Jerzy Strzadala (Unsolved Murder)

Jerzy Strzadala was a quiet and reserved man who first came to the UK as a prisoner of war.  Originally from Poland, Jerzy trained as a miner and found employment at the Tir Herbert colliery near Aberdare, South Wales. Around lunchtime on Tuesday, April 20th 1948, his dead and bloodied body was discovered by three schoolboys playing in a local park. Jerzy, who was known as "George" by his Welsh colleagues, had been stabbed over forty times. 

The brutal attack had occurred the previous evening, which was the day after his 33rd birthday. Scotland Yard were called, and acclaimed detective Chief Inspector R H Fabian arrived to lead the investigation. A description was given of a mystery man seen meeting with Jerzy in the park, and the hunt for the killer was on.

Rumours and whispers circulated in the community concerning the motive for the attack, and indeed, some have never completely gone away. Theories were rife, connecting the murder to the Second World War, the world of espionage, and even the suicide of a fellow Polish miner. Many questions were never answered by the investigation, including the reason why Jerzy was in the park that evening.

Sources for the episode can be found here

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Jerzy Strzadala

Shortly after lunchtime on Tuesday April 20th 1948 three boys of around 12 years old were out playing together at Aberdare Park in the Cynon Valley, South Wales. The friends were from the village of Hirwaun, 4 miles north-west of Aberdare. Glanville and William (Billy for short) were pupils of Aberdare Boys County Grammar School. Charles attended Gadlys Central School. It was the first time the three lads had visited the park in a while. This was a school day, so I think the boys must have been on their lunch break. Back then it wasn't unusual for schools to have a two hour break in the middle of the day and many children returned home to eat lunch. The friends had gone to the park to search for wild bird nests and entered via the Glan Road gates. They headed to a plantation, dotted with rhododendron bushes, near the outdoor public baths, or swimming pool.

The eagle-eyed boys spotted a nest in some shrubbery and decided to jump over a wire fence to take a closer look. Glanville then saw a lame bird and the boys decided to go and see if they could help it. Billy climbed a tree, possibly to get a better look at the nest, but as he was coming back down he saw something in the undergrowth that made his blood curdle. Clear as day there was the face of a man lying in the rhododendron bushes. The face had blood on it and it was obvious that the man was dead. 

Glanville, Billy and Charles raced to nearby Glan Road and knocked on the first house they came to. It was 1.10pm when Rachel Williams came to her front door and was told by the three frightened boys that there was a dead man in the plantation. She followed the boys back to the park and saw for herself the head of the dead man poking through the dense foliage. The body was lying amongst a blanket of damp, mulchy leaves that covered the ground.

Just then, Bowling Green Attendant Edgar Price came by and saw Rachel Williams running toward him, visibly distressed. He followed her to the plantation. Swimming Pool Attendant James McCarthy heard the screams of Rachel Williams while returning from his lunch break and he too was soon at the scene. James noticed that on the ground near the body were a wallet, a brown paper bag, a roll of brown paper and an identity card.

Edgar and James then went to find the Park Supervisor and the police were called from the park kiosk. 

Police Sergeant Alan Church was at the scene within 20 minutes of the body being found. He noted that the bloodied body was 24 yards from, and lying parallel to, the boundary wall with Glan Road and 13 yards from the pathway that ran through the park. The head was towards the bowling green. The hands were partially clenched and the right knee was bent with the foot flat on the ground. The left leg was also bent and raised off the ground. The man was wearing a white and brown checked suit and the trouser knees were stained as if they had made contact with the earth. 

Sgt Church was soon joined by Sgt Clark, Superintendent Arthur Morris and Inspector John Jenkins of Glamorgan Police. They contacted Glamorgan CID and Inspector JJ Williams from Pontypridd arrived at 3.00pm. Another police officer arrived at 5.00pm to take photographs of the body and the wooded scene. Cecil Watkins, the Assistant Chief Constable of Glamorgan Police also attended the scene that day. At 5.30pm County Pathologist Dr Charles Freezer arrived to observe the body where it lay. 

At 9.30pm the body was removed from the site and taken to the mortuary at Aberdare General Hospital, and then the following morning on to East Glamorgan County Hospital in Church Village. The crime scene was covered in a large tarp to try and prevent further contamination and was guarded by police officers around the clock. The gates at the Glan Road entrance to the park were locked to keep curious onlookers away from the area.

