Killings of Piotr Jaroszewicz and Alicja Solska

Piotr Jaroszewicz served as Prime Minister of Poland from December 1970 to February 1980. In 1980 he gave up his party posts, and the following year he was expelled from the Polish United Workers' Party. After leaving public life, Jaroszewicz and his second wife, Alicja Solska, settled in Anin, a suburb of Warsaw, where the couple kept largely to themselves and did not socialize much. Neighbors said Jaroszewicz was preoccupied with security: an 11-foot (3.3-meter) fence topped with barbed wire surrounded their villa, and he often carried a pistol when walking the couple's dog.

Despite these precautions, Jaroszewicz and Solska were killed inside their home. Their son discovered the bodies when he entered the house on 3 September 1992; the killings were later determined to have taken place two days earlier, on 1 September. The couple's dog had first been incapacitated with poison gas. Jaroszewicz's body was found in his upstairs study; he had been beaten, and the belt used to strangle him was secured with an antique ice axe from his own collection. His wounds had been bandaged. Solska's body lay beside his; her hands were bound behind her back, and she had been shot at close range with one of the couple's own hunting rifles. Investigators believe she injured one of the intruders during a struggle, since blood from her and from an unidentified person was found in another room of the house.

The intruders appeared to have searched every room. Early reporting suggested they had taken only what were believed to be documents from a safe and had left behind valuable coins and art, feeding speculation that the crime was not financially motivated. Police records later showed that two guns, 5,000 German marks, five gold coins, and a woman's watch had in fact been stolen. The double killing drew heavy media attention in Poland, both because of Jaroszewicz's history as a former head of government and the violence involved, and initial theories focused on a possible political motive.

In 2017, Warsaw police alleged that the killings were instead carried out by the Karate Gang of Radom, a group of violent criminals active through the 1990s, who police said broke into the home expecting to find a large sum of money and beat Jaroszewicz to force him to reveal where it was kept. According to this account, the intruders killed both Jaroszewicz and Solska once he broke free, then left the house quickly. Several alleged members of the Karate Gang were tried in 2020 on charges connected to this and other crimes, but in 2024 they were acquitted of the robbery and killings of Jaroszewicz and Solska. Prosecutors said they intended to appeal the acquittal, and no one has been convicted in connection with the deaths.