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Andrzej Kunowski (nicknamed The Beast; 1956 – 23 September 2009) was a Polish rapist and murderer. After illegally immigrating from Poland, where he had previously served 10 years in prison for 27 sex attacks on girls and women, to the United Kingdom in 1996, he strangled Katerina Koneva, a 12-year-old Macedonian girl, to death in her parents' flat in Hammersmith after she returned there from school on 22 May 1997.

In 2003, Kunowski was sentenced to nine years imprisonment for the kidnapping and rape of a Korean student. DNA and fingerprint samples taken from him matched a hair found on an item of clothing belonging to Koneva and fingerprints on one of the flat's windows and window ledges, and he was convicted of her murder and given a life sentence with a recommendation that he never be released in March 2004.

'The Beast' killer dies in prison

BBC.co.uk

September 26, 2009

A convicted killer dubbed "the Beast" who raped and murdered a 12-year-old girl has died in prison.

Police say Andrzej Kunowski died of heart failure on Wednesday at Frankland prison, Durham, where he was serving a life sentence.

He was jailed at the Old Bailey in 2004 for killing Katerina Koneva at her home in Hammersmith, west London, in 1997.

Police say he has also been linked to numerous investigations, including the disappearances of two young women.

He had previously served 10 years in jail in his native Poland where he became known as "the Beast" for 27 serious sex attacks on girls and women from the age of 17.

Police in West London say he is a suspect in the disappearances of 19-year-old student Elizabeth Chau in 1999 and Lola Shenkoya, a 27-year-old who vanished on her way home from work in 2000.

Detectives say they particularly want to speak to anyone who may have shared a cell with Kunowski during his time in prison.

Kunowski's trial was told he was on the run for raping a 10-year-old girl in Poland at the time of the murder.

Following his conviction in March 2004, Det Ch Insp David Little said: "He is probably the most dangerous sex offender I have ever come across and certainly the most prolific."

Katerina was strangled at her home on 22 May 1997 after she returned from school. Her father, Trajce Konev, came face to face with an intruder when he returned home and chased him into the street.

Kunowski was charged with murdering the girl when his DNA, which was taken after he was arrested for raping a student, matched a hair found on Katerina's cardigan.

Rapist known as The Beast takes secrets to the grave

DailyMail.co.uk

September 28, 2009

A predatory sex killer known as 'The Beast', who was linked to several unsolved crimes, has died in prison.

Police said Andrezej Kunowski, 52, was 'probably the most dangerous' of all sex offenders.

He was jailed for life in March 2004 after strangling a 12-year-old girl.

The Polish illegal immigrant came to Britain in 1996 after escaping prison in Poland, where he had been convicted of 17 rapes and faced a total of 70 charges.

In May 1997, he followed 12-year-old Katerina Koneva from school to her West London home and strangled her.

Her father came home to find Kunowski in the house and chased him away before returning to discover his dying daughter.

Kunowski's trail of sex crimes might have ended only a month later, when he was arrested for theft. But in a series of blunders by police, he was neither fingerprinted nor DNA-tested and was allowed to disappear.

He was then linked to several sex attacks and the disappearances of two women.

In 2002, he was charged with raping a 21-year-old student in London. Police found his DNA matched traces on Katerina's body and he was jailed for life. He died of heart failure on Wednesday at Frankland Prison, Durham.

Yesterday Katerina's mother, Zaklina, said: 'He has escaped punishment. The only positive part is that he will never inflict such a horrific act on any other person.'

Police hope other victims will come forward. Detective Inspector Andy Manning said: 'Now Kunowski is dead I am hoping anyone who was too scared previously will speak to us.'

Rapist on the run strangled 12-year-old Milly Dowler case police to question killer

HeraldScotland.com

April 1, 2004

AN illegal immigrant was jailed for life at the Old Bailey yesterday for strangling a 12-year-old girl in her home while on the run after being jailed for rape in his native Poland.

Last night, police said they would be questioning Andrezej Kunowski, 48, about the unsolved disappearances of other girls, and the murder of the schoolgirl Milly Dowler.

He was in prison in Poland for the rape of a 10-year-old girl when a judge set him free unsupervised for three months in 1996 so that he could have a hip operation.

Kunowski, who sexually assaulted 27 children and young women in a criminal career spanning 30 years, fled to London.

The following year he strangled 12-year-old Katerina Koneva in her home in Hammersmith, after she had returned from school.

Kunowski, of Acton, west London, was disturbed by Katerina's father, who had returned to the house to find the living room door barricaded with a chair.

Passing sentence, Judge Peter Beaumont, the Common Serjeant of London, told Kunowski that life must mean life, to protect others.

After the verdict, police said they would question Kunowski about the unsolved disappearances of other girls, and the murder of Milly Dowler.

Kunowski is already serving a nine-year sentence for raping a 21-year-old Korean student in September 2002. He had lured the student to a bedsit from outside Ealing Broadway Tube station in west London.

Milly vanished six months earlier, on March 21, 2002, while walking home from Walton-on-Thames railway station in Surrey after school. Her body was found seven months later in woodland near Fleet, Hampshire.

