World's Most Evil Killers - Season 3, Episode 1 - Karol Kot - Full Episode | Forensic Files

-February the 13th, 1966, Kraków, Poland -- Children were out sledging, but 19-year-old Karol Kot was looking
for a very different kind of thrill. -This is somebody who chose to do evil. He knew the difference between right and wrong,
and yet he chose to harm others anyway. -Kot spotted an 11-year-old boy walking alone
and approached him. -Press called him a vampire and a beast. People were really, really afraid.
-Spurred by an insatiable lust for blood, Kot grabbed the boy and drove his bayonet
into the child's chest repeatedly. ♪♪ He stabbed the boy 11 times, puncturing every vital organ.
-Kot killed as a schoolboy. At the age of 21, he had already stood trial for two counts of murder,
10 counts of attempted murder. -The perverse pleasure he derived from harming the most vulnerable of victims
make Karol Kot one of the world's most evil killers. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Kraków, Southern Poland --
Beginning in 1964, a young man called Karol Kot developed a lust for blood that earned him the moniker the Vampire of Kraków.
♪♪ He would terrify the city for the next two years. -Kot was, without question,
one of the world's most evil killers, not least because he killed all his victims
while, effectively, a schoolboy. -He was completely lacking in remorse, and he was so young.
To completely lack a conscious, to be a kind of fully formed killer before he's even age 20
is really shocking. -Still at school, Karol Kot had killed two people -- an 11-year-old boy at a sledging competition
and an 86-year-old woman as she prayed. ♪♪ Kot had attempted to kill at least a dozen more.
Fascinated by the sinister story, Marta wrote a book on Kot. -Women were afraid to go out to church anymore.
If they were going to church, some of them were putting, like, some metal balls or other objects like pillows
and attaching them to their backs, so they can protect themselves. -Coroner Tomasz Konopka
closely studied the Karol Kot case. -[ Speaking Polish ] -Only two people died as a result
of Karol Kot's activity, but the way he killed, his approach towards murder, was unique.
♪♪ Killing gave him pleasure. -One of the characteristics of Karol Kot was that after he would kill,
he took great pleasure in licking the knife and tasting the blood. This aspect of the vampirism
is something that has made his crimes sufficiently unique. ♪♪ -This killer's story begins
a little over 70 years ago. Karol Kot was born in Kraków in Southern Poland on December the 18th, 1946,
to a middle-class family. On the surface, their home life seemed happy and healthy.
-His father worked as an engineer. His mother was a stay-at-home mum, and they were quite that, a respectable family.
-It was like a good, loving family. His mother didn't work, especially for him, so he didn't have to go to preschool,
and he was raised in a Jewish quarter of Kraków. ♪♪ -But when Karol Kot was 8 years old,
his sister was born. -I think that really did unsettle him quite a lot because he's been used to being the center of attention
for eight years. He feels that she's the favored one, and whether or not that's true,
and often when we look at dynamics in families, it's not what parents are doing or not doing.
It's how children are perceiving that, so I think he felt pushed out. I think he felt slighted right from the beginning.
-[ Speaking Polish ] -Later, Karol Kot said that his parents loved her more than him.
He said that's why he abused her. He tried to introduce a military order at home.
-I think Kot's relationship with his sister is a warning sign, and this was the beginning, I think,
of a process for Kot, a process of expressing himself in a dysfunctional way when things weren't going as he wanted them to go,
and it's one that escalates slowly over time. -Another sign that all was not well with the boy
was his cruelty to animals. -They had two cats in the house, and he was, like, treating the cats badly.
He was throwing them at the walls, things like that. -Often, when we look back at the childhoods
of serial killers, we see some form of harm, some form of abuse towards animals,
and this is something that individuals do to maintain some control because they have feelings of trauma, of anxiety,
of basically feeling slighted, of feeling left out. -On family holidays, to the village of Pcim,
30 miles south of Kraków, Kot developed an unnatural passion. -He developed a fascination with slaughterhouses.
