Béla Kiss (1877 – ?) was a Hungarian serial killer. Year 1877 ( MDCCCLXXVII) was a Common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common Hungary (Magyarország 'mɔɟɔrorsaːg) officially in English the Republic of Hungary ( Magyar Köztársaság, literally Magyar (Hungarian Republic A serial killer is a person who Murders usually three or more people with a "cooling off" period between each murder and whose motivation for killing is largely based He is thought to have murdered at least 24 young women and attempted to pickle them in giant metal drums that he kept on his property. In Hungarian "Kiss" means "Little".
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Life
Béla Kiss was a tinsmith who had lived in Cinkota [1] (nowadays part of Budapest), Hungary since 1900. A tinsmith, or tinner or tinplate worker, is a person who makes and repairs things made of light-coloured Metal, particularly tinware. Budapest ( also /ˈbʊ-/) is the capital city of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary it serves as the country's principal Political, Hungary (Magyarország 'mɔɟɔrorsaːg) officially in English the Republic of Hungary ( Magyar Köztársaság, literally Magyar (Hungarian Republic His neighbors considered him a pleasant man to live with. Kiss was an amateur astrologer and allegedly fond of other occult practices. An astrologer practices one or more forms of Astrology. Typically an astrologer draws a Horoscope for the time of an event such as a person's birth and interprets The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus (clandestine hidden secret referring to "knowledge of the hidden" In 1912 Kiss hired a housekeeper, begun to correspond with a number of attractive women and sometimes took them to his home in Cinkota. However, his housekeeper Mrs Jakubec, never really got to know any of them.
Townsfolk also noticed that Kiss had collected a number of metal drums. Kiss had told the town police who questioned him that he filled them with gasoline in order to prepare for the rationing of the oncoming war. When World War I began, he was conscripted and left his house in the care of Mrs Jakubec. World War I (abbreviated WWI; also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All
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In July 1916, Budapest police received a call from a Cinkota landlord who had found seven large metal drums. Budapest ( also /ˈbʊ-/) is the capital city of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary it serves as the country's principal Political, The town constable had remembered Kiss' stockpile of gasoline, and led needy soldiers to them. Upon attempting to open the drums, a suspicious odour was noted. Detective Chief Charles Nagy took over the investigation and opened one of the drums, against the protests of Mrs Jakubec. There they discovered the body of a strangled woman. The other drums yielded similarly gruesome content. A search of Kiss's house resulted in a total of 24 bodies.
Nagy informed the military that they should arrest Béla Kiss immediately, if he was still alive - there was also a possibility that he was a prisoner of war. The name, unfortunately, was very common. Nagy also arrested the housekeeper Jakubec and asked the postal service to hold any possible letters to Kiss, in case he had an accomplice that could warn him. Nagy initially suspected that Jakubec might have had something to do with the murders, especially when Kiss had left her money in his will.
Jakubec assured police that she knew absolutely nothing about the murders. She showed them a secret room Kiss had told her never to enter. A secret passage (or hidden passage or a secret tunnel) is a hidden route that is used to travel stealthily The room was filled with bookcases but also had a desk that held a number of letters, Kiss' correspondence with 74 women and a photo album. Many of the books were about poisons or strangulation.
From the letters Nagy discerned several things. The oldest of the letters were from 1903 and it became clear that Kiss was defrauding the women who had been looking for marriage. He had placed ads in the marriage columns of several newspapers and had selected mainly women who had no relatives living nearby and knew no one who would quickly notice their disappearance. He wooed them and convinced them to send him money. If they proved troublesome for him, he killed them.
Police also found old court records that indicated that two of his victims had initiated court proceedings because he had taken money from them. Both women had disappeared and the case had been dismissed.
Escape
On October 4th, 1916 Nagy received a letter that stated that Kiss was recuperating in a Serbian hospital. Nagy arrived too late — Kiss had fled and substituted a dead body of another soldier in his bed. Nagy alerted all the Hungarian police. Unfortunately, all the sightings police could check proved to be wrong.
On several later occasions, speculation arose that Béla Kiss had perhaps faked his death by exchanging identities with a dead soldier during the war. He was supposedly sighted numerous times in following years and there were various rumors about his fate, including that he had been imprisoned for burglary in Romania or he had died of yellow fever in Turkey. Yellow fever (also called yellow jack, black vomit or sometimes American Plague) is an acute viral disease
Sightings
In 1920 a soldier in the French Foreign Legion reported on another legionnaire named Hoffman (the name Kiss had used in some letters) who had boasted how good he was at using a garrote, and who fit Kiss' description. A garrote or garrote vil (a Spanish word alternative spellings include garotte and garrotte) is a handheld Weapon, most often referring "Hoffman" deserted before police could reach him.
In 1932, homicide detective Henry Oswald was certain he had seen Kiss coming out of Times Square Subway in New York City. Year 1932 ( MCMXXXII) was a Leap year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. Times Square is a major intersection in Manhattan, New York City at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West The City of New York There were also rumors that Kiss was living in the city and working as a janitor but they could not be verified.
The fate of Béla Kiss remains unknown.
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