The Engagement Ring

Michelina Lewandowska left Poland for Huddersfield in northern England to be with Marcin Kasprzak, and the couple had a young son. By 2011 the engagement was over, though she still wore his ring. Kasprzak wanted to keep the boy, and the judge who later sentenced him said he had planned to be rid of her.

On May 28, 2011 he stunned her with an illegal Taser, and with his friend Patryk Borys he bound her in packing tape and sealed her inside a cardboard computer box. The two men drove to woodland near the Woodsome Hall golf course and buried the box under about four inches of soil, weighed down by a tree branch of about eighty-eight pounds. Underground, Lewandowska worked the small diamond of her engagement ring against the tape until it gave way, tore the box open and dug herself up to the surface. She flagged down a passing driver.

Kasprzak was convicted of attempted murder in December 2011 and sentenced on January 13, 2012 to twenty years, with release on licence possible at the halfway point. Borys was cleared of attempted murder but admitted kidnapping and was given four and a half years in a young offenders institution. Kasprzak also admitted eight counts of possessing explosive substances, drawing a concurrent four year term.