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Studia Comitatensia 2014 - Yearbook of the Ferenczy Museum - New Series 1 - English Summaries Henrietta Trádler The “Bluebeard” of Cinkota. The Interpretations of a Serial Murder A well-known figure of the opera houses, the Bluebeard, was reborn around the turn of the twentieth century in Hungary in the person of Béla Kiss. The master tinsmith of Cinkota (a small village next to Budapest, today part of it), who became famous as the Hungarian Bluebeard, published his dating advertisements in the Friss Újság (Fresh Newspaper). He organized his appointments in Budapest and invited the chosen women to his home in Cinkota afterwards. There he robbed, murdered and closed his victims into tin barrels deposited in his backyard. On 9 May 1916, several years after the homicides were committed, his crimes came to light. The criminal investigation began and found out that offender was not amendable any more, since he had joined the army at the outburst of the World War I and as the sources attested had died of disease in Serbia. His accomplice, János Nagy in 1918 was finally acquitted of the charges, and thus the murder of at least seven seduced women remained unpunished. For a historian the story of a historical serial killer is an interesting and suitable case for research in several respects. Beyond reporting the events, it is also necessary to analyze and explain what and why had happened. After reconstructing the murders and the life of the actors (the murderer and the victims), the discourses of the contemporary media is also worth to be surveyed. Therefore, the author investigated the various manifestations and deformations of the killer in the contemporary newspapers and penny-a-line literature. The tinsmith from Cinkota must have liked the shilling shocker books as the police found in his house the book on the horror story of the Austrian serial killer of young women, Hugo Schenk. Such pieces of literature produced cheap and of low standard for a wide readership, actually becoming rather popular by the end of the nineteenth century, were reflected in one of the articles of the Közbiztonság (Public Safety) stating that they are immoral and negatively influence the potential murderers who could get inspiration from these morally dangerous texts. This penny-a-line literature often demonized the Bluebeard from Cinkota, depicting his body suffering in Hell. The killer’s such evocation can also be interpreted as the medial transmission of the early modern ritual executions. While in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the criminal body was tortured in public and was ritually destroyed, with the Enlightenment the offenders were hidden from the audience in their physical reality. However, after a murder the society still needed recovery, the evil should have been punished, the body must have been cursed, and the shilling shockers fulfilled these functions. As Béla Kiss had disappeared in the war, unfortunately no psychological expertises could investigate his case, although it could have been an essential key to his criminal acts. The contemporary journalists, however, especially those following the new ideas of psychoanalysis, such as Dezső Kosztolányi and others, commented on the tinsmith’s mental state of mind in their articles in Világ (World) and Hét (Week), and regarded his abnormality among the causes of the murders. They even visited Kiss’ home and investigated his living conditions in order to understand his personality, and considered his aptness for killing as a consequence of his unhappy, parentless childhood. The “sinful city”, on the other hand, also played a key role in the story. The new metropolis of Budapest was a perfect hunting ground for Béla Kiss, similarly to any other nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Western cities like, for example, London was for Jack the Ripper. The metropolitan urban space provided the murderer with anonymity and invisibility. The social status and behaviour of the victims - being maid servants and cooks - was also strongly connected to urban life. The contemporary media highlighted the servant nature of the victims. Nevertheless, according to the biographical reconstructions it was far from being so. Among the killed women elderly “ladies”, singles with vague living standards were also found, only their status in the society and their low level education was common. And that the marriage was the only solution, the way out from their current situation, this meant social prestige and financial security. Béla Kiss, as a tinsmith master with his own workshop was a promising candidate, who took advantage of this situation. Although the tinsmith’s crime story was even after several decades still actual (music bands got his name, horror movies were shot, documentaries were made), until now it was not properly analysed and investigated in its own historical context. 270
