Poland is a central European country with a population of 38 million people. The Polish constitution of 1791, the oldest in Europe, in turn, incorporated ideals of the American and French revolutions. Poland was heavily damaged during both world wars due to its unique geographical position. With the fall of the Third Reich, Poland effectively lost its independence once again, becoming a communist satellite state of the Soviet Union. Nearly a half-century of totalitarian rule followed but in the 1970s a nationwide movement called Solidarity led to the 1989 fall of the Polish government. Which lead to Polish Democracy, today Poland is a member of the EU, NATO, and is the birthplace of the former Pope John Paul II. Poland runs on the civil law system and the contemporary penal legislation is comprised of three basic sets of laws: The Penal Code, the Code of Criminal Procedure. In the year 2019, just under 800,000 crimes took place in Poland with the most common crime being pickpocketing, the last recorded murder rate was in 2014 of just .0007%.
On the night of October 26 through the 27, 2001 in Dorbik, Poland near the city of Plock 25-year-old Krzysztofa Olewnik was having a housewarming party for himself. I couldn’t find any information about Krzysztofa’s life and personality except that he was a businessman and the son of Włodzimierz Olewnik who meat industry businessman. Włodzimierz was proud of his son and his new house and invited some local police officers to the party. The party came to an end at about 11 pm, when the vodka ran out. A policeman later stated that “Policemen drink only pure vodka, because colored alcohol stains uniforms.” Now Krzysztofa did not drink alcohol so he did his DD duties and drove his drunk comrades’ home and came back to an empty house. That is when gangsters who were watching the home all night across the road ran into the house and tied up Krzysztofa grabbed him out of his own home.
Two days later Krzysztofa’s family was contacted about a ransom. An important note about kidnapping cases that involve ransoms is that they usually solved and the person is recovered fairly quickly because the kidnapper’s only motive is money and once they get it they are okay. Krzysztofa’s kidnapper had some very specific instructions about the ransom which was asked for two days after the kidnapping for 300,000 USD and told the family to not contact the police. Krzysztofa’s family was prepped to pay the ransom. But something happened, now it was hard for me to completely understand what went wrong through google translate but according to the one English article I found about the case states “the kidnappers repeatedly taunted the Olewnik family. They were extraordinarily brazen, phoning the Olewnik’s dozens of times and sending letters handwritten by Krzysztofa. They warned the family repeatedly not to contact the police, but police were involved from the very beginning. Their phone calls, which featured Krzysztof’s voice speaking about current news stories, were all recorded by police, and their letters were also examined. But no progress was made in finding the Olewnik’s missing son”. All indications pointed to Krzysztof was still alive.
It wasn’t until July 24, 2003, nearly two years after the kidnapping that 350,000 euros (the kidnappers changed the currency to euros and added 50,000 for disobedience) was paid to the kidnappers. The ransom was dropped off under a bridge in Warsaw. The kidnappers drilled a hole for the family to drop off the ransom. The Olewnik family was so excited to have finally paid the ransom and have their son back after two years BUT Krzysztofa was not returned home. Now, why did it take so long for the Olewnik’s to pay the ransom well because the police were “investigating”. The Polish people and criminologists alike have noted that there could have been corruption in the case from the police, either the police were getting paid off by the kidnappers or they were involved in the kidnapping (remember there were police officers at Krzysztofa’s party that night he was kidnapped).
Now, this corruption theory isn’t just a theory, but there is some evidence pointing to it like a 2004 statement made to the court that the kidnappers used police jargon and terms in their letters and two police officers left the Olewnik case files unattended in an unmarked police car in the center of Warsaw. When they returned, the car had disappeared. Fortunately, a backup of the files was copied and in Krakow. Also is it just a coincidence that the ransom was recovered on National Police Day? Now what might be the craziest part, the police investigation concluded that Krzysztofa had kidnapped himself in other words, he staged his own abduction. The Olewnik family adamantly denied this; the patriarch told the press “Why would he do that, there is no reason”. The Olewnik’s were very suspicious of the police’s “investigation”.
According to 2011 inquiry about the case and the police’s handling of it concluded that the police did not take the proper investigation steps to find Krzysztofa. Mistakes happened from the Get-go like; nothing from the crime scene was sent in for analysis, the police contacted Interpol a year after the abduction, the police did not track the kidnappers' phone numbers when they made calls to the Olewnik home, they did not record the phone calls made to the police station and the family home, and when they received a letter with names of suspects they did not investigate. The police weren’t doing ANYTHING and for two years the Krzysztofa was being tortured at god knows where by god knows who.
According to the 2011 inquiry, Krzysztofa during the two years was chained to a wall, beaten regularly, and forced to take psychotropic drugs, and the last two months of his life were in a concrete septic tank. Now in my research and non-existent Polish, I am not exactly sure how the following information was discovered but on September 5, 2003 Krzysztofa Olewnik was murdered, reportedly the cause of death was suffocation via plastic bag over the face. On October 28, 2006, five years and two days after the kidnapping Krzysztofa’s body was found in a forest near Ostroleka, six feet under wrapped in wire mesh. On November 4, 2006, Krzysztof was properly laid to rest in Plock without properly identifying the body as Krzysztofa’s. It was only confirmed to be his in 2010 after it was exhumed for further testing.
So, what did the hell happen to Krzysztofa Olewnik? The police were obviously complicit in some way in the crime but the crime was ultimately pinned on a gang led by Wojciech Franiewski. Wojciech had an extensive criminal history mostly for burglary and was known in prison for being a leader among inmates and even greeted Pope John Paul II when he visited a Polish prison in 1991. Wojciech was believed to have worked for the feared Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa which was Communist Poland’s secret police service before the fall of the USSR. This position would have made Wojciech connected, possibly with some post-communism policemen? Though Wojciech was the leader he was not the only one arrested for the crime, in fact 12 people total were arrested for some involvement. So happy ending of justice, right? Wrong.
Wojciech refused to speak to the police which is his right but before his trial began in June 2007 he was found dead by hanging in his cell. Wojciech was supposedly on round-the-clock observation but at his autopsy alcohol and amphetamine were found in his system. Which isn’t allowed in prison... The death was ruled a suicide. Two other gang members involved in the crime Sławomir Kościuk and Robert Pazik who were already convicted to their part in the crime was also found dead in their cells under identical circumstances in the following months. Now, these suicides were big news in Poland, something was off. Who provided the inmates with alcohol and amphetamine? Well, I think it is obvious… The justice minister and several top officials in the justice department and prison services were forced to resign because of these suspicions. The remaining defendants have sentenced terms ranging from one year suspended for three years to 15 years imprisonment, and one of the defendants was acquitted.
What was the motive of these gangsters? It's obvious to me that it wasn’t money or they would not have waited for 2 years for the ransom. Krzysztofa’s father believes it was so the criminals could have control over his meat factory. He received several suspicious business proposals a few years prior to the kidnapping but turned them down when he found evidence of corruption. Some of these proposals were made by politicians and a very high-ranking police officer. It was the same officer who supervised the early stages of the investigation in which so many mistakes were made.
The 2011 inquiry noted many mistakes by the Polish police regarding the case. There are honestly to many mistakes for me to name. The one glimmer of hope is The European Court of Human Rights awarded Krzysztofa Olewnik's father and sister 100,000 euro for errors in the investigation and sluggishness. It held that the Polish state was responsible for the actions of its officers. 100,000 euros is nothing compared to what the Olewnik’s lost.
Sources
English
Polish (translated via Google Translate)
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