Hungary • 1929
The Angel Makers of Nagyrév Nagyrév, a farming village on the river Tisza in Hungary, a Friday morning in July 1929. Two gendarmes and the village crier walk in single file along a plank fence to the midwife's house, and the crier's eight-year-old daughter, Mária, creeps after them through the bushes.
Nagyrév Hungary Tiszakürt Hungary Cibakháza Hungary Szolnok Hungary Budapest Hungary Márianosztra Hungary Multiple countries • 1983
The Wedding Party That Hijacked a Plane: Flight 6833, Tbilisi 1983 On 18 November 1983 a wedding party boarded Aeroflot flight 6833 in Tbilisi, bound for Batumi on the Black Sea. The groom, Gega Kobakhidze, was a young film actor; his bride, Tina, was nineteen.
Tbilisi airport Georgia Tbilisi Georgia Sioni Cathedral, Tbilisi Georgia Batumi Georgia Natanebi Georgia Sukhumi Georgia Rustavi Georgia Leningrad Russia Moscow Russia Tallinn Estonia Multiple countries • 1971
The Colonel Who Wore Two Watches: A Murder Behind a Steel Door, Warsaw 1971 On a Friday evening in August 1971, a Warsaw militia sergeant stood at the door of flat seventeen, four Matejki Street, a few hundred steps from Poland's parliament. Nobody had answered the bell all day.
4 Matejki Street, Warsaw Poland Lwow Ukraine Montpellier France Toulouse France Bieszczady Mountains Poland Jablonki Poland Rakowiecka prison, Warsaw Poland Paris France Krosno Poland Świnoujście Poland Powazki military cemetery, Warsaw Poland Rzeszów Poland Baligród Poland Kraków Poland Legionowo Poland Budapest Hungary Germany • 1976
The Man Who Stole East Germany's Death Machines On the night of 30 April 1976, Michael Gartenschläger walked back alone to the East German border fence at marker 231, near Büchen. Bolted to its posts were machines East Germany said did not exist: the SM-70, a metal funnel packed with explosive and steel cubes, set off by trip wires.
Border marker 231, near Bröthen Germany Strausberg Germany West Berlin Germany Torgau Germany Brandenburg-Görden Prison Germany Giessen Germany Reinbek Germany Hamburg Germany Salzwedel Germany Bonn Germany East Berlin Germany Schulzendorf Germany Schönberg Germany Lübeck Germany Schwerin Germany Karlsruhe Germany Multiple countries • 1981
The Friend Who Cooked Dinner: A Stasi Murder Plot on the Sinai, 1981 On the twenty-first of July 1981, on a beach in the Israeli-held Sinai a few miles south of Eilat, a West German on holiday with his wife and their seven-year-old daughter sat down to a bowl of meatballs cooked by his best friend. The friend had been working for East Germany's secret police for eleven years, and there was poison in the mince.
Coral Island (Pharaoh's Island), south of Eilat Egypt East Berlin Germany Boizenburg Germany Bautzen Germany Brandenburg an der Havel Germany Herleshausen Germany Giessen Germany Sofia Bulgaria Weinheim Germany Platania, Pelion Greece London United Kingdom The autobahn south of Frankfurt Germany Dartford, Kent United Kingdom Mannheim Germany Köpenick, East Berlin Germany Acre Israel Tel Aviv Israel Eilat Israel Sharm El Sheikh Egypt Cologne Germany Buenos Aires Argentina Costa Rica Costa Rica Moabit, Berlin Germany Multiple countries • 1981
Poland Sent a Spy to Los Angeles. He Recruited the Man Next Door In February 1977 a young Polish machine-tool salesman took an apartment in a tennis complex between the beach and the Los Angeles airport, and made a friend on the court: a Hughes Aircraft radar engineer of fifty-seven who was broke. For three years the engineer photographed classified radar documents on his kitchen table with a home-movie camera and the salesman carried the film to Chicago, while the FBI watched both men around the clock and saw nothing it could take to a jury.