The victim was identified as 33-year-old Polish national, Jerzy Strzadala. This process was made easier as his identity card and wallet were found close by. Jerzy was a miner working at nearby Tir Herbert Colliery near Hirwaun. Tir Herbert was about half a mile west of Tower Colliery, which was to become the last mine of its type in South Wales, only closing in 2008. 

Jerzy lived at a Bevin Boy Hostel in Hirwaun. Bevin Boys were men who volunteered or were conscripted to work in coal mines during World War II, so named after Minister of Labour, Ernest Bevin. Jerzy, however, was not strictly a “Bevin Boy". Known as "George" by his workmates (this is the equivalent English version of Jerzy), he had lived in Britain since 1944, after being taken as a prisoner of war by the British Army.

Jerzy Strzadala was born on April 18th 1915 in Zaborze in the south of Poland. Between 1935 to 1943 he worked as a wheelwright before being conscripted into the German army. Zaborze was in the part of Poland annexed by the German Reich in 1939. Estimates vary but up to 450,000 Poles were forced to serve in the Wehrmacht during the Second World War.

After his capture in July 1944 Jerzy was sent to a POW camp in the UK. He was released after only a few days and sent to a camp for displaced persons in Westmoreland, in the northwest of England. By the end of July 1944 he was sent to a communications training centre in Scotland. By December that year he had become a medical orderly at the centre. As a note he may have become a medical orderly at the displaced persons camp, from reports it's a little unclear.

Two years later he enlisted as a private in the Polish Resettlement Corps This was a unit established to help integrate Polish soldiers into life in the UK rather than returning to their communist controlled homeland. 18 months later, in June 1947, Jerzy went to the miners training centre in Oakdale, near Caerphilly, South Wales. 

A month later he started work at Tir Herbert Colliery where he earned a minimum of £5 a week, which was an average wage for manual workers in 1948. There were about 300 men at the hostel where he lived including many from Poland and Yugoslavia. He had been living there for 10 months before his death. Jerzy’s living expenses at the hostel were modest so he had plenty of money to send support to his mother in Poland and to spend on clothes for himself. Jerzy’s love of fine clothes was mentioned several times in newspaper reports. He regularly visited shops in Cardiff and Swansea to pick out the latest fashions. 

Jerzy was 5ft 9, and sturdily built and was known to have a reserved disposition. He did not smoke or drink. One pub landlord from Hirwaun told the Western Mail that many Poles frequented his establishment but he only remembered Jerzy coming in on one occasion, when he drank only lemonade. 

Jerzy’s fellow miners spoke well of him. Richard Cahill, who had worked alongside Jerzy since August 1947, said he was a good worker, one of the best. This was a sentiment echoed by Jerzy’s training officer at Oakdale. 

Jerzy was quiet but Richard Cahill said he always had a smile for the other men he worked alongside at the colliery. In a piece from the Cynon Valley Leader, May 1st 1948, Richard goes on to say that Jerzy had settled in well to life in Britain. He seemed quite happy and had been getting around seeing the sights of South Wales.

It wasn't just miners who liked Jerzy. A local newsagent, William Cable, also told the Western Mail that Jerzy had been coming to his shop for months and had the hallmarks of a gentleman. He added that he spoke English very well and was always polite and well dressed. Jerzy never gossiped about others or shared much information about himself. It was obvious he cared very much for his mother. Jerzy would regularly buy packaging at the newsagents in order to send parcels back home to his mother full of things unavailable in Poland. His mother was a widow, as Jerzy’s father was killed in an accident. I do not know if this incident occurred when Jerzy was a child or when he was an adult.

Jerzy was unmarried, with no children and he did not have a girlfriend. More than one source states he was not seen in the company of women except when he went to the weekly dances held at the miners hostel. Jerzy also did not seem to have any close friends.

A post-mortem was carried out by the county pathologist Dr Freezer at Church Village near Pontypridd. As a warning, the following details are disturbing, so skip forward 30 seconds if you would rather not listen to them.

The body had 44 separate wounds that had been inflicted by a sharp blade.

There were 13 widely scattered puncture marks, 28 linear incisions and 3 deep penetrating wounds. These latter wounds were the most significant. One went from the right ribs to the right armpit and had punctured the lower lobe of the right lung. Another was at the base of the neck and cut through the thyroid gland towards the back of the left shoulder. This wound had penetrated the top part of the left lung. The final deep wound was on the right temple and had severed the carotid artery. All 44 wounds were above the waist. It was noted that there were scratches on the hands and wrists which looked like Jerzy had tried to defend himself against the onslaught. Cause of death was given as hemorrhage and shock from multiple knife wounds. The time of death was estimated between 8pm and midnight on Monday April 19th, so the night before he was found.

