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This episode includes graphic descriptions of violence. Please use discretion. One day in Southwest Poland, um there
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were a couple fishermen and one of them noticed something uh floating and then the other came over and they realized it
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was a body. Um and there was a noose around the neck and the hands had obviously been tied
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behind their back. There was no doubt that the figure had been murdered. This is author David Grann.
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The men who found the body called the police who came to remove it. It was decayed, um and it was evident
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once the pathologist looked at the person that they also had lack food uh in them. So, somebody had clearly
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deprived uh the person of nourishment. Um some indications that they had been beaten uh and tortured. Um and there was
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something very peculiar the way the noose was around the neck and the hands were tied behind the back. At one point
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the rope had been cut in the middle, but it was clear that the person had been held with the hands connected to the
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noose in the back almost like a backward cradle. So, very, very painful position
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so that if the figure had moved at all or struggled to move, um they would have been choking themselves.
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Um it was clear that the body had been through a lot. It suggested almost an anger. Um it was
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almost uh it did not seem like some detached uh murder. The man seemed to be in his 30s, was
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tall and had long dark hair and blue eyes. He matched the description of someone
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who'd been reported missing. A man named Darius Janiszewski. Darius was from the city of Wrocław, 60
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miles away, and it last been seen about 4 weeks earlier, on November 13th, 2000.
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He was a young businessman in his 30s. He worked in advertising. He was married. He was known as kind of
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a happy, cheerful. He played guitar, got along with people, no history of violence,
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very personable. Darius's wife didn't want to see the body. So, the police brought in his mother,
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and she confirmed it was him. Where had he last been seen? He had last been seen leaving his business. He had
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left in the afternoon around 4:00 p.m. if my memory is correct. And then was seen leaving the building.
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He didn't take his car, a Peugeot, which was unusual for him cuz he he normally when he was going to run an errand or do
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something, he always took his car. He did not take his car with him, and that was the last time he was seen.
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What what What did his family think? I mean, what when they reported him missing, what
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What did they think had happened? They really didn't know. His mother had worked at the business, and the only
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clue was the mother had reported that somebody had called the office in kind of a demanding state asking to
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speak with Darius for business, and she had then given him her son's cell phone.
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And then later when Darius came back into the office, the mother asked him, you know, "Did you
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speak with this client, this customer who called?" He said, "Yes, and I'm going to see him this afternoon." And
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that was really the only kind of clue that possibly he had gone to meet this person and then disappear. But nobody
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knew who that person was. There was no sense of motive. The police were able to trace the phone
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call to a payphone not far from Darius's office. But they were unable to find out who the
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caller was. You know, the authorities kind of considered almost a perfect crime because there were so few clues.
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Um and eventually, out of frustration and being stymied, uh the case was closed and it gradually became the
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coldest of cold cases. About 3 years went by. The case was eventually passed along to
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a 38-year-old detective named Jacek Roblewski. He was a really interesting figure. Um
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he had had many uh professions. He'd been a mechanic. Uh he'd been a municipal clerk. Um but
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then after um the fall of communism, he joins the police department and he kind of finally found his calling. He was um
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a large man, but he was very unthreatening and uh people said uh they trusted him because they didn't think
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there was anything to fear him. And he was able to solve many cases. Interestingly enough, his his first name
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uh Jacek translates to Jack and his last name of Roblewski, uh the first part uh
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i- is is sparrow. So, people called him Jack Sparrow after the Hollywood movie uh Pirates of the Caribbean. And um and
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he used to like to say, uh rather than being a sparrow, he says, "I'm an eagle."