On holiday, he would go with his parents and ask to go to the slaughterhouse. Now, this is quite unusual
in a young man of 10, 11, 12. ♪♪ -And that's when he understood that he loves blood.
He's fascinated with blood. He was talking about it like... He noticed that blood is still warm.
It was alive just a moment ago, and it's... that it was something very special for him.
-One of the most extraordinary incidents when he was in the slaughterhouse was the slaughtermen drained blood into a cup
and passed it to him for him to drink. They thought this boy would simply freak out.
He did exactly the opposite. He drank the blood, which, in turn, freaked them out.
-Here's a child who goes on family holidays to the countryside, and what do normal children do?
What are they interested in? They're interested in playing, running through the woods,
maybe picking flowers, right, swimming if it's possible. But what does Karol Kot want to do?
He wants to slice up an animal, and he wants to drink the animal's blood, and he wants to do it in front of people,
and he wants them to be entertained by it or amazed by it. This is extraordinarily rare behavior.
-At the same time, young Karol Kot develops a disturbing fetish. -He said that knife was, like, his biggest love
he can think of. He was admiring the knife. He actually can speak in surprisingly
sophisticated language about knives. -Kot's rare obsession would soon prove deadly.
-This is a weapon. This is something that he can use to threaten other people, and carrying a knife makes him feel important.
It makes him feel powerful. -Later, he was sort of thinking, "How does it feel to put knife into a human body?"
but he didn't have the courage, so he started hurting small animals, at first, and he noticed that the blood affects him.
It makes him excited. -While at school, Kot joined a target-shooting club, where he met a girl, Danuta,
that he became obsessed with. She was 6 years older than Karol. -They became, like, friends,
but from his side, I think this relationship looked a bit different. I think she treated him as a friend,
and he was in love. -It wouldn't surprise me if this relationship wasn't one of equals
because I think here, we've got a young lad who has difficulty relating to other people.
He doesn't have those social skills. -In a twisted bid to impress Danuta, Kot revealed to her some of his sadistic fantasies
and cruel acts he had committed. -I suspect she finds him cute. She's sure the stories are untrue or made up,
but she's just not excited by them. And in some ways, that's exactly what Kot needs.
He needs somebody who can hear his craziness, who he can brag to, who he can story-tell to,
who he can relive with and not have them screaming bloody murder. -On a shooting club outing,
the young Kot could not contain his violent urges. -After having told her that he's this person,
he attempts to prove it to her by attacking her and even starting to strangle her.
-[ Speaking Polish ] -He attacked her. He pulled out a piece of broken glass from his pocket.
He told her he wanted to cut her wrists and throw her into the river, so it would look like a suicide.
-This is, basically, his frustrations because he can't get what he wants, and the only way that he knows to get what he wants,
based on his past experience, is to be violent, is to be abusive, is to be manipulative,
but it doesn't quite work with Danuta. ♪♪ -She responds in a very interesting way.
She laughs. She doesn't take it seriously and tells him, in essence, "Well, you know everyone knows that we're together today,
so if you kill me, you'll definitely be caught," and he stops. What you have to be impressed with
is the woman herself because her momentary psychological sophistication probably saved her life.
-But on September the 21st, 1964, the 17-year-old schoolboy felt compelled to attack a stranger
for the first time. ♪♪ -Karol Kot was describing that day. The urge of killing was so incredible
that he just couldn't calm down, and he started to walk across the town with a knife,
and then he felt that he will settle for some lonely woman in a church, and he went to one of the churches,
and he was waiting. -Kot later said he was about to leave when 76-year-old Helene entered a church
in the center of the city to pray. -[ Speaking Polish ] -He took out a German military bayonet from the sheath,
and he stabbed her in the back. -He stabbed her just, like, once in her back, trying to reach the heart
from the back. -When someone is stabbed, they will describe the feeling as if they've been punched.
You don't necessarily get that sharp feeling you might imagine, and that would be a surprise.
It would be a shock. It would be unpleasant. -It's only when there's blood coming out
that they realize what's going on, so in the moments, in this blitz attack, I think perhaps this victim
didn't really understand what was going on. -Remarkably, the 76-year-old woman survived.
