Zoltán Szabó (1968 – December 5, 2016), known as The Balástya Monster, was a Hungarian serial killer who killed women for monetary purposes.
During the second half of the 1990s, the traffic near Balástya grew, as the civil war in Yugoslavia had recently ended and many passed through the 5th Highway along the settlement.
The increasing turnover of the highway attracted businesses, criminals, merchants and prostitutes to the settlement, including some of Szabó's future victims.
Szabó then dismembered his victim and buried her body in a pit 50 meters away from the farm, in which he also placed her clothes.
In February 2000, on the pretext of joint theft of fire syringes, Szabó lured and killed Teresia K. The woman was strangled in an orchard, and was then mutilated and burned.
On August 25, 1998, Szabó supposedly forced prostitute Mónika K. to leave the 5th Highway car park and go to his farm.
The detective, referring to a witness' testimony, wrote that Szabó was responsible for the disappearances of a Romanian family of five.
The Csongrád County court, hearing the case at first instance, found Zoltán Szabó guilty of all four murders and sentenced him to life imprisonment in November 2003.
[4][5] The Trial Chamber could not find any evidence that Szabó's murders involved sexual aberration, and there was no mention of this other despicable reason in the judgment.