The flies were so thick on the inside of the attic window that the glass itself appeared to be moving, a living curtain of insects that finally forced the authorities to break through the reinforced door of Bogdan Arnold’s flat on June 8, 1967.
When a firefighter was lowered from the roof and smashed the window, the stench of rotting human flesh hit him with such force that he was immediately driven back, gasping for air. He returned wearing breathing equipment and climbed inside, only to find the badly decomposed body of a woman lying directly beneath the window, her burgundy raincoat still draped over her remains.
But as the firefighter moved deeper into the attic, the true horror of what had been happening in the heart of Katowice, Poland, began to unfold. Human remains had been cut apart and scattered throughout the rooms, stuffed into a metal-lined wooden laundry tub, and left to rot for months on end.
The scene was so horrific that investigators could not immediately determine how many victims were inside. The attic, originally used as a laundry room, had been transformed into a chamber of death by a man who appeared to his neighbors as nothing more than a polite electrician who occasionally helped fix their electrical problems.
Bogdan Arnold was 33 years old when the world finally learned what he had done. He had moved to Katowice like so many others, a busy industrial city where people lived among neighbors they barely knew. He worked as an electrician and lived in an attic that had been reinforced with sheets of metal bolted to the wooden door.
The neighbors found the door unusual, but they had no real problem with Arnold. He would help whenever something electrical broke inside the building and was generally seen as a polite man. They knew he drank regularly and brought women back to the attic, but they felt that was his choice.
There was far more to Arnold than the neighbors knew. His heavy drinking meant he regularly didn’t turn up for work, and he had already been married three times. All three relationships had ended, and he showed almost no interest in the two sons he had left behind.
He avoided paying maintenance, and when his eldest son briefly came to live with him, he said Arnold forced him to drink, left him hungry, and barely looked after him. His relationships with women had also been violent, with former partners describing being beaten, choked, and tied up.
At a family wedding, Arnold reportedly pulled out a knife on a man after watching his wife dance with him. During another relationship, neighbors called the police after hearing him choking his wife. He later struck the same woman in the head with a hammer, leaving her unable to work for a month and needing surgery on her skull.
This violence had been part of Arnold’s life long before anyone died inside the attic. He had already hurt the women he supposedly loved and had repeatedly avoided any serious consequences. Now he was living alone behind a reinforced door inside a room where nobody could see what he was doing.
In October 1966, the first woman entered the attic who would never be seen alive again. Arnold met Maria B inside a bar in Katowice. Maria was 38 years old and had been working as a street worker around the city for several years.
Arnold later said she was a slim brunette with a strong Eastern accent and that she had come from Volhynia.
They stayed in the bar drinking for several hours before buying more alcohol and something to eat, then returning to his attic flat. Once they were inside, Maria asked Arnold for 500 zł. Arnold said he believed that she was interested in him and became angry when he realized she expected to be paid.
According to the story he later gave police, Maria threatened to report him when he refused. The argument became louder and Maria, presumably realizing she was in danger, ran towards the door. Arnold caught her from behind and pulled her to the floor and began choking her.
Maria fought back scratching his arm as she tried to get away. Arnold then grabbed a hammer and struck her several times to the skull. At first, he believed he had badly knocked her unconscious, but after standing over her for several moments, he realized that she was dead.
He would later say that he had strangled Maria, but the forensic evidence said otherwise. The attack had been far more violent and bloody than Arnold was willing to admit. Arnold put Maria’s body inside a wooden chest and carried on drinking.
Over the next several days, he continued leaving the building to go to work, then returned to the attic and slept only a short distance from where she had been hidden. He did nothing until Maria began decomposing and the smell started spreading through the room.
Arnold pulled her body from the chest and wiped the blood from the attic floor. He burned Maria’s clothing, handbag, and documents in the stove, destroying anything that could easily identify her. He then cut off her left hand, wrapped it in cloth, and tried to burn that as well.
The hand did not burn completely, leaving Arnold with ashes and pieces the fire had failed to destroy. He swept everything into a bucket and threw it in the rubbish the following day. Arnold then bought a dust mask and a single rubber glove home from work and began cutting up Maria’s body.
