Baby Magda mum facing charges

10th February 2012

The mother of baby Magda, who last week claimed her daughter had been kidnapped, faces manslaughter charges after confessing that the child died in an accident.

In a case that has gripped the nation, Katarzyna W. could stand trial for the involuntary manslaughter of her own six-month-old daughter. The 22-year-old woman said the baby had died after she dropped her by accident in the bathroom of their home in Sosnowiec, and that she then hid the child’s body by a river bank to cover up her fatal mistake.

At the end of January the mother had sparked a massive police hunt, aided by thousands of locals and wall-to-wall media coverage, after she said she had been attacked and her daughter kidnapped.

But following her confession police retrieved the child’s body, and a post mortem found that she had died from trauma to the head: an injury consistent with the mother’s statement. Following the examination prosecutors released the remains of Magda to her family for burial. It also emerged that the mother tried to kill herself by drinking detergent when in detention.

In a dramatic twist to the story, the man who goaded Katarzyna W. into confessing has himself stirred controversy. Krzysztof Rutkowski, a self-styled private detective with an apparently excessive penchant for publicity has been accused by the police of allegedly hampering their hunt for Magda, and he may face an official investigation from the prosecutor’s office.

At the same time Mr Rutkowski’s release of a video of Katarzyna W.’s tearful confession prompted widespread public anger and accusations that he had turned the harrowing events into a media spectacle.

The newspaper Gazeta Katowice also claimed that Mr Rutkowski had lied when he said police had failed to offer Magda’s family psychological counselling. The paper said it has seen documents showing that the family was offered counselling on no less than four occasions.

Ryszard Bedra, co-founder of the Association of Licensed Detectives, said Mr Rutkowski did not carry a license for detective work, and that he had “set himself up as opposition to the police” and that “this was an error as they both had a common goal”.