Vaslui serial killer

The Vaslui serial killer is the nickname given to an unidentified Romanian serial killer who murdered four women around Vaslui County from 2000 to 2004.

While nobody has been charged with these murders, investigators have indicated that they consider convicted murderer Cătălin Ciolpan to be the main suspect. Ciolpan, an HGV driver, was convicted of two sexually motivated murders in Austria and Germany committed in 2014 and 2016, and is currently serving two life terms for each crime.

Murders On October 12, 2000, 29-year-old Marcela Tomozei, the wife of a priest living in Crețești who also worked as a nurse at a hospital in Huși, was seen getting into the car of a stranger near Tecuci to attend a labor strike. On the next day, her body was found near a brick factory in Bârlad - she had been strangled with her own scarf, which was missing along with her jewelry.

While police were working to solve this case, a forester working near the forest in Mitoc found two human skeletons. The find was reported to the authorities, and both victims were identified shortly afterwards via their clothing. One allegation claimed that multiple witnesses had seen Tomozei enter a blue Dacia Pick-Up driven by an unknown man, while others said that they had seen her in the back of a red variant of the same car, unable to tell whether she was still alive. When the driver spotted them, he veered into the nearby woods, where the skeletonized remains were found months later. According to him, her body was sent to the National Institute of Forensic Medicine "Mina Minovici" in Bucharest so additional tests could be carried out, but the coroners never returned it. His first victim was 20-year-old French student Lucile Klobut, who was sexually assaulted and beaten to death with a metal bar in Kufstein, Austria on January 12, 2014. The other victim was 27-year-old Carolin Gruber, who was reported missing from Endingen am Kaiserstuhl, Germany, on November 6, 2016. Her body was found four days later, having been sexually assaulted and murdered in a similar manner to Klobut.

Evidence gathered from the crime scenes and detective work eventually led investigators to Ciolpan, who was arrested on June 2 at his workplace. He denied the charges, but was nonetheless tried, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in both cases.

Due to the similarities they exhibited to the crimes in Vaslui, various news agencies have delved into his past in an attempt to connect him to the crimes. He lived in the area at the time of the crimes, drove a car similar to the one reported by witnesses and had even been charged with the attempted murder of a prostitute in Iași in 2005, but was released due to a lack of evidence for a conviction.

However, as of February 2025, he has not been charged with the Vaslui crimes, all of which remain unsolved.