Stranger Than Fiction: The Twisted Case Of Krystian Bala

foreigner Hello everyone, Nigel and Luke here and welcome to Crime Zone On a cold day in December 2000, three friends were fishing in a secluded section of the River Olor in south-west Poland when one of them noticed something strange floating in the water . as if it were a log, but when a member of the group went to get a better look, he was surprised to see what appeared to be hair. Another of the fishermen touched the mysterious object with his rod only to realize that it was a human body. more specifically, the body of an unknown man, these men did not know that they had just discovered a crime that would terrify and captivate the Polish public, a crime that perhaps would never have been solved if it were not for the obsessive determination of an investigator before us. .

To get to the main part of today's story, we'd like to start with a sort of preemptive apology to any Polish or Polish-speaking viewers. We did the best we could with the names and places on this one, but as English speakers we've almost certainly butchered pronunciations in some places, so yeah, sorry, okay, with that out of the way, let's get to the video when the police were called to the scene outside the river. The situation became more disturbing when they managed to remove the body from the water. It became clear that whoever this man was, his death had not been an accident.

For starters, the man was wearing nothing but a sweatshirt and underwear at the time they recovered his body, making it easy to spot the various wounds that had been inflicted before his death. death a noose was found around his neck but his hands were also tied behind his back closer inspection revealed that all of this had been done with the same rope that had at one time connected the noose to the hands in other words, the victim had been tied in such a way that any attempt to free himself would have tightened the ropes around his neck, as if this was not brutal enough to imagine the crime, made even more disturbing during a later autopsy when it was revealed that the victim There was almost no food in his system, this meant that his ordeal had probably lasted for several days before he was finally killed.

To make matters worse, evidence of water in his lungs suggested that he was still alive when they threw him into the river where he was. The crime was eventually found to understandably spark a massive police investigation that initially got off to a promising start after someone noticed that the victim's long, dark hair and blue eyes bore a striking resemblance to a man who had disappeared about four weeks before. The remains were positively identified as those of Darius Yanashevsky as an aside. I will use the English version of Darius's name in the future. Sorry if that bothers anyone, but I'll have to say it a hundred times from now on.

I just felt like this was preferable for me, constantly tripping over it anyway. Return to video. Darius Yanashevski was a 35-year-old businessman from Brutzworth, a town in southwestern Poland, not far from the borders with Germany and the Czech Republic, where he had last been seen. On November 13, when he left his small advertising business to meet with a client who had been reported missing the next day after failing to return home or answer countless phone calls from his wife the night before, police understandably began his investigation into the chilling murder. In Darius's personal life, however, this turned out to be much less helpful than they initially expected.

In short, there seemed to be no reason for anyone to kill the 35-year-old man nor was there any particular person that authorities could identify and that I could want him dead. Darius was debt-free. With no enemies or criminal record, those who knew him described him as a harmless and gentle man who never looked for trouble when he was not working hard in his advertising business. He liked to play the guitar and write music for his rock band. The real source of stress that investigators were able to find in the dead man's life was the marital problems he had recently experienced with his wife of eight years;

However, according to friends and family, the couple had reconciled and were actually in the process of adopting a child when Darius disappeared. At the same time that investigators were reaching dead ends in this search, a search of the terrain also turned up no new clues. Divers were sent into the icy waters of the Olor River and forensic teams searched the woods surrounding where the body was found. Nothing of substantial value was found. The investigation would continue in this manner for six months until an announcement was made that he was leaving. A local prosecutor stated at that time that authorities had been unable to identify the perpetrator or perpetrators it appeared.

That whoever was responsible had just gotten away with a truly horrible crime, it would remain that way for almost three years until the

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landed on the desk of a man for whom it would become a personal obsession that the man's name was Yatzik Robovsky. vroblevsky was 38 years old. Detective who was working for the Vratsworth Police Department when the unsolved murder

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was handed over to his unit in the fall of 2003. Although the detective had tried several different careers as a young man, he had been on the city's police force for almost 10 years at This Point and discovered that the job suited him well.

Part of the appeal was that he liked to catch criminals, however, there was a deeper layer to it than the fact that Vroblevsky in particular was deeply interested in understanding the criminal mind, to such an extent that during the few free hours. He had things that were not dedicated to work and the family spent their time studying psychology at a local university like many people at that time Vroblevsky had heard about Darius Yanashevsky's case before it came to his desk however he did not know all the details. of the case and began by reviewing the investigation up to that point, Vroblevsky first focused his attention on the most concrete evidence that the police had managed to discover during their initial investigation, much of which referred to information that they had managed to gather by reviewing the last few hours.

