Krzysztof Gawlik

Krzysztof Gawlik (born 1 January 1965) is a Polish serial killer, nicknamed Scorpion . He killed five people in 2001 and was sentenced to life imprisonment. He attempted to escape prison twice, but was caught in the act both times.

Biography Gawlik was born in Świerczyna. His father was a miner, and his mother took care of the house. He experienced violence from an early age. His father, when not at work, drank alcohol and beat his wife. After finishing school, Gawlik was employed in the Julia coal mine in Wałbrzych, where he worked until 1996, when it was closed. Gawlik then set up his own company, which went bankrupt due to lack of funds.

He accumulated a debt of over in 1999. In June 2000, he was arrested on suspicion of robbery and was released on bail in January 2001, paid for by his wife.

Murders Krzysztof Gawlik got his nickname from murdering people with the Škorpion type silenced machine gun. Each victim was shot several times with a characteristic execution shot in the back of the head, along with some stabbing traces on the body. Her murder was ordered by the mafia, who paid Gawlik to kill her.

The next victims of "Skorpion" were Ukrainian Lesia H., a prostitute working in Wrocław and Tomasz S., a man associated with her. He shot them three days after committing the first crime, according to various sources in a public house of their apartment in Wrocław. or offer to rent an apartment of theirs.

Arrest and trial Gawlik was detained at the end of March 2001, when under the influence of alcohol he caused an accident and tried to flee from the scene. The police discovered a pistol with a silencer in his car, which was used to commit the five homicides. Gawlik initially confessed to the killings; he claimed that he first started killing in 1998 because he enjoyed to watch people die in front of his eyes. The trial began in 2002. However, Gawlik withdrew his testimony and claimed that he only killed one person, that he was witness to three murders, and that he had nothing to do with the Poznań murder. He also claimed that the murder he committed was carried out on behalf of a certain amount of profit and drug trafficking.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment with limited possibilities for conditional release, which he could apply for not earlier than fifty years, while the prosecutor demanded a 40-year limitation. Gawlik did not show remorse and decided not to exercise his right to appeal, which is a sensation in the event of a conviction for such a long sentence. He made a second escape attempt at a prison in Wrocław in 2021, where he unseated the barred window in his cell and tried to climb out of it, assisted by the fact his cell was on the ground floor. He was caught after guards noticed him escaping his cell. He had also prepared a hooked rope to scale the prison wall with.