The blade used was a very sharp two sided knife or dagger, a half to one inch in breadth and no more than 6 inches in length. It was described as being something like a wartime commando knife. This was not found at the scene. During the search of the undergrowth in the park a rusted clasp knife was unearthed. It was deemed to have lain buried for years and was unconnected to the case.

Police looked high and low for the knife throughout the park and across Aberdare. State-of-the-art mine detectors from America and eastern Europe were brought in to search the park grounds and a lake within the park boundaries that was close to the spot where Jerzy was found. A crowd gathered to watch the search of the lake and waited with baited breath as a police officer began pulling an object from the lake. It turned out to be just a piece of wood. Other than a few old iron boat rolls nothing was found and the knife was never located. 

Despite all that you’ve heard concerning the injuries sustained by Jerzy there was speculation in the press (for example in the Cynon Valley Leader on the 24th April 1948) that he may have died by suicide. Of course the biggest flaw to this theory was that the knife that inflicted the multiple stab wounds was not found at the scene. There was also the matter of the injuries to the hands that looked like defensive wounds. I have to say, when reading about the idea that the injuries could be self-inflicted, I struggled to understand how anyone could believe this. It does seem the police did briefly consider it but soon ruled it out and said they believed it was a case of murder. 

Within a day or so Glamorgan Police contacted Scotland Yard for assistance. Much acclaimed Chief Inspector Robert Honey Fabian, known as “RH”, arrived to lead the investigation into the murder. Fabian was a tall, broad-shouldered man who would wear a soft grey hat and grey suit with a white handkerchief in his breast pocket. He was known for his methodical, almost mathematical way of solving crimes. Fabian was quite the celebrity detective and was known for his handling of the Alec de Antiquis murder case in 1947. I haven't got time to go into that here, but look it up, it's very interesting. Fabian’s memoirs were later dramatised in a police procedural series which ran on UK television during the mid 1950s. 

Fabian was ably assisted by Superintendent Arthur Morris and Inspector John Jenkins from the Aberdare police as well as detectives from Glamorgan CID, including Detective Inspector George Thomas and Superintendent Brewden. 

A heavy rainstorm during the night of Monday April 19th seriously compromised the crime scene and hampered the collection of clues. Nevertheless, evidence at the scene suggested that Jerzy had been attacked and killed close to the location where the body was found. From markings on the ground the body had been dragged a short way into the rhododendron bushes where the three school boys came upon it. It was theorised the killer likely made their escape via the Glan Road gates. The person must have been heavily bloodstained. Surely someone saw something? It  was theorised the killer must be someone who lived in the vicinity as they knew the location.

Some discarded clothes, including a waistcoat and trousers, were found near the Tir Herbert Colliery. It was first thought they may have been dumped by the killer. However, there were no blood stains on them and their condition appeared too good to have been worn during the attack. These were ruled to be unrelated to the murder.

Extensive door to door enquiries were carried out, but no one who lived near the park had heard a peep or seen anything suspicious. Jerzy had not cried out for help as he obviously did not suspect an attack until the moment the blade cut his throat. This made Chief Inspector Fabian and his team suspect that Jerzy must have known his killer. It was speculated that one of the first cuts made by the razor sharp blade must have been the one across his neck which damaged his vocal cords and prevented him from yelling for help.

To help investigators understand how the quiet and reserved miner had ended up murdered in a public park, a timeline of Jerzy’s movements on the day he died was put together. This task was challenging as many of the Polish and yugoslav miners at the hostel did not speak English very well. Nevertheless, Fabian and his team managed to compile the following details.  

Jerzy worked shifts that were based on a two-week rota. One week he would work the dayshift and finish at 2.30pm and the other he would work the afternoon shirt and finish in the evening. On the day in question he was working the day shift.

At 2.30pm Jerzy travelled home from work at Tir Herbert Colliery with his Welsh colleague 29 year old Richard Cahill. Richard noted nothing unusual about the journey. After a short trip of around 4 miles Jerzy arrived back at the hostel.

Hirwaun Miners Hostel Manager Arthur Edward Davies saw Jerzy leave the hostel alone at 5.00pm. Davies described Jerzy as a fastidious man and he was exceptionally well dressed that afternoon, as was customary. He was wearing a blue open neck shirt with a grey checked suit and brown boots.

A moment later fellow Polish miner, 19-year-old Leopole Kosmala, who lived at the same hostel as Jerzy, saw him at a bus shelter close to the hostel. Leopole worked at Glyncastle Colliery in Resolven but had also finished work for the day. Both men missed the council bus into Aberdare and instead caught a Red and White bus, run by a private operator into the town. Jerzy only had notes so Leopole lent him change for the bus fare. They rode the bus together but did not talk during the short journey. There were three other miners from the hostel on the same bus.

Between 5.30 and 6.00pm Jerzy separated from Leopole after they had alighted the bus in Aberdare. The pair said nothing to each other and Jerzy headed in the direction of the Post Office. A short time later Leopole saw Jerzy again outside the Rex Cinema. Jerzy paid Leopole back for the bus fare. Before Leopole went into the cinema he asked Jerzy what he was doing that evening and he replied that he didn't know. Leopole did not invite Jerzy to join him in the cinema. He assumed the quiet Jerzy would return to the hostel and read, as he often did.

Around 6.00-6.15pm Jerzy called at William Cable’s newsagent shop and asked for some brown paper. William tied the brown paper with string; this was later found near the body. At 6.15pm another polish miner, 23-year-old Witold Ranachowski saw Jerzy opposite the Palladium Cinema in Canon Street. Witold knew Jerzy from their time together in the Oakdale Miners Training Centre. Jerzy asked Witold if he was waiting for his girlfriend. “Which one?” Witold replied. Jerzy said, “The tall dark one”, before carrying on up the street.

A little while later Witold saw Jerzy again near the Cwmaman bus queue outside the same cinema. Jerzy was carrying a package of brown paper.  Jerzy asked Witold if he was going back soon. Witold replied, “I’m going to buy a magazine first”. Witold then went to a shop (though he didn't buy a magazine in the end). When he returned Jerzy was gone.

Around the same time (6.15pm) another witness, Beryl May Pooley, was standing outside the Empire Ballroom on Canon Street when she saw a man, whom from photographs she later identified as being Jerzy Strzadala. He was standing opposite her, outside a cafe. He was acting in an impatient manner as if someone had failed to turn up to meet him. Jerzy waited there until 6.40pm.

The next sighting took place between 7.30 and 7.45pm. Joseph Knibbs who was also a collier at Tir Herbert and knew Jerzy Strzadla was strolling through Aberdare park with his three children. They had just been looking for fish in the lake. Joseph was pushing his young baby in a pram with a child on each side when he noticed Jerzy walking a few yards ahead of them. He was still carrying the bundle of brown paper. 

As Jerzy got close to the lake he suddenly quickened his pace as he seemed to notice a man standing on the grass just a little way off the path. Joseph got the impression that the man had been waiting for Jerzy. Jerzy approached the man and they began talking. They were not talking in English (or Welsh) but what Joseph described as a “foreign tongue”. The conversation appeared friendly. The man was 24-26, with a short, sturdy build. He had dark hair which had been flattened with Brill cream, which is a type of hair wax. The man was dressed in a navy pin striped suit. 

Joseph Knibbs did not know the man Jerzy was talking to but said he would recognise him if he saw him again. 

I’ll say here that there was an unconfirmed sighting of Jerzy later that evening. The South Wales Evening Post April 22nd 1948 states that a college student told police he spoke to a man resembling Jerzy Strzadala in the park a little before 9pm. In the write up about the case on the “Crime Immemorial” blog it mentions another unconfirmed sighting at this time near the boathouse in the park (which may refer or relate to the aforementioned sighting). This sighting was of two men, one of whom was running and the other followed him. Neither incident is included in the inquest reports I have come across.

With Jerzy having been heard speaking to a man in a foreign language the emphasis was placed on checking the whereabouts and alibis of many hundreds of Polish men throughout the region.

When searching Jerzy’s room at the miners hostel a large amount of letters sent from various people were found to be in his possession. These were all sent to Scotland Yard to be translated as many of them were in Polish and possibly other languages. Though I haven't found this next detail myself in newspaper reports, “Crime Immemorial" blog claims that one of the letters dated from 1946 contained a threat by a jealous suitor from France. This individual was apparently ruled out by alibi. 