Which led to Darius' disappearance. The main evidence was a mysterious account from the dead man's mother. Darius' mother worked as an accountant in her advertising business and she told officers about a strange phone call she had received on November 13, the day her son was last seen. According to her, around 9:30 a.m. That morning, an unknown man had called his office looking for Darius and said he needed to do a last-minute job that required printing three posters, at least one of which had to be the size of a full billboard, however, when She tried to get more details from the caller, he was evasive and said he would just talk to Darius about the project, without thinking much about it, at which point the mother explained that her son was out of the office but he could being located on her cell phone when she gave the man the number who hung up without identifying herself.

Darius' mother said she didn't recognize the voice of the person she called but that it sounded professional. The only other detail she remembered was that there seemed to be a lot of background noise on the man's side of the phone call. When Darius returned to the office, she followed up with him about the mystery client and he told her that he had spoken to him and that he would would meet with him that afternoon in an even more mysterious way when investigators investigated. Phone calls that had been made to Darius' office and cell phone that day discovered that both had been made from the same pay phone that was located just down the street from the advertising company.

The calls had been made in rapid succession with the cell phone. The phone call was made less than a minute after the office call ended, while this explained the background noise that Darius' mother had heard while she was talking to the unknown person. Unfortunately, the researchers discovered little else. They concluded that anyone could have used the pay phone. That day and he considered the lead to be more or less a dead end, in addition to the details about the mysterious person he called, there were two other pieces of evidence that stood out to Robevsky from the initial investigation of the case.

The first was another statement made by a receptionist in the same building who said she had seen Darius leaving his office around four in the afternoon, stating that as he walked down the street there were two men who appeared to be walking behind him, although he could not give an adequate description of either of them. For them, the second piece of evidence was Darius' car that had been found by police still in the parking lot of his office after he was reported missing. This was strange considering that Darius said that he was going to meet the unknown client who had called him earlier that day.

Those who knew Darius said that while it was not unusual for him to meet with clients in places other than the office, he always drove their car to these appointments after absorbing all this information. Robovsky began trying to draw his own conclusions about the detective's case. The strongest feeling about the murder was that whoever had committed the crime had done so for deeply personal reasons; The brutality of the murder was a big part of this, but there were other specific details that stood out to him as important, investigators had learned from speaking to begin with. with Darius' wife that her husband always carried credit and bank cards however none of these had been used after his death indicating that robbery was not the motive behind the crime then where is the lack of clothing that Darius was wearing in The moment he was found Vroblevsky theorized that his attacker or attackers had intentionally stripped him naked in an attempt to finally humiliate him and perhaps most importantly, the strange account about the mysterious caller seemed to suggest that the murder had been meticulously planned and directed. like the researchers before him.

He struggled to move forward Beyond this point, he was sure that his theory about someone who had a murderous grudge against Darius made sense on paper, but without any obvious conflict in his life it was impossible to know where to point the finger, however, Roblesky was determined to diligently review the case. Once again convinced that there was something he was missing he finally came up with an idea that started when Photoblevsky was thinking about the phone calls and remembered that Darius's cell phone had never been found while the initial investigators of the case had reached out. a dead end.

After the mysterious public phone calls, as far as he knew, no one had attempted to trace the dead man's cell phone. It turned out that there was actually a good reason for this, at the time Poland was apparently behind other European countries when it came to telecommunications infrastructure and the development of this was further complicated by the fact that many of the police forces in the The country didn't exactly have huge budgets, making investment in new investigative techniques, such as tracking cell phone and computer records, beyond the capabilities of many law enforcement departments; However, this was beginning to change.

By the time Vroblevsky began re-examining the Darius case, not only had the Fratsworth Police Department recently hired a telecommunications specialist, but Roblevsky himself had become interested in these types of emerging investigative techniques and, as As a result, he contacted the new specialist at his disposal and tried to see if Darius' cell phone could be traced, while this initial effort only showed that Darius' cell phone had not been used since the time of his disappearance. Robevsky was unfazed after all, he knew that this had probably been a long shot anyway, fortunately he knew that there was more than one way to track a cell phone, in particular Robevsky knew that the manufacturer included serial numbers on cell phones. , were also a valuable resource in these types of investigations and, surprisingly, when he approached Darius's widow, she was able to find a receipt.

