The Serial Killer Who Caused the Biggest Media Sensation in Hungary
By: Akos Peterbencze
Tags: Murder, True Crime, Psychology, Serial Killers, Crime

After his family’s death, Szabo lived alone on his farm. In order to make a living, besides regular land work, he often went hunting in the nearby woods without permission. He was frequently hiding from the authorities, but they never caught him.

A few years later, he found himself a girlfriend called Krisztina, who moved in with him. According to the locals, Szabo treated the young girl as a personal slave. If she earned any money, he took the cash from her and gambled it all. He was repeatedly abusing her. One day he boarded up all the windows and doors to prevent Krisztina from escaping. He locked her inside the house and gave her food through a small window like she was a prisoner.

Choosing Prey

In 1993, a teenage girl was cycling home from school when Szabo lured her into woods and raped her. The teenager’s family was so frightened of the man’s possible retaliation that they had decided not to report the crime.

After 1995, immigration from Romania increased in the region, and Szabo saw that as an opportunity to make money. He started organizing seasonal work and accommodation for the immigrants.

When the Yugoslavian Civil War ended, the freight traffic through Southern Hungary significantly expanded. That caused the appearance of certain criminals mostly involved with prostitution. More hookers turned up day after day on the highway.

The local police began receiving amounts of reports about young girls that went missing. After a while, they treated every disappearance the same way: they assumed that these girls were foreign prostitutes who ran away from home or their pimps trying to start a new life abroad. That’s what they suspected about Judit Almasy’s case, too, but that’s not what happened.

The First Murder

Almasy and her boyfriend purchased an old farm in Balastya that needed refurbishing. They quickly got to know Szabo because he lived just a short walk away from them. Almasy had found a job in a local bar. After finishing her first shift on April 18, 1998, she was driving home when bumped into Szabo. He convinced her to come to his ranch by offering an amount of wood the couple could’ve used as material for the refurbishment.

When they arrived at his farm, Szabo hit her with a heavy object (supposedly a hammer), and she died due to severe head injury. After the murder, Szabo undressed the victim, dragged her corpse about fifty meters away from his place, dug a hole, and buried the naked body with her clothes.

Murder on Repeat

It only took about three months until Szabo found his next victim. The circumstances were strangely identical: on July 16, Jege Szabo Bernadett was walking home from the bar where she worked and bumped into Szabo. He talked her into going home with him, and upon arrival, he hit the girl on the head multiple times. She died instantly.

Following his former routine, Szabo undressed the victim, dug a hole, and buried the bartender with her clothes. There was one main difference to the previous killing, though: when the police had found the corpse a few years later, her head was missing. They had never discovered it.

Heinous Act

A month later, Szabo targeted his next prey. On August 25, he walked up to the E5 highway, where the prostitutes worked usually. In a parking lot, he started talking to Monika Kovacs and persuaded her to walk back with him to his farm. They never made it to the place as Szabo strangled the prostitute with a rope in the woods. However, that wasn’t the evilest act he committed that night.

After she was killed, he dragged her body away to the nearby train tracks, place it on the railway, and covered it with leaves and branches. Three trains ran through the corpse and smashed it to pieces. The dead body was unrecognizable. Szabo later confessed to the murder in his testimony.

The Fourth Murder

Terezia Kallai grew up in an orphanage with Szabo’s girlfriend, Krisztina. She knew him well, in fact, in February 2000, she stayed with the couple at the farm for a few weeks.

In the summer, Szabo convinced her to go with him to an orchard and steal fire hoses from the adjoined ranch. The woman liked the plan, and one night she has decided to go with her killer. He strangled her with a cord, undressed the dead body, and buried it. Her clothes were never located.

The Fifth Murder and the Downfall

Hajnalka Szanka was a female cell phone dealer who knew Szabo from before. In August 2001, he told her that he acquired several cheap cell phones that he’s willing to sell her for the right price. To make a deal, Szanka withdrew 305 000 forints (approximately $995) from the bank and drove to the man’s house. Of course, the killer had no phones. Upon her arrival, Szabo strangled Szanka with a rope, took her money, and buried her body about a hundred meters away from his farm.

He hid the woman’s motorbike and belongings in a nearby ranch for six months. According to his testimony, he threw the small bike and other evidence into a water hole.

At the time, the authorities were monitoring the disappearances when the phone dealer went missing. They searched through her call lists, and after six months, they found Szabo’s number and called him in for questioning. Confronted by circumstantial evidence, he broke under pressure and confessed to the murder of Szanka.

The following morning, police searched through Szabo’s farm and found the dead body.

Intoxicating Fame

After his testimony, Szabo found himself on the front page of every newspaper, and all the national television channels reported his slayings. As soon as he tasted fame, he enjoyed it vigorously. He confessed to the murders of Jega Szabo Bernadett and Almasy Judit. When he admitted killing Terezia Kallai, the police were seeking the body for more than six weeks. At that time, Szabo felt like a superstar.

Eventually, the corpses from his testimonies were located, but no remnants of other murders were found. However, the prosecution suspected him of murdering at least five women.

As the media’s attention faded, Szabo changed strategy and began giving controversial statements to confuse the authorities. The local chief officer offered him 500 000 forints ($1600) for revealing the location of other victims, but Szabo didn’t take the bait. In the end, he withdrew all of his testimonies and stopped talking to the police and the press.

Sentencing

In November 2003, the court had found Zoltan Szabo guilty of all four murders and sentenced him to life imprisonment. However, they couldn’t find any evidence that his murders involved sexual aberration, and there was no mention of other despicable reasons in the judgment either. The prosecution stated that his murders were committed for monetary purposes.

For lack of evidence, he wasn’t charged for the murder of the prostitute, Monika Kovacs.

Conspiracies Say “There Were More”

According to local farmers, Szabo murdered a lot more women (mainly prostitutes) than he initially admitted. Rumors said that he had accomplices, and people claimed that there was a criminal gang (with 10–15 members) being responsible for many disappearances among other crimes in the area. However, no evidence was found to confirm these allegations. In his testimonies, Szabo gave vague hints about other possible murderers and accomplices.

According to a few detectives who worked on the case, for most of the missing prostitutes — and the mysterious disappearance of a Romanian family — Szabo was responsible. These speculations had never been confirmed.