The “picket killer” chose victims out of hatred. The Łódź gay killer remains elusive to this day

Mysterious Roman

When Stefan W. is murdered on September 19, 1988, it quickly becomes apparent that he was gay. Initially, policemen do not attach much importance to this information, but with time it turns out to be crucial for the investigation … Stefan’s murder is the first in a series of seven brutal crimes committed in Łódź and its vicinity in the years 1988-1993.

Arkadiusz Lorenc, in order to recreate these murders, uses police files, at the same time introducing readers to the socio-historical context of the transformation period. Above all, however, he is looking for an answer to the question why Roman remains elusive to this day? Does it have to do with how the authorities of the Polish People’s Republic, and then the emerging Third Republic of Poland, treated homosexuals?

Enriched reportage

“Morderca z pickiety” is the first report published by Empik Go, available both in paper and electronic versions, as well as in the form of an audio report, episodes of which will be available in the Empik Go application. In the book, readers will find an in-depth historical background – a description of the ways of life of LGBT people in Poland from the 1950s to the transformation period, as well as the birth of the first gay organizations. The series, on the other hand, allows you to hear the author’s interlocutors, without whom this book would not have been written. Lorenc asks the policemen who lead the murder cases, the functionaries of the so-called X Archives in Łódź, where this unresolved case ended up, as well as other and closer friends of the victims, gay activists who remembered £ ód90. And he keeps asking the question – why did these men die?

Below we present an excerpt from the book.

“You could meet everyone at the pickets. Not only fagots. Even if you were a lawyer or a doctor, you performed another profession considered prestigious, belonged to the cultural elite, for sex you had to descend to the level of a restroom or park. All criminals. Not only them, of course. And since it was a criminals’ milieu, they were crimes, it was completely natural. Theft was the first place of crime. It happened very often and did not impress anyone. Robbing someone with their pants down, when he doesn’t feel that you are rummaging in his pockets, it was very simple. And it happened on a daily basis. But there were also murders. myself”.

The picket killer / Promotional materials

The title will be available from May 30 in Empik bookstores, on Empik.com and as an audio report in the Empik Go application.

Arkadiusz Lorenc – journalist and author of reportages, a graduate of the University of Łódź, where he studied German and Spanish, and the Polish School of Reportage. He is interested in social and political topics. Finalist of the seventh edition of the Scholarship Competition. Ryszard Kapuściński for the project of a literary reportage devoted to the Polish bioenergotherapist Stanisław Nardelli.

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