With this information, to Robovsky's surprise, his streak of good luck continued when he was able to discover a cell phone record after Darius' disappearance. It turned out that the cell phone had been sold on an Internet auction site called Allegro, apparently a kind of Polish equivalent of eBay, the sale occurred four days after Darius disappeared, the seller had logged in with the username Chris B7, but oneFurther investigation would soon reveal his real name Christian Bala Christian Bala was a 30 year old man originally from Heinov a small town about an hour's drive west of Rodsworth, like many others Bala had struggled as a young man after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

He would eventually try his luck in business, although this was largely in an attempt to support his wife Stazia and his young son. In reality, Bala's first and greatest love was philosophy while he attended college in Fratzwath. Bala was known as one of the brightest students and considered himself an intellectual; in particular, he became obsessed with postmodernist philosophers and their precursors, people like Friedrich Nietzsche Jacques Derada Michelle. Foucault and Richard Rorty No

bala

eventually abandoned their PhD program to start their aforementioned business in the late 1990s, after just a couple of years the company went bankrupt, their marriage also fell apart and soon he and his wife Stazia They broke up, apparently this had less to do with Bala's poor financial situation and much more to do with his constant womanizing, eventually Bala left Poland completely, first traveling to the US and then to Asia, where he taught English.

In diving, when Froblevsky began investigating Bala, he was skeptical about whether he had any involvement in the Darius Yanashevsky case after all. He thought Am

bala

could have acquired the Dead Man's cell phone anywhere before selling it, perhaps even finding it on the street. He also reasoned that it would be ridiculous for someone who had planned such a meticulous murder to then turn around and sell evidence so blatantly on the Internet, much less use an obvious anglicization of his own name as a username, Bala ultimately didn't seem like the type to commits such a brutal crime. He seemed to have the disposition of a professor, not a hardened and experienced killer, however, as Bala was his only leader, Robovsky decided not to rule him out completely and continued to investigate his background while preparing to contact him.

It was during this time that the detective made a surprising discovery that would completely alter his feelings towards Bala and send him down a multi-year rabbit hole of investigation. It turned out that in early 2003, Bala had fulfilled his lifelong dream when he published a book titled Muck the Book. It was extremely obscure at the time and not sold in many bookstores, those that did carry the title supposedly kept it out of sight, hidden on high shelves, where you'd probably have to go out of your way to find it when Froblevsky got his hands on it. In the book he discovered that there was a good reason for this, what he found in its pages disturbed him to the core, while amok was apparently never translated into English, according to the sources we could find, it is about the descent of a man into a wave of absolute depravity.

Descriptions of the main character's escapades with drugs and women are littered throughout the novel, which finally culminates with the character murdering his girlfriend. Central to the premise of the whole thing is Bala's particular brand of philosophy in which he reiterates his views over and over again in various ways that the truth is an illusion and that he is above any kind of Morality, although it was clear to Robovsky that Bala had written nonsense to be deliberately provocative, he felt that something deeper was happening as he delved deeper and deeper into the content of the novel. He began to see it as a kind of

twisted

confession about the murder of Darius Yanashevsky.

Over the next two years, Wroblevsky would become obsessed with the novel and become a kind of half-literary critic, half-detective, collecting endless examples of madness to try. and proves his theory to begin with, there were similarities between Bala's life and the life of his main character, the character's name was Chris written in the same abbreviated and English way that Christian Bala had used for his username on the auction site of the Internet that both Chris and Christian had used. Similar stories were separated from their wives due to their womanizing, had serious problems with alcohol, and had run failed businesses.

Bala had even written in numerous anecdotes that seemed entirely drawn from his own life, including one time when he and his friend were arrested for shoplifting. a statue of Saint Anthony from a local Catholic church while he was drinking heavily, although it is common for authors to include details of their own lives and

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al work. Vroblevsky felt there were some crappy things that directly referenced the murder of Darius, for example, near the end of the book, when Chris murders his girlfriend, he describes putting a noose around her neck, even things that weren't exactly the same seem overlap eerily with the real-life crime in Froblevsky's mind, for example, in the novel, Chris uses a Japanese knife during the murder, while Darius had not been stabbed.

In the book, the character Bullet goes on to describe how he was stabbed. disposes of the murder weapon by selling it on an Internet auction site, while Vroblevsky was sure of his theory, he knew he would need more than something macabre. bullet novel details to convince a court of law of his guilt in the Darius Yanashevsky case while searching for clues elsewhere, he managed to stumble upon another piece of compelling circumstantial evidence, it turned out that just a month before Darius disappeared, Bala had used his account on the same Internet auction site where he would later sell the cell phone to search for a particular listing.

It was for a police manual on Discerning the Difference Between Self-Inflicted and Criminal Accidental Hangings, the manual also described various ways a noose could be attached. In the end, Bala never bought the manual, although Vroblevsky was sure it was evidence showing how he had planned Darius's murder. Finally, in the fall of 2005, Vroblevsky decided that he had to take action on the case when he learned that Bala would return to Poland to visit his parents for the first time in years on the afternoon of September 5. Ambala was arrested. We should note here that there were two wildly different accounts of how this arrest was carried out.

