It is possible that someone revealed the information that led the police to the remains of Tamás Till, who disappeared 24 years ago, in the hope of a plea deal. At least this is indicated by the fact that on June 11, the police received the information from the Bács-Kiskun County Prosecutor’s Office that a former resident of the Baja children’s home participated in the burial of a child’s body in 2000 – perhaps for money, perhaps as a result of threats.
The plea bargain version is likely because in the case of a plea bargain, the decision is in the hands of the prosecution. The institution of the colloquial “plea bargain” has been known in Hungarian criminal proceedings since 2003. We put the plea deal in quotation marks because Hungarian law does not recognize this term. The essence of plea bargaining is that someone who is the subject of criminal proceedings makes a plea deal with the prosecutor, with the approval of the chief prosecutor, during the proceedings, i.e. before indictment.
The essence of the deal is that the proceedings against him will be dropped, but “in exchange” he will help “solve” a crime, the detection of which has a more significant law enforcement or national security interest than the case against him. So, for example, if someone is caught stealing, but he can provide information about a homicide case that can be used to solve the murder case, the theft case can be dropped against him as part of a plea bargain.
Therefore, it cannot be ruled out that this also happened in the case of the disappearance of Tamás Till. And it is not unrealistic that, for example, a former resident of the Baja children’s home had the information that brought a breakthrough in the case. But if there is a plea deal in the background, we may never know, because most of them are secret.
Tamás Till disappeared on May 28, 2000 in Baja. He left home on a bicycle, but never returned. The police announced at a press conference on Thursday that the boy’s remains were found after 24 years. You can read more about this in our article. The police also published a video of the incident, which you can view here.
It is not certain that they will be able to determine the cause of death
Although the remains of Tamás Till were found, it can only be definitively stated that he was found after the genetic tests have been completed. Nevertheless, there are still unanswered questions. For example, what led to the boy’s death.
A medical expert who spoke anonymously to Telex said: after all these years, there are probably no soft tissue parts in the remains, so it is only possible to infer what happened from the bones.
Yes, but this seriously limits the work of experts, since they will only be able to draw conclusions from the condition of the bones. In this case, they look to see if there is a traumatic lesion on the bones, a fracture that could have been caused by trauma – for example, being run over by a car. A broken tongue bone may indicate that the child may have been strangled. In any case, if the possibilities of the experts are limited, it is possible that they cannot determine the cause of death with absolute certainty.
It is not unprecedented that a person registered as missing, who was the victim of a murder, is found years later, encased in concrete, by the police. Szlávy Bulcsú, one of the well-known figures of the underworld of the nineties, for example, disappeared in 1997. Seven years later, the police found his body under the garage of a villa in Buda, encased in concrete. In this case, it was clearly proven that the man widely referred to as the “King of Balaton” was shot, and this caused his death.
In any case, if it turns out that Tamás Till was murdered, it doesn’t matter what led to his death. After all these years, the case of homicide could even become obsolete if it was not classified. So, for example, if Till’s death was caused by being accidentally hit by a car, and the hit-and-run hid the body instead of being held accountable, then it falls under a different classification than if he intended to kill him on purpose. But if he didn’t die in a traffic accident, it doesn’t matter who killed him, why and how he killed him. It doesn’t matter whether someone commits a murder out of sudden impulse or, for example, premeditated.
They know who buried it. But what happened before that?
Although the police are investigating a homicide, the only thing that is certain about the Till case is that, according to witnesses, at the time of the boy’s disappearance, a 60-year-old local entrepreneur, W. József, and a young man who took on an occasional job for him, Péter K., buried and encased the body in concrete. However, neither W. József nor K. Péter is alive anymore: the latter committed suicide in 2011, the former in 2021.
According to the information known so far, József W. asked Péter K. to help him lay concrete, and the young man only realized during the work that the body of a child was hidden at the work site. For this reason, he called the contractor to account, who at first was confused, then by promising money and threatening to persuade Péter K. to remain silent. He probably paid him HUF 200,000 in silence money, but the fact that all this came to light after the death of Péter K. and József W. proves that Péter K. did not keep quiet and shared his terrible secret with others.
However, it is not yet known whether W. József caused the boy’s death, or whether he “only” carried out the disappearance of the body. And if the contractor also caused Till’s death, it is not yet known how he did it. One possible version is that József W. may have run over the boy with a vehicle, and then to avoid being held responsible, he disappeared the body. But if this happened, the question is whether the boy died in the accident, or whether József W. killed him after the accident.
Szabad Föld’s article about Tamás Till’s case in the issue of January 30, 2009 – Source: Szabad Föld / Arcanum
There is an example of the latter in the history of Hungarian forensics. Three years after the disappearance of Tamás Till, the body of a previously missing 23-year-old waitress, Eszter Tompa, was found near Győr. The woman was strangled. However, the investigation into the killer was unsuccessful for a long time, and the Tompa murder was one of the unsolved murders for years.
After fourteen years, the breakthrough came: in 2016, it was revealed that a man’s DNA matched the sample found at the scene of the Tompa murder. It turned out that the suspect was involved in a dog theft case, so he was arrested, and his DNA matched the sample recorded at the scene of the murder. The man confessed to the murder. He said that he was on his phone while driving, which is why he didn’t notice the woman he ran over. He was afraid of the consequences, he didn’t want to go to jail, so he decided to dispose of the body. He put her in his car, but Eszter Tompa later regained consciousness – then the man strangled her. The killer of Eszter Tompa was sentenced to life imprisonment, and will be reviewed whether he will be released in 2033 at the earliest.
The police are also investigating the “traffic thread” in the Till case. This thread is also interesting because it was the first theory that the police assumed after the disappearance of Tamás Till. So that the boy might have been run over by someone. But this thread is weakened by the fact that three months after Tamás Till’s disappearance, the police found the boy’s bicycle (by the way, near József W.’s property), but the crime technicians found neither damage nor foreign DNA traces on it, so the police believe that it was trampled then it was discarded.
Two involved, two suicides
Although it was not discussed at the Thursday press conference in the Till case, it is unlikely that in the case of W. József and K. Péter the investigators would not investigate their deaths. Because they both committed suicide, and knowing their dark past, it cannot be ruled out that their suicide was related to this.
The circumstances of the death of Péter K., who assisted József W., are also worth clarifying because it happened 11 years after Tamás Till was encased in concrete. Péter K. received money for all this, but if the testimony given by his acquaintance at the police is to be believed, József W. threatened him. That is why it does not matter how and under what circumstances Péter K. died eleven years after what happened.
In the case of this type of crime, it is not uncommon for the perpetrator to become more and more afraid as time goes by that someone who knows his secret might betray him or hand him over to the police, so he kills him. Of course, this does not mean that József W. had anything to do with the death of Péter K., especially if it was established with absolute certainty in the administrative procedure that suicide had occurred. In any case, in a case of such magnitude, where the investigators must clarify all the details, it is quite certain that the circumstances of Péter K.’s death will be investigated, or have already been investigated.
It is true that suicides of this kind are usually motivated by reasons of conscience. As the years pass, it becomes more and more difficult to keep such a serious secret, if only because the case of Tamás Till’s disappearance was known to the whole country, and the boy’s family hoped that the child would be found sooner or later. This mental burden can explain the death of Péter K. as well as the suicide of József W.
