Daria Reluga was the top high school graduate of 1995 in Gdańsk. A graduate of the XII High School, she was admitted to the Medical Academy. After the longest summer break, she was to begin studying biotechnology, aiming to become a doctor. Due to her outstanding performance on the final exams, Daria appeared on local television. "Act wisely and await the end. It is not always known and can sometimes be surprising," she said in the interview. A week before her disappearance, she celebrated her 19th birthday.
"That evening, I walked maybe 10 meters from where Daria was hidden."
Daria disappeared on August 4, 1995, after leaving her apartment on Bobrowa Street in Gdańsk. Around 7 AM, she went jogging in the Tricity Landscape Park. She was supposed to return at 9 AM, when her family was no longer home. Her mother discovered her disappearance when she returned home from work at 3 PM. The woman immediately notified the police, who initially refused to accept the missing person's report, telling her to wait 72 hours (note that you do not have to wait 24 or 48 hours to report a missing person—police are obligated to take the report regardless of how much time has passed since the person was noticed missing).
The police did not begin searching until that evening, after Daria's father organized a search party with volunteers to comb the forest. "That evening, I walked maybe 10 meters from where Daria was hidden," Mr. Dariusz told a Radio ZET journalist.
Daria's body was found the next day in the forest, 300 meters from her home, behind the Gdańsk Academy of Physical Education. It was covered with branches and ferns. Until 2020, the version of events was that the police found the teenager, but it later emerged that a forester directed the officers to dig up the spot that he thought looked suspicious. Beside the partially unclothed body were three large nests of red ants—according to an entomologist, after a month, "all that would have been left of Daria would be her skeleton."
Mysterious Letters on Daria's Grave and a Plaque About the "Martyrdom" of the 19-Year-Old
After the funeral, Daria's father wanted to place a cross at the site where she had died. However, the police refused to tell him the exact location, citing monitoring set up by the authorities. Mr. Dariusz accidentally found the place two months later. A neighbor showed him the spot, which had caught fire four days before Daria's death. Daria had reported the fire to the fire department and later jogged by the area to check if everything was alright. On one of the trees, her father and the neighbor found a cross with a plaque that read: "On August 4, Daria Reluga died here a martyr's death."
The man went to the police station, where it turned out there was no monitoring, and the police had no idea who had placed the plaque at the murder site, which had not been disclosed to the public. The police were supposed to secure the evidence, but it was Daria's father who removed the plaque and kept it at home. In 1999, he handed the plaque over to a police officer, who submitted it for analysis only when he was retiring—15 years after the crime, in 2010. The plaque could only be analyzed for handwriting.
For a while, strange cards and letters also appeared on Daria's grave. They were reportedly written by a girl a year younger who attended the same high school as Daria. However, this matter was not related to the 19-year-old's murder.
The Perpetrator Was Likely Strong, Athletic, and Acted Alone. However, the Evidence Was Poorly Secured
Investigators concluded that Daria was raped and strangled. Her father stated that "the direct cause of death was her heart—stress, exertion." At the scene, police secured a kitchen knife that had been stuck in the tree under which Daria's body was found—however, they did so incompetently, failing to secure any traces left by the potential killer. They also found a bloody handkerchief, which suggested that Daria had tried to defend herself. A hair that did not belong to Daria was also discovered, but a police officer kept this evidence in a drawer instead of a refrigerator for 10 months, rendering it unusable for testing. A pendant with a leather strap was also found, which the police claimed belonged to Daria, although her parents did not recognize it. Later, this evidence disappeared.
According to an expert report cited by Onet, the perpetrator acted alone. He was under 35 years old and was very strong and physically fit. He did not show sadistic tendencies and most likely did not know his victim beforehand. The autopsy indicates that Daria was strangled with a forearm, suggesting that the perpetrator did not intend to kill her but to incapacitate her. Injuries indicate that he may have been wearing a leather jacket with zippers on the sleeves. The rapist's semen and genetic material were secured and are in the Interpol database, among others. However, it has not yet been matched to any suspect.
