Grisly
details of Kot's crimes
spread across Poland.
I found
out during the trial
that he was nearly myage, from a good family--
not a pathological family.
I wondered why such a
young and intelligent
person turned into a vampire.
The public's
fear turns to horror
when Kot proudly admits that hedrank the blood of his victims
as they lay dying.
When themedia heard from the police
that he enjoyed drinking
blood, Kot was referred
to as the Vampire from Krakow.
That was the
nickname that stuck,
and that's how he's beenknown for the last 50 years.
Karol as a
vampire, as a murderer,
We didn't think that itcould be somebody so young.
We were 19 years old.
But after connecting
all the facts,
we were able to see
the whole picture.
We got very scared.
Karol Kot,
the baby-faced killer,
relished his notoriety asthe Vampire from Krakow.
But his killing spree wasalmost much, much worse.
In 1968, 21-year-old
Karol Kot is
charged with two
murders and a series
of attempted murders and arson.
Dubbed the Vampire ofKrakow because of his taste
for the blood of his
victims, he offers
no defense and no apology.
I remember
the Vampire from Krakow.
According to the press, heloved blood and killing.
When they caught
him, they made out
that it was a big achievement.
There were reports
in all the newspapers
about this great police success.
Jubilant policefilm a reconstruction
of Kot's attacks.
And the killer appears onlytoo happy to cooperate.
But Karol Kot's
cheerful accounts
of his murderous exploits sent achill through communist Poland.
Nearly five decades later,British criminal psychologist,
David Holmes, sees
beyond the headlines
to the underlying
significance of Kot's
crimes, and the
disturbing psychological
basis for his actions.
Oddly enough, Karol
Kot doesn't really
attract that criminologicalinterest because of the kind
of vampiristic side to it.
It's the very impersonal
nature of the killings,
almost killing by
numbers approach
to it, which seems to give me,at least, the sense of intrigue
to look further into this case.
Kot was born
in 1946 in the ruins
of post-war Krakow.
He was an only child,
doted on by his parents.
But when he was eight years old,his mother gave birth to a baby
girl, and his life changed.
Kot claimed thathe really loved his sister.
But at the same time, he wasalso very jealous of her.
He said that their parents lovedher more than they loved him.
And when they were
alone at home,
and their parents
were at work, he would
beat her and make her cry.
Most people have some
idea of sibling rivalry,
a little bit of competition.
But this is extreme.
Kot later
described how he also
attacked his sister's pets.
They represented, if youlike, his hatred for sister.
This is the kind of thing thatyou would associate with a very
fledgling psychopath.
This is someone
who does not have
the normal restraints of
the average individual,
the same empathies.
Kot's fascinationwith animals and violence
went much further.
In police interviews, Kotdescribed that as a young boy,
he started to visit the
local slaughterhouse.
He saw the
animals being killed,
and he really liked watching it.
He said that he tastedblood, first of all, for fun.
But at the same time,
he noticed that he
really enjoyed doing it.
Kot's fascination
with the slaughterhouse
provided him, I believe,with some of his earliest
sexual experiences.
He actually began to becomeexcited in the presence
of the death of animals,
the spelling of blood,
within the slaughterhouse.
Kot took what helearned from the slaughter
house and began killing animalshimself using his growing
collection of knives.
Gradon believes Kot's
world has spiraled
far away from the norm.
This addsup to a complete portrait
of a psychopath, but withvery obvious sadistic traits.
But even as a youngster,Kot is well aware that what
makes him tick is taboo.
And he goes to
extraordinary lengths
to conceal his urges
from his parents.
Kot described how
he feigned revulsion
when his mother preparedfish for the family supper.
Kot realized what hedesires, sadistically, is
not acceptable to his parents--
the only people in theworld who have accepted him.
Crime writer,
Mark Billingham,
sees a boy playing the system.
He sees how they behave,and he knows that's not him.
So he pretends.
He tells his parents that hehates it when he has to gut
a fish and this sort of stuff.
But actually, some
switch has been thrown.
By the time
Kot had finished school,
he had developed asophisticated, if eccentric,
persona.
