Amok

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That's fetch pet dot com slash save. This episode includes graphic descriptions of violence. Please use discretion. One day in Southwest Poland, there were a couple fishermen and one of them noticed something of floating and then the other came over and they realized it was a body and there was a noose around the neck and the hands had obviously been tied behind their back. There was no doubt that the figure had been murdered. This is author David Graham. The men who found the body called the police who came to remove it. It was decayed and it was evidence once the pathologist looked at the person that they also had lack food in them, so somebody had clearly deprived the person of nourishment, some indications that they have been beaten and tortured and there was something very peculiar the way the noose was around the neck and the hands were tied behind the back. At one point the rope had been cut in the middle but it was clear that the person had been held with the hands connected to the noose in the back, almost like a backward cradle. So very, very painful position so that if the figure had moved at all or struggled to move they would have been choking themselves. It was clear that the body had been through a lot. It suggested almost an anger, it did not seem like some detached murder. The man seemed to be in his thirties, was tall and had long dark hair and blue eyes. He matched the description of someone who had been reported missing, a man named Darius Anna Sheffsky. Darius was from the city of Rotswav, 60 miles away, and had last been seen about four weeks earlier, on November 13th, 2000. He was a young businessman in his thirties, he worked in advertising, he was married, he was known as kind of a happy, cheerful, he played guitar, got along with people, no history of violence, very personable. Darius's wife didn't want to see the body, so the police brought in his mother and she confirmed it was him. Where had he last been seen? He had last been seen leaving his business. He had left in the afternoon around 4 p.m., if my memory is correct, and then was seen leaving the building. He didn't take his car, which was unusual for him, because he normally, when he was going to run an errand or do something, he always took his car, he did not take his car with him, and that was the last time he was seen. What did his family think, when they reported him missing, what did they think had happened? They really didn't know his mother had worked at the business, and the only clue was the mother had reported that somebody had called the office in kind of a demanding state, asking to speak with Darius for business, and she had then given him her son's cell phone, and then later when Darius came back into the office, the mother asked him, did you speak with this client, this customer who called and said, yes, and I'm going to see him this afternoon. And that was really the only kind of clue that possibly he had gone to meet this person, and then disappear. But nobody knew who that person was. There was no sense of motive. The police were able to trace the phone call to a pay phone, not far from Darius' office, but they were unable to find out who the caller was. The authorities kind of considered almost a perfect crime because there were so few clues. And eventually, out of frustration of being stymied, the case was closed, and it gradually became the coldest of cold cases. About three years went by. The case was eventually passed along to a 38-year-old detective, named Yosik Robleski. He was a really interesting figure. He had had many professions, he had been a mechanic, he had been a municipal clerk. But then after the fall of communism, he joins the police department, and he kind of finally found his calling. He was a large man, but he was very unthreatening. And people said they trusted him because they didn't think there was anything to fare him. And he was able to solve many cases. Not just enough, his first name, Yosik translates to Jack, and his last name, Robleski. The first part is Sparrow, so people call him Jack Sparrow after the Hollywood movie, Pirates of the Caribbean. And he used to like to say rather than being a Sparrow, he says, "I'm an eagle." Did he have any suspicions about the case? When he first began looking at the case, he had very little, but he kept reviewing the file over and over, he put it away, he picked it back up. One thing that occurred to him, he had one suspicion, which was when he was looking at the way the body had been abused, the way this kind of cat's cradle, the way the body had been positioned, made him think that there was some kind of personal animus that drove the perpetrator or perpetrators. He did notice one clue, or it was the absence of a clue, which was Yosik had a cell phone, but there was no report of a cell phone in the file. So he began to say, "Can we trace, can we figure out what had happened to that cell phone?" At that time in Poland, telecommunications and that kind of technical investigation was still pretty primitive, but he was able to get a serial number of the cell phone from the widow and lo and behold that cell phone turned out to have been sold on an internet auction just days after the murder. And not only that, he was able to tell from the person who had sold this, with somebody who had identified themselves as Chris B. Chris B turned out to be a man named Christian Bala. And Yosik is aware that it's a very tenuous lead. I mean, in the sense that he doesn't know how this Christian Bala obtained the phone. He may have found it on the street. He may have bought it at a pawn shop, but it is the only lead he has. And he has to figure out who is