Amok

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0:44Just snap a few photos and we'll take care of the rest. And you at least get some of your dignity, money, back. Someone on Depop wants what you've got. Start selling now. Depop. Where taste recognizes taste. 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 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.

1:32This 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 pathologists looked at the person that they also had lacked food in them. So somebody had clearly deprived the person of nourishment, some indications that they had 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 a very, very painful position, so that if the figure had moved at all or struggled to move, they would have been choking themselves.

2:24It was clear that the body had been through a lot, It suggested almost an anger. It was almost, it did not seem like some detached murder. The man seemed to be in his 30s, was tall, and had long dark hair and blue eyes. He matched the description of someone who'd been reported missing, a man named Darius Yanishevsky. Darius was from the city of Rootswav, 60 miles away and had last been seen about four weeks earlier on November 13, 2000 He was a young businessman in his 30s He worked in advertising He was married He was known as kind of happy, cheerful He played guitar, got along with people No history of violence, very personable Darius' 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?

3:28He 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, a Peugeot 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? I mean, 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.

4:16and she had then given him her son's cell phone. And then later when Darius came back into the office, the mother asked him, you know, did you speak with this client, this customer who called? And he 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 payphone not far from Darius's office. But they were unable to find out who the caller was. You know, the authorities kind of considered almost the perfect crime because there were so few clues.

5:00And eventually, out of frustration and 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 Yossick 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 fear him.

5:45And he was able to solve many cases. Interestingly enough, his first name, Yasek, translates to Jack, and his last name, Robleski. The first part is Sparrow. So people called 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'd pick 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.

6:38He did notice one clue, or it was the absence of a clue, which was Jacek 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 that the person who had sold this was somebody who had identified themselves as Chris B.

7:29Chris B. turned out to be a man named Christian Bala. And Jacek 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 them and try to learn about them. One of the things he does is he learns that he was this kind of very young, bright philosopher student.

8:11and had been the equivalent of his valedictorian in high school, had gotten a scholarship to get a Ph.D. in philosophy, which he eventually dropped out of in order to work. He had been married, although was now divorced. He had a child. And he had also written a novel called Amok. Yossick Robleski learned that Christian Bala had published Amok in 2003, several years after Darius had been murdered. And not long before Yossick began investigating the case, Yossick 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?

8:54How can I learn about him? And the novel is a bit of a shock to him. I mean, Yossick is a very kind of straightforward person, you know, 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 his girlfriend in the novel.

9:38And so as Jacek 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 noose around her neck. So he pauses on that. And then he finds one other detail that really strikes him. And that is that the murderer, Chris, in the novel, had also not only put a noose around his girlfriend, had 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.

10:24Detective Vyosik Robleski decided to make copies of Christian Bala's 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 Januszewski's murder. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

10:58David Graham says Christian Bala's 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. Because 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, he, 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.

11:36He would tell people he'd gone on some adventure, had some romance, or he was at a brothel where he debased 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 the 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. Hyde, the dark side of their psyche.

12:13Do you agree? Christian responded,

12:21Christian 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 said, you know, this novel makes you look really bad. And he said, well, it's, you know, it's fiction. And she said, yeah, but for you to have those thoughts, you know, you must have had those thoughts. And he said, well, anybody who would think that is a fool. Still, as the detectives combed through the novel, they found more similarities.

13:09And they create like almost like a checkboard. 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.

13:49And there were other things. Christian had been left by his wife, so had 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 Jacek, was that Chris, the narrator, not only confesses to murdering his girlfriend in the novel, the narrator in this 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.

14:33He 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 Darius?

15:16We'll be right back. To listen without ads, join Criminal Plus.

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16:59To 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 Yacek would acknowledge that the case was extraordinarily thin. I mean, all they had at that point, well, they had the cell phone.

17:42They 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.

18:24Then 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 realized that very shortly, like a week before, 10 days before Darius was murdered, that Crispy, Christian Bala, had 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.

19:17They don't know if that book was ever found. But at least in Jacek's mind, again, it's suggestive to him. Why is Crispy looking at a police manual, detective manual, about criminal hangings 10 days before a noose is found around Darius' neck? And then they learn that Christian is going to return to Poland, that he's coming back to visit. And so they decide they're going to bring him in for questioning. Christian Bala returned to Poland about two years after Jacek 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.

20:05Officers arrested Christian on September 5, 2005, as he was coming out of a drugstore in a town near Rootswaw. 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.

20:52But 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. Yossick said that none of this happened. He said they did arrest Christian outside of a drugstore, but without violence. Quote, we used standard procedures and followed the letter of the law. What do you think about that, you know, do you have any suspicion that Christian was in some ways threatened, tortured by Yossick and his detectives? Or 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.

21:43I wasn't there. I wasn't a witness. I do know that it was investigated for a long period of time by authorities and they found no evidence of it. And there's no evidence ever in Yasek's career of doing anything like this. But it is the one time where suddenly you have Yasek 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 Yasek, he questioned Christian in his office, starting with simple questions about his work and relationships. When Yasek brought up Darius Januszewski's murder, Christian said he didn't know him.

22:29Ayasic doesn't yet reveal the one kind of trump card he has which isn't that much, but he knows about the phone that Christian Bala had somehow sold the murder victim's phone on this internet auction site and so he starts to ask him some questions and Christian about a muck, about his life and Christian just kind of denies him and then he asks him about the phone and that's the one time where Christian was a bit evasive he said, I don't remember where I got that phone. Now, it was a while back. This is many years before. And he said, well, then later he said, well, maybe I got it at a pawn shop.

23:08And so by the end, there really isn't any evidence to hold him or to continue to hold him under Polish law. He does agree to submit to a polygraph test. The polygrapher thought that at certain points during the polygraph that a Christian who was a scuba diver might have been using certain breathing exercises. It's hard to say. I mean, these polygraphs are notoriously unreliable, and the results were inconclusive in any case. And 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.

23:56And 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, you know, deluging 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 that someone's being investigated for a novel they wrote would say, this is outrageous.

24:37And Jacek 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 Jacek then begins to now, two things happen that are very important evidentiary-wise. One of the things they try to do is they keep trying to figure out from the payphone. In those Polish payphones, at the time, you would 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 payphones and use it again.

25:16They're able to finally crack that and figure out what the card was that was being used. And when they figure out and crack this card that was being used, they realize the same caller had placed a lot of other calls. Who were those calls to? There were two, Christian Bala's family members and friends and colleagues, everybody in Christian Bala's circle. So that was the first really strong piece of evidence, not suggestive. that Christian Bala was the one from the payphone who had placed the call to the advertising firm that lured Darius out. The next question, though, was, what is the connection?

26:02The 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 Bala 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. One person reported that at one point he had been in a bar, and he had seen his ex-wife flirting with a bartender.

26:46This 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 Bala's ex-wife talking to somebody And it was none other than Darius Yanichesky

27:31We'll be right back