Tamás Till was a lovable, independent boy with a mild speech impediment, from Baja, Hungary. On May 28, 2000, Tamás Till, then 11 years old, set off on a bicycle ride to a nearby wildlife park. His parents had made a commitment that he would be home by 1 p.m. However, no one saw the boy in the wildlife park or afterwards. 

Three months later, his bicycle was found, carefully cleaned and propped up against a fence, which suggested that the boy had not disappeared on his own accord; someone may have deliberately cleaned it up and removed the traces.

The police made a serious mistake early in the investigation by not issuing a warrant immediately, as the laws in force in 2000 already required this for anyone under the age of 11. Several false reports also led the authorities to a dead end, as there was an anonymous caller who saw Tamás at a train station, but as it turned out, this was not true. 

The Till family even received a fake letter attributed to Tamás with the inscription “I am alive” in block letters. Tamás’ parents also believed for a long time that the boy had been taken abroad. Mátyás Till, Tamás’ father, said that a local underworld figure had tipped him off that Tamás had been sold to a pedophile in Spain. It was suggested that the boy might have been run over by a car driver and then hid his body in a panic, but this was contradicted by the fact that Tamás’ bicycle was found unharmed. Tamás’ parents remained hopeful that their son was still alive. 

They did not change their phone number and redecorated the boy’s room in their renovated house so that he would have a place to go home. Tamás Till was also the number one on the FBI’s list of missing children, and Hungarian investigators interviewed five hundred witnesses without success. After Helga Farkas, Tamás Till was the person who was considered missing for the longest time in post-revolutionary Hungary, and the press in the early 2000s also gave special attention to his disappearance.

The turning point was the tip-off from a former resident of the Baja orphanage, saying he had been blackmailed into helping to dispose of a boy’s body. The focus was on a former resident named F. János and a former resident named K. Péter. K. Péter committed suicide in 2011, so investigators could only obtain information from his immediate surroundings. 

F. János said that he and Péter had learned a trade at the orphanage and worked for a lathe contractor named W. József, then sixty years old, for five hundred forints a day. According to F. János, W. József approached both of them at the local beach at that time to help him pour concrete in the building that was under construction. Only Péter agreed to do it, János did not, as they had to go to work immediately. 

During the work, the body of a child wrapped in plastic was found when the wheel of the wheelbarrow skidded. W. József threatened Péter and gave him money in exchange for his silence. W. József also committed suicide in 2021, at the age of eighty-one. During the on-site inspection, the floor of the outbuilding was opened and the examination of the human remains that had been found began. The clothing remains matched the clothes that Tamás Till was wearing when he disappeared. On September 3, 2024, DNA testing confirmed that Tamás Till’s body had been found.

Recently:

Just three days ago, F. János changed his original story (see above), admitting to murdering Tamás all by himself, K. Péter and W. József knew nothing about it. He was working on the building site the day Tamás rode his bike. János was having a cigarette break, standing by the road, when Tamás came along. János asked him for his help, luring him inside this half-done bulding. The two boys had never met before. János was only 16 years old at this time. 

Motivation is unclear/hasn’t been shared with the public, but inside this bulding János brutally and sadistically murdered Tamás, beating, stabbing and choking him. Many of us Hungarians think that János sexually abused or tried to sexually abuse Tamás, who fought back. After János killed him, he wrapped his body in plastic sheets and hid him in the ground, in a shallow grave, knowing very well that concrete would be poured over it in a couple of days.

Such a sad story but so happy to see justice served and the truth come out!