He was aloner, bit of an outcast.
He looked a bit like
an office worker.
He had characteristic
nervous movements,
and looked a tiny bituncoordinated and strange
at the same time.
Kot's
schoolmates found
his quick temper
and weird obsessions
enough to make them wary.
Karol alwayssmiled when he heard stories
about violence and killings.
Even at school, he loved it.
Kot made no secretof his love of weapons,
and often took some of
his knives to school.
I remember,
once, Carol pulled out
the knife he used
to carry with him,
and he stabbed
the table with it.
It went through the table, andhe couldn't pull the knife out.
I think each of us,
if we think about it,
has probably met
somebody or knows
somebody a little bit likehe would have been at school.
You know, the one who's
into kind of--
he's the one that loves knives,and talks about how he could
kill you with his bare hands.
You know, I've met
characters like that.
And what that was, in a way,was his way of disguising
his true personality.
Despite hisshort fuse and a fixation
on weapons and death, Kot'sfellow students accepted him--
albeit at arm's length.
In
everyday life, even
though he played with theknives, he was a good pupil.
He did what he was told
to do by his teachers.
They just wanted him tobe fitting in with the pack.
They didn't want him to be asodd as he really was at core.
Kot's
obsession with weapons
led him to join a rifle club,where he became a crack shot--
winning several competitions.
At the gun club,
at least, Kot was
recognized as a model citizen.
He found his
home, if you like.
He found people
who had recognized
his skills with weapons.
And that to show
prowess with weapons
was to have some status in life.
Well, I guess it's the
only place he could be.
I mean, there was no
kind of knife club.
There wasn't a meeting placewhere lots of like minded souls
could get together
and butcher animals.
So, you know, rifle club waspretty much all he could do.
But far from being asafe outlet for Kot's passions,
the rifle club is his
feeding Kot's fantasies.
You've got someone who has asadistic interest in killing.
And in that
particular situation,
his fantasies and the
realities of his skills
were becoming dangerously close.
Today, Kot's brazeninterest in death and weaponry
would immediately single him outas a potential school shooter.
But in 1966, he was
just another weird kid.
And nobody recognized the signs.
By the time Karol Kot
is 17, he's ready to put
his obsessions into practice.
After attacking the
elderly, Kot goes
for defenseless youngsters.
This was a very kind of almostnerdy approach to killing.
Choosing victims who are lesslikely to struggle or fight
back, therefore there's goingto be less interaction and more
fantasy, because it
would rather disrupt
his fantasy if
somebody turned round
and grabbed him by the neck.
For two years,Kot evades the authorities.
But then he makes an
unbelievable blunder.
He tells a friend at therifle club about his attack
on the 7-year-old.
She doesn't believe
him, until she
reads about the
attack in the news,
and immediately
goes to the police.
Kot is arrested.
When questioned, Kot
denies everything.
But police would soon findout the horrifying truth.
Not only was Kot
the murderer, he
also drank his victim's blood.
For almost two
years, police have
tried in vain to catchthe killer of an old woman
and a young boy.
Crimes also linked to
a series of attempted
murders, which left
traumatized survivors
with horrific knife wounds.
Then, in 1966,
19-year-old Karol Kot
is arrested after
he tells a friend
that he has stabbed a child.
Karol Kot openlytold her that he hates people.
That he enjoys killing.
And that he attacked
a little girl.
Luckily,
Kot's horrified friend
told the police.
The police
weren't on Kot's trail.
Nobody was observing him.
He wasn't in the
circle of suspects,
so it would have taken
a while to catch him.
If his girlfriend hadn't
have helped the police,
I don't know when they
would have caught him.
This is
the breakthrough
police had hoped for.
But when police
interview their suspect,
he denies having anything to dowith the murders or the attack
on the girl.
Kot is brazen about everything.
But when confronted
with the fact
that his surviving victimshave all identified him,
he immediately confesses.
And the police tell
the nation that they
have caught the attacker.
Catching theculprit, or the vampire,
we had a sense of triumph.
When we
found that it was Karol,
we were wondering where
his aggressive habits
and his motives come from.
