Skin hunters. “I'm too terrified to think how many people could have been victims.”

“Cadose bodies are traded in the Łódź emergency service. Doctors, paramedics, ambulance drivers and dispatchers sell them, funeral parlors buy them. The deceased is called 'skin'. To obtain 'skin' they may have even been killed” – reads a fragment of an article by “Wyborcza” from years ago, Tomasz Patora , who was his co-author.

– It was January 23, 2002, I remember that the newspaper ran out at 8 am. I knew there would be a storm like a hundred dragons, but I was sure then that no one would be punished. However, at least some of the killers were punished, recalls Patora.

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More than 20 years ago in Łódź, journalists Tomasz Patora and Marcin Stelmasiak revealed crimes so shocking that they were unbelievable. They discovered that those who were supposed to save people's lives had started killing. “Skin hunters” – this is the name of the practice, which to this day remains one of the most terrifying medical crimes – perhaps in the entire world.

Patora says that “the beginnings of the 'skins' trade” took place in the Hospital of the Military Medical Academy, because there “had its office there, a funeral parlor, one of the first private establishments in Łódź, headed by, among others, a former ambulance paramedic who invented trade”.

In the 1990s, capitalism developed dynamically in Łódź, and, among others, many funeral homes. The competition was huge. Information about deaths became so valuable that people began to pay for it.

– The emergency room was bustling here. Dispatchers worked here, there were duty rooms where ambulance teams waited when ordered to leave. And here, first of all, caravans with representatives of funeral homes arrived and money for “skins” normally passed from hand to hand – says Patora years later.

Initially, funeral home owners bribed paramedics with alcohol, then they gave electronic equipment in exchange for information about the death, and finally cash. They passed on the cost of the bribes to the families of the deceased in the form of additional fees.

– It was preying on the families of the deceased, because these people did not think logically, so a lot of money could be made. For everything: for putting up with the body, for not being put on a sheet, but on a stretcher. Everything was worth money. Money was chasing money – says Tomasz Wójcik, owner of a funeral home in the 1990s.

– At first, it was only about informing the specific funeral home that paid that we had a body here. But then small actions began, which, let's say, increased the probability that the patient would not survive – says Marta Fujak, executive producer of the series “Luchy Hunters”.

The practice also meant that the nearest ambulance did not arrive for a patient expecting immediate help. On the contrary, teams were sent to the site from far away and, moreover, were not in a hurry to see the patient. Therefore, the provision of aid was consciously delayed. – They were on their way to dinner, stood there and only after about 40 minutes did they arrive to see the unconscious man. So that he himself could die – says the ambulance driver of the Łódź emergency service in the series “Lowcy Łowcy”.

Journalists conducting the investigation in Łódź then began to receive information about unexplained deaths. For example, about the sudden death of a mentally ill man, and about a woman who died in an ambulance, previously complaining only of a rash. A 34-year-old completely healthy man also died suddenly and unexpectedly.

– Mrs. Danuta's grandson was going to a technical school. He stood at the tram stop and saw an orderly and a doctor taking his grandmother to the ambulance. He remembered being surprised because there was a hospital across the street. He was convinced that grandma would be taken there, says Tomasz Patora.

– There was nothing really wrong with his grandmother. The family doctor sent Mrs. Danuta Barasińska for tests just to be on the safe side, because she had slightly elevated blood pressure. It was just a matter of diagnosing it correctly. Unfortunately, this orderly was Andrzej Nowocień, a murderer. When the ambulance drove away a few hundred meters, he injected the woman with Pavulon and Mrs. Danuta never reached the hospital – says the journalist.

– This is one of the few cases that was proven and for which Andrzej Nowocień, a paramedic, was convicted – adds Patora.

The rule was terrifyingly simple: the more “skins”, the more money. The boundaries were blurred to such an extent that emergency workers not only delayed departures, but also began to kill patients by administering Pavulon – a muscle relaxant.

– Administration of muscle relaxants relieves the tension of the muscles responsible for breathing. In the process of loss of consciousness, in this case due to hypoxia, the last sense to be turned off is hearing. They were still alive, they were no longer breathing. They were suffocating and could hear this criminal calling the funeral home – explains Ignacy Baumberg, an anesthesiologist, in the series “Lowcy Łowcy”. – These are stories from the depths of hell and it is extremely difficult to talk about them – he adds.

The information trading system had grown so large that discovering the shocking truth was almost impossible.

This was achieved thanks to the then employees of the Łódź emergency service – Dr. Janusz Morawski and Renata Warężak-Kuciel. They discovered that Pavulon was being used excessively in some ambulance crews. Thanks to their own investigation, they found out who was probably killing the patients.

– I am too horrified to think how many people could have been victims of this practice if we included all the amounts of drugs that were released. The numbers are ghastly – says Janusz Morawski, an anesthesiologist and medical director of the Łódź emergency service in the years 2002-2015, in the series “Skin Hunters”.

– In my opinion, there is no doubt that over a thousand people were killed. But unfortunately there are also a huge number of people whose departures were simply delayed, who were allowed to die without being saved, says Tomasz Patora.

To this day, many families from Łódź wonder whether their loved ones were victims of “skin hunters”.

This topic is still alive and today it returns in the form of a documentary series. The creators decided to tell this story comprehensively – from beginning to end – also trying to answer the question of how a person becomes a murderer.

– In such documentary productions, only when all the facts are collected and put together, a different picture of reality appears. Thanks to a story composed of several perspectives, you can see that it was a systemic issue. There were no fuses, no framework that would stop these people – says Aleksandra Potoczek, director and screenwriter of the series.

– We do not want to stigmatize anyone or stigmatize health care workers. After all, it was thanks to health care workers that this story came to light. We wanted to bring these positive heroes to light and honor them – adds Marta Fujak, executive producer of the series “Lowcy Łowcy”.

– Within the four walls of a tin ambulance, the patient's hope, the family's trust and the need for help meet with the ruthless action of an agent of darkness dressed as a paramedic. A ruthless, cynical man who despises human life – said the chairman of the judge's panel, Judge Jarosław Papis, in the courtroom.

In the trial of the “skin hunters”, the murder of five people was proven. Two paramedics were sentenced: one is serving a life sentence, the other 25 years in prison.

Two doctors were sentenced for intentionally endangering the lives of patients. Both are now free.

– When I come back to this courtroom, I think about the fact that there are so many seats on this defendant's bench that it was begging for the other killers from the ambulance service, against whom no indictment was ever brought, to sit here. Those who remain unpunished to this day. And there were a lot of them, says Tomasz Patora.

The documentary series “Skin Hunters” can now be watched in its entirety on the MAX platform.