Angels of Death | The Skin Hunters of Łódź, Poland
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They swear to help people and protect people. They swear to save lives, not take them. But when greed works its way into the mix, some people's oaths are easily broken. Between 1990 and 2002, ambulance workers in Łódź, Poland formed an unholy alliance with the local funeral homes. They auctioned off dead bodies in a highly competitive market. When they ran out of bodies to sell, they began killing people instead.

During those years, a ride in a Polish ambulance may have been your last. Even if you made it to the hospital, life was not guaranteed. Two paramedics, Andrzej Nowoczyn and Karol Banasz, were found guilty of killing patients and selling their bodies. Two doctors, Janusz Kulinski and Paweł Wasilewski, were guilty of aiding them.

Polish authorities fear that hundreds more were killed by "Wolfcy Skór" or the skin hunters. There's no telling how many ambulance workers, doctors and funeral home directors were involved in the scam. Death is the only business that's always booming. These greedy Polish men wanted to squeeze the industry for every penny it had. Part 1: An Unholy Alliance

Łódź, Poland, is a large city in the country's geographical center. It is home to about 655,000 people, making it the fourth largest city in Poland as well. Among them are two self-described punk journalists, Marcin Stelmasiak and Wsi Mysław Witkowski. Consider them a rogue, investigative duo. They'd go looking for stories where stories may not be.

In 2000, they had the radical idea to look into the death trade. You see, capitalism was still new in Poland. It had been a communist country until the fall of the Soviet Union. In the 1990s, it transitioned to a capitalist economy. While this was a net positive for Poland, it unearthed its fair share of money-hungry scoundrels. It also had unintended consequences in Łódź.

Under the communist regime, roughly 80% of factory and textile workers in Łódź were women. They earned enough to support their families and were often the breadwinners. Most of these women were let go without warning when Poland pivoted toward a free market economy. Old buildings were bought by private citizens and transformed into the country's first strip clubs. Bore and hungry, many of the former textile employees turned to sex work.

The atmosphere in Wüch during the 1990s allowed illicit activity to fester. The line between moral and immoral, legal and illegal, was blurred. Death was a lucrative and highly competitive industry. Funeral homes were among the first private businesses in Wüch. Some were leaps and bounds ahead of the rest, and they were more than ready to capitalize on Wüch's cloak of moral ambiguity. Our punk journalists

Stelmashiak and Vitkovsky knew that information regarding recent deaths was being traded between ambulance crews and funeral homes. They just didn't know which way it was going and who started it. According to funeral home director Tomasz Wojciech, people like him came first. He owned Styx Funeral Parlor, one of Łódź's most successful death houses.

Tomasz openly admitted his early involvement in the Skin Hunter scandal, justifying his actions by saying: "Those who refused to participate didn't last in the business." The entry to business was also fairly easy. Anybody could open a funeral home. You didn't need a license or any special documentation. All you needed were the funds to get off the ground. Of course, funeral homes only make money off one thing: hosting funerals.

They can only host funerals when someone dies. And while people will always die, there's no telling when. The clock starts ticking as soon as someone flatlines. It becomes a race to contact families, as 99% of people only host one funeral. That's where the doctors and paramedics come in. They're the first people to know when someone dies. They're also connected to the deceased family, especially if the person died at home with paramedics on the scene.

It's a time of heightened vulnerability for loved ones. In other words, they're easy prey. Ivona Schwader was shocked when her mother-in-law died. She wasn't thinking clearly, and neither were her sisters. The paramedic who declared their mother-in-law deceased seemed like the only level-headed person in the room. They asked him what they should do next. All he did was put them in touch with the funeral home that bribed him the most.

Sometimes, it was as easy as handing over a business card. People like Tomasz Wojcik took care of the rest. He, among other funeral home directors, would squeeze the families for all they're worth. Did the family want the home to come and retrieve the body? Did they want their loved one carried away on a stretcher instead of balled up in sheets? By the end, the families would have no idea how the bill got so out of control.

