Between January 1996 and July 1997, garbage bags were found on the side of the road or on canal embankments not far from the Belgian city of Mons. These plastic bags contained the body parts of a total of five women who had been brutally murdered, which is why the perpetrator was nicknamed “The Butcher of Mons” in the media. The whole of Belgium was shocked by the gruesome discovery. The investigation was in full swing. Over 1,700 leads were followed, but there was no trace of the perpetrator. Ten years passed before the FBI arrested 67-year-old Smail Tulja in February 2007 on the basis of new evidence in the suburb of Maslin in Montenegro, Tulja’s home country. This inconspicuous, always helpful 1.60-meter-tall man, who was an avid hobby gardener, as his neighbors described him, is said to have murdered his wife, American Mary Beal, in New York in 1990. Her murder followed the same pattern as the five murders in Belgium and two murders in Albania. The bodies were all decapitated, then precisely dismembered, with the body parts placed in garbage bags and distributed throughout the city. At the time of the series of murders in Belgium, Smail Tulja, whose real name was Smajo Džurlić, was living there under a false name with his third wife, who had fled with him from the US after the murder of Mary Beal, before he returned to his native Montenegro. When he left, the series of murders ended abruptly. DNA evidence proved that the 67-year-old had murdered his wife. Smail Tulja had been working as a taxi driver in New York at the time. Mary Beal disappeared on September 15, 1990. Her body was found three weeks later in two garbage bags in New York City. As Montenegro did not extradite him as one of its own citizens, a trial was held via video link in February 2009, in which Smail Tulja was sentenced to 12 years in prison for the murder of Mary Beal. He died in prison in February 2012, and it could not be conclusively determined whether he was responsible for the other murders in Belgium and Albania.
The Butcher
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