With a warrant to arrest

Just don't underestimate anything and don't give up! It is said that every police officer has ten years to learn, ten years to work and ten years to pass on experience. Martin Baláž, now a retired brigadier general, started from scratch, serving as a regular police officer in Zlín from 1991 and eventually worked his way up to investigating cases that were at the time being followed tensely by the entire Czech Republic. He met reporter Martina Eretova through the filming of the documentary series No Regrets, in which he described how he unraveled the methanol case in 2012 and exposed one of its main actors. Then his working life was turned upside down - after twenty years of service he left his native region and his career continued in Prague directly under the Police Presidium of the Czech Republic. At the head of the Tempus team, he was given the opportunity to open a number of so-called memorials, or cases that until then had remained in the police archives as unsolved and often with little time left before the statute of limitations expired. His work as a criminalist, which he speaks about with great openness and passion, has fulfilled his childhood dream. And after thirty-two years on the force, he can't even count how many criminals - not just murderers - he's helped bring to justice. Memories of an elite criminalist on the methanol case, the assault of Petra Kvitová and cold cases. "Very engaging and interestingly written, read in one breath. A very nice memoir, if only all criminologists wrote like that." - from reader feedback on Databazeknih.cz Sometimes even the most hard-working crime writer just has to accept that even if they know exactly how a murder took place and who the killer is, the perpetrator won't get behind bars. The case of the murder of Antonín Běla is inextricably linked to the wild 1990s. It features so many murders, fraud, Money, weapons and underworld people, it's almost hard to believe today, that this was indeed the Czech reality. By the way, the case of Antonín Běla is also intertwined with the life path of another Czech crime boss, František Mrázek. His life was also ended by murder. But more on that later. Martin Balazs didn't get involved in the 1996 case until many years later as the head of the Tempus team, and for a while it looked like justice would be served. Unfortunately, everything turned out differently. - excerpt from the book