The worst part is, these funeral home owners would find ways to pass the cost of their bribes onto the families. Those bribes weren't always monetary either. Paramedics would accept everything from sleeping pills and TVs to vodka and boxes of chocolates. Funeral homes and the ambulance service became so intertwined that people in Łódź believed burial services were simply part of a paramedic's duties. Part 2: Supply and Demand

The relationship between funeral homes and paramedics straddled the line between legal and illegal. Its immorality drove many doctors away from the business. Those of lesser moral consciousness didn't mind helping families decide on funeral services. To them, the body of the recently deceased was a skin for sale.

Investigators discovered that top funeral homes were paying bribes as high as 20,000 PLN or about $5,000 every weekend to secure exclusive access to deceased bodies. Sometimes they heard from ambulance dispatchers before the paramedics did. When the ambulance arrived, funeral home reps would already be at the person's house. Even if the patient wasn't expected to die, an undertaker was always on the scene.

In a normal society, the hearse should never beat the ambulance to grandma's house. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Łódź, Poland was far from normal. The skin-hunter scandal entered darker territory when paramedics like Andrzej Nowoczyn and Karol Banasz realized there was more money in letting people die than saving their lives. They were hands-off death dealers at first.

Sometimes, they'd stop for lunch before getting to the patient's home. By then, the heart attack victim was already dead or dying. Dispatchers were like God, according to Polish police. Instead of sending the nearest paramedic team, they'd send someone 40 minutes to an hour away. Life-saving help was deliberately delayed, all in the name of money. On a good night, an ambulance team could secure between 15 and 30 skins.

The best was a dispatcher known only as Tomas S. Despite. Having no medical training, papers referred to him as Dr. Tomas. He had previously studied to become a priest but dropped out of the seminary. He was accused of falsifying data and deliberately delaying ambulance services. However, Dr. Tomas was never charged with any crimes related to the skin hunter's scandal.

For our journalists, investigative cases like these are always hardest at the beginning. It's all about finding that first lead. The domino effect typically takes over from there. The Skin Hunter's case was unlike any other. The beginning was the easiest part. Doctors and former paramedics came forward when people began dying mysteriously around Wuch. To their credit, they didn't want to be part of the scandal. Many were forced into it after finding needles in their tires.

If you participated, they could blackmail you. If you refused, they would punish you. In the end, it was a lose-lose situation for many good-hearted people. Families also reached out when news of the investigation spread. Their loved ones were sick but not dying. That's because some doctors were set up to fail.

In one case, a gynecologist who was afraid of electricity was sent to save a man dying of a heart attack. The gyno didn't know how to use the defibrillators, and the man passed away. Remember how thousands of women lost their textile jobs when Poland converted from communism to capitalism? The same is true for men. Instead of going into sex work, these jobless men entered the ambulance trade.

Despite having no medical training, many were given jobs as drivers or paramedics. They were known to steal from families and drink heavily on the job. During his trial, convicted killer Andrzej Nowoczyn claimed that he never drank on the job, but that was only when the cameras were rolling. When the cameras were off, he allegedly told a reporter, "This is the first time I've been sober since Christmas." That was in June.

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In the beginning, Polish funeral homeowners thought they'd discovered a new way to generate business. Was it immoral? Yes. Was it illegal? In the words of Dr. Victor Frankenstein, they created a monster. There was a power struggle at the height of the skin hunters' scandal. Funeral homeowners wanted out, as ambulance workers and paramedics seized complete control. They had a monopoly on information and dead bodies.

If the funeral home wanted to stay in business, they'd have to play ball with the monster they helped create. Here's how one former funeral home owner described the volatile situation: For two weeks, funeral company A would receive tips on recent deaths in Wuch. Then, two more weeks would pass without company A learning of a single corpse. Company A would call the ambulance service to inquire, only to learn that funeral company B was paying more for tips.