this person. He realizes that Christian Bala is out of the country. So he has to be a little bit careful about the way he investigates. He doesn't want to tip anyone off. And he begins to read about him and try to learn about him. One of the things he does is he learns that he was this kind of very young, bright philosopher student. The equivalent of his valedictorian in high school had gotten a scholarship to get a PhD in philosophy which he eventually dropped out of in order to work. He had been married, although it was now divorced, he had a child. And he had also written a novel called A Muck. Yosik Robleski learned that Christian Bala had published A Muck in 2003 several years after Darius had been murdered and not long before Yosik began investigating the case, Yosik decided to get a copy. And he begins to read through the novel at first almost kind of casually, almost out of curiosity is who is this person? How can I learn about him? And the novel is a bit of a shock to him. I mean, Yosik is a very kind of straightforward person, you know, a very Catholic, very strong kind of view of good and evil. And the book is very blasphemous. It's very creepy. It's very sadistic. It's pornographic. It's very, very postmodern. And this character who happens to be also identified as Chris. The same Chris, like the way the phone had been auctioned off. The narrator's name is Chris, who goes on this grisly, kind of rampage in the novel, indulging in sex and eventually ends up murdering the girl, his girlfriend in the novel. And so, as Yosik is reading the novel, he suddenly notices certain details that catch his attention. One of those details is that the victim of this murder, the girlfriend, had a new surround neck. So he pauses on that. And then he finds one other teacher that really strikes him. And that is that the murderer, Chris and the novel had also not only put a new surround his girlfriend, it also stabbed the girlfriend and then sold the knife used in the killing in the novel on an internet auction site. The fact that Darius' cell phone had been sold on an internet auction site had never been made public. Detective Theosik Robleski decided to make copies of Christian Ball as novel and hand them out to his detective squad. He assigned everyone chapters and asked them to look for more similarities between the plot and Darius Yana Shefsky's murder. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is criminal. David Grant says Christian Ball as novel didn't get very much attention when it was first published. And out of the people who did read it, some who knew Christian were surprised. This Christian was very charming, very bright, and so like his philosophy teachers and philosophy friends were quite shocked by it. But it is important to understand that many people found Christian mesmerizing. I mean, there was something very alluring about him. He was brooding, smoking cigarettes. He kind of created this character. And so even in his own life, he would kind of tell these stories that you never were quite sure what was true or what was false. He would tell people he'd gone on some adventure, had some romance or he was at a brothel where he had to base himself. And if people would repeat it several times, he would say, "Ah, it's become true." It was always in Christian both in the novel, but also in his own life, this play between what is real and what is false, what is true and what is a fiction and in the character in the novel. Was that Christian or was that just a character he created in a novel? David says once after the book came out, an interviewer asked Christian, "Some authors write only to release their Mr. Hide, the dark side of their psyche. Do you agree?" Christian responded, "I know what you were driving at, but I won't comment. It might turn out that Christian Bala is the creation of Chris, not the other way around." Christian had also posted excerpts of the book on his blog and would respond to reader comments under the name Chris, but David says Christian would dismiss suggestions that parts of the book had been drawn from his own life. He said at one point, somebody asked him after the novel came out, you know, a friend, he said, "You know, this novel makes you look really bad." And he said, "Well, it's fiction." And he said, "Yeah, but for you to have those thoughts, you must have had those thoughts." And he said, "Well, anybody who would think that is a fool." Still, as the detectives comb through the novel, they found more similarities. And they create almost like a check board. I mean, you know, where they're like, "Okay, this is true. This happened in Christian Bala's real life. This didn't happen. We could confirm this. I mean, there's a scene of a theft in the novel. It turned out that theft had really happened in real life. In the novel, the narrator Chris gets drunk one night with a friend and they decide to steal a figurine of St. Anthony from a church. Yossick Robleski discovered that Christian Bala had once been caught by the police doing the exact same thing. The friend he'd been with had told a judge they stole the statue because quote, "We wanted a third person to drink with." And there were other things. Christian had been left by his wife, so the narrator Chris, both men loved philosophy, both drank a lot, and both owned businesses that had gone bankrupt. One thing that is also present that is of suspicion, at least to Yossick, was that Chris, the narrator, not only confesses to murdering his girlfriend in the novel, the narrator in the novel gets away with it. There's no repercussions, no stain from the murder, no penance, no punishment, no redemption, just free. But he hints in several places that there was another murder of a man who had done something to him. He never speaks about what it is, but it's kind of moved throughout. Chris alludes to the other murder in a conversation with a girlfriend. After she questions the truth of his stories, he asked her if she didn't believe that he, quote, "killed a man who behaved inappropriately toward me 10 years ago." He adds, quote, "Everyone considers it a fable. Maybe it's better that way. Sometimes I don't believe it myself." So was there an actual other murder of a man that is being hinted at in the novel and could that have been Darious? We'll be right back. 