Police and prosecutors said the remains of 57-year-old Andrzej Mucha, originally from Grudziądz in north-central Poland, were discovered in the United Kingdom after a years-long cross-border investigation.
Officers said all four Polish nationals linked to the crime are now in Poland.
The case began in late 2021, when the man’s family in Poland reported him missing after losing contact with him.
He had been living and working in Britain for six years and disappeared in Slough, west of London. Relatives grew alarmed when his phone was switched off and he stopped responding.
British officers from Thames Valley Police led the initial missing-person inquiry. Polish authorities and organizations supporting families of missing people also became involved, but months of searches failed to establish what had happened to him.
By late 2022, investigators from the police headquarters in Katowice, southern Poland, working with British law enforcement, concluded that the man had most likely been murdered in Slough in November 2021.
They also established that people linked to the case had already left the UK and were believed to have returned to Poland.
Evidence gathered in the case was sent to prosecutors in the southern Polish city of Gliwice, who opened a formal investigation.
In January 2023, Polish police arrested a woman aged 25 and a man aged 33, both residents of Bielsko-Biała, a city near the Czech and Slovak borders.
During questioning, they admitted they had witnessed the killing in Britain, investigators said.
Prosecutors accused them of failing to help the victim, failing to report the crime, helping conceal the body, and taking other steps aimed at obstructing the investigation.
Both were initially jailed, then later released under non-custodial preventive measures.
Because the case stretched across borders, Polish and British authorities set up a joint investigative team in August 2023. It included prosecutors from Poland and the UK: officers from Thames Valley Police, investigators from Katowice, and representatives of the European Union's Eurojust justice agency.
Evidence collected by the Polish side was then passed to British authorities. As a result, two more men were arrested in London in 2023, a 28-year-old from Bielsko-Biała and a 36-year-old from Grudziądz.
Prosecutors say the older man is the main murder suspect, while the younger one is suspected of assault and of helping conceal the body and erase traces of the crime.
The breakthrough came during the latest search operation on February 3. Investigators from Katowice, working alongside Thames Valley Police in Britain, found human remains in a wooded area.
The remains were recovered on February 3 and 4, and an autopsy attended by a Polish prosecutor was carried out in the UK on February 6.
DNA tests later confirmed that the body was Mucha, according to the Regional Prosecutor’s Office in Gliwice.
Prosecutors said the preliminary autopsy results supported earlier findings about the course of events, the victim’s injuries and the cause of death.
The 28-year-old suspect was transferred from Britain to Poland and charged on January 26.
The second suspect was handed over to Poland on February 26 under reinforced escort.
On March 3, prosecutors charged him with murder committed under motives deserving particular condemnation, saying the killing reflected contempt for a weaker person, a desire to humiliate him, and "a broader intent to cause harm and demonstrate dominance."
(rt/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP, BBC