The horror of Lithuania: this is the first serial killer whose crimes the Soviet system could not trace

Jonas, when he was about 50 years old, started his crimes not in Lithuania, but in Latvia. In 1937, he was convicted of the murder of a Latvian officer he knew, which he did out of jealousy and a simple desire to steal.

Under the penal system of the time, he was sentenced to death, but later commuted to life imprisonment. But everything changed in 1940, when the Soviets came.

“The Soviets change the sentences according to their own law, so in their system there can’t be a life sentence if it doesn’t exist. The crime of a person convicted “for life” has been reclassified to the Soviet penal code and is punishable by the highest penalty for intentional murder at the time – 10 years, says D. Indrisionis.

Jonas was killed and sentenced to 10 years in prison and sent to the depths of the Soviet Union – a camp in Siberia.

Unsuccessful growth after returning to Lithuania

According to the historian, in 1947 Jonas returns to Soviet Lithuania and faces unexpected challenges – a stamp in his documents indicates that he was convicted of a serious crime – murder.

Without getting some kind of education and trade, he cannot register anywhere, because it was believed that such people could cause some trouble, commit crimes, so no one wanted to register them according to their place of residence. And without registration based on the place of residence, he could not get a job.

“He traveled all over Lithuania on the railways and in different towns he was looking for an opportunity to get a job in some kind of construction, he went to Akmenė, because at that time the Akmenė cement factory was being built, ‘ he tried to get a job. there He tried to go to Russia to get a job, but he was not successful anywhere,” said the man.

According to I. Indrišionis, such rejection and despair pushed John to a deeper and deeper psychological crisis, and it was then that he began his series of violent crimes. Iain became a serial killer who targeted lonely women traveling on the railway on dark nights.

A brutal massacre on the railways

Jonas committed his crimes in several towns in Lithuania. Most of the time, the targets were single women or young girls, with whom he met and chatted while traveling. They committed their crimes in secret places, assaulted their victims, raped them, robbed them and finally stopped them.

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His crimes began in 1949 in Švenčionėliai, where Jonas killed a young girl. Three more murders of women followed – in Kaišiadorys, Vilnius, and the last one was committed in central Lithuania.

According to the historian, the Soviet investigators did not realize that a serial killer was at work and that this series of murders was by one person.

“One of his first murders in 1949. In Svenčionėliai, where he killed a young girl, appeared as an unsolved crime for several years. Even the truth of rape was not clear to the Soviets, because they did not perform an autopsy or a forensic medical examination, only found a murdered woman in the bushes without her wallet and other valuables, they assumed that she was killed for the purpose of robbery . ,” he says.

The mistakes in the Soviet system

Although John later confessed to the four murders, he was not charged with a single crime. He spoke clearly and in detail about the murder of a teenage girl in Kaišiadorys, but the Soviet prosecutor’s office could not find any files related to this incident.

“That case was not even charged against him, although he told about it clearly and in detail, in the days when he did, but the Soviets lost those documents somewhere,” said D. Indrisionis.

This series of crimes ended only at the end of 1950, when Jonas attacked another woman near Utena and began to strangle her. People were walking by, so he didn’t finish the crime. Right after that, John was arrested and convicted of robbery, but his brutal deeds have not yet been revealed.

Then, according to the historian, another absurd step of the Soviet system took place – completely innocent people were convicted for one of John’s victims, a woman who was killed in Vilnius. Innocent young men who knew the murdered woman went to prison for John’s crime.

Confession in the camp

John’s violent crimes would have remained a mystery if it weren’t for an unexpected turn at the camp. While in prison in Siberia, John learned that an innocent man was in prison for one of his murders.

Tormented by his conscience, he wrote a letter to the Soviet Minister of Security of Lithuania, in which he said that he could tell about several events in 1949-1950. the circumstances of the murders that took place in Lithuania, on the condition that he be brought to Lithuania from the camp in Siberia.

“In 1953, Jonas was taken to Lithuania and told about the four murders he had committed. He was accused of three murders, because they just couldn’t find the documents for the fourth one, and they sent him to a camp for 25 years, because at that time there was no death penalty. Three years later, in 1956, he died in the camp,” says the historian.

According to D. Indrišionis, this story shows the inability of the Soviet system to investigate such an event: “They did not see isolation, but they saw all these crimes as scattered isolated cases throughout Lithuania. There was a lot of unexplained and unexamined murder or rape at that time, and people like that were free to run wild and do whatever they wanted.”