Leszek Pękalski,
a.k.a. Vampire of Bytów (born 12 February 1966 in Osieki
near Bytów, Poland) is a Polish serial killer. He is
believed to have killed at least 17 people between 1984
and 1992. At some stage of criminal procedures he
admitted to having killed as many as 80 people, but he
later retracted his confessions.
Nevertheless, due to
improper evidence collection, he was convicted for only
one murder. As of 2007, he is serving a 25-year term in
prison and is to be released in 2017.
Leszek Pękalski
Accused of killing 17 women from 1984
to 1992, Leszek was convicted of one murder but cleared
of more than a dozen others. After an eight-month trial
the Provincial Court in the northern city of Slupsk,
Poland, sentenced Leszek to 25 years in a psychiatric
institute. The court said there was insufficient
evidence to convict him of the other killings. Leszek,
when he was first arrested, admitted to killing more
than 80 people. Later he said the police had forced the
confession out of him.
"I'm a gullible man, and I was easily
persuaded by what the officers had told me," Pekalski
told the judge. "I'm mentally weak, and if somebody
pushes me, I break down. Then I admit to things I have
never done. I have never killed anyone. I'm so scared.
The prosecutor threatened that the victims' families or
the public would kill me if I'm acquitted or get a mild
sentence. He yelled at me and told me to confess
everything."
Like in the O.J. Simpson trial, DNA
tests of hair strands were to be crucial pieces of
evidence implicating the defendant. Sadly the
prosecutor's hopes proved futile when Doctor Ryszard
Pawelski from the Gdansk Medical Academy's forensic
medicine institute examined the evidence and declared
that the cops had clumsily handled the hair strands and
damaged their evidential value.
According to police Pekalski
confessed to details of the crimes no one else could've
known about. "We couldn't find his trail for a long
time. He never followed a regular pattern; there was no
typical victim or a repeated killing method. He would
hit with a wooden cane or would strangle his victim with
a belt."
Like other lust killers, the Pekalski
was diagnosed with having an abnormal sex drive. When he
was first incarcerated in 1992 he asked the warden's
permission to let him keep a rubber sex-shop doll in his
detention cell. Poor lonely Leszek wasn't allowed to get
the sex-doll. He has appealed to the government's
Citizen Rights representative, and is awaiting the
decision. Sources say he has put on a lot of weight in
jail, and is hopeful to soon "find a girl," in the flesh
or made out of rubber.
