Police: cannibal killed two women

Slovakia's police said on Wednesday they had evidence showing a man who had tried to lure a Swiss man to Slovakia to kill and eat him had also killed two women.

Published: 18 May 2011 14:40 CEST

“All evidence leads to the conclusion that the 43-year-old Matej Curko was a cannibal,” police chief Jaroslav Spisiak told AFP on Wednesday, adding he would not disclose details to protect the victims’ families.

“The police found two shallow graves in the woods near Kysak, eastern lovakia, with the remains of two female bodies cut to pieces (on Tuesday),” he added.

“Some body parts were missing but we found photographs of these parts” in Curko’s computer, which also contained data that led the police to the graves, Spisiak said.

Curko, who died in hospital on May 12 after being shot by the police in a gunfight two days earlier, hunted for his victims on the Internet.

“He contacted a Swiss citizen, who agreed to come to Slovakia, and let Curko kill him and eat him,” police said, indicating the would-be victim had been suicidal.

But the man panicked when he saw Curko was serious about his plan, and he contacted the police who sent an undercover agent to meet the cannibal and arrest him.

Before being shot himself, Curko managed to shoot the agent who is now in hospital, stabilised and improving, Spisiak added.

Two victims suffered serious wounds, police said. The attacker was also in hospital being treated for injuries that investigators said were self-inflicted.

The man was “believed to be of foreign origin” and was aged about 40, police said in a statement which added that he was thought to have acted alone.

All of the injured remained hospitalised late Wednesday.

Armed with “sharpened or pointed” metal weapons, the man first lashed out at a passer-by at the railway station in the town of 12,000 people in the Aargau canton, about 60 kilometres (38 miles) west of Zurich, police said.

He then wounded several people seemingly at random before entering a house, police added.

Among those attacked were two teachers from the Zofingen cantonal school, the institution’s director, Patrick Strossler, told 20minuten.ch news website.

The Aargauer Zeitung newspaper quoted one man as saying his pregnant wife had been among those attacked. She was cut in the face but her life was not threatened.

After two hours of negotiations with a specialised team, the man was arrested in the house, police said. The suspect had injured himself and was taken to hospital, said Bernhard Graser, a police spokesman.

Graser told the Zofinger Tagblatt newspaper that the attacker’s injuries were self-inflicted.

Police have called for witnesses to share video or photos that may be useful for their investigation.

Images shown by Aargauer Zeitung showed a large deployment of police and emergency vehicles. The security forces had assault rifles and bullet-proof vests.

A police helicopter landed on a nearby sports field, causing the local youth football team to cut short a training session, the newspaper said.