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Did he have any suspicions about the case? When he first began looking at the case, he had very little, but he kept
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reviewing the file over and over. He put it away. He'd pick it back up. One thing
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that occurred to him, he he had one suspicion, which was when he was looking at the way the body had been um abused,
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the way uh this kind of cat's cradle, the way the body had been positioned, made him think that there was some kind
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of personal animus that drove the perpetrator or perpetrators. He did notice one clue or was the absence of a
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clue, which was Jacek had a had a cell phone, but there was no report of a cell phone in the file. So, he began to say,
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"Can we trace? Can we figure out what had happened to that cellphone?" At that time in Poland
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telecommunications and that kind of technical investigation was still pretty primitive, but he was able to get a
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serial number of the cellphone from the widow. And lo and behold, that cellphone
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turned out to have been sold on an internet auction just days after the murder. And not only that, he was able to tell
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from the that the person who had sold this was somebody who had identified themselves
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as Chris B. Chris B turned out to be a man named Christian Bala. And Jacek is aware that it's a very
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tenuous lead. I mean, in the sense that he doesn't know how this Christian Bala obtained the phone. He may have found it
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on the street, he may have bought it at a pawn shop, but it is the only lead he has. And he he has to he has to figure
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out who is this person. He realizes that Christian Bala is out of the country, so
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he has to be a little bit careful about the way he investigates. He doesn't want
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to tip anyone off, and he begins to read about him and try to learn about him. Um
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One of the things he does is he learns that he was this kind of very young, bright philosopher student. He'd been
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the equivalent of his valedictorian in high school and he got a scholarship to get a PhD in philosophy, which he
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eventually dropped out of in order to work. He had been married, although he was now divorced. He had a
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child, and he had also written a novel called Amok. Jacek Wroblewski learned that Christian
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Bala had published Amok in 2003, several years after Darius had been murdered, and not long before Jacek began
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investigating the case, Jacek decided to get a copy. And he begins to read through the novel.
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At first, almost kind of casually, almost out of curiosity as who is this person? How could I learn about him? Um
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and the novel's a bit of a shock to him. I mean, Jacek is a very kind of straightforward person, you know, very
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very Catholic, very strong kind of view of good and evil. And the book is very blasphemous, it's very creepy, it's very
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sadistic, it's pornographic, it's very very postmodern. And this character who happens to be also identified as Chris,
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the same Chris like the way the phone had been auctioned off, the narrator's name is Chris, who goes on this grizzly
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kind of rampage in the novel, indulging in sex, and eventually ends up murdering
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the girl, his girlfriend in the novel. And so as Jacek is reading the novel, he suddenly notices certain details that
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catch his attention. One of those details is that the the victim of this murder, the girlfriend,
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had a noose around her neck. So he pauses on that. Then he finds one other detail that
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really strikes him. And that is that the murderer, Chris in the novel, had also not only put a noose around his
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girlfriend, had also stabbed the girlfriend and then sold the knife used in the killing in the
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novel on an internet auction site. The fact that Darius's cell phone had been sold on an internet auction site
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had never been made public. Detective Jacek Wroblewski decided to make copies of Christian Bala's novel
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and hand them out to his detective squad. He assigned everyone chapters and asked them to look for more
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similarities between the plot and Darius Janiszewski's murder. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.
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David Grann says Christian Bale's novel didn't get very much attention when it was first published.
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And half of the people who did read it, some who knew Christian were surprised. Because Christian was very charming,
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very bright. And so like his philosophy teachers and philosophy friends were quite quite shocked by it. But it is
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important to understand that many people found Christian mesmerizing. I mean he there was something very alluring about
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him. He was brooding, smoking cigarettes. Um he kind of created this character. And so even in his own life
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he would kind of tell these stories that you never were quite sure what was true
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or what was false. Um he would tell people he'd gone on some adventure, had some romance, or he was at a brothel, or
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he'd debased himself. And if people would repeat it several times, he would say, "Ah, it's become true." There was
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always in Christian, both in the novel, but also in his own life, this play between what is real and what is false,
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is what is true and what is a fiction. And in the character in the novel, was that Christian or was that just a
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character he created in the novel? David says once after the book came out, an interviewer asked Christian,
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"Some authors write only to release their Mr. Hyde, the dark side of their psyche.
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Do you agree?" Christian responded, "I know what you are driving at, but I won't comment.
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It might turn out that Christian Bale is the creation of Chris, not the other way
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around." Christian had also posted excerpts of the book on his blog and would respond
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to reader comments under the name Chris. But David says Christian would dismiss suggestions that parts of the book had
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been drawn from his own life. He He said at one point, somebody asked him after the novel came out, you know,
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a friend said, "You know, this novel makes you look really bad." And he said, "Well, it's you know, it's fiction." And
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he She said, "Yeah, but for you to have those thoughts, you know, you you must have had those thoughts." He said,
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"Well, anybody who would think that is a fool." Still, as the detectives combed through
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the novel, they found more similarities. And they create like almost like a check
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board. I mean, you you know, where they're like, "Okay, this is true. This happened in Christian Bala's real life.