Katerina's parents, Trajce and Zaklina, wept yesterday as Kunowski was jailed for murdering her on May 22, 1997. He had denied the killing. Earlier, Mrs Koneva sobbed uncontrollably as Kunowski's catalogue of crimes was read out.

Nicholas Hilliard, prosecuting, said Kunowski had escaped from custody several times in his 30-year career.

Some of the victims of his 17 rapes, eight attempted rapes and one attempted murder in Poland were girls of 10 and 12, ambushed as they arrived home from school. Others were dragged into bushes and fields. He was arrested in 1995 for raping a 10-year-old as she went home from school. He was also charged with raping a 12-year-old, but in 1996 was allowed free by the judge. He fled to Britain, where he assumed a Portuguese identity.

Mr Hilliard said Kunowski was later detained in the UK and ordered to be deported when an asylum claim failed in 2002.

However, Kunowski failed to turn up for deportation and raped the Korean student a few days later at his home. He was jailed at the Old Bailey last year.

Katerina was alone in an empty flat for the first time after school when she was targeted by Kunowski. She had sought sanctuary in Britain from Macedonia in the Balkans two years earlier with her family.

After pushing his way into the flat, Kunowski slowly throttled Katerina with a cord in a sexually-motivated attack.

However, as she slipped into unconsciousness, he was disturbed by Mr Koneva, who had been delayed because of an exam. Finding the living room door barricaded with a chair, Mr Koneva looked under the door and saw a man's feet.

He said: "I started like mad kicking with all my body. I was trying just to get in because I knew something was wrong."

Kunowski left his fingerprints as he leapt out of a first-floor window of the house. After a desperate chase, during which Mr Koneva was threatened with a knife, he returned home, forced the door and found Katerina.

Mr Koneva broke down as he described his frantic efforts to save his daughter by cutting the cord round her neck.

Outside the Old Bailey, Mrs Koneva said she hoped Kunowski would "burn in hell."

A Home Office spokesman said: "It is a matter of great concern that this individual with such a serious criminal history managed to get into this country and that his background was not uncovered when he came to our attention."

"Our system has been completely overhauled since then. All suspected asylum seekers are now electronically fingerprinted on entry and these details are then fed into a European warning index which would alert us to criminal activity."

Rapist murdered girl in her home

BBC.co.uk

March 31, 2004

A 48-year-old man has been sentenced to life in prison for killing a girl at her home in west London.

Polish-born Andrezej Kunowski, of Acton, west London, had denied murdering Katerina Koneva, claiming it was a case of mistaken identity.

The 12-year-old was strangled at her home in Hammersmith on 22 May 1997 after she returned from school.

The Old Bailey was told Kunowski was on the run for raping a 10-year-old girl in Poland at the time of the murder.

He previously served 10 years in jail in Poland for 27 serious sex attacks on girls and women from the age of 17.

After the verdict, police said they would be questioning Kunowski about other unsolved cases, including the murder of 13 -year-old Milly Dowler.

She vanished on 21 March, 2002, while walking home from Walton-on-Thames railway station in Surrey.

Her body was found seven months later in woodland near Fleet, Hampshire.

Sentencing him, the Common Serjeant of London, Judge Peter Beaumont, said that for Kunowski life would mean life to protect others.

Det Ch Insp David Little said: "He is probably the most dangerous sex offender I have ever come across and certainly the most prolific."

In a statement, Zaklina Koneva, Katerina's mother, said: "The only feeling I have is one of relief. I am relieved that this evil man is no longer free to murder or sexually assault another young girl."

Katerina's father, Trajce Konev, returned home in 1997 and came face to face with an intruder and chased him into the street.

Kunowski was charged with murdering the girl when his DNA, which was taken after he was arrested for raping a student, matched a hair found on Katerina's cardigan.

He also left fingerprints as he leapt out of a first-floor window of the house in Iffley Road.

During the trial, Mr Konev told the court he looked through the keyhole of the barricaded door and saw his daughter's bag in the room.

And when he looked under the door he saw a pair of men's black shoes.

"I started like mad kicking it with all my body. I was trying just to get in, because my brain was saying I knew something was wrong," Mr Konev told the jury.

He said he then ran downstairs and came face to face with the man outside bedroom window.

"I looked at him. He was so cool. It was so strange. Then I noticed a little bit of blood on the side of his face," Mr Konev said.

"I just asked what he was doing in my house. He just looked at me and ran away. I went after him."

He eventually lost the man, the court was told.

When Mr Konev returned to the flat he forced the door open.

Katerina was found lying with a cord tied tightly round her neck, the jury heard. It had been given to her as part of a present after she arrived in Britain from Macedonia in 1995.

Polish link solves girl's murder

By Jeremy Britton - BBC News Online

March 31, 2004

The police hunt for the killer of 12-year-old Katerina Koneva ended up with the arrest of a serial rapist on the run from Poland.

Detectives working on the case in west London appeared to have plenty of leads but it still proved to be the most frustrating of cases.

The bright schoolgirl, a refugee from Macedonia looking for a better life in Britain, was found strangled at her home.

Her attacker had been spotted by her father, Trajce, escaping from the family's flat through a back garden. He immediately gave chase.

