Killed His Family, Then Hung Himself in Prison

He strangled his ex-wife, hacked her parent’s heads with an axe and stabbed his one-year-old daughter in her crib.

As soon as it dawned on May 19, 1993, the telephone rand in Zagreb’s crime investigation unit. “Wife and husband Knezevic, Danica and Strahinja, have been killed in the Samobor area of Brezje,” was the call. Several other telephones rang. Including the one in Zagreb’s Precko, my apartment. I immediately headed for Brezje. While I was driving, the fraze “wife and husband Knezevic killed..” rang in my head for a long time. I began wondering why someone would kill a wife and husband. I arrived several minutes before the criminal investigation unit. 

I lightly pushed open the ajar house door with my foot, entered the hallway and paused. A ‘heavy’ smell lingered in the air, the smell of stale human blood and death that I had sensed so many times before. I recognised it now also, but have never been able to describe it fully. Luckily, the morning May breeze entered through the open door and somewhat freshened up the house of death.

Back in the hallway, my eyes slid to the right, towards the main bedroom. A big axe was reclining against its right wall. The bloody blade indicated that this was the weapon used to end the lives of Danica and Strahinja. They were lying in the bed in their pyjamas, covered to the chest with duvets. Both had gaping, bloody wounds on their heads, through which the brain peered. The pillows and bedding were copiously soaked in coagulated blood. Pieces of brain tissue, skull pieces, strands of hair and blood spatters were everywhere, mostly on the walls, ceiling and the bed shelves.

Child stabbed in the crib 

According to procedure, I needed to check the entire house. I carefully entered another bedroom. In it, along the wall to the right of the door, was a wardrobe with the doors open. On the floor in front of it was a big pile of clothes. I stopped and rested my eyes on the strange pile of clothes thrown from the wardrobe. The little hair I have on my head stood on end as I noticed on the floor a part of a foot in a red sock that protruded beneath the clothes. I touched the heel with my foot and the entire pile of clothes shook. It was now clear to me what this was. I moved the pile of clothing and there appeared the body of a young woman, lying face down. There were dusty and greenish smears on her yellow trousers. Around her neck was a silk kerchief, still firmly tied. I concluded: “She was probably killed in the yard and then dragged across grass and dusty surfaces into the room.”

When I turned her on her back I saw her face. It was blue, her eyelids open, eyeballs protruding. I shivered. Our eyes seemed to meet, as if she was lashing at me with her eyes and reprimanded me for coming too late and I felt ashamed.. It was clear to me, this was Natalija, the daughter of the murdered wife and husband, but nobody said she was dead.

In the same room, near the wall opposite to the door, I noticed a crib. I began thinking almost aloud “they didn’t..” and I approached it. The lifeless body of Ivona, born a year before, was lying in the crib. Her little hands were alongside her body, fists half-clenched, as if she was preparing to fight back, but could not. Her clothes on the chest area were bloody with traces of knife wounds. I lifted the lifeless body, clenched my teeth and tried to act professionally, bit it did not work. I felt my eyes moisten with tears. Carefully, as if Ivona were sleeping, I laid her onto the bed, as if not to wake her. I was comforting myself: “Maybe she did not even feel what was happening, maybe she died instantly, from the first stab.” I also checked the bottom of the crib which had three slashes from a knife and I thought “He stabbed so hard that he penetrated both the body and the bottom of the crib”.

Admission and motive: ‘I loved Natalija and I love her still’

The police did not waste a second. They learnt that Natalija had been in an extramarital relationship with Ivica Stefanovic. He used to live with them, but had moved several months before. The police immediately brought Ivica in for questioning. Soon, he confessed and serenely said: “I loved Natalija and I love her still, I just was never sure if she ever loved me. She worked in a massage parlour. I could not agree with that. Last night, at the end of her shift, I met her in front of the salon and we headed home together. We entered the yard and I again started to convince her not to work there, but she did not want to listen. Suddenly, I grabbed her by the throat and started choking her with the kerchief around her neck. I tightened more and more until she was still. I took the axe from the shed and carefully entered her parents’ room. I stroke both of them with the blade once, in the middle of their skulls.

It was around midnight when I entered the room in which our daughter slept. I took her from the crib, lay on the sofa and placed her on my chest. She woke up for a moment, but fell back to sleep. I was thinking whether I should kill her or let her live. Before dawn I came to the conclusion that it was best if I killed her too, because she no longer had a mother or grandparents, and I was going to prison anyway. It is better for her is she were dead than to be placed in a children’s home. I put her back into the crib, took a knife and swung powerfully several times. She did not utter a sound.

Ivica was convicted to a long-term prison sentence. He had sufficient time to think about everything in depth. They found him hanged in his cell one day.