True Life Tuesday: Bela Kiss

This is the story of the man known as Hungary's vampire serial killer. 

Little is known about Bela Kiss' early life. We do know that at 23 he was living in Cinkota outside of Budapest. He ran a successful tin business and was seen as a handsome and eligible bachelor. 

Beginning in 1903 he wrote lonely hearts ads in local newspapers using the alias of Bela Hoffman. He conned the women that he met out of their money. In 1912 he married a woman named Marie who was 15 years younger than him. She soon began an affair with a local artist named Bikari. When he discovered their relationship he strangled them both and told people that they went to America. 

After killing his wife and her lover he continued placing his lonely hearts ads. However, instead of just stealing their money he also began killing the women. He would drain their blood and then try to pickle their bodies in steel drums. He told people that he was using the drums to stockpile gasoline because there was a shortage forecasted due to World War I. People thought that he was actually illegally storing alcohol. 

In 1914 he was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army. He left his elderly housekeeper in charge of the house. After two years with no communication from Bela people believed that he had been killed in the war. His landlord decided to clean out the house to prepare it to rent to someone else. At that time he opened one of the steel drums and found a decomposing body.  He sent for the constable who arrived and eventual found 24 corpses in the drums.

Police contacted the military to have them arrest him however at the time Bela Kiss was a very common name and this caused issues with locating him. He was almost caught while being treated at a Serbian hospital but he managed to escape. There were reported sightings of him in Romania, Turkey and fighting with the French Foreign Legion. The last reported sighting of Bela was in 1932. He was allegedly working as a janitor in New York City. What happened to him has never been determined.