If Company A wanted tips again, it would have to increase its rates to outbid Company B. This cycle continued until both companies paid more than they could afford. Violence between funeral homes was inevitable. Owners were jumped and beaten. Their cars and parlors were torched with Molotov cocktails. Someone come outside to find their hearses with four flat tires.

The kingpin, if you will, was Witold Skowodelewski. He was a city councilman and the owner of the most prominent funeral home in Łódź. He even cut a deal with the church to be the sole proprietor of the largest Catholic cemetery. If other parlors wanted to use the cemetery, they had to pay Witold a hefty fee. Naturally, this put a target on his back. Polish newspapers described him as a funeral tycoon.

Smaller homes had united against him, and a war broke out among the owners known as the Gravediggers' War. The leader of the smaller homes was Jacek Tomalski. In 2001, Tomalski was looking for an assassin to kill Witold. Word spread throughout the criminal underground, soon reaching the ears of the Central Bureau of Investigation, Poland's version of the FBI.

The CBI sent an undercover agent, codename "Animal", to pose as a contract killer. Tomolsky wanted it to be loud and spectacular. Animal suggested they simply break Vitold's legs or send him to the hospital. But Tomolsky was adamant. The kingpin needed to die. Ironically, Tomolsky and Vitold used to be friends.

They met in the early 90s when Tomalski was working for the Military Medical Academy as a post-mortem lab tech, meaning he specialized in cutting up dead bodies. By then, Witold was starting his funeral home empire. He visited the morgue almost every day. He'd pick Tomalski's brain about the ins and outs of death in Łódź, Poland. He'd bring him sausages and other small delicacies in exchange for information.

Vitold was among the wealthiest men in Łódź by the late 90s. Tomalski also did quite well, undertaking for Skuza-Dalewski and other funeral homeowners as a side gig. Unfortunately, he spent money faster than he made it. His friends drank on his tab. On his 40th birthday, guests from the funeral business and medical community partied the night away.

Tomolsky's relationship with Vitold allegedly soured when the latter tried to rope the former into the skin hunters scandal. Tomolsky began liking Vitold less and less. He perceived him as a business tycoon who played dirty. All of his success wasn't due to any skill. He was lucky, connected, and willing to bend the rules, if not break them. In the mid 90s, WUCH established the Association of Funeral Directors.

Vitold was initially in charge, but the other owners drove him out due to his monopoly on the market. Furthermore, they wanted the police to look into his shady methods. Tomolsky was among the few people who challenged Vitold. Naturally, the Association of Funeral Directors put him in charge. Their first task was sticking the anti-monopoly office on the funeral tycoon.

The investigation never uncovered any illegal practices, likely due to Vitold's influence and position on the city council. Tomalski couldn't believe it. Soon, he began getting threatening phone calls and messages at his office. One read: "We'll cut off your head and play football with it." Another threatened to make a whore out of his 10-year-old daughter. Mysterious leaflets began circulating in Łódź, accusing doctors and paramedics of murdering patients.

At the bottom of each leaflet was Tomolsky's name and both his work and private phone numbers, making him an unwilling target of public outrage. He knew it was Vitold's doing. There were whispers of the skin hunter scandal, but the main story hadn't broken yet. Those involved wanted to send a message to anyone looking to tell it. Eventually, someone set Tomolsky's car on fire. He went to sleep each night and woke up each morning fearing for his life.

Despite changing his number, Tomolsky's phone rang every day. The threats got worse, so bad that they were not worth repeating. Soon, he was forced to move his daughter into hiding. She didn't go to school for two months. After Tomolsky went public with his accusations, Vitold retaliated by suing him for defamation. Soon after, Tomolsky was abruptly fired from his position at the Military Medical Academy.

Left unemployed and increasingly fearful for his safety, he became convinced that the only way to stop Vitold was to eliminate him. In early September 2001, Tomolsky met with a supposed hitman, an undercover agent known as Animal. He handed over 25,000 złoty in cash. Without even counting the money, Animal looked him in the eye and asked, "Are you sure about this?" Animal felt terrible for Tomolsky.