Playa del Rey, Los Angeles United States El Segundo, California United States Los Angeles United States Brentwood, Los Angeles United States Terminal Island United States Memphis, Tennessee United States Springfield, Missouri United States Chicago United States New York United States Washington United States Ventura, California United States Warsaw Poland Gdynia Poland Innsbruck Austria Linz Austria Geneva Switzerland Glienicke Bridge, Potsdam Germany Moscow Russia Majorca Spain Multiple countries • 1988
Czechoslovakia Sent a Spy to London. A Dutch Mother Thought He Was Her Son On the morning of Saturday 2 April 1988, Special Branch officers broke down the door of a flat in Friern Barnet, north London, and found an art dealer in his pyjamas with headphones on, listening to a woman's voice reading numbers in Czech. He said his name was Erwin van Haarlem, a Dutchman.
Friern Barnet, London United Kingdom London United Kingdom The Hague Netherlands Amsterdam Netherlands Schaijk Netherlands Caen France Teplice Czech Republic Rumburk Czech Republic Olešovice Czech Republic Prague Czech Republic Kolín Czech Republic Brno Czech Republic Halle Germany Vienna Austria Isle of Wight United Kingdom Moscow Russia Washington United States Multiple countries • 1948
The Masaryk File Before dawn on 10 March 1948, two stokers crossing the courtyard of the Czernin Palace in Prague found the foreign minister, Jan Masaryk, barefoot and in pyjamas on the paving under his own bathroom window. By noon the radio had a word for it.
Prague Czech Republic Lány Czech Republic Sezimovo Ústí Czech Republic Moscow Russia London United Kingdom Washington United States Multiple countries • 1988
Yugoslavia Sent a Hitman to Scotland. A Neighbour's Envelope Beat Him On a quiet street in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, on an October morning in 1988, a man walking his Alsatian home from the woods bent down to help a driver who seemed to want directions. The driver's hand came up holding a silenced pistol, and it kept firing until it was empty.
Kirkcaldy United Kingdom London United Kingdom Dunfermline United Kingdom Perth United Kingdom Rijeka Croatia Zagreb Croatia Munich Germany Paris France Multiple countries • 1927 to 1985
4 Men Who Never Arrived: The Strangest Disappearances of Eastern Europe Four doors, four decades, four countries. In Warsaw in 1927 a general steps out of an army car on the city's grandest street and walks into a bathhouse.
The Bath, Warsaw 1927
Warsaw Poland Wilno Lithuania Gdańsk Poland A Light, West Berlin 1952
West Berlin Germany Chemnitz Germany Moscow Russia A Good Sanatorium, Bucharest 1944
Bucharest Romania Oradea Romania Room 614, Madrid 1985
Madrid Spain Córdoba Spain Moscow Russia Multiple countries • 1933
Unsolved for 90 Years: The Girl in Two Suitcases Otýlie Vranská was twenty-two, six months into a new life in Prague, when she walked out into the small hours of Friday, the first of September 1933, and did not come back.
Prague Czech Republic Bratislava Slovakia Košice Slovakia Brezno Slovakia Jičín Czech Republic Žilina Slovakia Lučenec Slovakia Multiple countries • 1925
The Real Story of the Black Widow: Vera Renczi and the 35 Zinc Coffins The story says that in a town near the edge of Yugoslavia, police broke down three iron doors and raised their torches over thirty-five zinc coffins, arranged around a cellar, each labeled with a man's name, his age, and how long he had been hers.
Veliki Beckerek Serbia Perlez Serbia Novi Sad Serbia Požarevac Serbia Berlin Germany Temesvar Romania Belgrade Serbia Vladimirovac Serbia Multiple countries • 1963
The City That Stopped Opening Its Doors: The Mosgaz Panic of 1963 In December 1963, a young man in a fur hat began knocking on Moscow doors and saying one word: Mosgaz, the gas service. It was the most ordinary knock in the city, and people opened, because back then people opened their doors to everyone.
Moscow Russia Ivanovo Russia Orenburg Russia Kazan Russia Tbilisi Georgia Gori Georgia Multiple countries • 1991
The Culianu Case On May 21, 1991, in the middle of a crowded book sale, a professor of religion was executed with a single small-caliber shot inside the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. People heard it, and went back to work.
