Neighbours of ‘incest horror house’ where three babies were found dead say they often

Neighbours of an incest horror house where three babies were found rotting in the basement claim they heard the daughter moaning and screaming as she had sex with her ‘swearing and cursing’ father.

Piotr Gierasik, 54, and Paulina Gierasik, 20, are facing life in prison for murder and incest after three babies’ remains were discovered in shallow graves and wrapped in plastic bags at the property in the village of Czerniki, northern Poland.

The father and daughter – who are said to have been in a relationship for four years – were only found out when the girl’s vigilant colleagues discovered she was pregnant.

Colleagues of Paulina at a cake shop in the neighbouring village of Stara Kiszewa say she started wearing loose clothes as if she were trying to hide her belly.

And after coming back from holiday the shocked workers saw she totally transformed despite being away for just a week – as she was thinner, weaker, constantly tired and was forced to keep sitting down. 

But she was finally discovered when her workmates noticed her covering her nipples with tissues because her milk was leaking. 

One colleague – who Polish newspaper Fakt said was visibly distressed – claimed it was because of them that the couple were found out. ‘We were all shocked,’ he said.

The father and daughter were said to have ‘lived like a couple’ and ‘walked around hand-in-hand’.

And shocking testimony has now told how her father ‘shaved her head so that other boys wouldn’t look at her’ and that she looked up to him ‘as if he were God’.

The father and daughter were each charged with multiple counts of murder and each of incest.

It comes after the first two babies were found on Friday but further investigations revealed a third body in an ‘advanced state of decomposition’ on Saturday.

Two of the infants belonged to Paulina, investigators said, and the mother of the third is her sister. 

Paulina’s colleagues said they became suspicious that she was pregnant after she started to wear large, loose-fitting clothes. She then took three weeks off work but returned a week later.

One fellow shop worker told the Super Express newspaper: ‘We all guessed she was pregnant, I think she had tied belts around herself like a sort of corset.

‘When she returned early from her holiday the change was visible. She was much thinner, weaker, and constantly tired.

‘When we asked about the child, she feigned surprise and denied it.’

Another local told Fakt newspaper: ‘They lived like a couple. She called him Piotr, by his first name. They walked around hand in hand.

‘A few months ago, he shaved her head so that other boys wouldn’t look at her.

‘She looked up to him as if he were God.’

Addressing the arrests earlier, Mariusz Duszyński from the District Prosecutor’s Office in Gdańsk said: ‘The woman has been charged with two counts of murder and a charge of having an incestuous relationship with her father.

‘The man was charged with three counts of murder, a charge of incest with his 20-year-old daughter, and a charge of having incestuous relations with another daughter.’

According to prosecutors, two of the murdered children came from his relationship with the 20-year-old who they say was in a consensual relationship with her father.

The third baby was from a relationship he had with another daughter after forcing her into sex.

The prosecutors added that they suspected him of killing the third baby.

The grim discoveries came after police received a tip-off from social services. One of Paulina’s work colleagues is reported to have alerted social services after seeing a ‘disturbing’ text message the 20-year-old had sent to her father.

Police found the three infant bodies in the basement of the house, each in various states of decomposition. The ground was covered in dirt and there was no solid floor where they were buried.

Moving to the village around 15 years ago, Piotr was left to bring up his children after his wife died.

One local told the Super Express newspaper: ‘The father was left alone with the children.

‘There are a lot of them, ten or twelve, the oldest ones have already left.

‘Piotr made a good impression. The yard is neglected, but he installed new windows in the house.

‘There was no sign of him drinking. He took the kids for walks or to the forest to pick mushrooms.

‘Just ordinary people. Who would have thought that such abominations existed in their home.’

But other locals told Fakt that while he ‘seemed calm’ he ‘had the devil under his skin’.

It comes as the small town of Czerniki – with a population of less than 180, located 50km from Gdańsk – has been accused of holding a ‘conspiracy of silence’ over the allegedly known relationship between the father and daughter.

Locals said they ‘always suspected something was wrong’ with the family.

One neighbour said: ‘We often heard him shouting at the children. His verbal abuse was shocking. Sometimes we’d hear one of the girls screaming.

‘What people say now is that he used to go for walks with them. Maybe he did, but the whole village knew that something like this was happening.

‘It’s a tiny village, so everyone knew about these things.

‘Around ten years ago, the police were told that he was sleeping with one of his daughters. But after they investigated they couldn’t find any concrete evidence.

‘The older daughter, who we suspected he had slept with was so scared she refused to say anything.

‘He [the father] has such a personality that everyone in this village was afraid of him. That’s why this case didn’t appear for so long.

‘She later moved away, as did many of his other children. There were about twelve of them.’

A neighbour of the older daughter told Super Express: ‘She now lives in our village.

‘She has a decent husband. As far as I remember, everyone said that she ran away from that father.

‘If I were her husband, I would kill that monster. If someone hurt my wife like that, I would kill him too.’

Police have so far discovered the remains of three babies buried in the family’s house.

Unconfirmed reports say that one of the bodies wrapped in a black plastic bin liner was about three weeks old at the time of death.

Katarzyna Matyszczak, the manager of the confectionery shop where Paulina worked, said: ‘Everyone was gossiping about it.

‘His youngest daughter Paulina is a beautiful girl. Everyone said she was pregnant. So I asked about it directly.

‘She denied it. One of her friends didn’t believe it. I won’t say who, but she was the one who informed the relevant services about the whole matter, because she suspected that she had given birth to a child.’

Prosecutors are now waiting for an autopsy to determine how the three babies died. Meanwhile, police are continuing to search the property to see if any more bodies are hidden in the house.

Both the father and daughter are currently in detention as the investigation continues.