Storyville: The Polish Ambulance Murders (BBC4)

The whole tragedy of this story is that in reality it's a free market enterprise gone horrid.
Firstly, the Polish government does not pay undertakers for burials. The money (zasiłek pogrzebowy) is paid to the family of the deceased to ease the financial strain of the burial.

Nevertheless, this money has nothing to do with the ensuing murders, because people would bury their dead even if they never received government aid to do it.

There are several undertakers on the market. Each one would like to know where the next dead body is coming from - and when. Quite natural, eh? It's their line of business, after all... So they get in touch with the ambulance people and pay them for tips about who died recently. Then, they pay the ambulance people to recommend their particular services to the grieving family. Not very nice, in fact a bit nasty, but still somewhat above board. Nobody gets killed - yet. And then the final brainwave - the ambulance people don't have to wait to get paid until someone actually dies: they can fabricate their own dead. Ay, and there's the rub. That's when things took a decidedly unpleasant turn. :-(

thats stretching it a bit


thats stretching it a bit too - the money might have gone through the families of the deceased in order to ease the strain (cost) of burial but its obvious whos pocket the money was destined to ended up in


thats not strecthing it - its plain wrong

this money was the sole motivation for the murders. as you quite rightly say, people bury their dead even if they never received government aid to do so but the point is that these people wouldnt be dead if the money wasnt there to fund their burials... as you also said, the ambulance people dont have to wait to get paid until someone actually dies...

The problem is that the money would be there anyway! People would simply pay undertakers out of their own pockets. Do you think they would just bury grandpa in the back yard? I know, I'm being flippant but I want to make a point here. There is no necessary correlation between the murders and the burial "benefit" or whatever you wish to call it. There is, however, a direct correlation between undertakers wanting more business = more customers, and being willing to pay for that - and paramedics wanting the "head-hunter" money, so to speak. It was the undertakers who would pay up 1800 PLN to the ambulance team for a body, a healthy cut of their profit, one might say. :-(

but would the money have been there anyway?

there is a substancial difference between what the average pole could pay for a burial if the money was coming out of their own pocket and what they could be charged for a burial if the money was guarenteed by the government. i believe there is a direct correlation between undertakers wanting more business and the funds being made easily available in order to finance this increase

whatever the case, these killings were motivated by greed

If we're talking about a longer period of time, such us 10 years, and a bigger city like Lodz, with many ambulances, you could quite easely calculate how many people were murdered by these two ambulances using simple statistics.

All you need to know is how many ambulances there were in the city of Lodz within these 10 years, how many patients were transported during that time, how many of them had died during the transport. That would give you your average death rate in a Lodz ambulance. If there is a difference between that number and the number of deaths in our "suspect" ambulance, we can calculate the standard deviation, which is a square root of variance, or basically probability that this one ambulance's death rate is higher then average.

For example, you could say that an average death rate for a Lodz ambulance is, let's say, 8%, and the death rate of our "suspect" ambulance is (just an example!) 24% with a standard deviation of +-2.6%. Then you could say, that the chance of the "suspect" ambulance having so much higher death rate simple by "bad luck", not a homicide is 1 in 160, or 0.6%. That gives you the chances that a homicide had occurred is 99.4% and you have your number of murders +-2.6%.

I see you do not understand the Poles. As in case of weddings, christenings, and first communions - funerals are a very special (though mournful) moment in the life of the family and I have never heard of anyone who would try to be cheap at this time. People don't get "wedding benefits" from the government, yet they are capable of spending incredible sums of money on a reception. If a family member dies, more often than not special savings had already been made, if it's an elderly person they might even have paid for the monument and plot at the cemetery beforehand... And if the money were not readily available, the whole family would pay towards the funeral. The funeral aid is/was about 4000 PLN, I can assure you that most families would pay out a lot more for their dear departed. I bet a nice oak coffin costs about 2000 PLN. A funeral in Warsaw with all the trimmings would cost around 6000 - 7000 PLN (just googled it).

lol - it seems i have an outside understanding of the poles that might be a little too close to home for you... it seems you have lost your objectivity and are almost defending what took place

i realise these are your people magda but that these murders happened shows unequivically the lenghts some poles will go to for a few extra zloty

I meant the families - they would pay through the nose for their dead, and this is what the murderers knew and took advantage of.

These government given subsidies are wrong but in this case that wouldn't really change anything. Vast majority of people wouldn't pay less for funerals. Besides I think that subsidies can't even cover minimal costs.


No It doesn't. She is just telling truth. Should she lie to make somebody here feel somehow better ?


I could just use google and cover you with so many no less disgusting cases from the tiny island that only your stupid head would stick out of It.

So according to you, the Polish government purposefully pumps money into the undertaking sector so more people can get murdered? I like how you artfully place a gesture of decency and goodwill on part of the State on its head.

What I think is that there is a direct correlation between someone paying ZUS all their lives, and then receiving a tiny bit of that back to help get a decent funeral. I think the state could hardly do less for their pensioners and/or terminally ill.

The money is not paid to the undertaker, it is paid to the family or institution who forked out for the funeral. And do you seriously think that if the family did not get this cash, they would settle for a discount funeral with second-hand coffin and wilted flowers? Or maybe, as I suggested earlier, just bury grandpa in the back yard to cut costs?

Also, someone earlier said that this was "pumping money into state services" - sorry about that, but 90% of undertakers in Poland are, and were private enterprises.

I watched this documentry on BBC4 the other day. I felt compelled to watch it from start to finish. Very well filmed considering the awful story.

I was amazed at the journalists quality of Polish!

???? - youve read something into what ive written that isnt actually there


lets draw a simple anaolgy as youre obviously having difficulties with this one.

imagine you wanted to buy a new car - you scrape together all the money you can get and see that you can just about afford an audi from the late 90s with a high milage. then along comes a sizeable sum of money - lets say 4000zls for sake of argument - which enables you to buy a much newer audi with a much lower milage - according to you, you would have bought this car anyway...despite not having the money... ????

and which car do you think the dealer would prefer you to buy... the cheap clapped out audi or the more expensive newer model...?


lol - youre soo polish

Yeah, this would be the exact analogy to my hypothetical choice of second-hand coffin and wilted flowers funeral. And no, I would not consider this type of funeral even if I did not get the government grant. Don't you see that you cannot compare - in any respect - the last rites of your loved one to a car purchase? Your analogy is thoughtless at best, I am afraid.


lol - you're sooo non-Polish
(whatever that means, but obviously you like stereotyping, so I'll play along) ;-p