Crime Immemorial

In 1902, at the age of eighteen, Teresa married Edward Łubieński, a scion of another prominent clan, and the couple settled on the family estate in Łaszów. Their union produced two children: son Stanisław in 1906 and daughter Izabela in 1910. Life on the estate was one of privilege, but Teresa quickly channeled her status into service. She became a devoted member of the Polish Red Cross, organizing aid and relief efforts amid the turbulent politics of Eastern Europe.

Tragedy struck in 1918 during the Bolshevik Revolution. The family’s estate was seized by revolutionaries, and Edward was stabbed to death in the chaos—a foreshadowing irony that would echo decades later. Widowed and displaced, Teresa raised her children alone while navigating the shifting borders and conflicts of interwar Poland. Her resilience only deepened.

When Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Teresa, then in her mid-fifties, refused to stand idle. Joining the Armia Krajowa—the Polish Underground State and its Home Army—she rose to the rank of lieutenant, coordinating sabotage operations, intelligence gathering, and support for partisans. Her work was perilous; she was captured and deported to Auschwitz, the infamous extermination camp, where she was tattooed with the prisoner number 44747—a mark that would later aid in her identification after her murder. Transferred to the women’s camp at Ravensbrück, she endured forced labor, starvation, and the constant threat of death. Miraculously, she survived, liberated in 1945 as Allied forces closed in.

Postwar, Teresa’s fight continued. Exiled from Soviet-occupied Poland, she resettled in London, England, where she became a tireless advocate for fellow survivors of Nazi camps. Through organizations like the Polish Resettlement Corps and various welfare groups, she helped secure housing, medical care, and emotional support for displaced Poles. Her flat in Cromwell Gardens, Kensington, became a hub for the émigré community. She forged close bonds, including a friendship with the legendary SOE agent Krystyna Skarbek (known as Christine Granville), whose 1952 funeral Teresa attended at Kensal Green Cemetery.

For her bravery, Teresa was posthumously awarded Poland’s Golden Cross of Merit with Swords, recognizing her “devotion to the cause of free Poland” and the personal dangers she faced. At seventy-three, she was a living emblem of defiance—a white-haired countess who had outlived wars, camps, and revolutions.

Friday, May 24th, 1957, began innocently enough. Teresa attended a May Day party in Ealing with friends, including a Roman Catholic priest from Brompton Oratory. Around ten twenty-five p.m., they walked to Ealing Common station, purchased single tickets to Gloucester Road, and boarded a Piccadilly line train bound eastward. The priest, heading to Earl’s Court, parted ways with Teresa at some point during the journey. She was last seen alive stepping off the ten nineteen p.m. train onto the eastbound platform at Gloucester Road, just a short walk from her home.

The station was relatively quiet for a Friday night, staffed by three London Underground employees: a foreman operating the lift, a ticket collector, and another attendant. What happened next unfolded in seconds. An unseen assailant—described only vaguely in later appeals as possibly a man in dark clothing—lunged at Teresa, stabbing her three times in the chest (two wounds piercing her heart), once in the stomach, and once in the back. She staggered into the lift, blood soaking her clothes, and collapsed as it ascended to street level.

A witness, alerted by her cries, summoned help. Police and an ambulance rushed her to St. Mary Abbots Hospital in Kensington, but the injuries were too severe. Teresa succumbed in the early hours of May 25th, 1957. The concentration camp tattoo on her arm confirmed her identity to authorities, but the motive—and the killer—remained elusive.

The murder sent shockwaves through London’s Polish community and beyond, igniting one of the largest investigations in Metropolitan Police history. Over the following months, detectives conducted 18,000 interviews, many with witnesses abroad, retracing Teresa’s steps with stopwatches and notebooks. They appealed for two platform bystanders—a man and a woman—who had exited the lift just before Teresa and might have glimpsed a fleeing figure. Surveillance was mounted at the station in hopes the killer would return.

Forensic analysis revealed little: the weapon was a sharp knife, possibly a stiletto, but no prints or traces linked to a suspect. The inquest at Hammersmith Coroner’s Court on August 19th and 20th, 1957 heard testimony from staff and medical experts before returning a verdict of “murder by a person or persons unknown.”

Why would anyone target an elderly countess known for her charity? Robbery was quickly ruled out—no valuables were taken. The attack’s ferocity suggested deliberation, fueling speculation of a political motive. Days before her death, Teresa had confided to friends that she felt threatened and had reported her fears to police, hinting at unnamed enemies from her past. Her daughter, Izabela, insisted it was “absolutely… a political crime,” possibly retaliation from Soviet agents or lingering Nazi sympathizers.

Teresa’s resistance role made her a potential target; Polish exiles in London faced harassment from communist operatives during the Cold War. Some whispered of a connection to Krystyna Skarbek’s unsolved stalker-murder five years earlier. Others dismissed it as a senseless act by a deranged individual, exploiting the station’s shadows. Contemporary press, like The People newspaper, sensationalized the “political murder” angle, but evidence never materialized.

As of October 2025, the murder of Countess Teresa Łubieńska remains one of London’s most baffling unsolved cases.