The pre-war newspapers adored the crusades. Some fought against usury, others launched guns against prostitution, others opposed nonchalant officials. The Warsaw "Grom" - a small, almost district magazine - did not have such ambitions. He has only declared war on one trickster. But what kind!
Józef Tłuchowski started modestly. After all, not everyone is born a genius, not everyone in the cradle knows all the secrets of psychomanipulation ... Józef did not know them either, but he studied diligently. He came from Radomsko, but in August 1918 he stayed in Krakow for a longer time. He dealt with everything in turn:real estate brokerage, second-hand goods trading, office work, and finally management. He joined a small company and ... drained it to zero. He was even sentenced by a court to four months:for fraud, persuading witnesses to give false testimony and beating up an accomplice whom he had previously robbed. This school of life, instead of rehabilitating him, only encouraged Tłuchowski to further, more sophisticated twists.
The article with which "Grom" initiated its crusade against Tłuchowski….
In 1925, he decided to play a comedy that would pay off handsomely for him. There were two actors in this comedy:Tłuchowski himself and his wife Wanda nee Szembekowa. It was about earning money at the expense of a wealthy medical student who had just moved in next door.
The neighbors began to see more and more Tl [Uchowski] going out into the street in his shirt, he could hear the screams of Tl's wife and loud blows, as if they were beating with a riding crop (...), and all this was imagined had a beating of his wife by Tłuchowski.
After each such "treatment", Tłuchowska, wrinkled and tousled, ran out into the yard of the house or onto the street, crying and loudly saying that her husband was beating her, tormenting her that he had tried to kill her.
Tłuchowski started his career on the cobblestones of Krakow. And although he started out modestly, his ambitions were great.
Each time the unfortunate woman turned for help not to someone else, but to a wealthy student named Treitel. Finally she came running with the information that her husband prepared 3 razors and kerosene in the apartment, with which wants to slaughter her and set fire to the apartment . The measure has changed! At the persuasion of Tłuchowska, Treitel approached the city doctor, Mr. Weissberger, and - after presenting the state of affairs - asked for the mad husband to be returned to the insane asylum in Kobierzyn. However, the plant found Tł. healthy and released him. This is exactly what Tłuchowski meant! As soon as he returned home, he demanded that Treitel pay him high compensation for "crashing him into madness."
I must admit that it was a masterful plot! The student, however, did not give way to a horse. Although the police first took the side of Tłuchowski and arrested Weissberger, the trial - which the city council of Krakow was very much interested in - did not go the way of the blackmailers. In the end, the Tłuchowski family did not get a single penny, but… they already had an idea for a new scam.
The first scam by the Tluchowski family on the pages of "Grom".
This time the only actor was Józef, but apparently his wife Wanda was constantly assisting him, albeit with due discretion. We are moving to Płock. It is the end of the 1920s. Mrs. Helena Konarzewska, a newly divorced representative of the rich gentry, meets a young aristocrat from Krakow. The man is 32 years old, handsome and outspoken, though a bit… crude for a noble. He introduces himself as Count Józef Skarbek-Tłuchowski.
Although he lacks manners, in the opinion of Konarzewska he is the type of a 100% male. Their acquaintance is developing at a rapid pace. Konarzewska is stunned by the situation, but her broken heart wants a bit of happiness after the divorce:
The Count has deep compassion for the victim of the marriage profession. (...) At the second meeting, he talks about sympathy - at the next meeting, he professes passionate love.
- We know each other so briefly! So suddenly it falls on me ... - Helena tries to cool down the enthusiasm.
A kneeling devotee is deaf to the voice of persuasion.
- I love and wait! - I solemnly vow.
Konarzewska in front of anyone, not even herself, was not willing to admit it, but a few days of stalking was enough for the mysterious count to fall in love with her. Now, although he was forced to return to Krakow to look after his enormous fortune, their romance was to continue to bloom in letters. Until suddenly a bolt of lightning came from the blue. The count wrote in an urgent letter to Mrs. Helena: Please imagine what happened to me on my return home. My chief cashier took the money and blew it! I don't have a stupid PLN 600 for the most essential expenses.
