By Pavla Holcová and Eva Kubániová

The offer was straightforward and financially attractive: Kill a man in return for 50,000 euros in cash and the forgiveness of more than 20,000 euros in debt. Zoltán Andruskó, a Slovak pizzeria operator, quickly accepted – a decision that forever changed both his life and the history of Slovakia.

The woman Andruskó said offered the deal was Alena Zsuzsová, an Italian translator and fixer who worked for one of Slovakia’s richest men, Marián Kočner. Sitting together in a car outside her house, Zsuzsová gave Andruskó the details: a name, a couple of photos, and a home address. It was all he needed.

The target was Aktuality.sk reporter Ján Kuciak. The information about the deal to kill him comes from a Slovak police investigation that was reviewed by OCCRP.

The assignment wasn’t a natural fit for Andruskó. He wasn’t a killer. He was a bald, middle-aged businessman with a pot belly who later said he didn’t really want to kill anyone, mainly because he didn’t know how.

So he asked a friend for help, a former police officer. Tomáš Szabo looked the part of a Hollywood assassin: tall, muscular, and tattooed, with a strong jaw and a shaved head. He was also good with guns and willing to take on the assignment.

He also recruited a resourceful cousin, Miroslav Marček, an athletic former soldier who knew guns and could drive the car. The team was ready.

Any assassination requires surveillance to find the right opportunity. The men visited the home of Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová in the southwestern village of Velká Mača, about 60 km from Bratislava, the capital, at least seven times.

This account of their repeated visits to the town and of the assassinations is built on an OCCRP review of police investigative documents, which are partly based on closed-circuit TV footage.

Szabo and Marček first visited Velká Mača in the afternoon of Monday, Feb. 5, 2018, driving a white Peugeot 206.

The house Kuciak and Kušnírová had recently bought and planned to refurbish proved an ideal location for a murder. It was outside the city center, bordered a dense forest, and had a good road to a highway. There were no obvious surveillance cameras on the street.

Two days later, on Wednesday, Feb. 7, the men returned to Velká Mača twice. In the morning they took the white Peugeot; in the afternoon, they switched to Andruskó’s silver Skoda Superb.

They returned again that weekend, circling the village on a circuitous route that had no public traffic cameras and finding a spot near a football field where they could park the car without raising any suspicion.

Afterward, the trio identified a key problem. How could they communicate without leaving a digital trace? They devised a system of dialing each other but not answering to send signals they thought wouldn’t be logged by the mobile operator.

Their next visit to Velká Mača was on a snowy evening five days later. On this trip, and on the subsequent one, the men appeared to be monitoring Kuciak’s evening routine.

That night, Andruskó drove his companions to the edge of the village, dropped them off by the playing field, and then drove to a gas station to get a snack. At 7:22 p.m., the cousins walked by Kuciak’s house. Twelve minutes later, they gave Andruskó a one-ring call and he picked them up at the football field.

On the following night, Feb. 16, the men arrived in Velká Mača in the white Peugeot at 6:49 p.m. Szabo walked to Kuciak’s house and returned to the pick-up point 20 minutes later.

To further obscure their identities, the men decided to use “burners,” cheap mobile phones they could toss after a single use. The next day they bought two, using a middleman to avoid Slovakia’s registration requirements.

At some point before the murders, Szabo and Marček prepared their weapon, a Luger 9 mm with a silencer. It would later be discovered that the gun was loaded with modified ammunition: Some gunpowder was removed from the cartridges to make the bullets travel more slowly and quietly.

The men made one final visit for reconnaissance. Shortly before 7 p.m. on Feb. 19, Szabo walked around the football field toward the couple’s house at Brezova 558. It should have taken just a few minutes, but Szabo didn’t hurry, perhaps checking possible escape routes. About 20 minutes later, he dialed Marček on his burner phone, let it ring once, and hung up. Marček soon picked him up in a silver Citroen Berlingo.

