Jan Czyż, a Lviv laborer and caretaker, rubbed his hands stiff with frost, then grabbed the handles of a wheelbarrow and headed for the Stryjski Park. The piercing cold of February morning deprived him of his willingness to work, but the awareness that he had to feed his family gave him strength. After a few minutes, he reached the pile of sand used for sprinkling icy pavements and grabbed a well-worn shovel.
After another blow, a frozen crust of sand gave way to the rusty spade blade, revealing a loose interior to the worker. It was then that something strange caught John's eye. Something he had completely ignored before.
A few meters from the top of the gravel with which he had fought so fiercely a moment before, there was a brown stain that completely did not match the white background made of billions of snowflakes. Curious about the unusual sight, he stopped working and, still wondering what it was, came closer.
There are situations in life when blood stagnates in the veins as if it were immediately frozen by something. And we are talking not about the chill that morning, but about the terror that caught its victim in one moment.
Jan froze, like the mannequins he watches every morning on his way to work in the shop windows when the brown stain in the snow turned out to be a piece of tattered flesh. He stood motionless, staring at the severed hand, when finally a subconscious voice, coming from somewhere behind the recesses of his dull mind, shouted.
- Run as fast as possible to the police!
The investigator accepting Jan's testimony hurriedly noted something in a yellowed notebook and spoke after a while.
- Let Sir lead us there.
They arrived at the site several minutes later. With a trembling hand, Jan pointed in the direction where he saw a bloody part of the body. The policemen came closer. The investigator stopped them with a gesture of his hand so that they would not trample their tracks and scanned the area with a searching gaze. His penetrating eyesight caught a few more suspicious places, which in terms of color differed from the all-consuming white.
- Summon the tracking dogs! - He said firmly, and after a moment added. - Secure the place and let no one dare to walk here! We have a psychopath on the loose.
Immediately the park was swarming with police officers and onlookers. Journalists for whom the macabre crime meant a great topic for an article also arrived at the scene. Everyone watched the work of the technicians collecting the dismembered flesh with bated breath.
As the "Secret Detective" later wrote - an illustrated criminal and judicial weekly.
- "All pieces of the body (...) show signs of burning, while they weigh a total of 14 kilograms"
However, here the question arises - what happened to the rest and who is the tragic victim of the crime?
The answer came unexpectedly after several hours. A woman who made an appointment with a stranger to buy a coat that day came to the police. As she testified to the police, the wardrobe that she had the opportunity to inspect well was soiled with something resembling human blood. So she refused to buy it, and having heard the story of a mysterious murder that spread around Lviv in a flash, she associated the facts.
At the same time, the police officer also discovered the trail of the beast, who, as it turned out later, knew the perpetrator. It was Hieronim Cybulski, a war invalid, who was allowed to run a tiny tobacco kiosk. On the day of finding the remains, which began to be found also in other parts of the city, the constable arrived at the kiosk with the intention of buying cigarettes.
When he got there, he noticed Cybulski, who was just leaving his shop. His attention was caught by the tiny bundle that Cybulski was carrying under his arm. To the question.
- What is it? - He replied laconically that it was a special order for a customer to be delivered in person.
In fact, it was not surprising, but the same day the constable met the kiosk again. Once again the clerk was carrying a package wrapped in a fairly dirty newspaper. After taking a closer look at it and noting that the package was similar to the ones his colleagues found in various parts of the city, the policeman became suspicious. Without waiting a moment, he reported this fact to his superiors.
Officers surrounded the kiosk in a tight cordon, in which a terrible crime was suspected to have been committed. The leader of the investigation and two policemen knocked on a wooden door and went inside.
Journalists of Express Wieczorny Ilustrowany, who arrived at the scene at the same time as the criminals, wrote later:
"When the police entered his kiosk, Cybulski was busy cooking tea with the same knife used to cut up the victim's body, SŁONINA LAND"
In this case, the journalists did not use their imaginations and did not colorize the moment of Cybulski's arrest. The bloody kiosk was supposed to ask the policemen politely.
- Are you, gentlemen, to me? I didn't do anything. It was just a prostitute!
After the suspect was led out, the search of the tiny room began. Among other things, the murder weapon and the belongings of the victim, who was identified as Emilia Szew during the investigation, were secured. In addition, other parts of the body were found in the kiosk - fingers cut off, flaps of skin, and most importantly, the victim's head was found. It was wrapped in a plastic bag and stuck in the seat where Hieronim spent his days serving customers.
The trial was conducted in a lightning-fast manner. After all, the amount of collected evidence clearly burdened Cybulski. There was no doubt that a veteran of the Polish-Bolshevik war, whom his wife left a few years ago, fearing for her and her children, was guilty.
The on-site inspection in which the accused participated revealed the backstage of the horrific crime. On the night of the murder, Hieronim Cybulski was supposed to spend pleasant moments with the victim in his kiosk. It was not the first prostitute who offered him her services here. Cybulski was known for his orgies at his workplace, which also served as his home.
This time, however, unaware Emilia, previously drunk with two bottles of vodka, was to live her life here. The accused testified that it was the victim herself who took her own life by taking potassium cyanide. However, prosecutors did not believe it. It was poisoned by Cybulski himself, who was looking with undisguised excitement at the torments of the dying victim. Finally, when the woman gave up Cybulski's spirit, she was overwhelmed with ecstasy mixed with a slight dose of panic.
People who had the opportunity to meet him knew his unnatural attraction to blood. He was excited by the sight and the smell of the sticky liquid flowing in his veins. He vented his desires by killing stray dogs, which he later skinned. This time an ax, a saw, and an extremely sharp knife were to be used to dismember a man.
The judge, having heard the accused's testimony and the investigators' accounts, fell silent for a long time. He looked into Cybulski's eyes, and the whole Lviv held his breath waiting for the sentence. The Bloody Kiosk listened to him with tears in his eyes, pleading for him not to be deprived of his life. When asked for the last word, he replied.
- I admit it. I have committed a serious crime, but I want to live. I am asking for grace!
However, he could not experience grace. It is true that the death sentence was not pronounced, as the mitigating factor was the fact that at the time of committing the crime, he was not fully aware of his actions. According to experts, his behavior was influenced by his alcoholism, along with untreated syphilis, which significantly affected his psyche.
On February 28, 1934, Hieronim Cybulski was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder and, as the judge put it, "for brutally tormenting the corpse".
Soon the city forgot about the "Vampire from Lviv". Journalists found other topics that ignited the imaginations of readers. Only the guards knew that Hieronim Cybulski, imprisoned in a dark cell, was the perpetrator of a hideous crime that shook the city of Leo.
Our story could end here. However, as it turned out a few years later, the greatest armed conflict broke out, setting the whole world on fire. In 1939, taking advantage of the turmoil of war, the inmates were released. Among them was Cybulski.
To this day, it is not known what happened to him next and whether he accidentally murdered another person in a fit of madness, giving vent to his sick desires.
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