Karol Kot

Karol Kot (18 December 1946 – 16 May 1968) was a Polish murderer who terrorized the city of Kraków between 1964 and 1966.

Due to trial evidence and to the seemingly random choices of victims, which included children and elderly people, Kot was nicknamed the Vampire of Kraków.

On 21 September 1964, Kot attacked Helene Velgen (48), whom he stabbed in church.

He drove the knife into her back, from behind, when she knelt down to pray; however, Velgen survived this attack.

The second attempted murder occurred shortly after, on 23 September, when Kot spotted Franciszka Lewendowska (78) leaving a tram.

He followed her and stabbed her in the back while on the stairs to her apartment.

This attack was also unsuccessful, and both victims reported seeing a young male attacker.

Six days later, on 29 September, he stabbed Maria Plichta (86) from behind, after he spotted her near a church and followed her to Jana Street.

She died the next day, but not before Kot visited the hospital and inquired about the victim.

After a lull of seventeen months, the attacks began to occur again.

On 13 February 1966, in an overkill, Kot fatally stabbed an 11-year-old boy, Leszek Całek, near Kościuszko Mound, where a toboggan contest for children was being held.

On 14 April 1966, he attacked an 8-year-old girl named 'Małgosia'.

Kot went to a tenement on Jana III Sobieskiego Street and assaulted her when she came downstairs to collect letters from the mailbox.

He grabbed her and dealt eight stab wounds to the stomach, chest and back.

The girl managed to return home, and was taken to the hospital where the doctors managed to save her life.

Four days later, Kot returned to the scene, enquiring about the victim's name from her mother.

During the break between attacks, Kot tried to poison random people.

He bought some arsenic and went to Przy Błoniach, a bar, where he took a bottle of vinegar from the counter.

When certain that nobody was looking, he laced it with arsenic, hoping that somebody would later use it and be poisoned.

He often left bottles of beer or soda poisoned with arsenic out in the open in popular places, but nobody ever drank them.

He once poured a large quantity of arsenic into a schoolmate's drink, but the boy noticed a suspicious smell and refused to drink it.

During the trial, expert witnesses stated that the amount of arsenic used by Kot was sufficient to kill anybody who would drink the beverage.

During this time, he also plotted four other murders, all without success, as well as initiating several unsuccessful acts of arson.

Kot boasted of his crimes to a fellow student, Danuta, who informed authorities.

He was arrested on 1 June 1966, the day after his matura exam, which he was allowed to sit in order to prove that he was sane so that he could not later plead insanity during a trial.

A search of his house revealed sixteen knives and an assortment of other weapons that belonged to him.

After the trial, in which Kot pleaded guilty to all the crimes he was charged, he was sentenced to death on 14 July 1967.

After an appeal initially reduced his sentence to life in prison, his sentence was reinstated.

Kot was hanged on 16 May 1968.

Kot spent his whole life in Kraków.

His family consisted of his father, who was an engineer, his mother, and a sister who was eight years younger than him.

For family summer holidays, the four would travel to Pcim, to the south of Kraków, where a bored Kot began to regularly visit a butcher shop and became increasingly fascinated by knives, dying animals, and blood.

Kot found pleasure in watching death and, at the encouragement of some of the abattoirs, in drinking still-warm pig's blood.

The young Kot would also torture small animals, was abusive to his sister's cats and started collecting knives.

He indulged in studying anatomy books, imagining wounds that could be inflicted on people.

Academically, Kot had no problems at school, although he remained isolated from other students for his somewhat strange personality.

Kot was also a member of a shooting club, with dreams of being a commando or a student at an Officer Candidate School.

Kot suffered a nervous breakdown because he failed one of his subjects in college.

Eventually, he was allowed to study at another technical college for communications, where he passed the school-leaving examinations.

Kot's public crimes occurred in two separate sprees.