Toma Gheorghe

Toma Gheorghe (born 16 August 1941), known as The Butcher of Arad , is a Romanian serial killer and thief. Originally convicted of a 1973 double murder and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment, he was pardoned in 1988 and released. Years later, he committed three additional murders in his home city of Arad from 1997 to 2003, for which he was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment.

Due to the multitude of sentences he has served totaling over 50 years, Gheorghe is considered one of Romania's longest-serving prisoners. He is also the country's oldest confirmed and longest-active serial killer.

Early life Toma Gheorghe was born on 16 August 1941 in Arad, the first surviving child of Gheorghe and Rozalia Gheorghe. Before having him, the couple had had at least nine previous children, most of which had succumbed to diseases such as measles and scarlet fever. Reportedly, Toma was born prematurely and was also expected to die in infancy, but doctors continued treating him on his mother's insistence, allowing him to survive. Two years later, his younger brother, Trudi, was born. On the morning of 13 August 1973, Gheorghe went to the Pretorian household to retrieve a plastic paint bucket he had forgotten there, but found that nobody was home. He returned to the house that same evening and explained why he was there, only for Petre to supposedly snap at him for no apparent reason.

During his incarceration, Gheorghe's wife divorced him and forbid him from seeing their children, while his own mother passed away. During the mid-1980s, his older daughter Rozalia married at age 15 and moved away to another city. During his incarceration, Gheorghe was repeatedly visited by Tenzi, who attempted to convince him to move out once he got out of prison. Gheorghe refused each and every time, and when he was released from prison in March 1997, he moved back in with her. His body was found by his landlord on Stefan Augustin Doinas Street on 24 July, who immediately notified the police. An autopsy concluded that Rinaldi had been stabbed more than 20 times in the torso, neck, and head. Due to the fact that Rinaldi frequented the social circles of various female prostitutes and gay men, police initially believed that the killer was someone previously acquainted with him. During his stay there, he sent death threats to prosecutor Codrin Gavra – the man who had first arrested him for pimping in 1999. In these letters, Gheorghe threatened to chop him into pieces and that Gavra would not be able to sign arrest warrants for long. The inmate then reported this information to the authorities, who charged Gheorghe with the Rinaldi murder, proving that he was indeed the killer after his DNA was matched to the blood found at the crime scene. Investigators focused their searches on a bridge along Cocorilor Street, where Gheorghe claimed to have disposed of the bodies, but were unable to locate anything. Despite this, Gheorghe was charged with both murders after splotches of blood found on the yellow carpet he had sold to the prostitute were confirmed to belong to Tenzi. Regarding the charges, he was sentenced to 25 years for the murder of Rinaldi and another 25 for the murders of Tenzi and Bonţoiu, but the sentences for the latter two were merged into the Rinaldi sentence to form a total of 30 years imprisonment.

All of these appeals were denied by the courts, with his final appeal being rejected on 10 October 2024, finalizing his sentence. In their decision, the judges stated that despite his old age, Gheorghe still posed a danger to the public due to his aggressive behavior, lack of remorse, and open threats to "take revenge" on those who had put him behind bars.