-To stab someone to the back, you are primarily looking at damage to the heart, damage to the lungs,
and that certainly can be lethal, but it's not usually instantly fatal. -[ Speaking Polish ]
-The woman didn't realize that this had happened. She probably didn't feel any pain.
It was only after she left that she realized when she went to a shop, and someone told her
that her clothes were bloodstained. ♪♪ -The interesting thing about the first attack is,
it shows you how naive he is. His stabbing behavior doesn't have a chance at killing anyone.
He doesn't understand, really, how you kill somebody, right? So he's like he's exploring it.
It's like he rushes in. He stabs. He waits for something to happen. He thinks magic is going to happen.
Blood is going to be everywhere, and he's going to have a dead body. -But the schoolboy's bloody intent
was far from blunted. -The second attack happens only two days later, and I think this illustrates
how much he enjoyed the first attack and how much he wanted to continue the high
that had come along with that. ♪♪ -Kraków, Poland, September the 23rd, 1964 -- Just two days after his first attack,
17-year-old Karol Kot was on the prowl again. His next target was an elderly woman
chosen at random. ♪♪ -The second attack happens only two days later, and I think this illustrates
how much he enjoyed the first attack and how much he wanted to continue the high
that had come along with that. -In my mind, I think he was painting his own picture,
the life of Karol Kot. He was fulfilling, blossoming if you like, into a fully-fledged killer.
I think he set himself that dream. The butterfly was emerging from the chrysalis.
♪♪ -Kot wanted to kill again, but still a schoolboy, the young man needed a victim who wouldn't fight back.
-[ Speaking Polish ] -One characteristic that connects all the incidents was that he attacked single people,
single meaning, there were no witnesses. -I think the choice of victims here is no accident whatsoever.
We know that elderly people and elderly women, in particular, are one of the target groups for serial killers
because they are physically weaker, and they're often on their own, and that vulnerable makes it easy
to target them and to take their lives. -Kot's next victim was a 78-year-old woman
called Franciszka. He spotted her getting off a tram. When she entered the apartment building,
Kot attacked. ♪♪ -Kot stabbed her, again, in the back. This time, she felt the pain more quickly,
but equally, Kot disappeared. ♪♪ -Franciszka did, indeed, survive the attack, but she never recovered from her wounds.
♪♪ -The stabbings pierced her backbone, and she had problems walking for the rest of her life.
-I think that Kot, with all of his victims, he was trying to kill them, but he wasn't willing to hang around long enough
to make sure of it. He was trying to escape. -The news of the shocking attacks rattle the citizens of Kraków,
but that only served to embolden 17-year-old Karol Kot. -There would have been a bit of a buzz,
a bit of a fear in the community around them, and to know that he's created this
is something that he's going to be really enjoying, so he will be escalating his offending.
It is going to be more violent, more serious, more prolonged. -Just 6 days later, on September the 29th, 1964,
Kot, once again armed with a bayonet, slipped into a church in Kraków. There, he found his next target --
another elderly woman. ♪♪ -She's also stabbed from behind, but this one seems to have been more ferocious,
given that he's driven the knife into her with much more ferocity, much more force.
♪♪ ♪♪ -Never in a million years would you think that somebody has just randomly come and stabbed you,
so it would have been incredibly shocking. -This time, his victim, 86-year-old Maria, died,
but before she managed to say a few last words to the nun who found her. ♪♪ -The nun said that when she got close to her,
she was laying on the floor, breathing heavily, and she said just two words, "Young boy."
-Today, one of Poland's leading coroners, Tomasz Konopka, works at the same hospital that Maria's body was brought to.
-[ Speaking Polish ] -A postmortem examination was conducted here, in this autopsy room.
The examination showed that the wound was not deep. The wound went through the back, through the muscles,
and ended in the backbone. ♪♪ The conclusion was that, because of the pain and shock
related to the stabbing in the back, her heart gave out, and she died. -The senseless murder committed by a schoolboy
was headline news across Poland. -[ Speaking Polish ] -Panic broke out in Kraków.