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This didn't happen. We could confirm this." I mean, there's a scene of a theft in the novel. It turned out that
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theft had really happened in real life. In the novel, the narrator Chris gets drunk one night with a friend, and they
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decide to steal a figurine of Saint Anthony from a church. Jacek Wroblewski discovered that
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Christian Bala had once been caught by the police doing the exact same thing. The friend he'd been with had told a
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judge they stole the statue because, quote, "We wanted a third person to drink with."
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And there were other things. Christian had been left by his wife, so had the narrator Chris.
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Both men loved philosophy, both drank a lot, and both owned businesses that had gone
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bankrupt. One thing that is also present that is of suspicion, at least to uh Jacek, uh
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was that um Chris, the narrator, not only confesses to murdering uh his girlfriend in the novel,
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the narrator in this novel gets away with it. There's no repercussions, no stain from the murder, no penance, no
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punishment, no redemption, just free. But he hints in several places that there was another murder of a man who
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had done something to him. He never speaks about what it is, but it's kind of moved throughout
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Chris alludes to the other murder in a conversation with a girlfriend. After she questions the truth of his
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stories, he asked her if she didn't believe that he quote killed a man who behaved inappropriately
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toward me 10 years ago. He adds quote Everyone considers it a fable. Maybe it's better that way.
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Sometimes I don't believe it myself. So, was there an actual other murder of a man that is being hinted at in the
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novel? And could that have been Darius? We'll be right back. To listen without ads, join Criminal
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Plus. To try to better understand Christian Bala, the police reached out to a criminal psychologist.
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She examined the character of Chris in the novel and wrote that the character showed
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features of psychopathic behavior. Quote He is testing the limits to see if he can actually carry out his sadistic
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fantasies. She agreed that there were similarities between Chris and Christian. But that quote
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basing an analysis of the author on his fictional character would be a gross violation.
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Even Jacek would acknowledge that the case was extraordinarily thin. I mean, all
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they had at that point, well they had the cell phone. They knew that the that Christian Bala had somehow obtained
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Darius's cell phone within a few days and sold it on a internet site. And that's kind of
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you know, all they have at that point. So they they have a very thin case and and on top of that, you know, even
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people around the apartment are looking at Jacek like I think you've lost your mind. Like you're looking at a novel as
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a road map for a crime. So Jacek knows he needs more evidence, but he's also a bit hamstrung because
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at that point Christian Bala is out of the country and with extradition treaties he couldn't just call him back
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to question him. Jacek also didn't want word of the investigation to reach Christian.
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Then he might never come home. And so he couldn't interview his closest family members or his ex-wife. So he's
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somewhat limited learning about him through these different sources. He still has no sense
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of a motive for the crime. Jacek decided to look through the profile for Chris B on the internet
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auction site that Christian had used to sell Darius's cell phone. And they looked and realized that very
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shortly like a week before 10 days before Darius was murdered that Chris B, Christian Bala, had been
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looking for a police manual on criminal hangings. And now again, it's suggestive.
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But once again, they're also stymied because there's no evidence that the book itself
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was actually purchased. They don't know if that book was ever found. But at least in Jacek's mind again, it's
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suggestive to him. Why is Chris B looking at a police manual detective manual about criminal hangings 10 days
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before a noose is found around Darius's neck. And then they learn that Christian is
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going to return to Poland. That he's coming back to visit. And so they've decided they're going to
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bring him in for questioning. Christian Bala returned to Poland about 2 years after Jacek had begun
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investigating the case. While he was out of the country, he'd been traveling, writing for magazines,
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and teaching English and scuba lessons. Officers arrested Christian on September
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5th, 2005, as he was coming out of a drugstore in a town near Wroclaw. Christian later wrote an account of what
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he says happened. He said that three men attacked him, forced him into the back of a car, and
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put a black plastic bag over his head. He wrote that the men beat him and then called someone on the phone.
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He said he overheard one of the men say, "He's still alive. And what about the money? Will we get it
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today?" He said that the men drove for a while and then stopped, and one of them said,
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"We can dig a hole here and bury him." Christian wrote, "I thought that this was going to be the
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last moment of my life." But then he said the men started driving again and took him to a building where
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he was stripped and beaten some more. When they started to interrogate him, he realized he was in police custody.