At least seven eyewitnesses saw the man running away and a security video showed Katerina's father desperately trying to catch his daughter's killer.

But despite an extensive inquiry and three separate appeals for information on BBC's Crimewatch programme, the trail went cold.

The breakthrough only came last year after an illegal Polish immigrant was found guilty at the Old Bailey of raping a foreign student and sentenced to nine years.

The court heard how Andrzej Kunowski, a 45-year-old tailor living in Acton, west London, approached the Korean student outside a Tube station as she waited for a friend and offered to find her a bedsit.

Instead he took her to his flat and attacked her and when she tried to resist he started to choke her and then tied her up.

She only escaped by promising to phone Kunowski the next day.

Crucially, a DNA sample taken from Kunowski at the time proved identical to a hair discovered in packaging containing a cardigan belonging to Katerina Koneva.

Kunowski had also left his fingerprints on the window and window ledge as he escaped from the family flat where Katerina lived.

Forensic analysis showed they were "fresh" and made within the previous 72 hours.

Warsaw link

The final piece of the jigsaw came from Polish police - they had charged Kunowski with the rape of a 10-year-old girl in Warsaw in 1995.

In this attack Kunowski had again allegedly started to choke the girl and left her tied up before he was caught escaping from her flat.

DNA evidence from a sofabed in the flat was analysed by Scotland Yard and proved a perfect match to Kunowski.

Kunowski never stood trial for the rape of the Warsaw girl as he was released on bail for health reasons and fled to England where he would strike twice again.

It also emerged that Kunowski had attacked another 27 women and children in Poland, mostly in the north eastern town of Mlawa, where he was a driver for a construction company.

He committed his first rape at 17, and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

He came to England in 1996 where he disappeared from sight after being refused asylum.

Police from the UK's serious crime directorate are now investigating offences across Europe where women have gone missing to see if they may be linked to Kunowski.

Mother's anger at daughter's killer

BBC.co.uk

March 31, 2004

Katerina Koneva's family had come to Britain to escape the war-torn area of Macedonia.

Their new life in Hammersmith, west London, had flourished for two years.

Her father Trajce was a mature student learning English at the local college and Katerina, a bright, quiet girl, spoke good English and attended Holland Park School.

But their new-found happiness evaporated in May, 1997 when Katerina returned from school to find convicted paedophile Andrezej Kunowski waiting for her.

The illegal immigrant tied a piece of cord tightly round her neck and slowly throttled her.

He was disturbed by Katerina's father and jumped out of the window, leaving Katerina for dead.

Katerina's mother, Zaklina, visits her daughter's grave almost every day.

At home, a shrine commemorates the life of the 12-year-old who was murdered by a paedophile who should never have been freed.

Zaklina and Trajce are now divorced. Zaklina is living in a new flat in Hammersmith with her son Christian, 12.

Mrs Koneva has bought Katerina Christmas and birthday presents every year since her daughter was murdered.

She said: "I talk to her every day. We say goodnight to our children, don't we? So I always say goodnight to my daughter."

In an angry statement after the verdict, she said: "Today I do not feel happy. I wish that I was not giving this statement and that Katerina was still here by my side.

"I am relieved that this evil man is no longer free to murder or sexually assault another young girl.

"Today I do not feel that justice has been done. I hope that this evil murderer burns in hell.

"Knowing he is in prison is not enough for me. I hope he suffers every minute of the rest of his life.

"All life imprisonment means is that other children will be safe and no other parent will have to go through what we have because of him."

Hip operation

She also feels bitter that the serial sex attacker who took Katerina's life fled to Britain from Poland where he was under arrest for rape.

A Polish judge gave him three months bail to get a hip operation.

Left unsupervised, he did not have the operation but came to Britain, entering as a tourist, and then becoming an illegal immigrant.

Mrs Koneva said: "I am aware that he had serious criminal convictions and impending prosecutions in Poland.

"Something must be done to ensure that such a thing does not happen again."

She also felt police would never catch her daughter's killer.

Two months after Katerina's killing, Princess Diana died in Paris. Public interest switched away from the murder of a schoolgirl in London.

Two years later the senior officer in the case, Detective Superintendent Hamish Campbell, was switched to the Jill Dando murder inquiry.

"That was when I felt the investigation was over. I felt very angry."

For Mrs Koneva it is the end of a long vigil.

She attended court each day of Kunowski's trial and collapsed outside court after hearing the pathologist's evidence.

Katerina: A father's tale

BBC.co.uk

March 31, 2004

It has been nearly seven years since 12-year-old Katerina Koneva was murdered in her own home by a paedophile.

Andrezej Kunowski, an illegal immigrant from Poland, was on the run from another sex crime when he strangled the girl to death after she came home from school one afternoon.

For Katerina's father Trajce it has been seven long years of desperation.

His daughter's killer was finally brought to justice after forensic evidence obtained by the Metropolitan Police matched DNA material found at a similar crime Kunowski was alleged to have committed in Warsaw.

The Koneva family moved from the Balkans to Britain two years before Katerina's death.

In the cruellest of ironies, they moved to west London in search of sanctuary from ethnic violence in their native Macedonia.

