The attack on Katerina Konev, 219 days after Kunowski arrived in England, had not gone as he planned.
First, Kunowski had been interrupted by the arrival of the child's father. The Little Doctor had to abort the assault before reaching the sick sexual gratification he got from throttling children.
And the close contact with witnesses — including Trajce Konev, the two workmen, and Christina Kearney, owner of the hijacked car — placed him at peril of being identified.
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| Andrezej Kunowski |
He lived in Acton, just a few miles from the scene of the crime in Hammersmith. He assumed — incorrectly — that these clues might soon lead Scotland Yard's finest to the door of his flat.
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| Patch: New Scotland Yard |
He decided to get out of town.
The day after the murder, Kunowski gave up his room in Acton and fled to the countryside, taking a job at a strawberry farm in Ledbury, west of London.
But stealing, his genetic Achilles heel, cost him the job after just a month.
The Birmingham Sunday Mercury said he was accused of filching cash from the office at Siddington Farms.
"He was a bit of a strange one — a loner, I suppose," said farm manager Glyn Lewis. "We had hundreds of different workers on the farm, but he always stuck out in my mind."
He was arrested for theft, but Britain dropped that charge and focused on deportation when it learned that he was in the country illegally. After first claiming Portuguese citizenship, Kunowski admitted he was a Pole.
He had one last gambit: Kunowski applied for asylum under an economic hardship. While his application was being considered, he was allowed to walk free, once again.
His petition was denied in the fall of 1997. But by then, Kunowski had gotten lost in London.
He hadn't even been fingerprinted after his arrest, let alone subjected to a DNA swabbing.
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