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To try to better understand Christian Bala, the police reached out to a criminal psychologist. She examined the character of Chris in the novel, and wrote that the character showed features of psychopathic behavior. Quote, he is testing the limits to see if he can actually carry out his sadistic fantasies. She agreed that there were similarities between Chris and Christian. But that, quote, "Basing an analysis of the author on his fictional character would be a gross violation." Even Yasek would acknowledge that the case was extraordinarily thin. I mean, all they had at that point, well, they had this cell phone. They knew that Christian Bala had somehow obtained Darius's cell phone within a few days and sold it on an internet site. And that's kind of, you know, all they have at that point. So they have a very thin case. And on top of that, you know, even people around the department are looking at Yasek. Like, I think you've lost your mind. Like, you're looking at a novel as a roadmap for a crime. So Yasek knows he needs more evidence, but he's also a bit hamstrung because at that point, Christian Bala is out of the country and with extradition treaties, he couldn't just call him back to question him. Yasek also didn't want word of the investigation to reach Christian. Then he might never come home. And so he couldn't interview his closest family members or his ex-wife. So he's somewhat limited learning about him through these different sources. He still has no sense of a motive for the crime. Yasek decided to look through the profile for Chris B on the internet auction site that Christian had used to sell Darius' cell phone. And they looked at realized that very shortly, like a week before, ten days before, Darius was murdered, that Chris B. Christian Bala have been looking for a police manual on criminal hangings. And now, again, it's suggestive. But once again, they're also stymied because there's no evidence that the book itself was actually purchased. They don't know if that book was ever found. But at least in Yossick's mind, again, it's suggestive to him why is Krispy looking at a police manual, the tech manual, about criminal hangings ten days before a news is found around Darius's neck? And then they learn that Christian is going to return to Poland that he's coming back to visit. So they decide they're going to bring him in for questioning. Christian Ball returned to Poland about two years after Yossick had begun investigating the case. While he was out of the country, he'd been traveling, writing for magazines and teaching English and scuba lessons. Officers arrested Christian on September 5, 2005, as he was coming out of a drug store in a town near Rootswav. Christian later wrote an account of what he says happened. He said that three men attacked him, forced him into the back of a car, and put a black plastic bag over his head. He wrote that the men beat him and then called someone on the phone. He said he overheard one of the men say he's still alive, and what about the money will we get it today? He said that the men drove for a while, and then stopped, and one of them said, "We can dig a hole here and bury him." Christian wrote, "I thought that this was going to be the last moment of my life." But then he said the men started driving again and took him to a building where he was stripped and beaten some more. When they started to interrogate him, he realized he was in police custody. Josic said that none of this happened. He said they did arrest Christian outside of a drug store, but without violence. Quote, "We use standard procedures and follow the letter of the law." What do you think about that? Do you have any suspicion that Christian was in some ways threatened, tortured by Josic and his detectives? Do you think that that was another one of Christian's tales? When you read the tale, I'll just say this, it strains credulity. I wasn't there. I wasn't a witness. I do know, and then that it was investigated for a long period of time by authorities, and they found no evidence of it. There's no evidence ever in Josic's career of doing anything like this. It is one time where suddenly you have Josic saying, "This story, this story, this thing that Christian Bala is saying this time is definitely a fiction. He is making this story up." According to Josic, he questioned Christian in his office, starting with simple questions about his work and relationships. When Josic brought up Darius Yanyshevsky's murder, Christian said he didn't know him. Josic doesn't yet reveal the one Trump card he has, which is in that much, but he knows about the phone that Christian Bala had somehow sold the murder victim's phone on this internet auction site. He starts to ask him some questions and Christian about a mock, about his life, and Christian just kind of denies him. Then he asks him about the phone. That's the one time where Christian was a bit evasive. He said, "I don't remember where I got that phone." That was a while back. This is many years before. Later he said, "Maybe I got it at a pawn shop." By the end, there really isn't