During a meeting with his handler in Warsaw, he said: "We're chasing the wrong guy. His daughter is being threatened. His car has been burned and we want to put him in jail." His handler didn't care. Tomalski was arrested on September 6th, 2001, the very day his planned assassination of Vitold was set to take place.

The story became front page news. Seeing how close he had come to being killed, Vitold realized that if Tomolsky was desperate enough to take his life, others might be as well. So, to protect himself, he went to local reporters to blow the lid off the Skin Hunter scandal. He claims he did so because the affair had finally crossed the line. Doctors and paramedics weren't just letting people die, they were killing them. Part 4: Final Breaths

Pancuronium bromide, commonly known as Pavalon, is a muscle relaxant with several medical uses. However, it's primarily used in euthanasia. In the United States, it's the second of three drugs given during a lethal injection. It's important to note that Pavalon does not put you to sleep. It simply relaxes your muscles and paralyzes your lungs at lethal doses.

During a lethal injection, Pavalone is used after midazolam, a benzodiazepine that'll knock anybody unconscious. The Pavalone relaxes their muscles and shuts down their lungs. Finally, a lethal dose of potassium chloride is used to stop the heart. Without midazolam, you'd essentially be in a state of sleep paralysis after a lethal dose of Pavalone.

You'd feel everything happening to you, but won't be able to yell or move. That's why Amnesty International objects to Pavillon's usage during lethal injection. It may not look like the prisoner is suffering when they're silently screaming and crying for mercy. You'd have no way of knowing if the sedative did what it was supposed to do. A string of unexplained deaths in Wuch caught the attention of our punk investigative team.

They heard several strange stories, such as the mentally ill man who died without reason, or the woman who passed in an ambulance after complaining about a rash. In one case, a young man was waiting for the tram when he saw paramedics rush his grandmother, Mrs. Danuta, away in an ambulance. But instead of bringing her to the hospital across the street, the ambulance drove deeper into the city and vanished.

According to reports, Mrs. Danuta's doctor had ordered routine tests to check for high blood pressure. There was no reason to take her away in an ambulance. The paramedic and convicted killer, Andrzej Nowoczyn, convinced the family otherwise. He loaded Mrs. Danuta and drove around the block. He injected her with Pavalone and waited until her pulse flatlined.

You wouldn't be able to tell, but Mrs. Danuta suffered an excruciating death. It began with her eyelids. They dropped as if they had quadrupled in weight. Then she tried to breathe, but her lungs would not rise and fall. She let out her final scream, which began as a howl and faded into silence as the last bits of air left her windpipe. She was awake as she suffocated to death, and she felt every grueling second of it.

Hearing is the last sense to go under the effects of Pavalon. Mrs. Danuta likely heard Andrzej calling the funeral home and informing them of another skin, while she silently died in the back of an ambulance. Pavalon became the skin hunter's weapon of choice. It was readily available, and there was little oversight regarding the checkout process. Paramedics could stockpile a deadly drug they didn't need, and nobody seemed to notice.

Despite helping launch the skin hunter scandal, people like Tomasz Wojciech, the owner of Styx's funeral parlor, drew the line at murder. Tomasz recalled an incident where an ambulance pulled into his parking lot with a woman in the back. She showed signs of life and, with some intervention, would have likely lived. But instead of saving her, the on-duty doctor walked inside Styx and had himself a coffee with Tomasz.

He filled out the woman's death certificate while she was still alive. Then, time inevitably claimed her, and her body was loaded into Styx's storage unit. Tomasz Wojcik left the funeral home industry after that. He didn't want death weighing on his conscience, though he allowed the practice to continue by staying quiet in the years to come. Thankfully, others were willing to speak.

