Olewnik mystery deepens

7th February 2010

© PD The Olewnik case continues to deepen Share:

The tragic Olewnik murder case took a bizarre new twist with allegations that victim’s body was tampered with as it lay in an official morgue awaiting examination.

Press reports said that in 2006 somebody entered the room containing the remains of Krzysztof Olewnik, a 27-year-old businessman kidnapped and murdered in 2001, and stayed there for a few minutes.

Just who these people were, how they got in and why they wanted to get is now the subject of an official investigation.

“The public prosecutor wants to determine how these people got in and what they did there,” said Krzysztof Kwiatkowski, justice minister, adding that investigators had requested computer records from the security company protecting the morgue.

Officials will be keen to ascertain how the unidentified people got into the guarded morgue and managed to type in the security pass code without anybody raising the alarm. Although an examination of computer files might reveal exactly when the intruders entered the room it will shed little light on just why the rules and regulations governing access to evidence were flouted in such a brazen and flagrant manner.

To make matters worse there is also evidence suggesting that the remains, which had been recovered from woodland a few days before, were tampered with.

Officials have also refused to discount the possibility that the remains may not actually belong to Olewnik.

Last month evidence surfaced suggesting that pathologists had failed to make a clear indentification of the corpse: news that prompted the Olewnik family to have Krzysztof’s body exhumed.

The latest allegations have deepened widespread suspicions that high-ranking and powerful individuals want to hide evidence that might implicate them in the what has turned out to be to be the most infamous murder case in post-communist Poland.

Pointing to a series of bizarre events that dogged the investigation into Krzysztof’s kidnapping and murder, the Olewnik family have long maintained that the gang convicted of his death had the protection of well-placed politicians in local government.

Records went gone missing, obvious leads never followed and a number of people linked to the case have now died in mysterious circumstances.

Following a public outcry over the handling of the Olewnik investigation, the case has now become the subject of a parliamentary commission.