Fit for a Killer (Morderca szyty na miarę)

The court is now in session.

The prosecution has the floor.

Your Honor,

we the prosecution accuse Robert Janczewski

of having, with exceptional cruelty, and acting on a combination of motives,

including sexual perversion.

He acted on his sadistic fetishes by taking the life of Katarzyna Zowada

with elements of necrosadism or necrophiliac fetishism.

It is our belief that he strangled Katarzyna Zowada

by means of a chain,

beat her, kicked her,

delivered blunt force trauma with a hard object

and in doing so, thus caused Katarzyna Zowada's death.

All I'll say is, I waited 21 years for this.

That's all I'll say.

What happened during those 21 years?

He severed the outer layer

of skin on the torso,

as well as the head and both upper and lower limbs.

Will this trial give you a modicum of relief?

I don't think so.

She was discovered on January 7th, 1999

near the right embankment of the Vistula.

Have mercy upon us and on the world

for his sorrowful passion.

Have mercy upon us and on the whole world...

Right after Robert Janczewski's arrest,

Judge Maczuga is brought on to investigate.

In 2017, I was a judge at the fourth appeals department

in Kraków's district court.

That department's main job is to handle appeals.

My job was to determine whether the temporary detention

of Mr. Janczewski was justified.

The case was a tricky one

because right at the outset, I discovered

that there were over 130 volumes of case files.

A standard volume is around 200 pages.

So if we do the math, this amounts

to roughly 26,000 pages.

It was immediately obvious

that the evidence was not organized in a professional manner.

Some of the evidence in the files

did not even pertain to the accused at all.

I was amazed to learn that the prosecutor on this case

had presented to me, allegedly,

as proof of guilt, poems written by Robert Janczewski's father.

The prosecutor explained that this was because one of the poems

contained the word "skin."

This case features an individual who is familiar to me.

This person is named Leszek L.

He and I used to go scuba diving together.

We reached a certain level of friendship

or at least a certain level of camaraderie.

I decided the court should be aware of my connection to him

so it could be determined whether there might be any bias on my part.

All of a sudden, I find myself being summoned

by Prosecutor Krupiński to his office as a witness.

Sadly, one cannot be both a witness and a judge

in the same case.

The judge is removed from the case

in these situations.

This was Kraków. People knew one another.

The judge knew Leszek L. from back in the day

while Prosecutor Krupiński and Robert Janczewski studied

under the same teacher, Szigmund A.

But that wasn't an issue for some reason.

I struggle to understand why Krupiński didn't also withdraw.

In my opinion,

it was a move by the prosecutor to get rid of me.

- Hello. - Hi.

Let's put together a timeline of the case.

1998, she goes missing.

Yes, Katarzyna goes missing.

January 1999, her remains are pulled out of the river.

Robert's first detainment happens

in March of 2000.

June, Janczewski visits the police

where he watches footage of Katarzyna's mother.

- And kisses the screen. - After he was first detained.

He began visiting Michalec.

By the time we reach September, three months later,

it's clear there is no chance of the case being solved.

The investigation is shelved.

They found nothing at Robert's place. His deposition gave nothing.

They ran out of suspects.

When I first saw Michal's documentary in 2017

I was surprised by not only how well he'd managed to film the arrest

but also by how many journalists were there.

I counted four cameras in the footage of Robert's arrest.

I saw this coordinated media effort.

It was an instant lightbulb moment.

I thought, "Okay, I want in."

When Robert was detained,

it gave the prosecution confidence

so they decided to keep up the momentum.

Robert's apartment was ransacked, ripped apart.

They pulled out the flooring, the bathroom tiles, the tub.

They just completely smashed his apartment into pieces.

They scoured that apartment for two and a half months.

The holes were almost big enough to see into the neighbors'.

We have learned with near utter certainty

that two hairs have been discovered in the defendant's apartment.

It is highly possible that these two hairs could have come...

from Katarzyna Zowada's thigh.

This was the nail in the coffin for Robert Janczewski.

Hairs from the victim in the bathroom?

She had to have been there.

There was a media frenzy about this discovery.

HE RIPPED KASIA'S SKIN OFF

IT MIGHT EVEN BE BLOOD OF THE MURDERED STUDENT!

THE PROSECUTOR WILL CHARGE HIM TODAY

All these unsubstantiated rumors started being printed.

That Robert had known Katarzyna,

that it was actually for Robert that she had dyed her hair.

There was witness testimony that Robert had been seen with Katarzyna.

The investigators had anonymous witnesses who testified

that Robert had been seen walking her to his apartment in Kazimierz.

If witnesses say they saw Robert with Katarzyna

despite Robert saying for years that he's never met her,

well, then, that surely means he's lying.

Since the first trial was taking place behind closed doors, and classified,

there was no public information on these witnesses.

We were in the dark.

All of a sudden,

after five years of incarceration

and a hunt for new evidence,

a sentence is finally given.

Silence, please.

Having acted on a combination of motives

including sexual perversion,

and including elements of sadism

and necrosadism,

also known as necrophiliac fetishism,

a crime deserving of the utmost condemnation,

it is this court's belief

that Robert Janczewski did knowingly take

the life of Katarzyna Zowada,

for which the court now sentences him to lifelong imprisonment.

None of it was true.

This violates my honor,

my son's honor and my parents' honor.

This is not simply a mere humiliation for my son or for us.

This is a debasement of the family name.

I may not have been emotionally attached to him that much

but he uses our family name.

He knew my mom and dad.

Now, he too joins the family grave.

The sentence handed down by the Kraków district court

has made sure that the perpetrator of this crime

will not remain unpunished.

For us, this simply means that a not-guilty ruling has been postponed.

I'm Robert's defense attorney.

I sensed that the court decided he was guilty first

and then looked for evidence to substantiate that belief.

It was about the impression. Their case was smoke and mirrors.

They created this impression

of there being an enormous body of evidence,

hence the decision to hold a public trial

that anyone interested could watch.

This case did garner substantial public attention.

"I am not guilty because..." This is nothing unusual.

It's how our system works.

I thought about other cases involving people

who had been wrongly accused and sentenced.

I looked one by one

at any evidence against him that seemed suspect.

We latched onto this hair thing and wondered

how the heck this could be.

It's 2018,

and somehow they find intact hairs in the drain

which must mean they had been there in his drain, unmoving,

since 1998?

And what does the prosecutor's statement mean

about "near utter certainty"? Near is not absolute.

We asked experts if it's even possible to identify hair like that

after so long.

I was a forensic technician for several years.

Based on the morphology of a hair,

you can establish a probability but never complete certainty.

These hairs each have similar structure

but could have come from two different women.

In order to identify the hairs, they would have needed a DNA test.

We were able to determine that no DNA test had been done

because the hairs were unfit for such testing.

The prosecution decided not to test that hair for fear of ruining it,

which is just preposterous.

If they hadn't done a DNA test, what did they do?

BEGINNING OF THE TRIAL IN THE APPELLATE COURT

In 2024, we get a breakthrough.

The appellate trial in Kraków is declassified.

All of a sudden, journalists are allowed to enter the courtroom and listen

to both arguments, the defense and the prosecution.

Good morning. Those who are able to sit, please do so.

Has the defendant been uncuffed?

- No. - Uncuff the defendant.

- Can we proceed? - Yes.