On the afternoon of November 15th, 2013, several gardeners were clearing weeds at a house on Audley Drive in the village of Warlingham, in Surrey, England. One of the workers noticed that the padlock on the cover of the seven-foot well in the garden had been broken; curious, the gardener lifted the cover and peered inside. To his horror, he found himself staring at the decomposed remains of a human being, tied up and wrapped in a blue plastic tarp.
The body was eventually identified as Polish immigrant Damian Chlywka, who had last been seen going to a friend’s house to help them paint and decorate back in April of 2011. His Oyster public transport card had last been used on the 17th of that month. This suggested that Damian had been killed shortly after this time, and thus had been in the well for more than two-and-a-half years.
Although the degraded state of the corpse meant that authorities were uncertain as to the exact cause of death, injuries to the skull and ribs indicated that the victim had been severely beaten in the face and perhaps stomped on repeatedly before being stuffed into the well.
Damian lived on Virginia Road in Thornton Heath at the time of his death, and it was believed he had arrived in the UK from Poland in 2008, working as a laborer and a car cleaner at automotive showrooms in Surrey and South London. Notably, Damian had once lived at the Audley Drive residence where his body was found; the house was something of a central hub for other Polish immigrants arriving in Britain, and more than eighty men had lived in the house for brief periods since 2006.
From the beginning of the investigation, authorities were convinced that whoever had killed Damian was one or more of the victim’s Polish co-workers, some of whom had significant histories of violence. Three suspects in particular were focused on, but it was discovered that two of these men were already dead, and the other had returned to Poland. Though investigators attempted to get a warrant to travel to Poland to question the remaining suspect, the request was denied due to insufficient evidence.
During the inquiry, ten men were arrested in connection with the murder, but all were eventually released without charge. The mysterious killing of Damian Chlywka, therefore, remains unresolved.
Crime Immemorial 