This is a case that's been intriguing me ever since I first heard about it because it's just so bizarre and cynical in a way.
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Mateusz Kawecki is a 30 y.o. Polish man from a small village called Hutków, in southeastern Poland. He's been working in Hanover, Germany as a construction worker for about 5 years and lives with his father, who also works in Hanover.
Mateusz has a long-distance relationship with his Polish fiance, who is expecting, and lives in a village called Lipia Góra in northwestern Poland. As his fiancée is about to give birth, Mateusz sets out driving his 1998 BMW 525 from Hanover, Germany to Lipia Góra, Poland, after work at around 11.30pm on March 28, 2018 and is due to arrive at around 8-9am the following morning. It's a 647 km (402 mi) drive. However, Mateusz never makes it to Lipia Góra.
According to his father, he calls Mateusz at around 10.30am on March 29 and his son tells him that there was terrible traffic on the way, he waited a total of 2 hours in traffic jams due to accidents and that he was around Szczecin at that point. Szczecin is a town on the Polish-German border, on the way to Lipia Góra - he has around 214 km/133mi to go from there. /*Please note that the German-Polish border isn't staffed and there are no checks, although there are cameras that can apparently read license plates.*/ Around that time, he also sends a text message to his fiancée that he'll get there in around 2 hours, but he never made it to his fiancee's and this is in fact the last communication with Mateusz.
Becoming increasingly worried after unanswered calls to Mateusz, the fiancée gets in touch with Mateusz's sister (who also lives in Hanover) at around 5pm, but no one is able to get through - his phone rings, but he doesn't pick up. Later that evening Mateusz's mom goes to the police, but they discourage her from filing a report as it's too early and Mateusz will likely turn up.
Anyway, the family reports Mateusz as missing in both Germany and Poland, but the German police refuses to investigate, so long Polish police is on the case. This disconnect and bureaucratic barrier between the German and Polish police is quite apparent throughout this entire ordeal. The family then ask the Polish police to locate Mateusz's cellphone (which was apparently on for a couple of days after his disappearance), but the police is unable to do so as Mateusz was using a German sim card. German police, again, can't locate his phone either, as Mateusz disappeared in Poland. Later, Polish police claim that Matuesz's phone never connected to a Polish network; it is unclear where Mateusz received the call from his father.
Frustrated with the police, Mateusz's family begin their own investigation and thoroughly check the entire route, going into side streets, checking with gas station staff, asking for video surveillance, going around markets in towns near the border with Mateusz's picture and posting posters with his image. Unfortunately, no new clues appear for the next 6 months and it seems that Mateusz, along with his car, just disappeared into thin air. The family is featured on TV multiple times and complains that the police are not doing enough and not taking the matter seriously.
On September 12, a neighbor comes to Mateusz's mom to ask about their barn, as it has been smelling for a while (since July at least) and the neighbors are starting to complain. They think it's probably a dead animal, but can't quite locate it. The neighbor eventually asks the mother if he can check below the barn's roof - half of the barn was walled off, creating a room and an attic on top of that room. She agrees, so he climbs up and sees a pile of clothes. Upon closer inspection, he finds out it's actually a dead human body - a severed head and a torso. There are also two nooses hanging from the roof and a backpack on the floor. All the stuff seems to be Mateusz's, yet the corpse is too decomposed to be ID'd. Mind you, in March, Mateusz wasn't headed for his family's house in the Southeast of Poland, instead he was headed to his fiancee's in the Northwest - it's a 635km trip between the two (basically from one side of the country to the other) and his home village was about as far from Germany as you can get in Poland.
The police quickly determine the cause of death to be a suicide and hand over all of Mateusz's stuff back to his family.
Here's where things get even weirder: 4 days after having found his body, Mateusz's family find his shoe in the barn with his (~severed~ edit: let's say detached to avoid confusion) foot still inside it. This points to the police not having done a very good job at collecting evidence and also brings up the question of why this didn't come up during the autopsy. Furthermore, some (or all, not sure about this) of Mateusz's teeth are knocked out and stuck to his clothes with what seems to be blood. While a head can get severed after a body has hung for some time on a noose, it is rather difficult for teeth to get knocked out post mortem. There also seem to be bloody patches on his clothes, although these are difficult to distinguish considering the clothes are fairly dirty. Inside his backpack, there is a Polish water bottle with cigarette butts inside and an orange juice box - Mateusz's family all claim that he never drank orange juice (it's implied he disliked it). All of this potential evidence is released without any analysis by the police.
The biggest mystery of all is his car - to this day, it hasn't been found or seen. Not in Poland, not in Germany, not anywhere. The keys and vehicle registration were never found either, despite his wallet having been in that backpack. Furthermore, his phone was among the things found and there was one more call to his uncle on March 30 - this seems like an accidental dial, as it only lasted for less than a second and never got through (the uncle never received anything). Moreover the attic, where his body apparently hung is more or less in full view from the ground inside the barn and the family say that they used the barn throughout the summer, so they it's very unlikely they wouldn't notice a hanging body. I think it's also strange that given how tiny Mateusz's village was, no one noticed Mateusz or anyone else, wondering around and trying to gain access to the barn. On one of the shows, a prosecutor (not the investigating one) also claimed that they found public transit tickets ~from cities in Germany~[edit: this is incorrect, I re-watched one of the sources and the prosecutor claims that it was "public transport tickets" from Poland, not Gemrmany], dated past his disappearance.
The Police and Public Prosecutor maintain that the death was a suicide and refuse to investigate further, despite appeals and effort by the family.
I'm personally quite baffled as to what could have gone down here. Suicide seems unlikely as the guy had a fiancée and a kid on the way, although it's never quite certain what goes on in someone's head. On the other hand, if someone did indeed kill Mateusz (whether on purpose or accidentally) and then staged his suicide, how did they manage to sneak into a village that is so tiny any stranger immediately stands out. The public transit tickets also seem strange.
