Following a 64-year-old man’s brutal murder in Sejny in December 2017, a suspect’s DNA under the fingernails has triggered three separate acquittals and appellate reversals. <\/p>\n
It was December 14, 2017, in the early afternoon, when the daughter of 64-year-old Antoni P. could not contact her father. The door to the man’s two-story house in Sejny, Podlaskie Voivodeship, was locked, prompting her to call the police. Firefighters forced open a wooden window and entered, discovering the bloodied body of the 64-year-old on the hallway floor with two embedded fragments of a steel kitchen knife and drag marks indicating the body had been moved.<\/p>\n
Searches had been conducted across two kitchens and rooms on the ground and first floor, leaving cabinets open and items discarded alongside two empty wallets. Antoni P. sustained seven stab wounds and was strangled, with the autopsy indicating he likely died at least 12 hours before his daughter’s arrival, during the night of December 13 to 14. An acquaintance noted that Antoni P. was superstitious and feared the number 13, while neighbors confirmed he lived alone, was friendly, and was known to have significant savings, including over 260,000 PLN in a bank account.<\/p>\n
Days after the murder, a 50-year-old homeless man was arrested, charged, and placed in pre-trial detention, though he was later transferred to serve a 10-month sentence for another matter. A May 2018 forensic report from the Capital Police Headquarters laboratory revealed DNA from another unknown man under Antoni P.’s nails, but not the 50-year-old. With no supporting evidence on his footwear and a key witness retracting statements, the prosecution dropped the charges against the first suspect.<\/p>\n
A breakthrough came in October 2021 when forensics identified DNA on the fingernails belonging to 33-year-old local resident Waldemar G. and two unknown individuals. Arrested that month, Waldemar G. denied killing the 64-year-old, initially claiming he had not seen Antoni P. for a month or a half prior to the crime. However, after the Institute of Forensic Genetics in Bydgoszcz ruled out secondary transfer in April 2022, Waldemar G. changed his explanation, admitting he bought cigarettes for cash from Antoni P. on December 13 around 3:00 PM.<\/p>\n
BTS cell tower data placed Waldemar G.’s phone in Sejny closer to 5:30 PM rather than 3:00 PM that day, which the defense argued did not pinpoint his exact location. In June 2022, the Suwa\u0142ki District Prosecutor’s Office indicted Waldemar G. for committing the crime with an unidentified person or persons. Following a closed trial behind closed doors due to privacy concerns, the court acquitted him in December 2022 and released him from custody.<\/p>\n
The Bia\u0142ystok Court of Appeal overturned the acquittal in September 2023, returning the case to the Suwa\u0142ki District Court based on genetic opinions ruling out secondary DNA transfer. During the retrial in February 2024, the court requested an additional opinion from the Prof. Dr. Jan Sehn Institute of Forensic Expertise in Krak\u00f3w, which stated it could not definitively determine if the biological material arose before, after, or via secondary transfer. A forensic geneticist testified that the lab had simply tossed the fingernails into a tube together rather than testing them individually.<\/p>\n
On June 26, 2024, the Suwa\u0142ki District Court acquitted Waldemar G. a second time, noting that none of the other abundant biological traces at the crime scene contained the defendant’s DNA. The Suwa\u0142ki District Prosecutor’s Office appealed again in July 2024, arguing the circumstantial evidence formed a closed chain. The Bia\u0142ystok Court of Appeal overturned the second acquittal in March of last year, prompting a third trial where Waldemar G. was acquitted for a third time in August 2025. Following a third appeal by the prosecution, the Bia\u0142ystok Court of Appeal overturned the acquittal yet again on June 30, sending the case back to the first-instance court once more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Following a 64-year-old man’s brutal murder in Sejny in December 2017, a suspect’s DNA under the fingernails has triggered three separate acquittals and appellate reversals. The Discovery of the Crime It was December 14, 2017, in the early afternoon, when the daughter of 64-year-old Antoni P. could not contact her father. The door to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-and-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16240\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}