Something wrong

Trajce's nightmare began on 22 May 1997 when he returned home to the family flat in Hammersmith.

He had been studying English at a local college as a mature student and was delayed getting home because of an exam, while Katerina's mother Zaklina had been out with a friend.

Trajce knew something was wrong when he could not open the front door which was barricaded with a chair.

Although he saw his daughter's bag in a room, he also saw a pair of men's black shoes.

He told the Old Bailey during Kunowski's trial: "It was the very first time our daughter was alone. I expected everything to be all right.

"I started like mad kicking it [the door] with all my body. I was trying just to get in, because my brain was saying I knew something was wrong."

"I was desperate to get in because my feelings were bad. I was so scared. I thought that maybe if someone is inside and she cannot get to the door, he must get to the window and jump, so I ran downstairs," he said.

In a neighbour's garden Trajce came face to face with killer Kunowski and it was the stare the serial rapist gave that will stay with him forever.

"I just asked what he was doing in my house. He just looked at me and ran away. I went after him.

"It's difficult to put into words, but I remember the way the man looked at me. He was so cool. He just looked at me and ran away," he said.

Great Promise

What Trajce did not know when he instinctively decided to chase Kunowski in a desperate attempt to catch him, was that his daughter was dying in a room in the family flat.

After losing his daughter's killer he returned home, forced the door open and found Katerina lying dead with a cord tied tightly round her neck.

The bright, quiet 12-year-old who had been doing well at the local Holland Park school, was raped and strangled during a three hour period.

Trajce broke down in court when he described how he tried to save his daughter's life by cutting the cord that was round her neck.

He told the Old Bailey: "I tried to release it. It was too tight. I could not get it. I went to the kitchen to take something.

"I took a knife - I cut it. I started to cry and call her name - Katerina, Katerina. A policeman and I tried to resuscitate her."

At the Old Bailey Judge Peter Beaumont called Katerina "a child of great promise".

He sentenced Kunowski to life imprisonment, recommending that the 48-year-old should not be released.

Mystery of girl stabbed by intruder

Independent.co.uk

May 23, 1997

A 12-year-old refugee girl who was strangled to death at her home by an intruder was described by her headmistress yesterday as an "exceptional pupil" and a great loss.

Police are hunting the killer of Katerina Koneva, who moved to Britain two years ago from the former Yugoslavian state of Macedonia, after her father found her dead.

Trajce Koneva returned home on Wednesday afternoon to find a man in his first floor flat in Hammersmith, west London. A scuffle followed and the intruder escaped through a window, but the father chased him into the street, apparently unaware that his daughter was dying.

Mr Koneva continued to chase the man until he hijacked a Fiat Uno, forcing the female driver out of the car. The man abandoned the car nearby and escaped on foot.

It was not until the father returned home that he discovered his daughter.

A man, who lived downstairs from the Konevas, said yesterday: "I heard the father shouting ... `please come and help me someone' ... We went to help him ... and then we saw Katerina on the floor. Her face was a strange bluish-purple colour. We didn't know if she was still alive, but we thought she was because she was still breathing.

"Then an ambulance came and they tried to give her the kiss of life. But a policeman said later that she was dead."

Mr Koneva came to this country about four years ago. His wife, daughter, and six-year-old son joined him two years later. The dead girl was a pupil in the first year at Holland Park School in Kensington, west London, where headteacher Mary Marsh yesterday wrote to all parents saying: "It is with profound sadness that I write to tell you of the tragic death of Katerina Koneva.

"It appears that Katerina was attacked at home soon after she returned from school. You will share our shock and deep distress about this. Katerina was an exceptional student ... She is a great loss to us."

The motive for the attack remains unclear. Police have yet to say whether there was any indication of sexual assault, or whether the flat was burgled.

The suspect is of Greek or Arabic appearance and in his middle to late forties. He was of stocky build, 5ft 6in tall, with receding hair, short at the sides.

Neighbours have laid flowers outside the dead girl's house.

Andrezej Kunowski: The Little Doctor

Truecrimecases.blogspot.com

Caught in the Act

“It’s Daddy! Open up!”

Trajce Konev stood knocking at the locked door of his home in the London suburb of Hammersmith. His 12-year-old daughter, Katerina, was home alone. He couldn’t understand why she didn’t answer.

It was May 22, 1997, two years after Konev, a Macedonian, had arrived in England with his family as refugees from the ethnic war in the Balkans.

They were all learning English together—wife Zaklina; son Christian, 6, and daughter Katerina, a lovely and lively adolescent with long, sable-colored hair, a bright smile and eyes the color of mahogany.

Konev was studying at a local college and had been delayed by an exam.

“I raced home fast on my bicycle, because it was the first time my daughter was alone in the house after school,” he would later explain. “I expected everything to be all right.”

But it was not all right. She wasn’t answering.

“At first I thought, ‘Katerina may be changing her clothes,’ and waited a few seconds,” he said.

Konev peered through the keyhole and saw Katerina’s school bag on the floor. He then dropped to his knees and looked under the door.

“I saw two men’s black shoes,” he said. “I was shocked. I knew she was there … I knew something was wrong.”