Ján and Martina’s Last Day

Neither Ján nor Martina, both 27, had noticed the surveillance or had any idea they were being targeted. The story Ján was working on with OCCRP — an investigation into how the Italian ‘Ndrangheta mafia infiltrated his country — involved dangerous figures, but so far he had simply been requesting public records and doing research online.

No reporter had been killed in Slovakia in recent memory, and as far as his friends and family knew, Ján hadn’t received any physical threats. He had no reason to think his life was in imminent danger.

The couple also had a lot on their minds. Their wedding was coming up in early May, and they were busy with preparations. The last text messages and phone calls they exchanged with their families were about the celebration. Ján had just discussed the labeling of the wine bottles with his mother.

They were also refurbishing and outfitting their new home, visiting pawn shops to pick up items like a vintage ‘60s television set and an old post office table.

The two had met while living in a student apartment in the picturesque city of Nitra in western Slovakia.

Ján proposed to Martina on a trip to Georgia on the last day of January, 2017.

A devoted Christian, she asked her mother for permission to move in with Ján before they were married. Her mother acquiesced, but only after securing a promise from him that his relationship with her daughter was no short-term fling.

Now their lives seemed be moving forward. Ján was a successful and talented investigative reporter, more an analyst than a storyteller, who loved to dive into corporate documents many of his peers would find mind-numbing. Martina was happily working as an archaeologist.

As the couple planned a quiet night at home on that Wednesday, Feb. 21, Szabo and Marček met at 4:40 p.m., climbed into the Citroen Berlingo, and drove towards Velká Mača, avoiding many of the town’s surveillance cameras. They switched off their personal phones and turned on their burners.

Marček, the former soldier, stopped the car near the football field at 6:28 p.m. Szabo, wearing black, stepped out into the cold evening.

He took his burner phone and Luger. The weapon was fitted with a silencer and loaded with the modified, quieter ammunition. At 6:31 p.m. he headed toward the couple’s house.

Unexpectedly, they weren’t home.

Ján had returned from Bratislava by train as usual, but his car battery had died and Martina had to go pick him up. They got home at about 7:30 p.m. By then it was dark, and the couple settled in to make some tea. Martina planned to call her mother to talk about their project to create a historical narrative of her home village of Gregorovce.

Szabo was waiting nearby. At 8:21 p.m., he entered the yard and walked in the front door, which was never locked. In the kitchen, he saw Martina and shot her once between the eyes. She dropped to the floor.

Ján, who was in the basement, heard the shot and climbed the stairs. Szabo was ready. He fired two bullets into his chest, near his heart, and the young journalist collapsed on the stairs. Szabo stood so close that the barrel of the silencer left burns on his victim’s chest.

At about that time, Martina’s mother called. There was no answer.

Szabo left the house through the back yard and returned to the football field, where he used his burner to call for a pickup. At 8:25 p.m., only four minutes after the murders, Marček collected him by the field and the pair left town.

They drove to Andruskó’s house in Kolarovo to tell him the job was done and to get their money. When Andruskó heard that a woman had also been killed, he said it shouldn’t have happened. It wasn’t part of the plan. Nevertheless, he promised to deliver the money soon.

The Payoff

The next day, Andruskó met Zsuzsová, the woman who allegedly ordered the killing, in a parked car in front of her house. There had been a complication, he said: a second murder.

Zsuzsová became agitated, yelling that it was “impossible.” Still, she later called Andruskó to have him pick up his payment. The 50,000 euros were delivered in a stack of 500’s wrapped in a napkin. Andruskó kept 10,000 and divided the rest between his accomplices.

Zsuzsová’s motives for ordering Ján’s killing are unknown; he had never written about her. But she worked for Marian Kočner, a prominent businessman about whom Ján had written extensively. Andruskó would later tell police that Zsuzsová told him that Kočner paid for the killing.

Kočner has not been charged in connection with the murders, though he has been detained for the same financial crimes Ján had written about.

Kočner could not be reached for comment, and an attorney representing him declined to comment.

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