MASS MURDERER

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 113, 5 January 1932, Page 7

MASS MURDERER

SCORES OF VICTIMS MAN WHO DELIBERATELY CAUSED TRAIN WRECKS. DOUBLE PERSONALITY. • Silvester Matsuka, train wrecker and murderer, the most depraved criminal of modern times, besides whom Crippen, Peace, Lanrau, and Kurten, the Dusseldorf vampire, appear but novices in the practice of crime, finally confessed at Vienna on Octoher 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 twentyfive passengers, including two English tourists, were. killed; the wrecking of the Cologne express at Juterbog, Germany, on August 8, when the casnalty 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/fche Paris-Marseilles line, and the destruction of a train at Ventimiglia, on the Franco-Italian 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 cirele 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 in his confession he recounted blood-curd-ling tales of his criminal associates.

He .bought a factory for the preparation of dangerous explosives, and often disappeared for weeks, leaving no tra.ce, 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 np a train he wonld hide near the scene of the proposd 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 heen 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 tomb stone factory, and an interesting psychological explanation of the purchase was given by Dr. Robert Jokl, a famous psychologist of Vienna, who explained that Matsuka, in bnying the tombstones, was unconseiously thinking of his victims. "A classic case of Satism on a large scale was the burning of Rome by the Emperor Nero, who fonnd pleasure in watching the destructive flames," Dr. Jokl said. "Much the same motive of pleasure must have driven Matsuka to his crimes. "That Matsuka was a good father and a good friend to his business colleagues is proof of his double life. Criminals and madmen of his type seek to conceal their Jekyll and Hyde existence under a mask of exaggerated correetness."