Dr. Janusz Morawski was a renowned anesthesiologist in Łódź. He couldn't explain all the sudden deaths around him, so he began looking through the ambulance dispatch cards. He instantly noticed an insane quantity of pavilon flowing from the hospital pharmacies into the skin trade. To him, it was obvious that the drugs were being used to kill people. All it took was a simple test.

When pavalone and other muscle-reluctants shut down voluntary lung function, patients are given intubation tubes to keep the air flowing. If they are not intubated, they will suffocate and die. Dr. Morawski noticed a stunning disproportion of pavalone usage to intubated patients. Of the dozens of doses administered, only a few patients were intubated correctly. The rest were killed.

Moravsky traced the highest levels of pavalone to a handful of ambulance teams in Vuc. Four of the 109 crews accounted for more patient deaths than the other 105 combined. Furthermore, one resuscitation crew hadn't successfully saved somebody in over a year. Moravsky compiled a detailed report and gave his findings to his superior.

He was outraged when his boss returned the report having found nothing irregular and told Moravsky to give it a rest. Sometime later, Moravsky's report vanished from his desk. He worried that the skin hunter scandal had become too big to fail and that those at the top would ensure it continued. Thankfully, the power of journalism brought this scandal to a grinding halt. Part 5: Scapegoats

The scandal blew up in January 2002, when Marcin Stelmashiak and Przemyslaw Witkowski published their article "Wovci Skor" or "Skin Hunters". The story could be seen on every television, read in every newspaper, and heard on every radio station. The skin trade was all anybody was talking about. Many wondered if their loved ones were victims.

The scandal made some people afraid to call the ambulance service. There's no telling how many died because they feared being injected with Pavalon. People began vandalizing ambulances and hurling insults at doctors and paramedics. Many of them were good-hearted people who were just trying to do their job. But, because they worked for the ambulance service, people assumed they were in on the scandal.

While every driver was guilty in the court of public opinion, prosecutors had to determine which deaths were murders and which were unavoidable. According to one of the lead prosecutors, roughly 800,000 people had come into contact with the ambulance service during the scandal. Of them, between 4,000 and 4,500 died. It would have taken years to comb through all that documentation, so police relied on tips and witnesses instead.

Families called to report the suspicious death of a loved one, and police could link that case to a specific doctor or ambulance crew. Once the same doctor or crew came up multiple times, Wuch officers swooped in and made an arrest. It wasn't long before 70 people were arrested for their role in the skin trade. Unfortunately, none of them were willing to talk. Their colleagues remained silent too.

Even if they didn't participate in the scandal, speaking about it suggested they knew and did nothing. Investigators hit another significant roadblock regarding the murder weapon. According to one Polish toxicologist, pavalone rapidly decomposes in corpses. By then, it was 2003, and they were dealing with corpses from between 2000 and 2001.

All traces of Pavillon were long gone. It was, quite literally, the perfect crime. Just when all hope was lost, a Polish reporter working in California called regarding a case he'd been covering. Between 1988 and 1998, Efrain Saldivar, aka "The Angel of Death", murdered upwards of 200 patients at Adventist Health in Glendale, California.

In many of those deaths, Pavalone was his weapon of choice. Police in California were in a similar situation. That's when they turned to an unlikely source for help: the National Nuclear Security Administration. One of their offices, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, opened in the San Francisco Bay Area shortly after the Manhattan Project. They have the most sophisticated tools that taxpayer dollars can buy.

While they specialize in maintaining and modernizing nuclear weapons, they also dabble in forensic research regarding chemical, biological, and nuclear materials. Their high-tech gadgets allegedly found traces of Pavalone in Saldivar's victims, leading to his arrest. The Livermore scientists were willing to work with Polish authorities, but then something strange happened.

In essence, Polish prosecutors wanted to double-check Livermore's work. Suddenly, Livermore stopped answering the phone and responding to emails. Journalist Piszczemysław Witkowski came to a simple conclusion: that American doctors never found any pavalone in the Saldivar case. The tests were bunk. They simply wanted to secure a conviction. Saldivar ultimately pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty.

