Father Kills His Three-Year-Old Daughter in Woods Near Prague: Experts Declare Him Legally Insane Despite Evidence of Careful Planning

Czech police are continuing their investigation into a horrifying case in which a father took his three-year-old daughter into the woods and killed her. The thirty-year-old man is currently being held in pre-trial detention. According to case files, he has a long history of drug addiction dating back to his school years, along with a diagnosis of schizophrenia.

Psychiatrist Gabriela Leblová and psychologist Jindřiška Zahorská, who examined the man, concluded that he was legally insane at the time of the crime. As a result, police reclassified the case from murder to a lesser offence carrying a maximum sentence of ten years. The experts nonetheless recommended that he be committed to compulsory psychiatric treatment — theoretically for life.

"She Was Preparing Me for This Herself"

During the psychiatric evaluation, the man gave testimony striking in its callousness. "My conscience is completely clear. I knew I would kill her two days before it happened. She was preparing me for it herself," he said, describing his daughter as manipulative. Asked what the girl had supposedly wanted, he replied: "For me to kill her. It wasn't mischief — it was pure depravity."

On the fateful evening, the man led his three-year-old daughter into the woods and killed her in a manner so brutal that the details cannot be published. "I never would have believed a small child could endure something like that," he admitted months after the crime. According to him, he is being held alone in his cell after receiving death threats from other inmates who learned the nature of his crime.

Insanity or a Carefully Laid Plan?

According to the central finding of the psychiatric report, the man was not criminally responsible at the time of the killing. However, other assessments in the case file paint a less clear-cut picture. At his last psychiatric appointment on March 4, for instance, his condition was described as stable — he had been receiving regular depot injections.

The murder itself took place on March 21. The man repeatedly described how he had prepared for the attack in advance: he hid a weapon, packed cookies and a drink in his daughter's backpack, searched for a secluded spot, and adjusted his plans as obstacles arose.

"These are signs of planning, choosing means, monitoring the situation, adaptive behavioural regulation, and subsequent actions oriented toward consequences. The evidence is so strong — and so contradictory — that without further analysis, one cannot claim his capacity to understand and control his actions was entirely lost rather than merely diminished. This contradiction is essentially left unaddressed in the report," noted an experienced forensic expert who reviewed the case materials.

The girl's relatives did not report her missing until March 24. When police arrived, the man initially refused to say where his daughter was, claiming she was with "good people" who were taking good care of her. Only later did he agree to lead police to the site of the killing.

Contradictions in the Expert Report

Shortly after being taken into custody, on May 4, the man was hospitalized in a prison psychiatric ward. Doctors there noted that the patient showed no signs of psychosis. "When we pointed out to him that he did not appear to be unambiguously mentally ill in the full sense of the term, the patient admitted that having the illness worked in his favour — it eased his situation and offered him a way out of a difficult predicament, whereas without a diagnosis he might lose his pension," the doctors recorded.

The expert report itself contains further inconsistencies. On one hand, the experts state that the accused's "contact with reality is significantly impaired, unstable, and constantly deteriorating," while on the very next page it is claimed that "the subject's intellectual and expressive faculties are not impaired; he is capable of correctly perceiving situations, remembering them, and verbally describing the events he experienced."

The experts also concluded that it is impossible to determine with certainty the cause of the man's psychotic episodes, while simultaneously stating that his failure to stay sober led to an acute psychotic episode. During the examination, the accused cooperated with specialists but made no secret of his opinion of them: "Psychiatrists are behind the times. Drug addicts could teach them a thing or two."

Psychiatrist Leblová is reportedly among the busiest forensic experts in the country: in 2025 she produced 447 expert reports — more than one a day, including weekends and holidays. According to the register of forensic experts, she has already issued 231 this year alone.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz