Adrian Stroe
Adrian Stroe (born October 24, 1959), known as The Taxi Driver of Death, is a Romanian serial killer responsible for the murders of three women in the vicinity of Bucharest, committed between January and September 1992. Sentenced to life imprisonment for these murders in 1996, he was paroled in 2018. Early life Adrian Stroe was born on October 24, 1959, in Bucharest. Little is known about his early life, but he would later claim that he grew up without feeling any love towards his mother. He studied as an engineer at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, from where he successfully graduated, but instead opted to work as a taxi driver, because he claimed that he'd "earn in one evening as [he] would earn after a month in the construction site". At the age of 22, he married a local woman and had a daughter. In 1991, the couple divorced. Stroe started to feel embittered by the separation, as he still loved his wife, and eventually turned his anger towards his female passengers. Murders In the evening on January 29, 1992, Stroe picked up 26-year-old Lavinia Stoian, and drove her to Lake Cernica. When they got to the destination, he asked her if she would like to have sex with him, which she refused. Annoyed by her refusal, Stroe strangled her to death. After picking off all her jewellery and undressing her body, he threw it into the lake and promptly left. On March 29, he was driving down a street in Bucharest, when he picked up 25-year-old Russian tourist Elvira Vasilieva in front of a hotel. Stroe drove to Lake Cernica again, where he attempted to kiss the woman in a state of arousal. Vasilieva rebuffed his advances, and in a blind rage, Stroe strangled her. He then undressed her body, leaving only her blouse on, and threw it into the lake. On September 9, Stroe picked up his final victim, 25-year-old Mariana Baltac, a saleswoman working at the Unirea store. With this victim, Stroe claimed that he had attempted to befriend first, with the pair going to two restaurants and him buying her expensive perfume and shoes. When they reached Lake Cernica, he attempted to court her, but Baltac refused his advances. Enraged by her refusal, Stroe raped and then strangled Baltac. He then got the body out of his car, doused it in gasoline and lit on fire. After letting the fire disfigure her body for some time, he put it in the taxi's trunk and drove to nearby Glina, where he discarded it in a ditch. Discovery, arrest and trial Between March and April, the decomposing bodies of two women were found within two weeks of each other in Lake Pantelimon. Authorities were able to identify both victims as Stoian and Vasilieva, but were unable to determine whether the case were related. This suspicion was confirmed when the badly burned body of another woman was found near Glina. Despite most of her body being burned up, some