Andrzej Kunowski: The Little Doctor
DNA Finally Shared
After he was sent to prison, Kunowski's identity and DNA profile were shared with other countries via the Interpol database.
Through that data, Polish authorities realized that the British convict was the serial rapist who had absconded while on medical furlough.
Scotland Yard compared its DNA sample from Kunowski with DNA from swab evidence taken after the 1995 rape of one of the adolescent girls in Warsaw. It matched.
The match prompted British police to begin looking at unsolved attacks on adolescent girls there.
Within days, both DNA and fingerprint evidence linked Andrzej Kunowski, at long last, to the murder of Katerina Konev.
He was charged in that case on July 29, 2003.
Kunowski claimed it was a case of mistaken identity.
But the damning physical evidence was coupled with eyewitness testimony from Trajce Konev, the victim of the auto theft and others.
A jury of eight men and four women took less than three hours to render a guilty verdict — even though jurors were denied access to information about Kunowski's long history of attacks.
The British press, too, learned only at trial's end the extent of his history of rape and the government bungles.
As Detective Chief Inspector David Little put it, "He is probably the most dangerous sex offender I have ever come across and certainly the most prolific."
The press gave the Little Doctor a new nickname: the Beast of Poland.
Judge Peter Beaumont handed down the maximum sentence of life in prison.
"I would be failing in my duty, in the light of the evidence about your behavior both in Poland and this country," Beaumont said, "if I did not ensure you spend the rest of your life in prison. ...You took the life of a child who was just beginning to enjoy what this country had to offer her and her family as refugees from hardship abroad. It was a life of great promise. You ended it in circumstances of great violence and terror."