Konev banged his shoulder into the door to no effect, so he ran around the house — just in time to find a strange man climbing out a window.

“We came face to face,” Konev said. “I noticed one small drop of blood on the left side of his face…He was staring at me. I asked him, ‘What are you doing in my house?’ He was just so calm. He didn’t say anything. He just looked at me and ran away. I went after him.”

“Help Me!”

Konev chased the intruder for a few blocks, but the man managed to turn the tables by hollering for help just as Konev had him in his clutches.

Two workmen interceded and ordered Konev to back off.

The attacker ran on and jumped in front of a Fiat. The driver, Christina Kearney, said he hollered, “Help me, help me, call the police!”

He suddenly brandished a knife, ordered Kearney out of the car and sped off.

Meanwhile, instead of trying to explain the situation to the workmen with his limited English, Konev ran back home, pausing to ring a police alarm.

He broke through a chair barricading the door and found young Katerina unconscious on the floor.

She had been choked with a piece of cord cut from a Virgin Atlantic flight bag that Katerina used to tote her books.

The garrote was so taut that Konev could not release it with his hands. He got a knife and cut the cord from his daughter’s throat.

“I started to cry and shout her name — ‘Katerina! Katerina!’” Konev said.

A policeman arrived and tried to revive the girl. It was futile. She was beyond saving.

Case Goes Cold

In a cruel twist, Trajce Konev became the initial suspect in the murder.

Police doubted his story about chasing off an attacker, and he was ordered confined while detectives investigated.

Zaklina Konev arrived at the police station to find Trajce behind bars wearing a prisoner’s overalls.

She jumped to conclusions — perhaps understandably.

“What have you done to our little girl?” Zaklina demanded.

“I remember just banging my head from wall to wall in my cell,” Trajce Konev later said. “I couldn’t believe what was happening. They must have thought I was a madman. They thought I had killed my Katerina.”

He was quickly cleared on evidence that included the eyewitness accounts, a security camera videotape that showed him chasing the suspect, and fingerprints found on the window the attacker had climbed through.

Police found another clue that would prove crucial: A single strange hair on Katerina’s sweater.

The investigation revealed that the same man who killed Katerina had earlier stalked three other adolescents in Hammersmith. Each girl had long, dark hair, like Katerina.

Detectives surmised he followed the girl home, made sure she was alone, then knocked. Katerina opened the door, probably assuming it was her father.

It seemed a simple crime to solve, with both forensic and eyewitness evidence. But the investigation went nowhere.

The killer seemed to have disappeared amid the 7 million people of London.

But he was hiding in plain sight and, in fact, had been in and out of police custody within a month of the murder.

Forensic evidence alone cannot bring criminals to justice. Competent investigators use the evidence as to solve crimes.

Unfortunately for Katerina Konev’s loved ones, competence went lacking in this case, despite the sterling reputation of London’s Metropolitan Police.

But the murderer was accustomed to law enforcement incompetence. He had benefited from bungling bureaucrats from one end of Europe to the other.

The killer would prove to be a native of Poland named Andrezej Kunowski, whose career as a rapist would span 30 years.

Mama’s Boy

Kunowski was born Andrezej Klembert in Warsaw in 1956, just after the signing of the Warsaw Pact enshrouded Poland behind the Iron Curtain.

He was the only child of parents of questionable character; they stole anything they could get their hands on. As a result, Kunowski had a troubled boyhood, according to Dan Newling of London’s Daily Mail newspaper.

At age 2, he was sent off to an orphanage because his mother, father and maternal grandmother were all in prison. To boot, his grandfather was locked up in a state psychiatric hospital for unspecified sexual offenses.

When Elzbieta Klembert was released, she reclaimed her son, divorced her husband, and married a cement mason, Stephan Kunowski.

The family settled in Mlawa, a gritty city of 30,000 in the Polish lowlands 80 miles north of Warsaw that was known for producing shoes, milk and meat.

Mlawa had a troubling history.

During World War II, as many as 7,000 Jews from Mlawa were exterminated. When a handful of Jewish survivors limped home in 1946, they were aghast to find that Mlawa’s Poles had excavated graves in the Jewish cemetery and removed gold teeth, jewelry and other valuables from the corpses, which were then left to rot in piles.

The hatred of Jews was so intense there that a memorial to Holocaust victims in Mlawa was destroyed by Poles again and again after the war. And ethnic hostility persists. In 1991, Mlawa’s men launched a pogrom against Gypsies in the city.

Growing up in Mlawa in the 1960s, young Andrezej was viewed as a mama’s boy. And when other children teased him, Kunowski reacted with a ferocity that seemed out of proportion to the insult.

He was a small child with mighty fists. During fights, Andrezej would throttle his foes with a bear-claw grip until they cried uncle.

He also developed a habit of ogling pretty girls with a frightening glint in his eye, as though in a trance. Elzbieta expressed concerned that her son seemed unable to recall these episodes of fighting or inappropriate staring.

Andrezej also began to steal as his teen years arrived. Perhaps it was genetic. In any case, at age 13 he was packed away to a facility for delinquent juveniles, where his various problems were allowed to fester.

