00:00In the aftermath of a forgotten war, a discharged soldier walked home, but he didn't return to a
00:07life of peace. Instead, he brought the slaughter with him. Over the course of three years,
00:15he and his band of rogue mercenaries carved a bloody path across Central Europe, leaving a
00:22staggering 59 bodies in their wake. They didn't just kill for coin, they killed for clothes,
00:29for sport, and eventually, for a dark, ritualistic hunger. His name was Martin Rojac,
00:37and he remains the worst serial killer in Czech history.
00:44Welcome to Cold Block.
00:51Among them was Martin Rojac, a native of Velkavitesh. History gives us no portrait,
00:59no physical description, only the words of his confession. We know nothing of his childhood or
01:06early years. Based on what we know of 16th century Moravia, he was almost certainly illiterate.
01:14His education limited to basic catechism. A man of low social standing, with few prospects,
01:21and fewer options. When the war ended, he found himself with a set of skills that had exactly
01:28one application. Gathering a group of about eight fellow discharged mercenaries, he formed a ruthless
01:36band of highwaymen. They had no intention of returning to the quiet lives of peasants. Their method
01:44was chillingly pragmatic. Robbery was the goal, but murder was the standard operating procedure. Dead
01:53men tell no tales. They would ambush travelers, slaughter them without hesitation, and strip them of
02:00everything, down to their very close. This wasn't just greed. Wearing the garments of their victims gave
02:08them a practical disguise. The appearance of ordinary merchants or travelers, making it easier to approach
02:16their next targets without raising suspicion. The slaughter began in Transylvania.
02:26Four men were murdered on the road for a mere 24 gold coins. The trail moved west. Near Vienna, a
02:37merchant
02:37was killed for 40 gold pieces and two firearms. At Robinsburg, two more men died for a pair of swords.
02:48The trail pushed into upper Hungary, the surviving rump of a medieval kingdom wedged between Habsburg
02:56authority and the Ottoman frontier. In these fractured borderlands, a man could be robbed and have his
03:05hand severed at the wrist near Stupava, and no single authority felt clearly responsible for pursuing the
03:13killers. It was exactly the kind of jurisdictional no-man's land that men like Rohac knew how to exploit.
03:21The body count climbed relentlessly as they crossed north into Moravia.
03:28In the towns and fields of southern Moravia,
03:32Uherske, Hradishtje, Uherske Brod, Hustopece, they struck again and again.
03:39In Hustopece alone, three men were murdered in a single day. Clothmakers were robbed of their entire
03:46stock. The band looted butcher shops in Vestonese. A Jewish man was murdered near Ivanchetz. No one on the
03:54road was safe. But as they reached southern Moravia, the band began to fracture. Some men took their loot and
04:05went home. Soon, only the most depraved remained. Martin Rohac, a former soldier named Mikulash Micha,
04:14and a butcher known as Jan Cech. Reduced to a trio, their crimes didn't slow down.
04:23They escalated into pure nightmare. Moving into Bohemia, they began targeting pregnant women.
04:31In a twisted ritual born of underworld superstition, they murdered three expecting mothers, cut the
04:39unborn children from their wombs, and extracted their hearts, lungs, and livers. They cooked and
04:46consumed the organs at a place that would later be recorded simply as Chertova Khrchma, the Devil's
04:53Tavern, believing it would grant them supernatural courage and prolong their reign of terror.
05:01But dark rituals offer no real protection. By early 1571, the countryside was gripped by fear,
05:10and regional authorities, the Zemsky Hatemen, were hunting the trio relentlessly. The crack in
05:18their campaign came when Mikulash Micha was recognized and captured. He was thrown into the dungeons,
05:25where the magistrates prepared to extract the truth using the standard investigative tool of the 16th
05:32century, judicial torture. Armed with this confession, the authorities moved swiftly. Martin Rohac was
05:42captured shortly after in his own hometown of Velka Bitesh. Subjected to the same brutal interrogation,
05:50Rohac confirmed every detail. The confessions matched. The final court tally. 59 murders across three
05:59phases, spanning from Transylvania to the outskirts of Prague. The court of Velka Bitesh handed down a
06:07sentence designed not merely to kill, but to make an example.
06:21On February 17, 1571, the sentence was carried out. Rohac was bound to the pillory. The executioner severed the
06:32joints of his fingers, the same hands he had used to kill. As he was dragged to the execution ground,
06:39his flesh was torn with red-hot iron tongs at intervals along the route. At the site,
06:46he was staked to the earth. The executioner systematically dropped a heavy iron-rimmed wagon
06:52wheel onto each limb, shattering the bones one by one. His broken, living body was then woven
07:01through the spokes of the wheel and left to die in the open air. The butcher, Jan Cech, vanished into
07:10history. But the execution of Rohac and Meecha brought an end to the most prolific killing spree
07:16the region had ever seen. Today, Jack the Ripper is a global phenomenon, remembered, studied, and mythologized
07:26for five murders. Martin Rohac slaughtered 59 people across three countries, committed acts of ritualistic
07:35cannibalism, and yet his name has almost entirely faded from history. Buried in the obscure pages of a
07:43Moravian executioner's log, a ghost story that never got told.
07:58Rohac's 59 murders remain the highest body count firmly attributed to a single killer in Czech historical
08:07records. But the darkest chapters of Czech crime didn't end with the 16th century. Nearly 400 years
08:16later, in the quiet river town of Rautnic Nadlabem, a gardener would begin burying things in his yard
08:24that he had no business burying. The newspapers would call him the Rautnic Monster. The courts would call him
08:32Czechoslovakia's first sexual serial killer.
08:50If you made it this far, you already know what this channel is about. Like the video, subscribe to
08:58the Cold Block and stay with us. There's always another door.
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