Chicago United States Iași Romania Bucharest Romania Latina Italy Milan Italy Groningen Netherlands Paris France New York United States Hungary • 1957
The Martfu Case July 1957. A young worker from the Tisza Shoe Factory in Martfu, Hungary, is murdered on her walk home from the second shift.
Martfű Hungary Tiszaföldvár Hungary Öcsöd Hungary Nagyrév Hungary Tiszakécske Hungary Szolnok Hungary Szeged Hungary Budapest Hungary Czech Republic • 1951
He Was in a Cell When the Shots Were Fired: The Babice Case On a July night in 1951, armed men walked into the village school of Babice, Czechoslovakia, and shot the three communist officials meeting inside.
Babice Czech Republic Rokytnice Czech Republic Šebkovice Czech Republic Horní Újezd Czech Republic Jihlava Czech Republic Třebíč Czech Republic Brno Czech Republic Prague Czech Republic Multiple countries • 1983
The Friend Held the Key: The Cold War Murder Germany Took 33 Years to Solve In July 1983, Stjepan Đureković, marketing director of Yugoslavia's oil giant INA, was shot and struck down with a blade inside a Bavarian garage where his banned books were printed. The lock was untouched: the killers had been let in with a copied key.
Wolfratshausen Germany Munich Germany Zagreb Croatia Luxembourg Luxembourg Mallorca Spain Calgary Canada Glina Croatia Bukovac Serbia Belarus • 1971
The Man With the Red Armband: 36 Murders the Soviet Union Refused to See For fourteen years, women vanished along the roads of the Vitebsk region of Soviet Belarus, and the state kept solving the murders: fourteen innocent people were convicted, one was shot, one went blind in the camps, one was broken in a psychiatric ward.
Vitebsk Belarus Polotsk Belarus Novopolotsk Belarus Minsk Belarus Beshenkovichi Belarus Mozyr Belarus Romania • 1972
The Man With the Hammer: The Serial Killer Communism Couldn't Punish Cluj, Romania, winter 1972. Women walk home from factory shifts through unlit streets, holding their keys in their fists.
Cluj Romania Bucharest Romania Ștei Romania Nucet Romania Huedin Romania Salaj Romania Poland • 1964
He Never Confessed: The Vampire Trial That Hanged Two Brothers For six years a killer stalked the coal towns of southern Poland, striking women from behind at dawn and dusk. Fourteen died.
Katowice Poland Będzin Poland Siemianowice Poland Sosnowiec Poland Tarnowskie Góry Poland Warsaw Poland Romania • 1977
Tortured Into Confessing: The Murder That Communist Romania Refused to Solve In July 1977, an eighteen-year-old student named Anca Broscoțean traveled to Bucharest for a university entrance exam and never came home. Within days, packages containing her remains were found across the city.
Bucharest Romania Sibiu Romania Târgoviște Romania Târgu Jiu Romania the Danube Black Sea Canal Romania Multiple countries • 1981
The Sealed Death of the Dictator's Daughter In 1981, Lyudmila Zhivkova, the daughter of Bulgaria's communist dictator, his minister of culture and presumed heir, was found dead in her bath at 38.
Sofia Bulgaria Borovets Bulgaria Petrich Bulgaria Moscow Russia Oxford United Kingdom Multiple countries • 1971
Murder at the Golden Stag In March 1971, communist Romania threw open its doors to the West for the Golden Stag, Cerbul de Aur, its glittering international song festival.
Poiana Brașov Romania Brașov Romania Predeal Romania Timișoara Romania Bucharest Romania Cyprus Cyprus the United States United States Multiple countries • 1959
The Communist Bank Robbery That May Never Have Happened In 1959, six former insiders of Romania's Communist regime were accused of the impossible: robbing the National Bank of Romania, in a state that insisted crime was a disease of the capitalist West. But the case had a strange flaw.
Bucharest Romania Jilava Romania Israel Israel Romania • 1970
The Vampire of Bucharest and the Murders His Father Got Away With In 1970, a killer began hunting the streets of Bucharest, and he came only on the worst nights, in the storms and the freezing rain. For more than a year, a Communist state that insisted crime was a disease of the capitalist West refused to admit he existed.
Bucharest Romania Jilava Romania 
