Ondrej Rigo


Ondrej Rigo is a Slovak serial killer and necrophile who targeted women in Bratislava, Munich and Amsterdam from 1990 to 1992. Currently serving a life sentence for nine murders and one attempted murder in Leopoldov Prison in Slovakia, Rigo has been diagnosed with a schizoid personality disorder along with being an antisocial psychopath as well as a necrophile, finding pleasure in having intercourse with women with mutilated heads. Rigo remains the Slovak murderer with the highest number of victims and he is also the most prolific serial killer in modern Slovak history. He is eligible to apply for parole in 2019.

Early life

Ondrej Rigo has a daughter. According to an article in the Slovak newspaper SME, Rigo is of Roma ethnicity. Even as an adult, Rigo was a man of short stature. When he was 14, he, along with his siblings, was taken into a youth corrective institution and later into an orphanage. They stayed there for a year, having been taken from their mother after their father's arrest. Rigo's mother died in 2000 after being hit by a car. Learning of her death is the only time Rigo recalls ever crying in his life. His father died during a burglary. Rigo claims he liked both parents.
He was married two times. His first marriage was during his military service, but "when we returned to Bratislava she started to become jealous. You know, an Easterner , so she returned to Poprad. I went with her to say goodbye at the station," recalls Rigo. Little is known about his second marriage. The woman he was with in the movie theatre on the night of his last murder is being referred to as his "partner".

Legal occupation

In Bratislava, Rigo worked in Hotel Carlton, where he was arrested. Before that, he worked as a firefighter in a heater room for the Pravda newspaper, a hospital on Bezručova Street as well as a hospital on Šulekova Street, having also completed his gasman certification.

Criminal career

Before committing his first murder, Rigo had already been convicted of crimes 11 times. He was a criminal from an early age, focusing mainly on home burglaries. The last time period he was in police custody in Slovakia was from September 28, 1989 to December 9, 1989, because of unauthorised leaving of the Republic.
After the fall of the Iron Curtain and the end of communism in Czechoslovakia, people were allowed once again to travel freely in Europe; Rigo then continued with his crimes abroad. On December 9, 1989, the same day he was released from prison, he traveled to Vienna without any valid passport. There, he acquired a fake Yugoslavian passport in the name of "Nedo Ikic". Later, he traveled to West Germany to meet his brother. In Bavaria, he asked for asylum, using his fake passport. He was, however, sentenced by the German authorities to two months in prison for forging documents. He spent his sentence in a prison in Bad Reichenhall. After his release from prison, Rigo escaped from a refugee camp and traveled to Munich, where he continued his burglaries and started his killing spree.