There was no trial, and the Pavalone tests never underwent legal scrutiny. Polish investigators were back at square one, and it was about to get worse. Police had no case because they couldn't prove Pavalone was used to kill the skinhunter victims. And without a case, they had no legal reason to hold the doctors and paramedics behind bars. On April 4th, 2003, the last person arrested for the skinhunter scandal was released from jail.

Some began doubting if what they heard about the skin trade was true. Did Stelmashiak and Witkowski stretch the truth to sell more newspapers? Was there really an unholy union between funeral homes and ambulance doctors? The narrative shifted. Now, the public believed the journalists had initiated a witch hunt. One doctor described the Skin Hunter's article as a threat to society.

The local doctors' union went further, saying journalists were acting irresponsibly when they wrote the alleged story. But despite the backlash, the police kept going. If they couldn't prove Pavalone was used, maybe they could prove it was checked out in abnormal quantities. They discovered forged pharmacy receipts in which orders for Pavalone were written in different handwriting and a different ballpoint pen.

They traced those forged receipts to two men: Andrzej Nowoczyn and Karol Banasz. Of the two, they believed Andrzej would be easier to crack, and they were right. Under questioning, Andrzej admitted to his role in the Skin Hunter scandal while also incriminating Karol Banasz.

He confirmed that the scandal went far beyond bribes and that he and other ambulance doctors were intentionally killing people, either with Pavalone or by simply delaying their case. While in jail, Andrzej tried to hang himself. Ironically, it was Jacek Tomalski who saved him. They were cellmates as Andrzej awaited his trial. Tomalski recalled entering their cell to find Andrzej hanging by the heater cord.

He grabbed him, pulled him down, and pounded on his back to kickstart his lungs. He saved Andrzej's life, allowing him to have his day in court to answer for his crimes. The trial began in April 2005. Andrzej maintained his innocence while Karol Banasz sat silently in the courtroom. Andrzej insisted that police fed him information and said he'd be free to go if he just confessed to the skinhunter crimes.

Another cellmate of his told a different story. He testified against Andrzej, claiming that the former ambulance doctor had been obsessed with the human brain. One time, he arrived on the scene of a patient with an exposed skull fracture. In the ambulance, Andrzej allegedly stuck his finger inside the wound and began poking around the brain. He claimed that Andrzej admitted to killing so many people that he'd simply lost count.

While they were together in jail, the cellmate asked: "How can you forget about murdering someone?" Andrade allegedly replied: "Do you remember what you had for lunch two weeks ago?" The cellmate's testimony corroborated police evidence. It was enough to find Andrade guilty of murdering four patients, even though he initially confessed to killing 50. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Karol Banasz was only found guilty of one direct murder and helping Andrzej kill other victims. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Dr. Janusz Kulinski was sentenced to 6 years in jail and banned from practicing medicine for 10 years. Dr. Pawel Wasilewski was sentenced to 5 years and also was banned from practicing. But frustratingly, that's where it ended.

Nobody looked into the dispatchers who delayed crews or sent them across the city to pick up patients. Nobody questioned the pharmacies that allowed so much pavillon to be checked out without oversight. No funeral home directors were ever charged with bribing the ambulance service, even if they benefited from the murders. Peshemyshchov Vytkovsky believes the number of victims could easily surpass 1,000.

Between 1997 and 2002, upwards of 850 doses of Pavolone were missing and unaccounted for. Some of them were used appropriately, most of them likely weren't. They were used to kill someone who would have otherwise lived, all in the name of making a quick buck from the local funeral home. Andrzej, Banasz, and all the other unknown killers never stopped to think, "What if it were my loved one? What if it were my grandma?"

What if it were me? As of 2025, many families in Łódź, Poland, still don't know if their loved ones were victims of the skinhunter scandal. Sadly, it seems like they never will.