any evidence to hold them or to continue a hold them under Polish law. He does agree to submit to a polygraph test. The polygraph earth thought that at certain points during the polygraph that a Christian who is a scuba diver might have been using some breathing exercises, it's hard to say. These polygraphs are notoriously unreliable, and the results were inconclusive in any case. In the end, the case seems to be unraveling, and Christian is let go. The police were able to charge Christian with selling stolen property, the cell phone. He had to hand over his passport and stay in the country. And he begins to tell people that he is being investigated and persecuted because of a novel he wrote. And it creates a sensation. I mean, human rights organizations start writing letters to the Polish ministry of justice, delusion them with letters, saying, "How can you be doing this, you're violating his rights?" One of Christian's girlfriends organized a committee to bring attention to his case. In an online post, she wrote, "During his brutal interrogation, they referenced his book numerous times, citing it as proof of his guilt." And let's, you know, I think anyone hearing this, someone's being investigated for a novel they were wrote, we say, "This is outrageous." And Jasek always says, "I need corroborating evidence. The novel is a roadmap to a crime. It is giving us some clues and insights. He knows it is not evidence. He cannot present the novel as a piece of evidence in court. He's trying to use the novel though to try to kind of crack the case." So Jasek then begins to now, two things happen that are very important evidentiary wise. One of the things they try to do is keep trying to figure out from the pay phone. In those Polish pay phones at the time, you kind of insert this card and that would allow you to make the calls. And with that card, you could then insert it into other pay phones and use it again. You're able to finally crack that and figure out what the card was that was being used. And when they figure out and cracked this card that was being used, they realized the same caller had placed a lot of other calls. Who were those calls to? They were two Christian ballas, family members and friends and colleagues, everybody in Christian balla circle. So that was the first really strong piece of evidence, not suggestive. That Christian balla was the one from the pay phone who had placed the call to the advertising firm that lured Darius out. The next question though was, what is the connection? The detective started to question Christian's family and friends. David says many people had nice things to say about Christian, a past employer from a teaching job called him easy to get along with and said, with no reservation, I highly recommend Christian balla for any teaching position with children. But a babysitter who worked for him and his then wife said he drank a lot and he often gave his wife a hard time and accused her of sleeping around. Christian and his wife separated in 2000. Some person reported that at one point he had been in a bar and he had seen his ex-wife flirting with a bartender. This was just a few weeks after Darius was killed and he was screaming drunkenly that nobody can talk to my wife that way. Witnesses said Christian shouted, quote, "I've already taken out a guy like you with a rope. Five people held Christian back from attacking the man." Then the detective spoke to a friend of Christian's ex-wife who says that one time at a bar she had seen Christian ballas ex-wife talking to somebody and it was none other than Darius Yanachevsky. We'll be right back. Support for criminal comes from Mintmobile. Some things appear too good to be true, but a $15 monthly phone plan isn't one of them. Mintmobile has affordable premium wireless plans and they include high-speed data on unlimited talk and text and they make signing up easy. You can do it all online. If a friend was switched to Mintmobile, he said that it's a great deal and he liked that he didn't necessarily need to get a new phone or phone number when he switched. To get your new wireless plan for just $15 a month, go to mintmobile.com/phibi. That's mintmobile.com/phibi. 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Get free shipping on your order in 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK too. When Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know criminal send you. Yossick Roblesky had been trying to get Christian ball as ex-wife to agree to an interview. So she had been very resistant to be interviewed for a long time and I don't know the reason why perhaps it was, I only know what Yossick wondered, could it be because she was afraid of Christian, was it because she thought it was innocent, was it because they had a child together and she didn't want to incriminate them, but eventually Yossick goes to speak with her. And she had never read the novel a muck, but then he shows her portions of the novel and these very, very sadistic descriptions of a woman in the novel who is very much mirrors her, the ex-wife, and at that point she's willing to talk. And she says for the first time that she had met Darius Yanuchesky in a bar. This was in the summer of 2000, the same year she and Christian separated. They had later gone on a date, they had gone to a motel. She says they didn't have sex because she learned that he had been married, but they were together and they had gone on this date. He had left, they never went on a date again and that was it. But that Christian had showed up not long after, at her apartment or at her home, broke down the door, hit her, screaming, says I know you had an affair, I know who was, I know the hotel, I know the room. Christian's