The Little Doctor

Andrezej Kunowski began attacking girls and women soon after he was released from juvenile detention.

From the outset, he seemed to be the most frightening type of sexual predator. His attacks did not stem from an occasional random impulse. They were compulsive, coming in clusters.

Most of his victims were in their teens and early 20s. The oldest victim was 41, although most of his more mature targets seemed younger than their actual age. He assaulted at least three 11-year-olds.

His standard MO was to stalk a pretty adolescent girl after school. If she was a latchkey child without after-school supervision, he would break in and attack her.

In other cases, victims were dragged off into bushes or remote fields.

Kunowski’s attacks were based on sheer strength. He was a brute, not a suave seducer, in the manner of, say, American serial killer Ted Bundy.

He certainly did not have Bundy’s good looks. Kunowski was balding, round and just 5-foot-4. He often wore a toupee and elevator heels to try to disguise his shortcomings.

The Daily Mail’s Newley reported that Kunowski dressed himself fastidiously, with shirts carefully tucked in and shoes shined to a high gloss. He doused himself in cologne.

Kunowski had an oddly formal, Old World demeanor, bowing and clicking his heels when making a new acquaintance. His nickname was “maly doktor”—the Little Doctor.

Numbing Attacks

Kunowski wasn’t a clever criminal. But he didn’t need to be smart, as his rap sheet and prison record display.

His first reported rape came in June 1973, when he accosted a neighbor girl in Mlawa. He dragged her into the bushes and forced himself on her. The victim was acquainted with Kunowski and readily identified him as her attacker.

Two other teenagers stepped forward to accuse him in similar attacks, but he was prosecuted for just the one case and sent to prison for three years.

On July 16, 1977, a month after his parole, he struck again, attacking a girlish-looking 24-year-old. He choked the woman until she lost consciousness and likely would have killed her had witnesses not intervened.

He spent less than nine months in jail after that attack, then went on a violent tear, traveling back and forth between Mlawa and Warsaw to find victims.

On April 12, 1978, he attempted to rape a 22-year-old woman who fought him off. Later the same day, he succeeded in raping a 27-year-old.

On June 23, he robbed and raped a 22-year-old woman, dragging her into bushes. Eight days later he raped a 16-year-old, followed by the rape of a 12-year-old on July 21.

Kunowski’s violent urges seem to ramp after those attacks. Most of his rapes after July 1978 involved choking. He often left his victims unconsciousness, although none died.

Experts recognize choking and strangulation as a singular form of criminal pathology. It is considered the most intimate variety of assault or murder — more personal and hands-on than the use of a gun or a knife. And it gives the assailant an unparalleled sense of domination and control.

On Aug. 4, Kunowski choked and raped a 19-year-old, then pulled identical crimes against a 22-year-old a week later; a 20-year-old on Sept. 6; a 17-year-old just two days later, and another 17-year-old on Sept. 20.

In October 1978, he raped, robbed and choked at least four women in one week—ages 17, 20, 28 and 30. He accosted four more women and girls in November, ages 19, 21, 15 and 11—the latter his youngest victim yet.

He raped and choked a 16-year-old on Dec. 14, then victimized another 11-year-old three days before Christmas.

On Jan. 25, 1979, Kunowski stole a car that he used for a rampage of sexual violence the next day.

One Jan. 26, he robbed and attempted to strangle a 41-year-old woman; robbed and groped a 36-year-old woman, then raped, robbed and choked a 20-year-old woman.

Brief Jail Stay

At long last, Polish police caught up with him and returned him to jail. But his sexual assaults continued even there.

On Feb. 24, he forced a male cellmate to perform oral sex, then raped another cellmate on March 1.

It seemed remarkable enough that Polish authorities had failed to suspect and arrest Kunowski, a twice-convicted rapist, during his string of assaults. But the country’s criminal justice incompetence was merely beginning.

Kunowski somehow escaped from Polish prison on April 25, 1979. Six weeks later, he raped a 13-year-old girl he followed home from school.

He was arrested the next day and returned to prison but escaped yet again that August. He committed more attacks before he was rearrested.

Finally, he faced justice for his long list of crimes, which included 17 sexual assaults and eight attempted rapes.

The prosecutor, Waldemar Smarzewski, sought a long sentence, recognizing that Kunowski had little chance of reform.

“There were about 70 charges, made up of rapes, attempted rapes, lechery with children, endangering a child’s life and attempted murder,” Smarzewski told the Daily Mail. “This was a very important and dangerous case because of the number of victims and what he did to them. I wanted to put him away for longer because he was very dangerous. I was sure that if he left prison, he would go back to rape and maybe even kill.”

Kunowski was sentenced to a total of 30 years. Finally, it seemed that Polish women and children would be saved from him.

But revolution interceded.

When the Communist regime was routed in Poland in 1989, the opening of prison doors became fashionable.

Andrezej Kunowski was one of those who benefited. He was freed for good behavior in 1991, after serving less than six years for attacking 23 women and girls and two men.

After his release, Kunowski married and fathered a daughter. He found work as a cosmetics salesman, and he seemed to reform for most of a year.

