The Kičevo Monster:Vlado Taneski·Mitra Simjanoska·Ljubica Licoska·Zivana Temelkoska

Kičevo is a small mountain town in what is now North Macedonia. Between 2005 and 2008, three older women from the same neighborhood, Mitra Simjanoska, Ljubica Licoska and Zivana Temelkoska, were abducted, held and strangled. Their bodies were found wrapped in bags and dumped around the town. All three had worked as cleaning women.

Vlado Taneski was a local journalist who covered the killings for his newspaper. His articles were detailed, and some of those details were facts police had kept to themselves. That caught the attention of investigators, and Taneski became a suspect.

Taneski was arrested on June 20, 2008, and labs then matched his DNA to evidence from two of the victims. Three days after the arrest he was found dead in his cell, in what authorities described as suicide, leaving a note that said he was innocent. The case drew attention around the world because of its central twist: the reporter writing about the murders appeared to be the man committing them. With his death, there was never a trial to test the evidence in court.