Toma Gheorghe (born 16 August 1941), known as The Butcher of Arad (Romanian: Măcelarul din Arad), is a Romanian serial killer and thief. Originally convicted of a 1973 double murder and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment, he was pardoned in 1988 and released. Years later, he committed three additional murders in his home city of Arad from 1997 to 2003, for which he was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment. Due to the multitude of sentences he has served totaling over 50 years, Gheorghe is considered one of Romania's longest-serving prisoners. He is also the country's oldest confirmed and longest-active serial killer.
Early life Toma Gheorghe was born on 16 August 1941 in Arad, the first surviving child of Gheorghe and Rozalia Gheorghe. Before having him, the couple had had at least nine previous children, most of which had succumbed to diseases such as measles and scarlet fever. Reportedly, Toma was born prematurely and was also expected to die in infancy, but doctors continued treating him on his mother's insistence, allowing him to survive. Two years later, his younger brother, Trudi, was born. According to an interview he would give later in life, Toma and Trudi got sick when they were very young and had to be hospitalized, an event during which the older boy claimed to have seen a vision of Death disguised as his mother. Throughout his childhood, Toma reportedly witnessed and experienced several disturbing events, such as seeing local Jews sacrificing and having sex with geese, and being beaten by his mother with a rolling pin after he supposedly stabbed his younger brother on accident. Whether these events actually occurred remains unclear.
First offenses According to Toma, a major turning point in his life occurred when he was still a young boy. At some point, he and his brother Trudi stole money from their father's suitcase and went out to buy fruit. Once their father learned of this, he beat them and forced them to retrieve the money from wherever they had spent it. After this event, the father sent them to numerous orphanages across the country, but their mother retrieved them both and brought them back to Arad every time. At age 15, Toma was arrested for stealing a pigeon breast from one of the orphanages he was staying at. He was later convicted and sentenced to six months imprisonment at the Ocnele Mari Prison, where he was forced to work in the prison workshop. Almost immediately after his release, he was arrested for being an accomplice in another theft, which he blamed on a friend that supposedly stolen money from his aunt and pinned the crime on Toma. He was released after serving a year in prison.
Death of father and young adulthood When he was around 17 years old, Toma's father passed away. Once he learned of this, he returned home from a vocational school in Drobeta-Turnu Severin to stay with his mother and brother for a while. During this stay, Toma's mother told him that his father had returned as a ghost and was watching over them. While he personally did not believe this, Toma was devoted to his mother and concerned about her well-being. To those around him, Toma Gheorghe appeared to be a pleasant young man who greatly cared about the way he dressed, was obsessed with cleanliness, and was an amateur chess player registered with the Romanian Chess Federation. Despite this positive reputation, he continued to commit thefts, receiving a third sentence for stealing a box full of money from a driving school and spending it on a bicycle. He received a 5-year sentence for this, but was released after spending 3 years and 4 months behind bars. Gheorghe then found work as a painter at the Arad Carriage Factory, where he once tricked two colleagues into drinking paint thinner, lying to them that it was juice – both men were hospitalized, but Gheorghe did not face any apparent repercussions for this incident. Later on, Gheorghe would state in an interview his personal belief that his mother cursed him to die in prison. This belief stemmed from an incident in the late 1960s, when he took down several icons to put up his chess diplomas. Once his mother saw this, she became distraught and told him that he was disrespecting the Saints, supposedly bringing a curse upon himself that would lead him to end up in prison.
Marriage and children In 1968, the 27-year-old Gheorghe married a 19-year-old peasant woman, much to the objections of her parents. As they frequently quarreled, Gheorghe took her away from them to his home in Arad. The marriage was unhappy, as Gheorghe was verbally abusive and often made her cry. The couple had their first child, Rozalia, in 1969. Two years later, they had another daughter, Hortenzia, known affectionately by the nickname "Tenzi".
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