ZAGREB, CROATIA - Zvonimir Hodak knows the murderer of his daughter Ivana Hodak very well. His name is Mladen Slogar, and is nicknamed "Zila".

When the chief of police Vladimir Faber reported the name and surname of the murderer, but not the nickname, Hodak said that he does not know that person at all, and that he does not know how he could have angered that person. However, some time later, he was called by an apprentice who told him that “Zila” from the sports park Mladost was in question. Then Hodak’s memory wound back and he remembered Zila who he met at the tennis courts next to the Sava River.

“When I heard that it was Zila, the picture immediately returned to me. I played tennis with him, sometimes chess, I bought him beer. That nobody came from the JNA (Yugoslav People’s Army). He brought that pistol from there. He was always an ordinary drifter” remembered Hodak.

“Tomorrow is her birthday”

According to the police report, after being fired from his job in 1995, Slogar expected that Hodak would help him get a new job or return his old job. However, this did not happen, instead of him another person prepared the tennis courts. Thirteen years later, as a drifter selling cigarettes and eating in soup kitchens, when his life was brought towards the edge, a fixation of revenge was created in his head against Zvonimir Hodak.

Instead of Zvonimir Hodak, he came across his daughter Ivana, and killed her with two bullets from his illegally owned pistol.

Regardless of the successful solution to the case, and even though this act was classified as ordinary homicide, despite being carried out for revenge with premeditation, the lawyer Hodak is still inconsolable. His sadness is additionally worsened by the fact that Ivana would have turned 27 years old today.

“Tomorrow is her birthday. I am not interested in what way the murder was classified. Nobody can return her to me, and I hope that animal will not see death in his bed” said the lawyer Hodak yesterday.