People were afraid of going out in the evenings, especially women. People were warned not to go out alone,
not to go alone to the church. ♪♪ -I think it was very difficult for the inhabitants of Kraków
to comprehend that a boy could be responsible. The first reaction was disbelief.
The second reaction was fear. -And then in the autumn of 1964, Kot's knife attacks suddenly stopped.
♪♪ -I think he just calmed down after he actually, for the first time, succeeded to kill someone.
He was would just continue going to school, going to his shooting section, just normal everyday life.
-Kot had got away with murder, but his deadly desires had not stopped. In fact, his murderous urges were growing.
-He appeared to have stopped killing for a two-year period, but during that period of time,
he still would've been having violent thoughts and violent fantasies, and we can see that this is exactly the case with him.
-He was still bent on killing, but this time, he wanted to murder en masse, so at the end of 1964,
Karol Kot changed his MO. -He turns his offending towards other outlets, setting fires, poisoning, so he's always creating harm.
He's always externalizing his trauma to hurt other people. -[ Speaking Polish ] -He confessed that he had planned
to kill a large number of people by changing his method to poisoning or arson. -He was putting poison, for example,
into a bottle of beer and leaving that bottle of beer somewhere and hoping that someone will be tempted to drink it.
♪♪ -But thankfully, Kot's plan failed. -When you look at what he actually does, it really confirms how completely devoid
of ordinary social understandings he has. He does things like go to drinking establishments,
leave out drinks half-drunk that have lethal doses of arson and sits and waits for somebody to pick up the drink
and drop dead. He doesn't have a grasp of social behavior, that people don't go around bars
picking up half-drunk drinks and drinking them. That's just not what people do. ♪♪
-Kot then turned to arson. -[ Speaking Polish ] -He committed at least four arsons.
We only know about them from his testimony. That's because these were failed arsons.
For example, he poured gasoline on some rags in a room, and he hoped it would start a fire.
It did not. He tried to set an attic on fire. He said there was smoke and fire but no inferno.
-Fortunately, no one was killed in any of the four fires that he set. -Again, he doesn't even know how to set a fire.
He can't get a whole structure to burn down to save his life. He's just trying to find a way
to get death to happen doing as little as possible, and he can't seem to figure it out.
-By February of 1966, 18 months after his first murder, Kot could no longer contain the urge to kill again.
-I think he definitely would've been fantasizing during that period about those attacks he carried out before,
so he carried out some very violent attacks that had a real impact on the local community.
He created fear, and he was reveling in that. He was enjoying that, and when he came to kill again,
it was going to be something horrendous. -But this time, he changes direction. He doesn't target elderly women.
He targets children. He goes to a local mound, which attracts tobogganists, particularly children.
♪♪ -On Sunday, February the 13th, 1966, Karol Kot was looking for an easy target
when he spotted 11-year-old Leszek. ♪♪ -He was just walking alone because he arrived late to a competition,
and Karol was just walking around looking for a victim. ♪♪ -For Leszek, the speed of the attack
would likely have been stunning. -And this attack is really ferocious. So he turns the boy towards him.
he stabs him 11 times, and this is a real ramping-up of his offending. So he's not just killing this individual.
He's using much more violence than he needs to get that job done, so this is about more than that.
This is about completely obliterating someone. This is about saying, "Well, I can do to you
whatever I want to do to you." It's about status. It's about power, and it's about entitlement.
♪♪ -We must be grateful, to some extent, that stab wounds are not usually tremendously painful.
They can often feel more like a punch, but it must have been utterly confusing and bewildering
that somebody has suddenly started to assault you and then very quickly, within probably seconds in this case,
you would lose consciousness and die. You've gone from being a normal child doing normal childhood things
to being a body. ♪♪ -The autopsy later revealed that Kot had punctured every major organ in the young boy's body.
