George Joseph Cvek

George Joseph Cvek (1918 – February 26, 1942) was an American murderer and serial rapist executed for the killing of 29-year-old Catherine "Kitty" Pappas, the wife of a coffee importer, in the Bronx, New York City on February 5, 1941.

Cvek was born in 1918 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and raised in nearby Steelton, Pennsylvania, descended from Yugoslavian and Hungarian heritage. He had admitted to the rapes of 14 other women in the New York City area. Bronx detectives traced at least 81 robberies and rapes during a nine month span from mid-1940 to February 1941 from Maine to New Orleans to the unique modus operandi of asking for a glass of water and aspirin that earned him the moniker "The Aspirin Bandit", and "The Gentleman Killer" following the Pappas murder.

The jury found him guilty of the murder of Pappas on May 19, 1941, and only took 20 minutes to deliberate before sentencing him to death. He was executed on February 26, 1942, in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison in New York.

His crime spree was the subject of a 2017 episode of the Investigation Discovery series A Crime to Remember. As noted in the episode, just prior to the end credits, "The District Attorney chose to charge George Cvek solely with the murder of Catherine Pappas."