ex-wife said he also mentioned that he had visited Darius' office and described it to me. After this, Yossik decided he had enough evidence to charge Christian Bala with murder. And so a Christian Bala is indicted, it creates a sensation. He continues to claim that he has been persecuted for a novel he wrote that he compares himself to Salman Rushdie, that he has been crucified for his literature. It was reported that at one point, before the trial, Christian confessed to prosecutors that he had killed Darius. But he immediately retracted the confession and had a quote, fainting spell. The trial began on February 22, 2007. When the first day, the courtroom was packed, one Polish newspaper wrote, "Killing doesn't make much of an impression in the 21st century, but allegedly killing and then writing about it in a novel is front page news." What did the prosecution argue that it was kind of cut, it was a cut and dry case? Yeah, they presented it as, you know, if you take away the novel and you know, this was a man allegedly, who out of a fit of rage, kidnapped or abducted somebody who had gone on a date with his ex-wife and then murdered him in this very barbaric way. Christian was found guilty of planning and directing the murder. There wasn't enough evidence to prove that he'd committed the murder himself. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He later appealed. He did get a new trial, but he was found guilty in a second trial as well. And he's still in jail to this day. In 2007, David Graham traveled to Poland to meet Christian. At, you know, really tough prison, got a post-communist prison, there'd been a riot. I mean, it was, you know, very harsh conditions. And I remember going into the, the visitor's room, I was surprised I was able to get in and able to see him and as I walked in, you know, it's just very dismal place and I see someone kind of standing in the visitor's room wearing a sweatshirt that said, I think it's a university Wisconsin on it and the dark here and the here was kind of standing up as if the person kind of been rubbing their hand through it, very handsome, but they look like a grad student. And I realized I was looking at Christian Bala. David remembers Christian shook his hand and as they walked to a table to sit down, Christian said, this whole thing is farce, like something out of Kafka. While they were talking, Christian would occasionally point to David's notebook and say things like put this down or this is important. When we spoke about the novel, he was very excited when we talked about different theories and truth and even when you, when I asked him about some of the very specific evidence about the cell phone where that, you know, why, how did he get hold of that and some of the other like why on the public telephone did, you know, did it look like he had made the call to the, to the, to the advertising firm and he, on those points, he was a bit evasive and kind of could spare a toilet. I didn't feel like I ever got clear answers, but he maintained his it instance and he kept saying, I'm the author, I'm the author, I know what I meant, I know what I meant. David says at one point during their conversation, Christian accidentally said, me instead of him when talking about the narrator, Chris, do you think that there's any part of him that wrote the book because he wanted someone to figure out the puzzle? Well, one of the questions that always kind of haunted this case was, you know, and for me as someone who spent, you know, many months researching, it was, you know, why did you write? Why did you write the novel? And you know, had the novel not been written, I don't think Yossick ever would have had his suspicions raised to the extent that he did. And it did give him to some extent a roadmap, you know, the character in the novel was somebody who is dealing with guilt and a guilty conscious. I mean, that is kind of one of the themes of the novel. So was the author dealing with a guilty conscious? Was this his confession? After Christian was arrested, his book started selling out in bookstores all over Poland. He thought, and he still thinks, or at least when I met him, you know, that his novel while it was obscured at the time, would one day be recognized for the masterpiece it was. And then, I'll never forget this, at one point he said to me, he said, I'm working on a second book. And he said, but the investigators confiscated it. And so he hadn't been able to finish it yet. And at one point, he leaned towards me as if to make sure that the guards couldn't hear him and he said, it's going to be even more shocking. David Graham is the author of The Wager and Killers of the Flower Moon, and his article about Christian Bala is contained in his collection, The Devil and Sherlock Holmes. Criminal is created by Lauren Spore and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Sajiko, Lily Clark, Lena Silason, and Megan Canayne. Our engineer is Veronica Seminetti. Julie Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at ThisIsCriminal.com, and you can sign up for our newsletter at ThisIsCriminal.com/newsletter. We hope you'll join our membership program, Criminal Plus, now on Patreon. It's the very best way to support our work. You can listen to Criminal ThisIsLove in Phoebe Reeds and Mystery without any ads. Plus, you'll get bonus episodes behind the scenes, photos, and videos, and you'll be able to talk directly with us and other criminal listeners. Learn more and sign up at patreon.com/criminal. Or on Facebook at ThisIsCriminal, an Instagram and TikTok at Criminal_Podcast. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com/criminalpodcast. Criminal is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. [Music]