Nobody could find a
rational explanation.
Gradually, the
truth about Karol Kot's
murderous rampage
begins to unfold.
Far from being the mastercriminal that some had
imagined, Kot had madeone big mistake, allowing
some of his victims to survive.
This meant the
police could link him
to both the old lady killing andthe more recent child attacks.
And the survivors
could identify him,
confirming the friend's story.
Mark Billingham
tries to make sense
of the blunder that came backto haunt Kot after his arrest.
The big question
for me is, why does
he leave these victims alive?
He's got a fantasy, whichhe wants to live out,
which involves killing
people, which involve
butchering them with knives.
He does that, and then
leaves them alive.
What's going on there?
That is baffling to me.
Kot had intendedto kill his victims,
but had failed to
do it properly.
Crime scientists,
Kacper Gradon, puts
Kot's failure to finishoff his eventual accusers
down to simple naivety.
With
the first attacks,
Kot was still an
inexperienced murderer.
He's not even 18
years at the time.
His only violent experiencesare with animals,
and he's never killed
a human being before.
He's still a rookie.
Rookie or
not, in Kot's mind,
he had killing
down to a fine art.
He applied what he thought wasthe correct technique, actually
penetrating the person throughthe rib cage at the most
direct route to the heart.
This should have
been a sure kill.
It arcs back to Kot's experiencein the slaughterhouse,
where it was always a singleblow to kill the animals.
And he would expect
that, of course,
to be a single blow
for killing humans.
Kot's total confidence
in his killing abilities
could be the reason
he left witnesses, who
would later point the finger.
Perhaps he genuinelythought, they're gonna die.
I've killed them.
I know how to butcher an animal.
But he never actually
considered the fact
that these victims
were not dead yet,
and could possibly turn
round and identify him.
Despite his
youthful inexperience,
Kot repeatedly managed
to avoid arrest.
Gradon believes it'smore than just pure luck.
Kot is
choosing his victims
from a segment of populationthat poses no threat to him.
He's choosing the locationsthat are safe for him.
There are too many
people around.
And he disappears.
He uses his own weapon.
He takes his weapon
from the crime scene.
And he disappears.
After
Kot's first kill,
the knife attacks stoppedas suddenly as they began.
But the mystery deepens
when, after 17 months,
Kot re-emerges with adifferent style of attack.
Kot Struckagain in the winter of 1966.
This time, he attacked
an 11-year-old boy.
In that attack, he
uses much more force.
He stabs many more times thanis needed to kill his victim.
This is the overkill.
He had destroyed virtuallyevery organ in the boy's body.
The boy was certain to die froma tiny number of those blows.
To carry on what
we call overkill,
and it showed a certain amountof control and confidence.
Kot's original
method was to kill
with a single knife strike.
So this frenzy representsa profound escalation.
Something builds in thosetwo years, that then manifests
itself in the horrendous
killing of the boy,
the overkill murder.
And at that point, he
is gripped by a frenzy
and there's no going
back from there.
He's not going to take
another two years off.
The full horrorof Kot's warped world
was only revealed when
he detailed his exploits
to police interrogators.
Kot confessedthat after each and every one
of his attacks, no matterwhether his victims lived
or died, he would take his knifeand lick the drops of blood
from the blade.
He learned that
as a young child,
watching animals
being slaughtered.
And he recreated the
same circumstances
when he was killing people.
Billingham wondersif Kot's vampiristic fantasy
sheds more light on his failureto finish off his victims.
What was important tohim, so important to him,
was just that moment
of drinking the blood
and the enjoying that.
He's so taken up withmaking this fantasy real,
he doesn't ensure
that they're dead.
Whatever hismotives, and despite failing
to kill all his
victims, Kot is still
beyond the reach of the police.
But then, he makes
a fateful decision--
to confide in a friend.
Why, at the point where
he's kind of unstoppable
as a killer and thisfrenzy has got hold of him,
does he completely turn around
and confess to the girl.
That is baffling to me.
Maybe he confesses to
this girl because he
does want to get caught.
When policefinally do catch up with him,
they discover Kot had a sinisterplan to kill even more people.
