The case of the "Cold Surgeon" shocked Poland. Edmund Kolanowski's perverse crimes were unprecedented. Rapist, degenerate, necrophile, pedophile, psychopath, beast - these epithets were used to describe a man sentenced to death on June 4, 1984. And there was no exaggeration in that.
"I wish I had drowned you in your first bath," the mother, who never concealed her contempt and even hatred for the younger child, was told to little Edek. She preferred to scratch the wounds after the death of Andrzej's firstborn, to whose grave she took Edmund very often. It must have left a strong mark on the child.
Born on October 24, 1947, the future serial killer had a difficult childhood not only because of his mother. My father, a former prisoner of Auschwitz, was an alcoholic abusing the family. As if that were not enough, Edmund was sick a lot from an early age and developed more slowly than his peers . He also began to show disturbing character traits fairly early:he was nervous, restless, and at school he was difficult to control; argued with teachers and got into fights with friends. At the same time, he was shy and shy in interpersonal relations.
Poor academic performance and mental problems meant that as a teenager he repeatedly stayed in psychiatric institutions - in one of them he finished primary school. This did not help, indeed, his unpleasant history shows that in hospitals and sanatoriums, psychosis began to appear in the boy's mind.
Youth degenerate
Edmund Kolanowski discovered his sexual attraction to women very early. Already at the age of 10-11 he reached sexual maturity (which could not be said about other spheres of his personality), but no one from the environment, not even psychologists, was able to show him how to deal with it.
He began to steal women's underwear, the best worn and dirty, into which he changed into and masturbated in it. In one of the sanatoriums he was to be forced by his older colleagues to perform sexual activities. Together with them, he was peering through the morgue window of the dead female bodies to which they were masturbating together. Also each other.
Soon he started attacking and harassing ladies he accidentally met on the street. As he testified later, at the sight of a lonely woman, his legs buckled under him. Already at the age of 15, he had suits in a juvenile court for sexual assault. He also had several failed approaches to intercourse.
An oversensitive personality, a tendency to pathological behavior, increasing sexual frustration and a couple of unsuccessful suicide attempts must have caused enormous havoc in Kolanowski's mind. It was fully felt after a few years.
Meanwhile - surprisingly - in the meantime Edmund managed to start a family. He had a wife, Zofia, and two daughters. Unfortunately, he was unable to contain his lust. When around 1972 he was imprisoned for several years for attempting to rape a random woman, Zofia divorced him and cut off all contacts.
The birth of a monster
According to the police records and Edmund's testimony, he committed his first murder on October 28, 1970 near the town of Emilianowo. He brutally killed the woman, then cut off her breasts and removed the genitals, which he wrapped in paper and brought to Poznań - to his apartment. At the same time, he also began to profane fresh, female graves. He was digging up coffins and stealing bodies to later masturbate over them. He "worked" in this way also cemetery chapels.
With time, he moved to mutilating a corpse by amputating the attributes of femininity. In July 1980, such desecrated body of an elderly woman was discovered in the chapel in Nowa Sól. On March 17, 1981 in Wawer near Warsaw he killed again. Similar traces were found on the body of a 20-year-old girl, but due to the failure to find the perpetrator, the cases were discontinued . The press was silent about this. After all, the communist authorities could not admit that a deviant had appeared in an ideal socialist society.
During the interrogation, he initially denied the accusations, but soon softened and told everything exactly.
However, the crime that took place in the winter of 1982 could no longer be concealed. On November 4, 11-year-old Alinka from Poznań went to a nearby meadow after school to collect grass for rabbits. She didn't come home. About the disappearance of the girl wrote, among others "Express Poznański". Despite the meticulous combing of Naramowice by the secret services, no clue was found.
The girl's naked body, abandoned on a railway embankment, was only discovered after a few weeks. Its breasts and reproductive organs were cut out. The striking similarity of the injuries to the previously found corpses left no doubt - a psychopath was prowling in and around Poznań. We didn't have to wait long for the next traces. On November 29 of the same year, a dug-out grave was discovered in the Miłostowo cemetery with the characteristic mutilated body of the deceased. The servants were quickly put on their feet, and they were secretly observing the Poznań necropolises.
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Necrophile roundup
On the night of May 7, two policemen noticed a suspect in the Miłostów cemetery, who was digging up the grave. Unfortunately, the alleged necrophile managed to escape, but left traces that turned out to be extremely important, incl. paper with stamps "Pollena Łaskarzew". It could only come from one factory in Poznań. On May 16, Edmund was arrested.
During the interrogation, he initially denied the accusations, but soon softened and told everything about everything. His relationship was chilling. He confessed to the murders committed. He was supposed to kill six women in total (only three crimes were proven for him). He accurately described his motivations and what he was doing with the removed body fragments.
Its story is deceptively similar to the movie "The Silence of the Lambs". Well, Edmund sewed breasts and genitals to mannequins specially made by him, used for masturbation. He called it "fun." Cold Surgeon told the policemen coldly and to the point:
I would insert my penis into the sewn organs in a sliding motion until the semen ejaculated. After two or three days, I ripped off my organs and burned them in a tiled stove in my room. I smashed the doll and threw it into the trash.
He arranged his "playroom" in a utility room in the building where he lived, on Wodna Street in the city center. Neighbors reportedly complained of a strange stench but did nothing about it. Kolanowski's concubine, with whom he became involved after his release from prison, was also silent. She knew about the partner's perversions. She found remains of burned bodies in the furnace, but, intimidated, did not speak until Edmund was captured.
He confessed to the murders committed. He was supposed to kill six women in total (only three crimes were proven for him).
The trial of the "Surgeon" began on January 22, 1984; On June 4, he was sentenced to death by hanging. The sentence was carried out two years later, on July 28, 1986 (it was the last death sentence carried out in Poznań). Psychologists who spoke to Kolanowski, and some policemen investigating the case, claimed that it was unnecessary, because his place was in a psychiatric hospital, and on the basis of his resume, important scientific publications and "more than one doctorate" could be written.
Edmund Kolanowski was buried in Miłostowo - the same cemetery where he had previously roamed. Until recently, his grave was a nameless, neglected, anonymous grave.