How Did Katarzyna Zowada Die? The College Student's Corpse Was Skinned

On a gray morning in early January 1999, a tugboat crew moving slowly along the frigid waters of the Vistula River in Poland noticed something tangled in the vessel’s propeller. At first it looked like debris, perhaps cloth or plastic caught in the current. When the crew pulled it free, they realized with mounting horror that it was something else entirely—a large sheet of human skin.

Within days, investigators confirmed the unimaginable. The skin belonged to a missing university student named Katarzyna Zowada. The discovery launched one of the most disturbing murder investigations in modern Polish history, a case that would haunt the city of Kraków for more than two decades. 

When a suspect was finally convicted years later, many believed the mystery had been solved. But in 2024, an appeals court overturned that conviction, and the man once blamed for the crime walked free—leaving investigators and the victim’s family once again without answers. Today, more than a quarter century after Zowada disappeared, the identity of her killer officially remains unresolved.

In the fall of 1998, Zowada was a 23-year-old student at Jagiellonian University, one of Europe’s oldest academic institutions. Friends described her as thoughtful and introspective. She had struggled emotionally since the death of her father two years earlier following a hiking accident, and was undergoing therapy for depression.

On November 12, 1998, she left home for an appointment at a psychiatric clinic in the Nowa Huta district, where she was scheduled to meet her mother. Zowada never arrived. When she failed to return home that evening, her mother quickly reported her missing. Police initially treated the case as a routine disappearance. Zowada was an adult, and investigators suggested she might have left voluntarily or simply needed time away. There were no obvious signs of violence and no immediate evidence of a crime.

Weeks passed without answers. Then, on January 6, 1999, the grim discovery in the river shattered any hope that Zowada might still be alive.

Forensic analysis revealed that the skin pulled from the Vistula had been carefully removed from the victim’s torso. It appeared to have been fashioned into something resembling a crude bodysuit, leading investigators to suspect the killer may have wanted to wear it. Specialists concluded that whoever had done it likely possessed at least some knowledge of anatomy. Additional remains, including a severed leg, were recovered days later.

The crime scene offered few clear clues. Zowada’s remains had been scattered in the river, destroying much of the forensic evidence that might have identified where she was killed. DNA samples collected from the body did not match any known suspect.

One early suspect was a Jagiellonian student named Vladimir, who had decapitated and scalped his father in a nearby town. But police later cleared him of suspicion. Investigators worked with European and American law enforcement, including FBI profilers. In 2011, investigators even brought in one of Poland’s most well-known clairvoyants, hoping his "psychic" abilities might help crack the case, to no avail. Despite years of interviews and failed leads, the investigation stalled. 

One man, however, had drawn investigators’ attention during the early stages of the case: Robert Janczewski.

Janczewski’s background immediately raised questions. He had previously worked in a laboratory where he handled human cadavers during dissections and later held a job at a zoological institute preparing animal skins for research collections. The skills required for that work seemed disturbingly consistent with the forensic findings in Zowada’s case.

Colleagues also described him as socially isolated and sometimes erratic. In one incident that later drew media attention, he reportedly killed several rabbits kept at the research facility where he worked, an act that led to his dismissal. Investigators would later reveal that, in the years after Zowada’s death, Janczewski had made several visits to her gravesite.

In 2017, detectives received new information from a former acquaintance of Janczewski who provided a letter suggesting Janczewski might have been involved in the crime. While the contents of the letter have not been revealed, it was enough for police to act on the tip, searching his apartment in Kraków.

During the search, forensic technicians reported discovering traces of blood and hair samples. Combined with the earlier suspicions surrounding his background, the discovery was enough for prosecutors to move forward.

In October 2017, police arrested the then-52-year-old man and charged him with murder committed with particular cruelty. Janczewski claimed he was innocent and denied knowing Zowada.

The trial that followed attracted widespread attention in Poland. Because of the disturbing nature of the evidence, much of the proceedings took place behind closed doors. Prosecutors argued that Janczewski’s anatomical experience and unusual behavior made him uniquely capable of committing the crime. They suggested that he had lured Zowada to his apartment, killed her there and later dismembered the body before disposing of the remains in the Vistula River.

In 2019, an investigative team cast doubt on the validity of the physical evidence linking Janczewski to the murder: blood traces and hair samples the prosecution claimed were Zowada’s. Defense attorneys agreed, arguing the prosecution’s case relied heavily on circumstantial evidence. The evidence in Janczewski’s apartment could not be conclusively linked to Zowada, and no witness had placed the two together on the day she disappeared.

In 2022, the court convicted Janczewski and sentenced him to life imprisonment. For many observers, the verdict seemed to bring long-delayed closure to a case that had haunted Kraków for more than 20 years. For others, many disturbing questions remained unanswered, including the reliability of witnesses prosecutors claimed linked Zowada with Janczweski.

Then, in October 2024, Poland’s Court of Appeal concluded that prosecutors had failed to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and overturned the conviction. Invoking the legal principle that doubt must favor the accused, the court acquitted Janczewski.

After nearly seven years in custody awaiting trial and appeal, he was released.

Investigators in Kraków have stated that the case technically remains open, and prosecutors have continued reviewing evidence from the original investigation in the hope that new forensic techniques might eventually provide answers.

Several theories persist among investigators and criminologists. The 2026 documentary Fit for a Killer, featuring interviews with reporters covering the case for decades, as well as Janczewski himself, explores a number of alternate theories, including that Zowada may have died accidentally by falling or being hit by a car, with her body later mutilated by someone who found it. It also explores alternate suspects, including a former friend of Janczewski. The man, referred to as “Lesha,” was reportedly a Kraków resident with a history of disturbing behavior.

For Zowada’s family, however, those theories offer little comfort. More than 25 years after her disappearance, the identity of the person responsible for her death remains unknown.