This article has more than one page. Please select another one below to continue reading.Attention! You are not on the first page of the article. If you want to read from the beginning click here.
What could Konarzewska do after receiving such a message? Of course, she immediately sent the aforementioned 600 zlotys via the telegraph. After a few days, the count asked for another PLN 500 (oh, how this parasite cashier made his life difficult for him!), And the addressee of his advances still did not notice any deception.
Seeing that he was dealing with a gullible victim, Tłuchowski proceeded to a decisive attack. "Grom" reported: The next letter from Krakow reported about a rare opportunity to purchase a villa in Swarzędz near Poznań. The count, stripped of cash by embezzlement, lamented that he could not take advantage of such an exceptionally convenient opportunity .
There is indeed a 19th-century manor house in Swarzędz, which now houses a kindergarten. Is it here that Tłuchowski imprisoned the unfortunate Konarzewska?
Luckily, Mrs. Konarzewska has just received PLN 150,000 from the division of the marital property! Overjoyed that at the same time she will invest money correctly and will have the opportunity to see the count again, she asked Skarbek-Tłuchowski to come to Płock quickly. Everything went according to plan, the villa was purchased. There was only a small, downright tiny mistake :
Perhaps absent-mindedly, Hr was entered as the owner. Treasurer. When asked for an explanation, he replied simply:
- We'll be getting married soon! Mine or yours will become ours, won't it?
At the invitation of the Count, Helena and her daughters moved permanently to Swarzędz.
And suddenly the idyll was over. The count looked after Konarzewska in a truly extraordinary way:he did not allow her to receive any guests, leave the estate or even conduct correspondence. In the face of protests, he would say without a trace of his former ingratiatingness: I am the master here, it will be as I want!
This short piece of information appeared in the seventh issue of "Grom" in 1931. The eighth number was gone. The magazine went bankrupt.
Konarzewska thought that it couldn't get any worse, while Tłuchowski was just getting to the most important point of his lousy plan. He seduced a wealthy dugout and took over her property. Now it was necessary to get rid of the interested person herself, so that she could not reveal to anyone that the alleged count was in fact a fraud (as the journalist of "Grom" put it: Tłuchowski did not even serve the count, and he could only be called treasure or treasure by numerous their admirers in moments of love ecstasy ).
One evening the ladies were given scrambled eggs for dinner. The meal looked so dull that neither Helena Konarzewska nor her daughters even touched it. The scrambled eggs remained on the table until morning. During this time she managed to ... turn completely green: Arsenic content was found . The count was outraged and carried out an investigation, unfortunately without a concrete result.
A few more days passed, and then suddenly after dark someone - it is impossible to guess who! - unscrewed the gas valve in the ladies' bedroom. The investigation stalled again, but the count was fed up with the hysterical Konarzewska. Over and over again, she was only complaining that someone was trying to kill her! The indignant jasmine sent his "beloved" to ... a mental hospital .
Now he had all of Swarzędz to himself and Konarzewska's property at his disposal. He immediately set out on another love conquest. He not only posed as a count, but also a colonel, industrialist, former member of the general staff. He began to seduce another rich woman, Aniela Kamińska.
How did his story end? It is not known. He reportedly defrauded dozens of women and was eventually brought to trial for his actions. He was allegedly Don Juan, Casanova, Rasputin and Hugo Schenk in one person. Unfortunately, "Grom" went bankrupt before it could complete its story, and other newspapers were not interested in Tłuchowski.
Perhaps in this extraordinary soap opera there were more fabrications than facts? Journalists fighting for a client in those days resorted to no less vile tricks than today. If only to invent the whole plot and bring to light the crimes of a man who ... might not exist at all.
Source:
- Issues of the magazine "Grom:Tygodnik Społeczno-critical" from January and February 1931 (No. 1-7).