She was a young translator in the hard times of the Polish People's Republic. She did not bother anyone, she did not engage in politics. Her brilliantly developing career was interrupted by sudden and unexplained death. Was the cruel murder committed in her own apartment the result of ... a tragic mistake of the repression apparatus?
“He struck the first blow but missed the heart. He had to tighten his hand on her throat to stifle a scream. He struck again, but she moved again. […] Holding a hand over her mouth […] he pushed the woman towards the door with all his might. […] He squeezed her jaw tighter and delivered a blow that tore the whole throat out. ”
Here is the murder account from Ken Follet's book The Needle. It was the most famous novel that Małgorzata Targowska-Grabińska has managed to translate. The first edition went to bookstores in 1981. When she translated these sentences, she probably never thought that life could feel so much like fiction.
Mystery Worker
On May 9, 1985, a young, cultured man appeared in Małgorzata's apartment in Warsaw's Saska Kępa, claiming to be a worker. He claimed to have brought paint to paint the window bars. The surprised woman let the visitor in and called her husband at work asking what the matter was.
Ken Follett - author of a book whose translation Małgorzata became famous ... and who almost predicted the way she died (photo Blaues Sofa from Flickr, CC BY 2.0 license).
Aleksander Grabiński was in the middle of important negotiations and did not have time to talk. He exchanged a few sentences with the man and casually stated that there must have been a mistake. He ignored the strange fact that, for a simple dyer, the man spoke very correctly. Alexander could not have realized that he was talking to his wife's murderer.
Meanwhile, a drama was taking place in Grabiński's apartment. The stranger calmly hung up the phone. As soon as Małgorzata turned her back on him, he grabbed the knife, ran to the victim from behind and cut her throat. When the rattling stopped, he bound his limp hands with a rope and covered his screamed face with a pillow.
Investigation underway
The husband discovered his wife's body this afternoon after returning from work. The policemen summoned by the shocked Aleksander quickly started securing the tracks. They did it extremely scrupulously. They even cut out a section of the wardrobe door where they saw traces of blood.
Saska Kępa. It was here that Małgorzata Targowska-Grabińska's drama played out. Contemporary bird's eye view (photo:Foma, license GFDL).
Investigators discovered the presence of fingerprints that did not belong to the Grabiński family. However, they were never identified. The mysterious worker was also not found.
At the same time, the policemen determined that no money or valuables were lost from the apartment, although the Grabińskis had a lot of them. The murderer removed only a chain from the victim's neck, and a wedding ring from his finger. It was also not found that the crime was committed sexually.
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The mysterious killings of the 1980s are described in more detail by the author of the article in his latest book, “Zabić. Political murders in the People's Republic of Poland ”(Znak Horyzont 2016).
Aleksander, as the main suspect, was taken to the Mostowski Palace for questioning. Two policemen questioned him - according to the classical rule, one was good and the other was bad. The latter did not shy away from hitting the detainee.
Grabiński, immersed in shock, did not care much about such treatment. For two days, both interrogators accused him of harassing questions, trying to get him to plead guilty. This harassment could have had a specific cause:a desire to frame an innocent husband for murder.
On the third day, Grabiński was released. It turned out he had a strong alibi. Sudden dismissal - as well as the previous charge - could have had the same cause. It cannot be ruled out that in the capital MO was aware of ... a mistake. A tragic mistake.
There is a theory that people associated with the SB were behind the murder. However, they made a mistake and ... killed the wrong Grabińska they were planning.
Two Małgorzata Grabińskie
Three blocks from the Grabiński house, in the same Saska Kępa, another Małgorzata Grabińska lived a few weeks earlier. She was the daughter-in-law of the well-known lawyer Andrzej Grabiński, one of the two auxiliary prosecutors in the trial of the killers of Fr. Jerzy Popiełuszko, which ended just three months before the translator's death.
Earlier, advocate Grabiński proved to be a defender of priests accused of acting to the detriment of the socialist state. He also defended the strikers from the Szczecin Shipyard and Ursus. So it is not surprising that he had a stumbling block with a repression apparatus. In addition, several times he flatly refused to cooperate with the SB. He was also constantly under surveillance. According to some reports, during the Toruń trial, threats were made against him from a courtroom full of officers.
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Was Małgorzata's death related to the case of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko? (photo:Krugerr, GFDL license)
As an anonymous SB officer assures, the patron has become an enemy of the system, hated by the people he accused . At the same time, this witness suggests that the possible perpetrators from the Ministry of the Interior did not want to hit the lawyer directly, because it would be obvious who was behind it. It was safer to hurt him indirectly, but very painfully.