But as always, his compulsion got the best of him.

He Walks Again

On Aug. 12, 1992, he raped another 11-year-old girl in Mlawa, then moved to Warsaw, where he raped two more adolescents. He was arrested in 1993, but escaped prison yet again and was on the lam for two years.

In March 1995, the Little Doctor is believed to have abducted Agnieszka Grzybicka, 14, who disappeared while walking home from school in Mlawa.

Two months later, he was arrested in Warsaw in connection with two attacks that occurred on consecutive days — both against adolescent girls who, like young Agnieszka, were followed home from school.

As he awaited trial, Kunowski began filing medical complaints about persistent pain in his left hip. X-rays showed no problem, but doctors finally acquiesced in his insistence that he be scheduled for hip-replacement surgery.

Perhaps no one was more stunned than Kunowski when, in June 1996, Polish authorities announced that he would be freed on a medical furlough to await the operation.

It turned out Kunowski’s hip was not bad enough to deter him from running from justice.

He sold his apartment and used the profits to buy a fake Polish passport. He then boarded a bus in Warsaw and was waved through border security checks across northern Europe, through Germany and Belgium and into Calais, France, where he boarded a ferry that crossed the Strait of Dover to England.

On Oct. 15, 1996, he arrived by bus at London’s Victoria Coach Station on Buckingham Palace Road.

No one would have noticed him.

Each day, more than 300,000 people pass through Victoria, a bustling amalgam of bus, train and Underground stations.

Then as now, Polish nationals poured into London each day on tourist visas to look for work. Kunowski blended right in.

When Polish authorities realized that Kunowski had left, they issued an international warrant through Interpol. His photograph and fingerprints were made available via Interpol’s crime database to its 125 member countries — the United Kingdom among them.

But Kunowski was not fingerprinted when he arrived in the United Kingdom, so British authorities had no way of knowing that a notorious sex fiend had arrived there.

He had a clean slate to find new victims in a fresh country.

Medical Benefits

The attack on Katerina Konev, 219 days after Kunowski arrived in England, had not gone as he planned.

First, Kunowski had been interrupted by the arrival of the child’s father. The Little Doctor had to abort the assault before reaching the sick sexual gratification he got from throttling children.

And the close contact with witnesses — including Trajce Konev, the two workmen, and Christina Kearney, owner of the hijacked car — placed him at peril of being identified.

He lived in Acton, just a few miles from the scene of the crime in Hammersmith. He assumed — incorrectly — that these clues might soon lead Scotland Yard’s finest to the door of his flat.

He decided to get out of town.

The day after the murder, Kunowski gave up his room in Acton and fled to the countryside, taking a job at a strawberry farm in Ledbury, west of London.

But stealing, his genetic Achilles heel, cost him the job after just a month.

The Birmingham Sunday Mercury said he was accused of filching cash from the office at Siddington Farms.

“He was a bit of a strange one — a loner, I suppose,” said farm manager Glyn Lewis. “We had hundreds of different workers on the farm, but he always stuck out in my mind.”

He was arrested for theft, but Britain dropped that charge and focused on deportation when it learned that he was in the country illegally. After first claiming Portuguese citizenship, Kunowski admitted he was a Pole.

He had one last gambit: Kunowski applied for asylum under an economic hardship. While his application was being considered, he was allowed to walk free, once again.

His petition was denied in the fall of 1997. But by then, Kunowski had gotten lost in London.

He hadn’t even been fingerprinted after his arrest, let alone subjected to a DNA swabbing.

Tragic Bungling

In 1998, British immigration authorities received a letter from Kunowski saying that he had returned to Poland. It was postmarked from Poland, but likely had been sent by Kunowski’s mother.

Immigration officials continued to list Kunowski as “missing,” although there was no active attempt to find him.

It couldn’t have been too difficult. The Little Doctor likely never left London.

The evidence was at hand in automobile and apartment rental records. He owned a Renault automobile that he kept registered and insured. And his mother traveled from Poland to visit him in his Acton apartment at least three times in the late 1990s.

In 2001, British taxpayers treated the wanted illegal immigrant to heart bypass at Hammersmith Hospital, located a block from the apartment where he strangled Katerina Konev.

In July 2002, Kunowski was arrested for collecting welfare benefits under the name Jose Marco da Dias. But again he was released before anyone made a connection to the Konev killing or his history as a sexual predator in Poland.

Conviction & Sentence

Another crime finally brought him down.

On Sept. 22, 2002, Kunowski was loitering in the London Underground station at Ealing Broadway, probably looking for potential victims.

He spotted a young woman, a recent arrival from Korea who looked younger than her 21 years.

Kunowski moved close enough to see that she was looking at advertisements of rooms for rent.

He struck up a conversation with the woman, whose English was even more halting than his.

Kunowski explained that he could help her find a cheap room at his boarding house in Acton, and she agreed to accompany him there.

Once inside his room, Kunowski attacked. He tied the woman up and subjected her to a brutal three-hour rape.

She said he choked her until she nearly passed out. She talked her way to freedom by promising to phone Kunowski the next day to schedule another visit.

As noted, he wasn’t a clever criminal.