The correspondence was also sent to Scotland Yard fingerprint specialist Superintendent Cherill. It does not appear that anything useful came of this.

The timeline of events that day still begged the question of motive for this most brutal of murders. What was Jerzy doing in the park after dark? He could have been out for a walk along the pathway but why not leave by the Glan Road gates? What made him go into the shrubbery? The Cynon Valley Leader posed this question in their May 1st edition. They added that there were several innocent reasons that might cause him to enter the plantation either alone or with a companion. The paper went on to say there was no suggestion he had gone to the park after dark for a dubious purpose. He was a good type. The issue they appear to be skirting around and debunking is that Jerzy had gone to the park and gone into the shrubbery for a sexual purpose. This is something that is not brought up again and is not referred to at the inquest. I will however be circling back to this point later in the episode. 

There were many rumours circulating the district of Aberdare concerning the murder and there was a lot of speculation regarding the motive. Robbery certainly seemed a possibility. Jerzy’s wallet was found close to the body and had obviously been rifled through. He was said to have left the miners hostel that afternoon with £20-£30. That is a sizable sum, when you factor in that he earned around £5 a week, though I don’t think it was unusual for him to be carrying this amount of cash. This money was not in the wallet. A silver wrist watch with a swiss jewel belonging to Jerzy was also missing and assumed to have been taken by the killer. The watch strap was not taken and was found with the body.

A description was given of the man police believed to have met with Jerzy in the park on the evening of April 19th. I think this was largely based on the description given by witness Joseph Knibbs which I have already detailed, although police now gave a slightly older estimated age of 27 or 28. Not long after this information was shared the police said they were hopeful they would soon be able to interview this man. They were banking on him being able to share with them valuable information.

That being said, police were disappointed with the public response to the crime and pleas for help in solving it. The first week or so was a frustrating time for Chief Inspector Fabian, but by April 30th more people began coming forward. For example, an early lead involved the handing in of several blood-stained treasury notes. In the end the money was not believed to be connected but may have come from a butcher's shop. However, the results of the tests to determine if the blood was human or animal were never made public. 

Despite the improvement in the public's response things were still slow. 

Almost three weeks after the murder an individual came forward with information which cleared up some matters. The information was not released to the public but police were annoyed that this person had not come forward sooner. Police said if they had known this detail during the first three days of the investigation it would have cut down the work by about a third. Police were convinced that there were people out there in the locality who knew more than they were letting on and that the killer was being shielded by friends or family.

The funeral service for Jerzy was held on Monday April 26th. The previous evening the body was taken to St Terese’s Catholic church in a coffin emblazoned with a crest consisting of four silver emblems and a red shield, representing the sacred heart. It was placed at the foot of the altar where it remained overnight. 300 polish miners came to view the body that evening as they would be at work during the service the following day.

The service was led by Father McAniff and Father Dubrowka, who was a padre in the Polish settlement corps. Jerzy was remembered as a good comrade who had won the respect of miners. He was held up as a man with admirable qualities which made him a reliable worker in what was seen as the battle for coal.

The body was taken in a hearse to Bryngar Cemetery. Along the route a crowd gathered at Hirwaun Square to pay their respects. Plain clothes police officers mingled with the bystanders on the lookout for anyone acting suspiciously.

As the coffin, adorned with a bouquet of tulips, was lowered slowly into the grave Father McAniff sprinkled it with incense. 65 polish miners who were in attendance then each took a handful of earth to throw atop the coffin.

The local community were becoming increasingly jittery in the weeks following the murder. People eyed strangers with suspicion and for the first time many households started bolting their doors. The day after the funeral, Tuesday April 27th, a rumour spread through the town of Aberdare that an arrest had been made in connection with the murder. A crowd gathered outside the police station in Market Street to get a peak at the suspect. Alas, the rumor proved to be false. I believe that police Sgt Alan Church had spotted a person hanging around the fenced-off lake in the park on the night of Monday April 26th. The man who was a polish miner was taken to the police station and questioned. He provided a statement and was soon released.

There were a lot of stories and gossip circulating about the town which the police had to deal with. Some of these false leads included tales of women and children being stabbed in the streets and in local fields. It seemed a new story sprang up every day, taking precious police time and effort.

