Eighty-five-year-old widow Domicela Skiera was originally from Poland but had moved to England after World War II. Over the years, she had become quite wealthy, eventually owning two expensive properties in Ealing, West London that she would often rent to lodgers, particularly other Polish immigrants.
Shortly before ten p.m. on Wednesday, January 29th, 2003, two of these lodgers entered the building they were living in and discovered Domicela’s body in her living quarters. She had been bound and then brutally beaten in the face, so savagely that every single bone was broken. The coroner believed the fatal injuries had been inflicted with a fist.
The property had clearly been ransacked, and it seemed a large amount of cash had been taken, though it was unclear if any other items were missing. The victim conducted a significant portion of her rental business in cash, a fact that all of her lodgers would have presumably known.
The prime suspect in the murder was a new lodger who had only arrived two days before Domicela was found dead and vanished the same day as the crime. Like most of the other lodgers, he was Polish and described as about forty years old, standing about five-foot-eight, with dark hair and mustache, and a pockmarked complexion. He’d reportedly been working as a laborer at a nearby construction site.
Authorities also didn’t discount the possibility that the killer had an accomplice.
Despite a thorough investigation, the suspect was never located, and as of this writing in December 2024, the identity of the person or people who slaughtered the elderly widow remains a mystery.
Crime Immemorial 