Modus operandi

An important factor in Ondrej Rigo's conviction was his consistent modus operandi:
After arriving at Munich, Rigo murdered twice in three months. His first victim, Helena S., probably surprised Rigo while he was burglarizing her apartment. "He killed her and got aroused sexually," recalled Anton Heretik, author of Rigo's psychological evaluation during investigation. On the night from June 7 to June 8, 1990, he sneaked through a partially open window into the ground floor bedroom of Helena S. at an unspecified location in Munich. Rigo smashed her head with a 2.5 kilogram metal pipe, wrapped the upper part of her body in a blanket, and raped her corpse. Before leaving, he may have stolen some easily portable valuables. He disposed of the murder weapon directly beneath the bedroom window.
On the night between July 31 and August 1, 1990, Rigo snuck through the partially open balcony door and into the Munich apartment of Ilke Z., 28, murdering her, again using a metal pipe. Rigo also stabbed her in the neck with a screwdriver, most likely during the act of copulation. He performed both vaginal and anal intercourse with her body. Afterwards, he covered up the body and searched the house for valuables, finding a golden necklace and an unknown amount of German marks, which he stole. The murder weapon and a man's sock was later found by the German police at the crime scene.
In October, Rigo left Munich for Amsterdam to visit his sister, Helena. Maria van der W. was a woman living alone in Amsterdam. During the night of September 27, 1990, Rigo snuck into her ground floor apartment through a partially open balcony window and killed her with a stone weighing over 5.5 kilograms. He stripped the body naked and copulated with it. Again he robbed his victim, stealing a camera, a woman's wristwatch, two boxes containing coins, and some other valuables. In the kitchen, he found a bottle of slivovica and drank it. Later, in court, a witness would testify that Rigo had a liking for this particular drink.
Rigo left for Bratislava, Slovakia the day following the murder. His killings continued with the murder of Terézia R. inside a retirement home in Bratislava, on October 6, 1990. He bludgeoned her with his fist while she was sleeping. The retirement home reported prayer books, a rosary and 4000 Kčs as missing. Underneath the balcony, the police found some Dutch coins and cigarette butts with Rigo's DNA on them.
On January 3, 1991, early in the morning, the bodies of Anna P. and her son Juraj N. were found inside a ground floor flat in a dormitory at an unspecified location in Bratislava. Rigo entered the apartment through a window around midnight. The son was sleeping beside his mother when Rigo crushed their heads with a wooden stick. Anna P. tried to protect her son. Afterwards, Rigo copulated with her body. Anna P., who had emigrated to Switzerland in 1982 with her son and husband, was in Bratislava with her son for only a few days for New Year's.
Jana B. became the first person to survive Rigo's attack on January 9, 1991, when she managed to fight him off after being attacked in her first-floor Bratislava apartment on Kutuzovova Street. Rigo gained access through a ventilation window above the door. After the unsuccessful attack, he quickly fled the apartment. Jana B. noticed that Rigo's light-blue pants were hand-sewn in the crotch area, which later helped in identifying him. The police indeed found such pants in his closet. That same night, before attacking Jana B., Rigo entered through a different window in the neighborhood, but it led only to a small, locked storage room.
Three months after his last kill and after the attack on Jana B., he murdered Helena N. near Záhradnícka Street in Bratislava. This was very near his previous murder scene, possibly even on the same street. Rigo removed a net from the kitchen window of this ground floor apartment, killing Helena N. with a piece of concrete.
Henrieta O. was attacked on July 14, 1991. Rigo gained access to her Bratislava apartment through the window, which she probably left open because of the heat. She was playing her guitar late into the night. Rigo smashed her head in, raped her, and robbed her, leaving her for dead. Henrieta O. initially survived the attack but died 18 days later. Henrieta O.'s grandmother was sleeping in another room of the apartment at the time of Rigo's attack. She was nearly deaf, and could not hear Rigo attacking her fatally injured granddaughter.
Rigo's final victim, Matilda U., was murdered on March 4, 1992, in the center of Bratislava in a porch house on Obchodná Street. That night, Rigo was in a movie theater, Dukla, on Šancová Street with his girlfriend. They were returning home together when he suddenly told her that he had to take care of something and got off the trolleybus. He did not come home until the following morning.
Another unnamed victim from Bratislava, killed with a knife, has been inconclusively attributed to Rigo. The victim was a woman found the morning after her murder by her son. The murder is considered unsolved as of 2008.
Rigo gave some of the items he stole from his victims to his daughter.

Arrest and sentencing

Arrest

Ondrej Rigo was arrested by the Slovak criminal police on March 4, 1992, only hours after his last murder. He was arrested in Hotel Carlton on Hviezdoslavovo Square in Bratislava, where he was employed as a cloakroom attendant. At the time of his arrest he was still without his socks on, which he had used in the attack.
Later, he would claim that the blood on him was syrup and that his sperm found on the victim was arranged by a prostitute from an erotic club. He explained his footprints beneath the balconies and cigarette butts by claiming he was there by chance and had to urinate or that he was curious and took a look through some windows. He explained his possession of jewelry by saying that women often gave him gifts.
Jana B., the only survivor of his crimes, clearly saw Rigo's face because inside the apartment where she fought with Rigo, there was some light from a streetlight outside. She would later attend his trial wearing a wig to remain unnoticed. The criminal police of Germany, Netherlands and Czechoslovakia had been investigating each of Rigo's murders separately. It was only after his arrest that they started cooperating on the case.