This time, not with
knives, but poison.
19-year-old Karol Kot
was arrested in 1966
after terrorizing
the city of Krakow
with a string of
brutal knife attacks.
The bizarre circumstancesthat lead to his downfall
have captured the imaginationof generations of experts.
Kot's biggest blunder, andfor which he is somewhat famous,
is actually confessing hiscrime to a female friend
at the rifle club.
Up to that point, he's avery difficult killer to catch.
He then goes and tell
somebody, it's insane.
Kot's balmy confessionto his friend made police
suspicious that he
might have been planning
to plead insanity at
his trial as a way
to avoid the death penalty.
They were so concerned, theywaited until Kot had sat
his final school exams
before arresting him,
as a way of proving he was sane.
The fact that he passed themenabled the police to say,
well, he's clearly not insane.
Look at how well he's
done in his exams.
There's no way on God's earththat would happen today.
Nevertheless,
the reason
for Kot's boast to the girl mustlie in his warped world view.
Kot is kind of associatingthe rifle club as a safe haven.
And he had the confidenceto actually believe
that this female
friend of his was
going to be accepting
of this very
alien and bizarre behavior.
I think that hewas still thinking that he's
so smart, so intelligent,that he's going to manipulate
that girl and make her his.
Maybe his partner in
crime, or an accomplice.
The girl
had socialized
with Kot a few times.
But then, he decided
to share some
of his weird, violent
fantasies with her.
For him, it's
very much like a cat
bringing home a dead
bird to its owner
and expecting the
owners to be incredibly
sort of grateful and impressed.
I don't think
he was confessing.
He was kind of showing off.
He's making a move
on her, you know.
He's hoping she's
going to go,
really, that's a bit naughty.
Let's, you know, let's go tomy bedroom and have some fun.
And actually, she
just told the police.
But Kot's clumsy,romantic approach to the girl
just reveals his naivety
with the opposite sex.
Something Billingham
believes may
be the motive for his crimes.
There's an interview with himwhere the interviewer says, is
this about sexual satisfaction?
This killing that you did?
And he said, well,
it was satisfying.
I enjoyed it.
I enjoyed watching
my victims suffer.
I can't tell you whetherit was sexual satisfaction
because I've never really
known what that's like.
And that really leapt
out at me,
there's your kind ofmotive behind everything.
Whether it was
an irrational impulse
or a bizarre attempt toimpress, boasting to the girl
was Kot's downfall.
And as the police
interviews continued,
the surprises didn't stop.
Kot's 17 month long breakbetween murdering the old woman
and attacking the
children had baffled
investigators at the time.
And is almost unprecedented inany serial killer's profile.
The first attackson the old ladies happened
on almost a daily basis.
And then something changed.
And the perpetrator
changed his behavior.
But the
mystery is solved
when Kot reveals he had notretired from killing at all.
In those 17 months, he
had been experimenting
with the deadly
art of poisoning.
We know,
from Kot's statements
during his interviews,
that he was
planning to kill many people.
And he was even
explicitly referring
to poisoning as a militaryway of disposing of enemies.
He wanted to show off
his skills in weaponry.
And poison was one of these.
Kot begins hispoisoning campaign by, once
again, selecting easy targets.
This time, it's his schoolmates.
Jan Ksiazek was 17-years-oldwhen he went on work experience
with Kot.
And a tea break nearly
cost him his life.
I poured
myself some tea
and tried to drink it, whenI smelt the pungent chemical.
I took a sip and spat it out.
I simply thought,
my tea had gone off.
In that moment, I looked athim as I felt him watching me.
He looked suspicious.
As he later
confessed, he poisoned
my tea with potassium arsenate.
Kot, again, went for
the overkill thing,
thinking he did not
want to mess up.
But used so much poison thathis friend found it repugnant.
And it failed because of that.
Unfazed by
his abortive attack
on his school friend, Kotrolled out his toxic assault
across Krakow.
In an incredible piece
of film, Kot himself
shows police exactly how hewent about his murderous scheme.
