Who Was Béla Kiss?
Kiss was born around 1877 in Izsák, Hungary. By the turn of the century, he had settled in Cinkota, a sleepy suburb of Budapest, where he worked as a tinsmith and was regarded as polite, well-read, attractive and eccentric. Kiss lived alone for much of his adult life, though he occasionally hired a housekeeper. He was also known for his fascination with astrology, alchemy and occult studies—interests that lent him an air of mystery but raised little suspicion among his neighbors.
Behind this facade, Kiss was pursuing a far darker obsession. Beginning around 1903, Kiss started placing personal ads in Budapest newspapers under the alias of “Hoffman,” posing as a lonely widower or man seeking marriage with refined and financially independent ladies. Many of the women who responded were middle-aged widows or spinsters with savings, socially isolated and eager for companionship.
It’s believed Kiss married at least once, to a woman named Marie who was 15 years his junior. But the marriage was troubled, and soon after tying the knot, Marie began an affair. When Kiss discovered it, he murdered her and her lover, stuffing the bodies into metal drums on his property. He told neighbors that Marie had left him, immigrating to America with her lover, but in fact they were his first known murder victims.
After his wife’s murder, Kiss continued his fake courtship of well-to-do women, focusing on those who were alone or did not have any relatives living nearby. It would later be revealed that Kiss had received more than 170 marriage proposals and accepted more than 70 of them. Most of these women had sent Kiss large sums of money, with at least one selling her business before her intended marriage.
At least 20 of his potential wives traveled to Cinkota, where they began to disappear soon after arriving. It would later be revealed that he had strangled most of his victims, preserving their bodies in methanol, or wood alcohol, in a growing number or metal drums. When asked what the drums held, Kiss said they were filled with gasoline, which he was stockpiling in anticipation of fuel shortages should war break out in the region. As many feared an upcoming war in central Europe was likely, the explanation seemed plausible.
A Shocking Discovery
In 1914, World War I indeed began, and Kiss was conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian army. He left his home under the care of his housekeeper, Mrs. Jakubec. Two years later, word reached Cinkota that Kiss had likely died while fighting in Serbia. His landlord decided he wanted to re-rent the home and arrived to clean out the property. When he opened the first barrel, he was overwhelmed with the smell of decaying flesh and immediately contacted law enforcement.
When police arrived and examined the barrel, they found the preserved body of a woman, her skin soaked in wood alcohol. Investigators quickly opened the remaining containers and made the same horrifying discovery again and again. In all, at least 24 bodies were found—most of them female, wrapped in burlap or canvas, their corpses meticulously pickled.
The home itself yielded further clues to Kiss’s double life. Police uncovered evidence of Kiss’s secret life, including dozens of letters from women answering his personal ads, multiple forged identity papers and a library filled with works on poisons, strangulation and the occult.
The Hunt for Béla Kiss
The chaos of wartime Europe, when many were killed and never identified, and many more were captured or missing in action, made finding out what truly happened to Kiss a difficult task, especially because “Béla Kiss” was an extremely common Hungarian name. Investigators alerted the military, and word soon spread that a serial killer might be hiding among the soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian army.
In October 1916, Hungarian authorities received conflicting reports about Kiss’s fate. One message claimed he had died of typhoid in a Serbian hospital; another insisted he was alive and recovering there. When investigators arrived, the patient was gone—and in his bed lay the corpse of another soldier. The discovery fueled suspicions that Kiss had swapped identities to fake his death.
Over the next several decades, alleged sightings of Kiss cropped up across Europe and even in the United States. In 1919, a man resembling Kiss was reported seen in Budapest , but the lead proved false. A year later, a soldier claimed he’d encountered Kiss while serving in the French Foreign Legion.
The most famous account came in 1932. A New York City detective famed for his recall of faces claimed he had seen Kiss walking out of the subway station in Times Square, but that the murderer had disappeared into a crowd before he could be apprehended. Four years later, another alleged sighting of Kiss in New York yielded nothing. Whether that fugitive truly was Kiss remains one of history’s enduring mysteries.
Legacy of a Killer
By the time the case faded from headlines in the 1940s, Béla Kiss had become part of European criminal legend. What seems certain is that Kiss possessed both the intelligence and cunning to plan his crimes and disappearance with care. His use of personal ads, assumed names and chemical preservation of his victims made him a forerunner of many stereotypical modern-day serial killers who use their charming facades to methodically prey on vulnerable young women.
The investigation into Kiss also highlighted the limitations of early forensic science and international policing. Without fingerprints, DNA or shared databases, detectives could only rely on word of mouth and handwritten records, an impossible task during wartime upheaval.
More than a century later, Kiss’s true fate remains unknown. In Hungary, his name has become synonymous with mystery and menace, a reminder that the capacity for evil can remain hidden behind an ordinary face.