North Glamorgan Coroner, T Alwyn John, opened the inquest shortly after the finding of the body. Identification was formally made by the miners hostel manager, Arthur Edward Davies. The inquest was then adjourned to allow for Fabian and his team to complete inquiries. It resumed at the end of May 1948. By that time 600 written statements had been taken and thousands of Polish people living in Britain had been checked up on. Much of the information I have already detailed was shared. The jury of seven concluded that Jerzy Strzadala had been murdered by a person or persons unknown.

A year later Chief Inspector Fabian retired without having found the killer. I imagine it vexed him to leave such a glittering career without being able to solve one of his most perplexing cases.

I mentioned earlier the many rumours that circulated about the murder back in 1948. Many of these stories have survived in the locality for decades. In 2023 the BBC news ran a piece on their website about the murder of Jerzy Strzadala and detailed some of the local whispers. 

One theory expounded by locals is that the murder had its roots in the Second World War. One idea is that his attacker recognised Jerzy as someone who had colluded with the Nazis. The opposite possibility is also put forward that Jerzy recognised the other man as a fascist and confronted him about his checkered past. Jerzy was then murdered so this man's secret would not be outed. Another story is that one of the men was a guard at a POW camp. The BBC piece also says that there was a rumour linking the murder to to the world of espionage.

There is no hard evidence for any of these claims. Though, as mentioned earlier, we do know that Jerzy was conscripted into the German army. Perhaps, knowledge of this fact was enough for a compatriot to have murdered him.

The witness account given by Joseph Knibbs and detailed at the inquest states that it looked like Jerzy had arranged to meet the man he saw with him at the park and they appeared friendly. There exists the possibility that the killer lured Jerzy there under false pretenses with the intention of seeking revenge for something that happened during the war. The savagery of the attack certainly suggests a lot of hatred and seems very personal.

Another rumour at the time which I discovered in my research was that the death of another young polish miner living at the same hostel as Jerzy could be connected.

On April 22nd, just a few days after Jerzy was murdered, 23 year old Josef Solecki ran out in front of a Rhondda transport bus near the main gates of a trading estate in Hirwaun. He suffered catastrophic injuries and died in hospital the next day. The Cynon Valley Leader,  May 1st 1948, has a tiny paragraph mentioning local rumours connecting Josef Solecki’s death to that of Jerzy Strzadala. Josef was clearly not murdered so the inference is that he must have had something to do with Jerzy's murder and, from a sense of guilt or some other motive, killed himself.

I have read the inquest report published in the Cynon Valley Leader . On the day of the accident Josef had been drinking with a Welsh friend and consumed nine pints of beer. According to the driver of the bus Josef ran out in front of the bus waving his hands. The driver thought that he may have been momentarily confused as in Poland traffic drives on the right rather than left. Josef was only at the stop because a miscommunication had meant he had gotten off the bus a mile and a half past the miners hostel. He was looking to catch the bus back in the opposite direction when the accident happened. The inquest labeled the death as accidental.

There is no evidence connecting Josef Solecki to Jerzy's murder and at the time a journalist outright asked Chief Inspector Fabian if they were linked. He answered there was no reason to believe a connection.

It is worth noting that there is a good chance the men did know each other as not only did they live at the same miners hostel but I believe attended the Oakdale miners training centre at the same time.

Earlier in the episode I alluded to questions concerning what Jerzy was doing in the park after dark and why he went into the plantation. The idea that he had met another man for a sexual liaison was dismissed out of hand in the newspapers because of the societal homophobia of the time. I do not know if this was an angle the police pursued. If it was, they did not publicly reveal it. One has to remember that in 1948 sex between two men was still illegal and indeed was not decriminalised in England and Wales until 1967. For gay men any sexual and romantic relationships had to be carried out in secret.

Many reports mention Jerzy did not go out with women. It is certainly possible that Jerzy was gay and that this was a factor in his murder. He may have been lured there by his killer as a ruse in order to rob him. It is conceivable the murder was a hate crime motivated by homophobia.

The encounter may have started in a friendly and consensual manner but somehow quickly turned to violence and murderThe amount of injuries suggests the killer had a lot of rage and would seem to indicate the crime was personal in nature rather than a random act. 

Listeners with an ear for details may also have put together that Jerzy was murdered the day after his 33rd birthday. This could be significant or purely a coincidence.

According to information released in 2009 by South Wales police, Jerzy's murder was one of dozens of unsolved cases that remained open. Perhaps there is still someone in Hirwaun or Aberdare who unknowingly has in their possession some clue or piece of information to solve the mystery of who killed Jerzy Strzadala and why.