So, is it possible, as part of a specific "curse of Fr. Popiełuszko ”- an attack on Andrzej Grabiński's daughter-in-law was invented? This hypothesis is reinforced by at least two facts. Firstly, it was realized in the lawyer's circle that Małgorzata was his beloved daughter-in-law. Secondly, Andrzej's son, Paweł, had a strange adventure on May 9. A distant friend contacted him and said that his car had broken down and that he was stuck in a forest parking lot near Falenica. This friend asked Paweł, who was driving a truck, to help him tow the car.
Paweł Grabiński went, but he did not find a car or a friend on the spot. Furious, he returned to town and called his friend with grudges. Suddenly he said that there was no question of any request. Later, the patron's son realized that it might have been about depriving him of his alibi while his wife was murdered. Framing Paweł for this murder would be an additional blow for Andrzej Grabiński.
Fatal mistake
The elaborate plan, however, was marred by the killers' dramatic mistake. It is true that the " proper" Małgorzata checked out of Saska Kępa a few weeks earlier, but the conspirators may not have known about it.
This is how Father Popiełuszko was said goodbye on November 3, 1984. Did two women die because their murderers were tried to be held accountable? (photo:Andrzej Iwański, license CC BY-SA 3.0).
Both the family of the lawyer Grabiński and the despairing Aleksander soon realized the possibility of a fatal mistake. The latter learned about the second Małgorzata Grabińska from his uncle, who worked together with Paweł Grabiński.
The shocked widower called Grabiński, a lawyer he did not know before, and asked directly if such a tragic mistake was possible. The attorney flatly denied it. However, as he later explained, did so only because he was still afraid for the lives of his loved ones.
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Investigation underway
Meanwhile, a carefully initiated investigation has stalled. Significantly, they were supervised by an officer of the Warsaw Internal Affairs Office Jacek Ziółkowski. The same one who previously took part in the great operational action of the SB, aimed at concealing the departmental killers of Grzegorz Przemyk. Has history repeated itself now?
At first, Ziółkowski and his subordinates tried to blame Aleksander, and then for many months they persistently searched for traces of the murderer in the milieu of Warsaw craftsmen. Equally much effort was devoted to identifying who might have obtained the telephone number and address of the marriage. Aleksander Grabiński himself states that the renovation thread was completely wrong, because at that moment he was not carrying out any renovation.
So it is not surprising that after a year the proceedings were closed due to the failure to identify the perpetrators. The files of the case, already in free Poland, were placed in the archives of the Internal Affairs Office of the Capital Police Headquarters. However, it recently turned out that these documents had disappeared. It is not known when or why.
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In order to hit Krzysztof Piesiewicz, a woman close to him was also killed ... (contemporary photo, photo:Sławomir Kaczorek, Senate of the Republic of Poland, license CC BY-SA 3.0 pl).
Who else did the curse get?
The hypothesis of a ghastly mistake is reinforced by another tragic death - the "curse of Fr. Popiełuszko "could reach one more person. During the Toruń trial, in which the three direct perpetrators of the murder were sentenced to Fr. Popiełuszko, not only Andrzej Grabiński acted as the representative of the auxiliary prosecutors.
He was also a lawyer, screenwriter and opposition activist Krzysztof Piesiewicz. On the night of July 21-22, 1989, Piesiewicz's 82-year-old mother, Aniela, was brutally murdered in her apartment.
In the morning of July 22, a nurse called Piesiewicz who came to Aniela with injections. She claimed that she could not open the door to the apartment. The concerned lawyer and his wife quickly got into the car and drove to the building.
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Aniela Piesiewicz died on the eve of the National Rebirth of Poland on July 22, the last one ever celebrated. Was the date not accidental? The photo shows the Christmas parade in Warsaw on July 22, 1952 (source:public domain).
The Piesiewiczs unsuccessfully tried to open the door, and then, more and more nervous, entered the apartment through the terrace. In the corridor, scared, Krzysztof noticed a machete lying there. He started running around the apartment looking for his mother.
At one point he looked at the bed crushed by an inverted armchair and pillows. There was a pair of pincers and a file next to it. With trembling hands, he threw back the armchair and pillows. Then he saw the legs. And a rope or a kind of cable with which these legs were tied. The cable also bound his hands, running upwards and ending in a loop around his neck. The loop was established in such a way that each movement would automatically tighten it.
Piesiewicz thought that Fr. Popieluszko.
The perpetrators, of course, have not been identified.
Source:
The article was based on the literature and materials collected by the author during the work on the book "To kill. Political murders in the People's Republic of Poland ” (Horizon 2016 sign).