Trial

Ondrej Rigo was sentenced on December 7, 1994 by the City Court of Bratislava after a trial that lasted 10 days. A senate headed by Peter Šamko sentenced him to life imprisonment in the "third class", which means highest security prison in Slovakia. When details of his crimes were read to him in court, Rigo did not react in any way. He was sitting rigidly and leaning a bit forward with his face showing no emotion throughout the trial. His file consisted of 5500 pages.
As explained by Šamko, the sentence was chosen based on directly or indirectly proven nine murders, the especially brutal way in which he committed the murders, as well as the fact that possibilities of his resocialization are quite limited and the prognosis is poor. There was also DNA evidence presented to the court consisting of blood analysis and analysis of semen from the victims, as well as testimonies of 194 witnesses.
Rigo never pleaded guilty to any of the murders and he does not feel guilty.
Rigo has appealed the first-order court's sentence. In his appeal, he claims he is innocent, without giving any kind of proof.
Rigo's appeal process at the Supreme Court of Slovakia started on February 27, 1996. During his finishing speech, the representative of the General Prosecutor's Office of Slovakia, Ivan Segeš, proposed to confirm the life imprisonment sentence because Rigo's guilt had been proven once again in the appeal process. On February 28, 1996, the senate of the Highest Court of Slovak Republic denied Rigo's appeal and confirmed his sentence. There is no other appeal possible.
After serving several years in Ilava prison, Rigo was transferred to Leopoldov Prison.

Personality and psychopathological profile

According to court appointed psychologist Anton Heretik, author of Rigo's psychological profile during the trial, Rigo is a psychopath. "He does not accept any social norms, he is lacking empathy and behaves very impulsively. At the same time he is a schizoid personality, unable to create relationships with others. He has strange thoughts and hobbies and he is a loner. He is a combination of schizoid and antisocial psychopath, creating a very dangerous type of criminal", claims Heretik.
According to his psychological profile, the strangeness, lack of hospitality and language barrier in a foreign country could have influenced his later behavior. Rigo was found by the psychologists to not be a sadist.
According to Rigo's investigator Jozef Vachálek, " had a low IQ and seldom talked".
While incarcerated in Ilava prison, Rigo behaved according to the norms most of the time, but according to pedagogist Daniel Blaško from Ilava Prison, he would "often react too aggressively". "Chances for his correction are zero", says Blaško. According to him, it was difficult to communicate with Rigo, because he seldom communicated in a coherent sentence.

Survivor

The Slovak artist Jana B. is the only person to survive an attack by Rigo. She had attended karate classes for several years. Jana B. was attacked around 2:30 in the morning while sleeping in her apartment on Kutuzovova Street in Bratislava's third district on January 9, 1991. She returned home an hour after midnight and went to sleep. Rigo gained access to the apartment via a ventilation window above the door. A ladder was found leaning against the "pavlač".
"I was woken up by a hit to the head and I saw a man standing by my bed. At first I thought I'm dreaming, because I was living alone but when I received another hit to the head I woke up and the wooden shaft from a hoe Rigo stole outside, on the building's yard, broke, because it was moldy," she recalls. Jana B. jumped from her bed and started defending herself immediately with the broken piece of wood. When Rigo went to the door, unlocking it from inside, she threw a chair at him. In the kitchen, he wrestled Jana B. onto a hot gas oven. "The skin on my legs and stomach started to burn", she recalls. They fell on the ground wrestling, then Rigo stood up and started punching her in the head. At this moment, Jana B. grabbed him by his genitals and squeezed them. "He was just trying to gouge out my eye", she remembers. She doesn't remember whether Rigo screamed or not, but the rest of the fight before was silent. He then quickly fled the apartment while Jana B. alarmed her neighbor by banging on the wall, instructing him to call the police. Another neighbor, woken up by her son who had heard the commotion, found Jana B. in shock and savagely beaten.
The neighbor told the police he heard some weird noises but he thought Jana B. was probably framing pictures in the middle of the night. After the attack, her wounds required several weeks to heal. According to Jana B.'s mother, the worst thing was that Rigo was caught over a year after the attack on her daughter, all the time knowing he might come back to finish the job. Years later, Jana B. claims she has no psychological trauma from the attack and she is not interested in Rigo.
Jana B. stayed in the flat she was attacked in for a long time, not feeling the need to move. Other sources claim she got a dog and had to have a light on during the night for seven years after the attack, afterwards finally moving out from the apartment.

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