-[ Speaking Polish ] -The stabs were deep. The strikes damaged the aorta, the heart,
the lungs, and the liver. The boy had no chance of surviving the attack. -As Leszek lay bleeding to death,
Kot walked away. -[ Speaking Polish ] -He just left him like this and walked away.
What also surprised me was that he said that he went straight to the patisserie,
bought some cakes and took them home. ♪♪ -The attack on the 11-year-old boy was a clear sign that Kot's ferocity had escalated.
-This is Kot in his new form. This is the fully-fledged butterfly. He's absolutely at one
and determined to destroy his victim. It isn't very long before he chooses another.
♪♪ -Kraków, Southern Poland -- By the end of February 1966, Karol Kot, now age 19,
had viciously attacked four people with a knife, killing two -- 86-year-old church attendee Maria
and an 11-year-old boy Leszek. But Karol Kot's lust for blood was far from satiated.
On April the 14th, 1966, 2 months after he'd last killed, Kot struck again. -His next attack is on a 7-year-old girl,
so he's targeting vulnerable victims. He's targeting people who he feels can control,
who he feels he's got power over. -Kot hid in the stairwell of a city tenement building
and waited for a suitable victim to attack. -[ Speaking Polish ] -His decision depended on who would appear.
A 7-year-old girl came to the mailbox from the upstairs. He approached her, grabbed her with one hand,
and stabbed her with the other. He stabbed her eight times and left the girl wounded and bleeding.
♪♪ -Incredibly, 7-year-old Magosia survived the brutal attack. However, the psychological scars
would last a lifetime. -These children, because they are only just kind of forming their views of the world,
their views of other people, and to be attacked randomly by someone who is also just a child
is something that will stay with them forever and is going to shape their relationships with other people.
Very often, people who are attacked as children can move on from it. They can go on and have fulfilling lives
and move on from their trauma, but it's something that really is going to set them off
the track that they were on for quite some time. ♪♪ -After the vicious attack, Kot confessed to attacking the 7-year-old girl
to the woman he still obsessed with, Danuta. -He tells her what he's done, and I don't think this is
any kind of remorse or any kind of catharsis. I think this is, "Look at me. Look what I can achieve.
You should be impressed by this." -For some reason, Kot decides to boast that he has attacked the child.
She doesn't believe him. She thinks it's a fantasy, another of Kot's constructions
until she reads about the story in the local newspaper about the stabbing. -The horrific truth then dawned on Danuta.
-She realizes that the man, the young man she's known, may be more dangerous than she thought he was,
and she talks to her psychiatrist about the confession. He advises her to go immediately to the police.
[ Siren wails ] -Ultimately, the one person in the world who he could trust was the avenue to his being caught.
-For the investigators, Danuta's information would prove crucial in identifying the schoolboy killer
who had plagued Kraków for the last two years. Coupled with the description given by some of the surviving victims,
Karol Kot was now the police's prime suspect, but they did not immediately arrest him.
♪♪ -In the months between April and July, they placed him under surveillance, and there was a good reason for that.
They wanted to be absolutely sure that he was capable, that he was sane, and, indeed, they wanted him to sit his school examinations
to prove it. -So the police waited until after he'd finished his exams before they arrested him,
but this was a really high-risk strategy, as well, because you're waiting to arrest somebody
who has committed violent offense after violent offense, and I think this really did put the public at risk.
-On July the 14th, 1966, 3 months after his last attack, the Polish police finally apprehended
Karol Kot. -And it's after his final exams in school, and I think that really does bring home
how horrific this is, these horrendous crimes that have been committed by somebody who's so young,
and when he's arrested, he is arrested in school. -The most striking moment of the case
was when Karol Kot was arrested, and everybody realized that the beast, which was everybody afraid for such a long time,
for two years, was just a young schoolboy. ♪♪ -Finally, the young man was under arrest.
♪♪ -[ Speaking Polish ] -You could say that Kraków breathed a sigh of relief. People stopped being afraid of a killer.
-But Karol Kot was not ready to admit his guilt. -[ Speaking Polish ] -But when he was presented
to the two elderly ladies that survived the first attacks, he was instantly identified by them.