In that
year and a half,
he had tried to poison people--
collecting poisons and pouringthem into lemonade or beer
bottles that he'd leavehere and there in Krakow,
hoping that somebody wouldget thirsty, drink, and die.
Luckily, he only
failed because nobody
was interested in drinkingfrom open bottles.
By some miracle,it seems nobody was killed
by Kot's poisoning spree.
It was like it didn't
really matter to him.
He'll cut them.
He'll poison them.
He'll bludgeon them.
He'll shoot them.
It's all about the
power over life.
It's all about being
able to take human life.
Whether Kot wasmotivated by the simple impulse
to kill, or a cocktail of urgesthat included drinking blood,
the people of Krakow
got the chance
to make up their
minds when Kot was
put on trial in spring of 1967.
The trial waswidely publicized by the media,
as the court was
open to the public.
It went on for about twoweeks, if I remember correctly.
And all of Krakow
was buzzing about it.
Throughout
his trial, Kot
remained unnervingly cheerful.
It's a very odd situationwhen you have someone who
has a deficit of this type,but looks to the world
as if they are
reasonably normal.
It's a very difficult
thing for the public
to actually take on board.
I kept looking athim when he was in the dock,
and he had this
characteristic smirk
on his face, which
had made me so
suspicious of him in the past.
He also had this cold,glazed stare, which reminded
me of some images of Hitler.
It was the kind of look thatsaid a lot, like, I'm going
to do this and that to you.
And so what are you going
to do about it, then?
His schoolmatestestified that they had been
extremely wary of the
knife obsessed Kot,
but had not assumed he wasthe murderous schoolboy
the police were looking for.
What he did, so brilliantly,was hide in plain sight.
He wasn't, like,
that's the quiet kid
that never says anything.
It's like, he's the nuttykid that loves guns and knives
and, you know--
so couldn't possibly be anythingwrong with him, could there?
Kot's
school friends could
be forgiven for not spottingthe murder in their midst.
But to the court, it was clearthat this strange and alienated
young man had made littleeffort to conceal or control
his murderous instincts,
yet had appeared
to run rings around the police.
It became rather embarrassing,for the authorities,
because this series
of blunders emerged.
Kot might as well have
just given his victims
his name and address.
He was leaving them alive.
He was seen.
He was sneaking out
during breaks in school
to commit these attacks.
So the big question at
the end of the trial,
almost more
important than was he
sane was he not
sane, was how did he
get away with it for so long?
Why wasn't he caught earlier?
As soon as
the police had realized
they had a serial
killer on the loose,
they made newspaper
appeals for witnesses.
But they received little help
Poland, at thattime, was a communist country.
And the police was
a paramilitary arm
of the government, so
the people generally
thought any kind of cooperationwith the police force
to be totally unacceptable.
But policeobtained little information
of any significance.
When it comesto trusting the police,
it was much worse at the time.
It was well known
that you would not
know how it's going to be used.
Often, if a crime was
unsolved, that person
would be in a lot of trouble.
And then they would be invitedfor further cooperation.
I'm afraid even if someoneactually saw what he was doing,
they would not report it.
Krakow's then
secretive, and perhaps
politically motivated,
police force
was no match for the
bungling teenage killer.
He was his own worst enemy.
Before he was executed,
Kot made a statement--
I don't regret anything.
If I could, I
would murder again.
Suffering of the victims
gave me happiness.
I had grand criminal goals thatI deeply regret not achieving.
I planned to kill
adults and children.
He acceptedthe death penalty calmly.
He didn't repent.
We felt relief that it wasn'tgoing to happen any more.
Thankfully,there's not much trace of him
in Polish history.
It proved that it was possibleto get away with murder, right
under people's noses.
I think that hepurely enjoyed hurting people.
And that was not a sign
of a mental illness,
but rather of a deep sadismand a very clear psychopathy.
That might be a scarythought, but at the same time,
it's very important to remember
that serial homicide is
one of the rarest
crimes you can think of.
Karol Kot's
murderous rampage
still reverberates throughPoland, almost 50 years
after his death.
And the baby-faced killerwill always be remembered
as the Vampire of Krakow.