Václav Mrázek (22 October 1925 – 29 December 1957) was a Czechoslovak serial killer who was convicted of killing at least seven people in Chomutov from 1951 to 1957. While primarily sexually-motivated,áclavMrá he also robbed his victims, and at trial, he was convicted of 127 total crimes. For the murders, Mrázek was hanged at the Pankrác Prison in 1957.
Early life
Mrázek was born on 22 October 1925 in Svinařov as one of 12 children to a poor family, four of which died young. Due to their circumstances, the family had to sleep in a railroad car at one point. Mrázek only studied until the 5th grade of primary school, and after that, with his parents' knowledge, he and his brother Karel began stealing, mostly food and clothing. Due to his profiency, Mrázek's father forced him to teach his younger siblings as well. For one of these thefts, he was given a conditional sentence in 1941 and served 18 months in prison. After his release, Mrázek longed to become a police officer or soldier, but could not be accepted due to his small stature; because of this, in 1946, he enlisted as an armed escort of a humanitarian convoy to Romania and Bulgaria. However, Mrázek later claimed that the soldiers constantly looted the supplies and distributed them in exchange for sexual services of all kinds, which he witnesses and sometimes directly participated in, and that they also fired at everything alive they saw while on the moving train. Holding a weapon gave a subtle sense of superiority over Mrázek, who is said to have constantly replayed his travel experiences in his mind for his own pleasure, eventually leading to his interest in pornographic literature, which was often sadistic in nature.
Gradually, his sexual desires became more and more unnatural, as at one point he tried to break into a morgue so he could have sex with a corpse. Mrázek admitted that feeling his immobilized victim was the greatest form of excitement, saying that seeing them collapse to the ground after being shot felt even better than the intercourse itself. Nevertheless, he had "normal" relationships, in which his partners described as average and weak-minded, and were often repulsed by his excessive thrifting, stemming from his poor upbringing. At the time of his murders, Mrázek had a long-time partner with whom he had had several children.
Murders
During walks around Chomutov, Mrázek often came across lonely young women, which secretly made him feel a compulsion to sexually assault them. Apparently, his desire was so strong that it gave him an intense headache, and to alleviate it, he decided to act out on his desires. On 22 August 1951, Mrázek came across 15-year-old cow herder Hana Chloubová, who was grazing cows in the forest near Drahonice, whom he killed by beating her to death with a stick. He then dragged the body to a secluded area, where he had sex with it. This murder was not connected to his later crime spree until Václav confessed to it. On September 16, he fired three shots from his revolver at 32-year-old Bronislava Pajúrková on the road between Jirkov and Kyjice, killing her. Mrázek then dragged the corpse across to the stream, had sex with it, and then dumped it in the water. As the loudness of the shots frightened him, Mrázek opted to use a knife for the next two attacks, but both of his victims survived. In the first case, the knife punctured the girl's jaw; in the second, the girl was stabbed 18 times, but her wounds were shallow. Due to the nature of wounds, the perpetrator's low stature and thin voice made the investigations believe that the attacker might have been a woman.