He even said to one of them, the one that shouted at him, "It's him!" that if she wanted, he would finish killing her.
♪♪ -Karol Kot had no choice but to confess to his crimes. -Kot... doesn't plead innocence.
He glories in his guilt. That is exactly what he's always wanted. This is the tableau
that he wanted to paint for himself. He tells them in elaborate detail about the way he killed.
-He bragged about these crimes. He talked about these acts like it gave him pleasure.
♪♪ -The press give him the nickname that he must've lusted after -- the Vampire of Kraków.
I think he wanted to forever be remembered as one of the city's most dramatic residents.
I wouldn't call him dramatic. I would call him depraved. ♪♪ -[ Speaking Polish ]
-The term "vampire" was used, not only because he killed, but also because he drank the blood
of his victims. He said openly that when he killed or maimed his victims, he took pleasure in licking their blood
off the blade of the knife. ♪♪ -I think he really would have relished being called the Vampire of Kraków.
This is somebody who has got quite a narcissistic element to their personality. They want to be noticed.
They think that they deserve to be noticed, that they're entitled to be lorded by other people,
and I think having that name that the Vampire of Kraków, this brings with it some kind of status,
and I think this is very important for him. ♪♪ -Soon after he was arrested in July of 1966,
19-year-old Karol Kot gleefully participated in the reconstructions of his crimes.
-You know, police do re-reenactments as a common technique, and there are many reasons to do that.
One of the most important reasons to do that is, a re-enactment is one of the ways
that you determine whether or not a person claiming to be a killer is the real killer,
or whether or not they are somebody who are just seeking the fame. ♪♪ The re-enactment will show whether or not
you did the crime in a way that is consistent with the physical evidence, and it allows you to be
more sure. ♪♪ -A reconstruction can be a useful thing to. It enables witnesses' memories to be jogged.
It sometimes leads to new evidence, but in this case, I think he got more out of it than anybody else did.
♪♪ -He was actually kind of directing on the show, and he was just saying to cameraman
or where to put lights. "I'm going to stab from that direction, so the lights shouldn't be here.
You will not see anything," and stuff like that. -[ Speaking Polish ] -He was up on a pedestal.
He was important for that moment. There was a crowd of policemen around him, a crowd of people,
and, finally, he could start showing off. ♪♪ -When the policemen asked him, "Does it feel the same to do it all over again?"
he says, "Well, almost, but I'm missing just one thing," and policemen ask, "What is it?"
and he said, "Blood." ♪♪ -If there were any doubts among the police officers as to Kot's guilt,
the young man's reaction during the reconstructions put them to rest. -It was obvious that he did it
because he made the reconstruction of all five attacks, and he was saying... He was showing every details,
what exactly he was doing. -[ Speaking Polish ] -He did not show any remorse. He was proud of what he did.
He described the series of murders. He even showed how he licked the blood of the blade
after he committed the homicide. -Karol Kot was put on trial in Kraków on the 3rd of May, 1967.
-Kot killed as a schoolboy, stood trial for two counts of murder, 10 counts of attempted murder,
four counts of arson all before the age of 20. -In addition to his knife attacks
on the two children and three elderly women, Kot was also prosecuted for the many other lives
he was deemed to have put at risk in his poison and arson attacks. -[ Speaking Polish ]
-Obviously, everybody was in shock. His whole family and friends were in shock that such an innocent-looking person
from such a good family could do such terrible things. -In all, 64 witnesses testified at the trial.
Many took to the stand to vouch for the young man's character. -[ Speaking Polish ]
-Initially, everybody defended him, not only his family, but even his schoolteachers.
There is a letter in the files written by his shooting-section trainer that shows his support for Kot and his innocence.
-But Kot's behavior in the courtroom shocked both friend and foe. The young man who'd killed two innocent people
and had attempted to murder many more relished the limelight. -[ Speaking Polish ]
-He was cheerful. He was laughing. While his friends were testifying, he was waving to them.
You could see that on the films shot in the courtroom. He was proud then that he could perform
almost like an actor, that he was the center of attention. He was even proud of what he did.