Roblesky maintains that it was a standard arrest that was carried out to the letter of the law. Meanwhile, Bala would tell a harrowing story of how he was attacked and kidnapped in the middle of the street by a group of men, he claimed that these men beat him, They put a bag over his head and took him out in the middle of the street. Woods threatened to kill him numerous times before finally taking him to the police station. It is unclear which of these versions of events is closer to the truth, although most of the reports we found seem to be on Robowski's side, this is largely due to Bala's decision.

Known penchant for embellishment, it turned out that the idea that the truth was an illusion was not just an idea Bala explored in his

fiction

al work, as friends and family knew all too well, he also applied this to his daily life as Bala described this habit. in terms that were simultaneously intellectual and almost romantic, as far as we know, often amounted to little more than boasting about the kind of tall tales someone might tell to cheer themselves up and seem bigger. than they really are, except in Bala's case, his stated goal was to do this so frequently that the truth about his life was indistinguishable from what he had invented.

He apparently called this myth creativity, although this might seem quite harmless at first glance, it immediately became transcendental. After Bala's arrest, when Roblevsky finally had the opportunity to question him, Bala quickly denied any involvement in Darius' murder and when Froblevsky was forced to take his evidence against the writer to court, it was determined that he did not have a compelling case. solid enough, instead, Bala does. charged with selling stolen property in connection with Darius' cell phone, as well as an unrelated bribery charge, neither of which would result in Bala serving prison time after his release. Bala went on the offensive, repeating his accusations of police brutality and claiming that he was being persecuted.

By art he said that his novel was nothing more than a work of fiction and many members of the public agreed that instead of directing outrage at Bala, he focused on the police and his investigation into the case. of the. It is important to note that this is a nice public reaction, however, is understandable, given that at this point the country was not that far from the days of Soviet rule, during which it was very common for artists to be censored and persecuted for their work despite the enormous setback for the police. It wasn't all bad, although Bala's charges in the stolen property and bribery case were enough to keep him in the country, as he was required to hand over his passport;

In fact, the passport actually led Froblevsky to discover another piece of circumstantial evidence in the case. The evidence in question was related to a Polish true crime television show called 997, which, according to sources we found in our investigation, was something like the country's version of America's Most Wanted in early 2002. The show did a segment about Darius' case, which was soon followed by a post on the show's website intended to provide the latest news and updates on the investigation. When Froblevsky initially examined the data on the page as part of his investigation, he was surprised to learn that People visited the website from as far away as the United States and Japan. and South Korea became a lot less strange once Oaksky got his hands on the bullet passport.

Using the dates from the stamps on the passport and the data from the 997 website, the detective was able to link each of these page views outside the country to the bullet travel history. evidence that Bala had been following Darius Yanashevsky's investigation at the same time Oaksky made this discovery, a couple of members of his team discovered even more incriminating information while reviewing the telephone evidence in the case once again, they discovered something that until then Apparently they had missed the mysterious phone calls that had been made to Darius's office and cell phone the day he disappeared.

They had been made with a phone card. Each of these phone cards were encoded with a unique number that notified the phone company. At any time using this information, the team's telecommunications expert was able to determine the rest of the call history linked to this particular calling card, almost all of the calls had been made to friends and family of Christian Bala, although this one was possibly the most convincing piece. There was still no evidence linking Bala to the murder. Roblevsky was determined not to repeat the mistakes he had made when he chased Bala the first time.

Instead of moving forward with the information, he continued to build this case in Flablovsky's mind, the biggest missing piece of the puzzle. It was a sure reason: they now had a lot of circumstantial evidence that seemed incriminating, but they had nothing that directly connected Bala to Darius. They needed to know what had driven him to commit such a brutally personal crime. Vrobleevsky went back to square one with Bala's background. and he began interviewing many more people about his personal life, this time a much darker picture emerged. People who spoke with Robleski revealed that at the time of Darius' murder, Bala's life had been in ruins, his business had collapsed and his marriage to his wife Stazia had collapsed.

However, he was prepared to be next instead of painting Bala as he had wanted to be seen as some kind of tragic but brilliant womanizer who drank too much. This time people began to reveal another side of him, as a jealous and controlling husband who was lashing out at anyone who approached his wife in one case where Bala had tried to fight with a waiter who he believed was making advances towards him. Stasia, one of his friends allegedly told police he was quoting crazed Roblesky was sure that's where the title was. The most chilling thing about his novel was the statement of another witness who had seen Bala try to attack the waiter.

