Pilgrimowo. Murder of an 82-year-old woman in her home. The Supreme Court dismissed the cassation appeal

The murder took place at the end of January 2006 in the village of Pielgrzymowo in the Kozłowo commune. According to the prosecutor's office, the accused then, in an unknown way, got into the house of an 82-year-old woman living alone and began to search it, probably for robbery purposes.

When she noticed that there was a stranger in the house, she was attacked and the perpetrator started beating and choking her. The woman suffered serious injuries and lost consciousness. The attacker then set fire to the house. The woman died in the fire.

The investigation was discontinued in June 2006 due to the failure to detect the perpetrator. Its resumption was determined by a comparative analysis of the genetic material originally secured on the victim's clothing with a sample collected in 2021 from a selected man, performed in a police laboratory. The sample showed characteristics consistent with the defendant's DNA profile.

At the time of the crime, he was 24 years old and a resident of the same commune as the victim. He was then suspected of committing several burglaries in the area. He was also punished many times for such crimes.

He did not confess to the murder either during the investigation or in court. He presented the version about a road accident. He was then driving with friends (in a car with fuel stolen from a gas station) and hit an 82-year-old woman on a bend. This was to be his only contact with her at that time. He claimed that he himself was injured and that while helping the injured person, he must have accidentally left traces of blood on her clothes. He also said that he had never been to her house.

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The District Court in Olsztyn illegally sentenced him to 25 years in prisonhe also ordered the payment of PLN 50,000. PLN compensation for the victim's daughter. The prosecutor's office assumed that the perpetrator acted with the intention of murder, but the court of first instance assessed that it was a direct intention.

Considering the defense attorney's appeal, in October last year the Court of Appeal in Białystok upheld the verdict. He considered DNA tests to be the most important evidence, and the completely unreliable line of defense was that there had been a road accident and a woman had been hit, and that it was then that the man's biological material could have been transferred (blood was allegedly dripping from his broken eyebrow). Moreover, as the forensic opinion showed, the victim did not have any injuries that would be typical of a road accident.

The defense filed a cassation appeal against the verdict. According to the press office of the Supreme Court, the cassation appeal was dismissed. It was found to be unfounded.