It horrifies me. -During the trial, Kot displayed disdain for the pain and suffering he'd inflicted on the innocent.
-At the trial, he just showed a complete disregard for his victims and their families.
There was an absolute lack of remorse, and that doesn't surprise me whatsoever, because here we have somebody who only cares about themselves.
If he felt sorry, he would only feel sorry for himself. He'd only be sorry that he got caught,
and unfortunately, you're never going to get sympathy from somebody like this. They don't care about the mayhem that they create.
They just care about what it's done for them. -He showed no remorse. There was no apologies to the victims.
He simply went blank, because he was fulfilling his own fantasy of himself. He was fulfilling the painting
that he'd always wanted to paint of his life. This was Kot's creation, and the killings were that.
♪♪ -He didn't ever admit that he's feeling sorry. He was saying that, to him, it was moral
because what brings pleasure, that is moral, and that it was his private thing, that he was taking someone else's life,
but he doesn't think that he is criminal. -Kot soon alienated his family and friends.
♪♪ -Had he not been caught, I think he would have just gone on to kill even more people in even more violent ways.
This is somebody who enjoyed killing, who enjoyed feeling power over others. -[ Speaking Polish ]
-When he started to say that it brought him pleasure, and he would continue to kill,
the voices of support fell away. -Kot confessed in detail to all of his crimes. -Usually, the perpetrators of such killings defend themselves,
try to come up with any line of defense. He did not do that. -After a series of appeals on the March the 17th, 1968,
Poland's Supreme Court convicted Karol Kot of two counts of murder, 10 counts of attempted murder,
and four counts of arson. -When he was sentenced, the judge said of him that he was more dangerous than a savage beast
because he was endowed with reason. Kot was certainly not insane. He never, for one moment, expressed an item of regret
or remorse for any of his victims. -At the age of 21, Kot was sentenced to death.
-On May the 16th, 1968, the 21-year-old Karol Kot was hanged by the neck and executed...
♪♪ ...thereby ending the story of a boy, and it's fair to call him a boy, who could truly be called one of the world's most evil killers.
♪♪ -[ Speaking Polish ] -Until the end, even after he was sentenced to death, he said in an interview that if he were to be released,
he would kill again. -And Karol Kot was a psychopath. He knew what he was doing.
He knew that it was wrong. This is somebody who chose to do evil. He knew the difference between right and wrong,
and yet he chose to harm others anyway. -The senseless and sadistic murder of the most vulnerable of victims,
an 11-year-old boy and an 86-year-old woman, as well as the attempted murder of children
and the elderly whilst still at school makes Karol Kot one of the world's most evil killers.
♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪

By the age of nineteen, Polish schoolboy Karol Kot, aka the Vampire of Krokow, had killed two people. He tried to kill many more in arson and poison attempts and was executed at the age of twenty-one.

An in-depth look at the lives and crimes of some of the world's most evil killers, including Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez, Cary Stayner, Leonard Lake, Dorothea Puente and more.

Brief Summary

Karol Kot, the Vampire of Kraków, committed brutal murders and attempted murders in the 1960s, leaving a lasting impact on his community.

Key points

Karol Kot: The Vampire of Kraków. A chilling exploration of Karol Kot, a schoolboy turned killer who terrorized Kraków.
A Disturbing Childhood. Karol Kot's early life was marked by signs of violence and a fascination with blood.
The First Attack. On September 21, 1964, Kot attacked a 76-year-old woman in a church, marking his first murder attempt.
Escalation of Violence. Just two days after his first attack, Kot targeted another elderly woman, showcasing his growing confidence.
The Shocking Murder. Kot's brutal stabbing of 86-year-old Maria left the community in panic and disbelief.
Karol Kot's Brutal Escalation. At just 19, Karol Kot viciously attacked four people, killing two, showcasing his escalating ferocity.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He was completely lacking in remorse, and he was so young.

Highlighting Kot's chilling lack of empathy.

2:11WatchJul 29, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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