He opened her abdomen and removed the organs and cut them into smaller pieces and then began forcing them down the drain. He then poured water through the pipes to stop them becoming blocked with human remains. Arnold then severed Maria’s head and placed it in a bucket of water and bleach.
When that failed to destroy it, he tried to get hold of caustic soda, but he couldn’t find any. So he bought more bleach instead and increased the strength of the mixture, but the head still remained intact. He placed the rest of the body inside a large wooden laundry tub in the attic.
After days of burning, cutting, and trying to dissolve her remains, Arnold simply stopped. He left the remains of Maria inside the flat and went back to work whilst her body continued decomposing only a floor above the people living beneath him.
By the beginning of 1967, Maria had been dead inside Arnold’s attic for months and the effects of her decomposition were beginning to reach the flat directly beneath him. Larvae were appearing around the downstairs toilet after making their way through the sewage pipes.
In the kitchen, they were getting through gaps around old pipework and falling onto plates, worktops and sometimes onto the woman living there. She also described a foul-smelling liquid occasionally splashing back out of the kitchen sink while she was cooking.
This was the same neighbor who eventually confronted Arnold and told him she knew the smell coming from his attic was decomposition. As we already know, Arnold blamed the drains and promised to sort the problem out, but he never did and the smell was not the first warning that something was seriously wrong inside Arnold’s attic.
Just 10 days after Maria was murdered, two women traveling to work came across Ludmilla G outside the building. She had managed to wrap a coat around her naked body, but her hands were still tied behind her back. She had just escaped from Arnold’s attic.
Ludmilla already knew Arnold. They had first met several years earlier when she worked as a cleaner at one of his workplaces. When they crossed paths again, Arnold offered to pay her to clean his attic.
Ludmilla agreed to look at the place first before deciding whether she wanted the work.
She never got a chance. As they reached the upper part of the building, Arnold suddenly threw a towel over Ludmilla’s head and dragged her through the door. Once inside, he knocked her unconscious, removed her clothes and tied her hands behind her back.
When Ludmilla came around, Arnold began beating and kicking her while she was still restrained. He bit her breasts and assaulted her repeatedly. At one point, he used a bottle on her.
The attack continued for hours with Ludmilla unable to properly defend herself or get out of the attic.
And somewhere inside those same rooms were the decomposing remains of Maria who Arnold had murdered just days earlier. Towards morning, Arnold finally fell asleep. Ludmilla managed to get out before he woke, but she could not free her hands.
She pulled a coat around herself and left the building and found the two women outside. They untied her and listened as she explained that she had been attacked. Ludmilla did not immediately go to the police herself, but the women who found her did.
A few days later, she was called to the station and questioned. An official report was made. Arnold denied assaulting her and instead accused Ludmilla of stealing from him.
That was where the investigation ended. Nobody searched the attic and Maria remained exactly where Arnold had left her.
Months later, when the bodies were finally discovered, Ludmilla returned to the police and told them that the man they were hunting was the same man who had attacked her. They had been warned about Arnold months earlier and nothing had been done.
In March 1967, around five months after Maria’s murder, Arnold was supposed to be traveling for work. Instead, he stopped at a bar near Katowice coach station and began drinking. A man he knew introduced him to a woman who Arnold later described as around 30 years old with dark hair, heeled shoes, and a blue trench coat.
She also had a bruise beneath her left eye. According to Arnold, she had nowhere to live, but because this woman was never identified, there was nobody else who could confirm any of this. Arnold bought more vodka and some sausages before inviting her back to his attic.
She followed him upstairs through the stench of decay and walked straight through the reinforced door without knowing that Maria’s dismembered remains had already been decomposing inside for 5 months. Arnold would later give three different accounts of what happened.
He claimed the woman discovered Maria and began screaming. He also said he brought her home already intending to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 her. In another version, he deliberately started an argument and attacked her when she tried to leave.
The reason changed every time Arnold told the story, but the woman was dead and he was the only person left to speak for her.
The version later treated as the most likely was that the woman became heavily intoxicated inside the attic. Arnold tied her hands behind her back with electrical cable and she may have been too drunk to fully understand what he was doing. They eventually fell asleep, but when Arnold woke, the woman’s hands were still tied.
He then forced himself on her while she remained restrained. When Arnold tried to force her to perform oral 𝒔𝒆𝒙, she resisted. He threatened to beat her if she refused and continued the assault while she lay on the floor with her hands still tied behind her back.