They claimed that they had heard Bala say that he had already dealt with the guy who had tried to flirt with his wife. Just weeks after Darius' body was found with jealousy now established as the likely motive behind the crime, the only thing Oaksky was missing was a solid bond between Bala and the victim. This finally came about when the detective spoke to one of Stasia's friends, the friend told Oaksky that in the summer of 2000 he had gone with Stasia to a nightclub in Vratsworth called Crazy Horse at that time Stasio was still getting over his breakup from Bala. and I needed a fun night at some point I had meta man with long dark hair and blue eyes who was going through his own marital problems his name was Darius Yanashevski the two had talked for a while and exchanged numbers before parting ways with all this evidence now in hand rolovsky decided to approach Stasia directly She had already tried this before Of Course, but until now she had completely refused to participate in the investigation this time, although things would be different, although it is not clear exactly what made Stasia talk.

Most of the reports we found suggest that at least part of this had to do with Robovsky. bringing with her excerpts from the Bala book to show Stasia during their conversation that she had apparently never read the novel before, but was sufficiently disturbed by the similarities between the main character of Bala and his actions in real life that she became convinced of its guilt, not just confirmed In the story about the meeting with Darius at the nightclub, she said that the two had actually agreed to go on a date the following week, although they eventually dated, nothing happened between them and soon after Darius reconciled the problems marriages he had been having with his wife according to Stasia, although several weeks after her date with Darius, Bala showed up drunk and angry at her apartment and said he knew she was having an affair and that he had hired a private investigator who told her. all about his meeting with Darius.

He even knew exactly where they had gone. Stazia said that the main reason she had never come forward before this was that she had asked Bala about The Disappearance and he had denied any involvement and she did not believe he was capable of murder not only. This cleared up the last remaining pieces. of the puzzle for Verbsky, but it also gave him insight into a line from Bala's novel that he had been struggling to decode for some time. A quote read: "This was the one who was murdered out of blind jealousy as far as Broblevski was concerned." She worried that this was possibly the most direct confession in his madness.

Bala had killed Darius in a blind, jealous rage. Ambala's house was subsequently raided and he was placed under arrest when Bala went to trial in February 2007. The case was making headlines around the world. Poland, the story of a disturbed philosopher writer who confessed to his crimes through his novel was, understandably, quite sensational and, in fact, caused many to buy Bala's book. It seemed like everyone else was finally seeing what Detective Roblevsky was all about after all these years of the trial, reportedly. It did not disappoint those looking for a spectacle, apparently as part of the Polish justice system, the accused are allowed to question witnesses directly and Bala made the most of this opportunity during the trial, at the same time the prosecution still abandoned Further evidence of Bala's chilling behavior during much of this had to do with a laptop that was found during the raid on Ballis' home in which there was a file protected with the password amok in the file there were graphic descriptions of the encounters bullet intimates with more than 70 women where he used language extremely similar to that of the main character of his Novel Chris, this was not even the most disturbing discovery;

However, in another, more cryptic document on the laptop, authorities found evidence that seemed to suggest that Bala was planning a second murder, that of Stasia's new boyfriend, a man named Harry, as the trial came to a close. Bullet. He was convicted of the murder of Darius Yanashevsky and sentenced to 25 years in prison a few weeks later he was granted a new trial apparently on the basis that there were still gaps in the logical chain of evidence in the case; Well, it's true that there are a lot of unanswered questions about Darius's murder, arguably including how many people were actually involved, if you ask us, it seems pretty clear that the evidence against Bala was strong enough for a conviction.

It appears that the Polish courts finally agreed when Bala was retried a year later. He was found guilty once again and, having said that, reportedly continues to deny any involvement in Darius' murder to this day. The most recent information we could find about Bala states that he is currently working on his second novel titled lyric. Apparently, this is a play on words that means either The lyrics sound like a story or a delusion, although apparently little is known about the book. Part of the manuscript was found on Bala's laptop that was seized at the time of his arrest during an interview with New York writer David Gran in 2008.

Bala claimed that his new novel will be even more extreme than his first at the time. He stated that he would finish the book no matter what happened abroad now that you've heard the full story, although do you think there's anything you think we missed or left out? Also just FYI. This story was originally intended to be just one of a larger list of stories about writers who turned out to be criminals before we realized it was long enough to be made into a standalone story if you want to see us tackle the other cases in that list. in a future video, be sure to let us know in the comments section below while you're there if you enjoyed our video, don't forget to like and subscribe to crimezone for more True Crime content like this, making sure to hit the notification bell to Stay up to date with our future releases and as always, thanks for watching.