Last week and over the weekend, the Hungarian and international public was shocked by a gruesome murder case in Hungary’s capital, Budapest. American nurse Mackenzie Michalski, 31, arrived in Budapest for a holiday last week. She disappeared seemingly without a trace in the early hours of Tuesday, 5 November.
‘Mackenzie Michalski travelled to Budapest from Portland, Oregon, but did not board her flight home and failed to check out of her Airbnb apartment,’ the Budapest Police Headquarters (BRFK) stated in a release. The authorities promptly initiated a massive search for the missing American woman.
News broke on Thursday that the police had identified and arrested Michalski’s suspected killer using CCTV footage. The 37-year-old Irishman, identified as LTM, confessed to the crime but claimed that Michalski’s death was the result of an unfortunate accident.
The victim and her killer met at a nightclub and later went to his apartment. According to the police, the man killed Michalski while they were engaged in an ‘intimate encounter.’ In a statement, BRFK also revealed that after the murder, the perpetrator placed the victim’s body in a suitcase and hid it in a wooded area in Szigliget, more than 100 kilometres from Budapest. Following his confession, the perpetrator led the authorities to the body.
‘The perpetrator placed the victim’s body in a suitcase and hid it in a wooded area in Szigliget’
Ferenc Rab, deputy spokesman for the Budapest Chief Prosecutor’s Office, stated on Sunday that the court had ordered a 30-day detention of the Irish suspect due to the risk of absconding, though the decision is not yet final. The order was appealed not only by the suspect and his defence team but also by the prosecutor. In the prosecutor’s view, there is a genuine risk of re-offending.
According to Index, the Irish man works in marketing and had travelled to Hungary on business the week before the murder. The suspect’s lawyer stated that the 37-year-old man was also traumatized by the incident and continues to maintain that it was an accident.
The (suspected) perpetrator attempted to cover up the murder by turning to Google. Investigators discovered that, following the crime, he searched for the following phrases on the internet: ‘do pigs really eat dead bodies?’, ‘wild boar in the villages around Lake Balaton,’ ‘what does a dead body smell like after it decomposes?’, and ‘removing the smell of rotting meat.’ The suspect was also concerned about the likelihood of being identified for the crime. In this regard, he checked CCTVs in Budapest, and also ran searches asking ‘how do the police handle missing person cases?’ and ‘how reliable are the police in Budapest?’
‘The 31-year-old woman had visited Budapest several times and adored the city’s restaurants and culture’
Before the confession, Michalski’s family and friends, along with the US Embassy in Budapest, launched an effort to find her, starting a Facebook group to gather tips on her whereabouts. Her parents travelled to Hungary to assist in the search, but while en route, they learned that she had been killed.
At a candlelight vigil in Budapest on Saturday night, the victim’s father, Bill Michalski, told the Associated Press that he was ‘still overcome with emotion’ at the loss of his daughter. ‘There was no reason for this to happen,” he said. ‘I’m still trying to wrap my arms around what happened … I don’t know that I ever will.’
According to her boyfriend, Michalski was very excited about the trip to Budapest, a city she loved deeply. The 31-year-old woman had visited Budapest several times and adored the city’s restaurants and culture.
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