TERRIBLE CONFESSION

Evening Star, Issue 20987, 29 December 1931, Page 9

TERRIBLE CONFESSION

MASS MURDERER'S GRIMES SCORES OF VICTIMS BIG RAILWAY CRASHES. Silvester Matsuka, train wrecker and murderer, the most depraved criminal of modern times, beside whom Crippen, Peace, Landrau, and Kurten, the Dusseldorf vampire, appear but novices in the practice of crime, finally confessed at Vienna on October 18 that he had planned and carried out three of the most disastrous train wrecks of the past year. They were the blowing up of the Budapest-Ostend. express at Biatorbagy on September 13, when twenty-five passengers, including two English tourists, were killed; the wrecking of the Cologne express at Juterbog, Germany, on August 8, when the casualty list was two dead and seventy-five seriously injured, and an attack on a train at Anzbach, Austria, on December 30 last year, when several passengers were hurt. Silvester declared that his plans for the future included three further wrecks —the blowing up of an international express near Amsterdam, the blowing up of a French express on- the Paris-Mar-seilles line, and_ the destruction of a train to Ventimiglia, on the FrancoItalian frontier. Leading detectives of Germany, Austria, and Hungary sat round Matsuka in a cell in a Vienna police station all one night in a desperate_ battle to extract a complete confession, and at 6 a.m. their efforts were crowned with success, and the mass murderer confessed to his crimes. DEVIL IN DISGUISE. What manner of man is this Silvester Matsuka, who takes such a fiendish delight in sending innocent people who have never done him any harm, to a terrible death? says the correspondent of the ‘ Daily Express.’ He is tall, handsome, much respected by a circle of friends, an excellent business man, and a kind-hearted father and husband. He is deeply religious, wears a sacred emblem, and one of his recent actions was to send a case of candles to his parents in Jugo-Slavia for the use of the village church. . It is now revealed that _this_ normal, kindly man is a devil in disguise, leading a double life. When his wife went on a visit to her parents in Germany he indulged in wild orgies, and m his confession he recounted blood-curdling tales of his criminal associates. He bought a factory for the preparation of dangerous explosives, and often disappeared for weeks, leaving no trace, and returning home haggard and depressed. During these lonely walks Matsuka used to stare at railway trucks, which seemed to have a fascination for him. Before blowing up a tram he would hide near the scene of the proposed wreck, and when the crash and the explosion and the cries of the victims told him that his plan was successful, he would leave his hiding place and mingle with the passengers, pretending that he himself had been a passenger in the wrecked train, and was fortunate to escape with his life. COMPARISON WITH NERO. Matsuka’s last business deal was to buy a tombstone factory, and an interesting psychological explanation of the purchase was given by Dr Robert Jokl, a famous psychologist of Vienna, who explained that Matsuka, -buying the was unconsciously thinking of his victims. “ A classic case of Satism on a large scale was the burning of Rome by the

Emperor Nero, who found pleasure mj watching the destructive flames,” DrJ Jokl said. “Much the same motive] of pleasure must have driven MatsukaT to his crimes. , ~ J “ That Matsuka was a good father] and a good friend to his business col-, leagues is proof of his double hfe.l Criminals and madmen of his type seek' to conceal ’ their Jekyll and Hyde existence under a mask of exaggerated correctness.”