Circumstances of detention
On 22 July
1942, at the tram stop near the church of St. Anne, at the beginning of
Horodotska street, Marian Priwer, a Kripo corporal, detained Karol Leskiw, who
had two thousand zlotys with him. The money, as it turned out, belonged to
Stefan Kotyński, a tram passenger, and had just
been extracted from his pocket. Leskiw claimed that he had found this money on
the tram floor. The detainee was taken to the Kripo commissariat.
Investigation
According
to corporal Priwer's testimony, he followed Leskiw from a long time ago, but
could not catch him red-handed. The point was that Leskiw acted in conjunction
with other thieves using various techniques of theft, when one of them stole
and immediately transferred the money to another pickpocket. For example, in
the case of Kotyński, Leskiw played the role of a
"wall", that is, he pressed the victim when passengers were entering
the car, and directly behind him there was a thief who took the purse from the
victim’s pocket and then put it into a pocket of Leskiw, who held his hands in
sight and was beyond suspicion.
One way or
another, on July 8 Priwer followed Leskiw from the city center to the church of
St. Anne, where, after 45 minutes of waiting, caught him, but later had to let
him go due to lack of evidence. Finally, on July 22, the corporal managed to catch
the pickpocket in the act.
During
interrogations in the Kripo Leskiw admitted committing 6 episodes of stealing
purses and documents in trams from 1 to 22 July 1942.
However,
shortly afterwards, he retracted his words and said that his confession was wrested
from him by force as a result of beatings at the commissariat. He also said
that he was a simple shoemaker and was going on business to the UAP
commissariat; he claimed that he constantly got on and off trams because cars
were overcrowded. To verify the veracity of this statement, the prosecutor
appointed an investigating judge to conduct a re-investigation.
Accordingly,
requests were sent to the courts of Warsaw, Przemysl and Lviv to conduct re-interrogations
of victims in the specified episodes. Also, corporal Priwer's and Leskiw's
cellmate's testimonies were checked, the latter confirming the signs of
beating. In most cases, it was impossible to identify the actual pickpocket,
and only the case of Kotyński could be directly associated with
Leskiw.
It turned
out that Karol Leskiw, a "simple shoemaker", had a rich criminal
biography. He was imprisoned 11 times in 1918-1939. Therefore, corporal Priwer
had every reason to state that Leskiw was a professional pickpocket. The case
was referred to the court.
On 10 and
23 December 1942, the court sessions were held. The defence tried to use the cellmate’s
and the defendant's wife's testimonies to confirm Leskiw's testimonies about
his being beaten and not implicated in the case; however, these efforts were to
no avail. Anyway, Leskiw was released from custody as early as 11 December
1942.
Conclusion
According to the court decision, Leskiw was sentenced
to 6 months (his temporary arrest included) of imprisonment for pickpocketing
and to the compensation for material damage suffered. Consequently, from the
day of the trial, he had to do only two months in prison. For unknown reasons,
he was imprisoned in Stryy only eight months later, on 8 September 1943, and served
his sentence till October 21 of that year.