Instead, the victim went to police, and Kunowski was arrested and charged with rape.

At trial in May 2003 at London’s Old Bailey, Kunowski claimed the sex was consensual — a “thank you” because he helped her find a place to stay.

The judge dismissed his alibi as absurd, and Kunowski was convicted and sentenced to nine years.

But even then, the British had no reason to believe that Kunowski was a serial rapist and murderer.

Only after the conviction did the extent of his predation — and the government bungling that allowed him to attack again and again — become clear.

DNA Finally Shared

After he was sent to prison, Kunowski’s identity and DNA profile were shared with other countries via the Interpol database.

Through that data, Polish authorities realized that the British convict was the serial rapist who had absconded while on medical furlough.

Scotland Yard compared its DNA sample from Kunowski with DNA from swab evidence taken after the 1995 rape of one of the adolescent girls in Warsaw. It matched.

The match prompted British police to begin looking at unsolved attacks on adolescent girls there.

Within days, both DNA and fingerprint evidence linked Andrezej Kunowski, at long last, to the murder of Katerina Konev.

He was charged in that case on July 29, 2003.

Kunowski claimed it was a case of mistaken identity.

But the damning physical evidence was coupled with eyewitness testimony from Trajce Konev, the victim of the auto theft and others.

A jury of eight men and four women took less than three hours to render a guilty verdict — even though jurors were denied access to information about Kunowski’s long history of attacks.

The British press, too, learned only at trial’s end the extent of his history of rape and the government bungles.

As Detective Chief Inspector David Little put it, “He is probably the most dangerous sex offender I have ever come across and certainly the most prolific.”

The press gave the Little Doctor a new nickname: the Beast of Poland.

Judge Peter Beaumont handed down the maximum sentence of life in prison.

“I would be failing in my duty, in the light of the evidence about your behavior both in Poland and this country,” Beaumont said, “if I did not ensure you spend the rest of your life in prison. …You took the life of a child who was just beginning to enjoy what this country had to offer her and her family as refugees from hardship abroad. It was a life of great promise. You ended it in circumstances of great violence and terror.”

“Matter of Concern”

The British Home Office admitted it was a “matter of concern” that Kunowski had not been unmasked as a wanted man years before.

Asylum-seekers are now fingerprinted and scrutinized through Interpol, although British law still does not mandate DNA testing of illegal immigrants.

But Inspector Little defended the British criminal justice system.

He said Kunowski managed to slip through the cracks because he was, as an illegal alien, invisible to the British criminal justice system.

“If the person doesn’t exist,” he said, “you can’t bring him to justice.’

Little said Kunowski has now been scrutinized in connection with numerous other unsolved rapes and murders of women.

And although he has not been definitively linked to any additional cases, Little said Kunowski’s criminal history leaves not doubt that he was likely responsible for many other sex crimes during his time in Britain.

“When he wasn’t incarcerated, he was committing offenses,” Little said.

Reaction from Poland

The Polish government has said that it would like to prosecute Kunowski should he ever be freed in Britain.

But it is unlikely the U.K. would turn him over to the country that bungled his incarceration and prosecution so many times.

“I knew he would strike again,” said Waldemar Smarzewski, the Polish prosecutor. “He should remain behind bars for the rest of his life. I am sorry this psychopath ever came to Britain.”

His mother, Elzbieta Kunowski, defended her son in an interview with the Daily Mail.

“He is ill, not evil,” she said. “He needs proper medical and psychological care. … He is my son and I love him.”

She said they talk often by phone, and her son always praises the British penal system’s good food and good medical care.

If his left hip is getting achy, he hadn’t mentioned it.

Lives Ruined

The murder of Katerina Konev left her family devastated and embittered.

In a statement at Kunowski’s sentencing, Zaklina Konev said, “I find it impossible to understand how he was allowed into the UK to commit this crime. … I hope that this evil murderer burns in hell. Knowing he is in prison is not enough for me. I hope he suffers every minute of the rest of his life.”

The child’s parents split up in 2000, four years after the murder.

Trajce Konev said they could not overcome the barrier created when his wife, seeing him in jail, accused him of murdering their daughter.

“I had lost my little girl, but my wife was attacking me, and my 6-year-old son was looking up at me with hate in his eyes,” he told reporters.

“Things were never the same. The anger and hate afterwards was unbearable,” he said. “I would argue all the time with my wife. It was small things that would set us off — anything which reminded us of the pain of losing Katerina. I frequently told my wife I hated her. It was awful. I felt like I had gone mad with grief … Finally we could take no more of each other and we split up.”

Konev, a Web site designer, said he attempted suicide but has resolved to live for the sake of his son, now a teenager.

Zaklina Konev says grief hangs like a dark cloud over their lives.

She said she buys gifts for her daughter at Christmastime, and she carries on imaginary conversations with the dead child.

“I talk to her every day,” she said. “We say goodnight to our children, don’t we? So I always say goodnight to my daughter.”

The child’s father, meanwhile, said he drew solace from Kunowski’s conviction.

“I had finally beaten the devil,” said Trajce Konev. “I knew this man could never again do to anyone else what he had done to my angel.”