Then Arnold heard footsteps on the landing. Someone was moving just outside the attic while the woman was still alive. Arnold became frightened that she might call out and bring whoever was there to the door.
He blocked her airway until she stopped breathing.
Again, her hands were still tied behind her back. Whoever had been outside continued walking. Because Arnold changed his story so many times, we could not know exactly how those final moments happened.
But what he did to the body afterwards was described in much greater detail.
There was none of the same panic that had followed Maria’s murder. He opened the woman’s abdomen and pulled out the internal organs. He then cut them into smaller pieces and forced them down the drain again.
Arnold then cut off both her arms, both her legs, and then her head.
He placed those parts in boiling bleach water while her torso and whatever remained were forced into the metal-lined wooden container where Maria’s decomposing remains were already being kept. Arnold destroyed the woman’s documents and almost everything else she had brought into the attic.
A pair of stockings were the only thing left behind, but anything that might have given investigators her name was gone. Once Arnold finished cutting her body apart, he went out drinking. His next concern was not the woman he had just killed.
Arnold had failed to turn up for work and needed an excuse. He wrapped a hammer in cloth and deliberately smashed his own left finger with it, then went to a clinic and claimed he had injured himself while cleaning his home. The lie worked and doctors gave him 9 days of sick leave.
He had now murdered two women, but missing work was what concerned him. In April 1967, Arnold met Stefania M after another night out drinking and brought her back to the attic. By then, Maria and the unidentified woman were already dead inside.
Arnold was so drunk that little happened before they both fell asleep. The following morning, Arnold tried to have intimacy with Stefania, but she refused. He told her that he had to go to work and ordered her to leave.
Stefania was still tired and asked if she could remain in the flat until he returned.
She even suggested that Arnold lock the door behind him and let her out later. Arnold told Stefania that another woman had recently stolen from him. He said she could stay, but only if she allowed him to tie her hands behind her back so that she could not take anything.
Stefania agreed, believing he was about to leave for work. Arnold secured her wrists with wire, then told her he wasn’t going anywhere. He tore off Stefania’s clothes and began forcing himself on her and then beating her.
The attack continued for hours with Arnold using threats of violence as Stefania remained restrained.
When he woke, the assault continued into the following day. Arnold had even built his own electrical device to use during the assaults. He made it from a small transformer normally used inside a doorbell with one wire designed to connect to him and the other to the woman.
While Stefania was still tied up, he used it on her and sent electricity through her body. He later said it had not produced the reaction he wanted, so he put the device aside and carried on forcing himself on her. After the assault had continued into the second day, Arnold wrapped an electrical cord around Stefania’s neck and strangled her.
He burned some of her belongings, but left her coat, blouse, and handbag inside the flat. Her body was pushed into the same storage space already containing the remains of Maria and the unidentified woman. Less than a month later, Arnold brought Helga Erika S.
back to the attic.
He met her near the railway station in the second half of May 1967. Helga was around 27 years old with blonde hair and was wearing a burgundy raincoat and cherry-colored ankle boots. She gave Arnold a false name and said she was waiting for a train.
He offered her somewhere to stay, and with not much chance of catching a train at that time, she went with him. Once inside, Arnold used the same theft story that had worked on Stefania and again persuaded a woman to let him tie her hands behind her back.
This time, we know Helga repeatedly asked Arnold to release her, but he refused. He kept her restrained through the night and into the following day whilst he was repeatedly assaulting her. Eventually, Arnold took one of Helga’s own stockings and looped it around her neck.
He pulled it until she fell to the floor, then used his foot to tighten it further and continued until she stopped breathing. During the later reconstruction, Arnold calmly demonstrated exactly how he had done it and was even smiling while describing the murder.
By then, Arnold had run out of places to put another body. He made no attempt to cut Helga apart. Instead, he carried her across the attic and laid her directly beneath the window and covered her with the burgundy raincoat she had worn into the building.
Her clothes and belongings were simply left around. After Helga’s murder, Arnold mostly stopped sleeping in the attic. He stayed at his workplace or anywhere he could and only returned when he needed to change clothes, collect something, or shave.
