Kish, Bela

Information about the early life of Bela Kish is quite small. Born in the family of Janos Kisch and Verona Varga. It is known that he worked as a tinsmith in one of the suburbs of Budapest (now this suburb is located within the city) since 1900. He was twice married and had two daughters. The neighbors had a good opinion of him, considering him a generous, well-mannered and erudite person (although he had no systematic education). Nevertheless, they nevertheless noted some oddities in his behavior: besides the fact that he was interested in occultism and astrology, he kept at home many metal barrels with unknown contents. This seemed suspicious to the local police, but Kish explained to them that he was holding a supply of gas in these barrels in case of war. By that time (early 1910s), it was already clear that a major war could soon begin in Europe, so the police found this explanation plausible. Kish was drafted into the army and sent to the front in 1914, shortly after the outbreak of World War I. At that time he was 37 years old. In 1915, a notification was received at his residence that he was captured and died of typhus in the city of Valevo on February 5, 1915.

In July 1916, the owner of the house in which Bela Kish lived, decided to get rid of the things of his tenant, whom he had already considered dead for a long time. When he tried to open one of the metal barrels found among Kish’s belongings, he smelled badly. One of his neighbors turned out to be a chemist who confirmed that it was most likely the smell of decomposition. The barrel was opened in the presence of a police inspector, who inside her found the body of a young woman embalmed with wood alcohol, and a piece of rope with which she was strangled. An autopsy of the remaining six barrels found in the house yielded similar results, after which the police began a search of the entire house and the land around it. A total of 24 female corpses were found, all embalmed and well-preserved (even those that were found in the ground). The skin on the necks of some of them was damaged, which suggested that the killer could drink the blood of his victims.

A secret room was also opened in the house, in which Bela Kish never let anyone in. It found a large amount of literature on poisons and methods of strangulation, as well as a photo album with photographs of more than 100 women, and a large number of letters arranged in 74 packages (one package for each recipient). After analyzing the correspondence, it turned out that Kish, starting in 1903, had been posting dating ads in newspapers, to which a total of 174 women had responded. Of these, he selected those who did not have relatives nearby and whose disappearance could go unnoticed for a long time - a total of 74. Then, using the classic tricks of a marriage swindler, he convinced them to send him money (in some cases, almost all the savings that were at the victim), after which the women went missing. All this, of course, could not go completely unnoticed by Kish's neighbors - who, however, did not suspect anything and considered it quite natural that a good-looking and pleasant man was successful in women.

On October 4, 1916, a message arrived from the hospital in Valevo that Bela Kish did not actually die in 1915, but was still alive and is still in the hospital. Police arrived immediately, but Kish had already disappeared by that time, and another soldier was found dead in his bunk. He was immediately put on the wanted list throughout Austria-Hungary, but it did not give any results - including because the surname “Kiss” was very common, as well as completely in tune with the popular nickname “Kis” (“small” ; an interesting fact is that the name of the inspector in charge of the Kish investigation was Nagy, which means "big.") Various rumors circulated about his subsequent fate - for example, that he was convicted of burglary in Romania, or died of yellow fever in Turkey - but they were not supported by any evidence.

In 1920, a soldier of the French Foreign Legion reported to the police about one of the legionnaires, similar in description to Bela Kish, and who took the name “Hoffman” when he entered the Legion service (Kish used the same pseudonym in his correspondence with victims). As in the previous case, the Hoffman defected before the police could interrogate him.

In 1932, a New York investigator, Henry Oswald, known for his “photographic” facial memory, confidently stated that he had seen Bela Kish, who stepped out of the subway into Times Square and was immediately lost in the crowd. In 1936, 4 years after this incident, a rumor spread that one of the janitors working in New York was actually Kish (at that time his age should already have been around 60 years old). Based on Oswald’s testimony, the police took these rumors seriously. But when the police arrived to interrogate the janitor, it turned out that he disappeared without a trace. No more reports of observing people like Kish have been reported. The last official mention of Kish is a newspaper article in Nyírvidék - Szabolcsi Hírlap of August 18, 1939, reporting that the warrant for his arrest was extended.

• Greig, Charlotte "Evil Serial Killers: In the Minds of Monsters". New York: Barnes & Noble, 2005. ISBN 0-7607-7566-4 .
• Georgy Zotov, Tiergarten. AST Publishing House, 2018. ISBN 978-5-17-101237-3 .

• Bela Kish. Prologue ( Bela Kiss: Prologue , 2013) is a film by the German director Lucien Förstner, based on the story of Bela Kisch.

• The Crimes of Bela Kiss