The police searched for a long time for two men who boarded a bus at 8:40 AM on the day of Daria's murder at a request stop in the middle of the forest, near where her body was later found. The driver remembered that the two approximately 35-year-old men behaved strangely—they were scared and covered in pine needles. One of them bought tickets for both, but they were so shaken that they couldn't validate them—a 10-year-old boy helped them. The men got off at the next stop and ran into the forest. The driver remembered their faces well, and composite sketches were created based on his descriptions.
One of the men, nicknamed "Wątły," was slim, tall, had dark stubble and disheveled hair, and bushy, joined eyebrows. The other, "Rudy," was stocky and had short-cropped hair. They may have been homeless men who, as Onet notes, disappeared from the forest where their encampments were located shortly after the murder of the teenager. The suspicious passengers were never found. Nothing is also known about a third man who entered the forest right behind Daria, as seen by a woman walking her dog.
The failure to solve the case may have also been influenced by the fact that the Gdańsk and Sopot police stations passed the case files back and forth—there was uncertainty about which city's territory the forest crime scene belonged to. The aforementioned forester who discovered the body determined that the forest area belonged to Sopot, which then took over the case. Later, in unexplained circumstances, many files related to the 19-year-old's murder went missing from the Sopot prosecutor's office—documents collected between 1997 and 2006 disappeared. No one was punished for this.
In 1995, Someone Attacked a Woman. The Victim Threw Herself Under a Car to Avoid Being Dragged Into the Forest
After Daria's murder, reports emerged that in the summer of 1995, a suspicious man had been seen around the Tricity Landscape Park. Witnesses reported at least three attempted assaults. One woman was followed and then attacked at a bus stop. The man pulled her by the hair, choked her, and tugged so hard that her shoes fell off. When she saw car headlights, she decided to throw herself at the vehicle. The attacker then fled into the forest.
But this is not the end of the stories linked to Daria's case. Four years after the 19-year-old's death, her friend from high school, Anna Rozkosz, disappeared. The girl was supposed to go to the garden plots, but her family lost contact with her. Eight months later, her body was found covered with branches and pieces of wood. According to investigators, the girl committed suicide.
Years later, Daria's father also contacted the bus driver, who stated that the men he saw were younger and well-dressed and revealed that he recognized one of the suspects in 1995 in a hospital. Doctors had reported him because they noticed he had suspicious injuries. When he saw the officers, he reportedly shouted that "he didn't do anything to her." The police allegedly knew "whose son he was." However, this information did not appear in any documents. Based on these statements, Mr. Dariusz concluded that the perpetrator might have had "well-connected parents."
100,000 Reward for Help in Identifying the Perpetrator: "It's Not True That Time Heals All Wounds"
In 2022, Daria's father, Dariusz Reluga, offered a reward of 100,000 PLN for information leading to the identification of the perpetrator or perpetrators. In numerous interviews, he stated that he could no longer wait for his daughter's murderer to be found—being in his seventies himself, he wants to see the killer brought to justice. As a result, Mr. Dariusz sold a plot of land near the Tricity area and used the proceeds to fund the reward. "I know that someone involved in the murder won't give themselves up, but I don't believe that only the perpetrator knows the truth. They must have confided in someone, maybe over wine, vodka, maybe in a moment of weakness," Dariusz Reluga explained in an interview with the portal zawszepomorze.pl.
"It's not true that time heals all wounds. That's a lie. There's nothing worse than burying your own child. I will never give up until the perpetrator is caught and punished," he added in an interview with Onet. Daria's father is waiting for any information regarding his daughter's death at the phone number: 452 457 043. Information can also be directly reported to the District Prosecutor's Office in Bydgoszcz, which is handling the case—one can call 525 190 033.
"The statute of limitations for a crime ceases if 30 years have passed since it was committed, in the case of murder." Therefore, for Daria's death, this would be the year 2025.