Meanwhile, the number of flies inside the flat continued to increase, eventually gathering across the attic window. Yet, on the night of June 2, Arnold brought another heavily intoxicated woman inside. We have no account from her, so we do not know what she saw or how much she understood.
Arnold said the woman was much older than he had first thought, and that he was too drunk to assault her. He allowed her to leave the following morning. During his trial, he said that if she had been younger, she would probably have been his fifth victim.
Four women were dead inside the attic. Another had just spent the night there and walked back out alive. That was the room waiting behind the window on June 8, 1967.
The firefighter had already broken the glass once, only for the smell to force him back.
Wearing breathing equipment, he returned to the roof, was lowered down towards the window again, and climbed directly inside. Beneath him was the badly decomposed body of Helga, still lying where Arnold had left her. But Helga was only the first woman he could see.
The metal-lined wooden tub was packed with decomposing human remains. Several body parts from several women had been pushed inside together and left for different lengths of time. Thousands of maggots, pupae, and insects were feeding on the rotten flesh.
Beneath the tub, officers found part of a human leg wrapped inside newspaper and fragments of human remains around the sink. There was even a worse discovery in the kitchen. A saucepan had been left on the cooker with a human head floating in the water inside.
The first officers inside could not even establish how many victims they were looking at. One victim later recalled seeing officers come back down the stairs vomiting after what they had seen. The attic was sealed off and investigators began working through everything Arnold had left behind.
They collected the hammer, wire, stockings, and other evidence that would eventually help them piece together what had happened to each woman. The examination continued for five days. Everybody had to be removed, separated, and examined before forensic specialists could establish that the remains belonged to four women.
The oldest had been decomposing since October 1966, while the most recent had been dead only a few weeks. The insects feeding on the bodies helped investigators estimate how long each woman had been inside the attic. Word spread quickly through Katowice.
Crowds gathered outside the building and packed the staircase contaminated by lumps of human decomposition. Police vehicles and a hearse remained outside, whilst rumors spread through the crowd about what had been found in the attic. Arnold finished work and returned to Drobosz Street while the search was still underway.
He approached from another direction and saw the police vehicles, the crowd, and above them the attic window standing open. Arnold knew immediately that they had got inside. He turned away before anyone recognized him, bought two bottles of wine, and caught the tram away from the area.
He got off near a factory where he once worked and hid amongst the piles of scrap on the site. Arnold spent the next week hiding at the factory. He had little food, nowhere proper to sleep, and no real plan of what he was going to do next.
Eventually, he walked into a police station and gave himself up. He confessed almost immediately to murdering the four women found inside his attic, and he began telling the investigators what had happened behind the reinforced door. Two months after the bodies were discovered, investigators took Arnold back to the attic for an official reconstruction.
The women had been removed, but the smell was still so strong almost everyone inside struggled with it. Arnold was the only one who seemed completely unaffected. He calmly moved through the rooms showing investigators how he had restrained and killed the women.
He showed little emotion while doing it, and at one point was even smiling as he demonstrated one of the murders. Before Arnold could be tried, he spent months under psychiatric observation. The doctors found no psychosis or intellectual disability, and no evidence that he had failed to understand what he was doing.
The 58-page report described a psychopathic man who abused alcohol, lied constantly, and showed little moral responsibility, and felt no remorse for the women he had killed. He was considered fully responsible for his actions. The trial began on March 4, 1968, and lasted six days.
Some of the evidence was heard behind closed doors because it was considered too disturbing for the public gallery. Arnold remained calm throughout. He spoke openly about the attacks and regularly corrected witnesses on dates and details, but when a question made him look worse, he suddenly claimed that he could not remember or did not understand what he was being asked.
His lawyers continued trying to raise doubts about his sanity, but the psychiatric findings left little for them to work with. Arnold was convicted and received three death sentences and one life sentence, with death becoming the final punishment. His appeal failed and the authorities refused to grant him clemency.
Bogdan Arnold was executed in December 1968. Nobody ever lived inside the attic again. He had not been 𝓮𝔁𝓹𝓸𝓼𝓮𝓭 because investigators connected the missing women and he didn’t surrender because he felt guilty.
The bodies had simply been left inside for so long that when somebody finally looked across the courtyard, there were so many flies covering the window that it appeared to be moving.