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Jacek said that none of this happened. He said they did arrest Christian outside of a drugstore,
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but without violence. Quote, "We used standard procedures and followed the letter of the law."
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What do you think about that? You know, do you do you have any suspicion that that Christian was
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in some ways threatened, tortured by Jacek and his detectives, or do you think that
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that was another one of Christian's tales? When you read the tale, I'll just say this, it's strains
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credulity. Um, I wasn't there. I wasn't a witness. I do know and then that it was investigated uh, for a long period
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of time by authorities and they found no evidence of it. And there's no evidence
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ever in uh, Jacek's career of of doing anything like this. Um, but it is the one time where suddenly you have um,
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Jacek saying this story, this story, this thing that Krystian Bala is saying this time is definitely a fiction. He is
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making this story up. According to Jacek, he questioned Krystian in his office starting with
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simple questions about his work and relationships. When Jacek brought up Dariusz
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Janiszewski's murder, Krystian said he didn't know him. Uh, Jacek doesn't yet reveal the one
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kind of trump card he has, which isn't that much, but he knows about the phone that that Krystian Bala had somehow sold
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the murder victim's phone on uh, this internet auction site. And so he starts to ask him some questions and um,
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Krystian about a muck, about his life and he and Krystian just kind of denies saying um, and then he asked him about
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the phone and and that's the one time where Krystian was a bit evasive. Um, he said, "I don't remember um, where I got
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that phone. Now, it was a while back." I says many years before. And he said, "Well, then later he said, 'Well, maybe
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I got it at a pawn shop.'" Um, and so by the end, there really isn't any evidence
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to hold him or to continue to hold him under Polish law. He does agree to submit to a uh, to a polygraph test. The
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polygrapher thought that at certain points during the polygraph that uh, Krystian, who was a scuba diver, might
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have been using certain breathing exercises. Um, it's hard to say. I mean, these polygraphs are notoriously
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unreliable. And the results were inconclusive in any case Um, and in the end the case seems to be unraveling and
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Christian is let let go. The police were able to charge Christian with selling stolen property, the cell
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phone. He had to hand over his passport and stay in the country. And he begins to tell people that he is
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being investigated and persecuted because of a novel he wrote and it creates a sensation. I mean the human
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rights organizations start writing letters to the Polish Ministry of Justice, you know, deluging them with
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letters saying how can you be doing this? You're violating his rights. One of Christian's girlfriends organized
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a committee to bring attention to his case. In an online post she wrote, "During his brutal interrogation they
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referenced his book numerous times citing it as proof of his guilt." And let's you know, I think anyone hearing this
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someone's being investigated for a novel they were wrote would say this is outrageous. And Yacik always says, "I
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need corroborating evidence. The novel is a road map to a crime. It is giving us some clues and insights." He knows it
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is not evidence. He cannot present the novel as a piece of evidence in court. He's trying to use the novel though to
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try to kind of crack the case. So Yacik then begins to now two things happen that are very
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important evidentiary-wise. One of the things they try to do is they keep trying to figure out from the
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payphone. In those Polish payphones at the time you would kind of insert this card and that would allow you to make
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the calls and with that card you could then insert it into other payphones and use it again.
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They're able to finally crack that and figure out what the card was that was being used and when they figure out and
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crack this card that was being used they realized the same caller had placed a lot of other calls. Who were those calls
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to? They were to Christian Bala's family members and friends and colleagues, everybody in Christian Bala's circle.
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So, that was the first really strong piece of evidence, not suggestive, that Christian Bala was the one from the
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payphone who had placed the call to the advertising firm that lured uh Darius out. The next question though was
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what is the What is the connection? The detectives started to question Christian's family and friends.
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David says many people had nice things to say about Christian. A past employer from a teaching job
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called him easy to get along with and said "With no reservation, I highly recommend
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Christian Bala for any teaching position with children." But a babysitter who worked for him and
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his then wife said he drank a lot. And he often gave his wife a hard time and accused her of sleeping around.
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Christian and his wife separated in 2000. One person reported that at one point he
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had been in a bar and he had seen his uh what ex-wife flirting with a bartender.
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This was uh just a few weeks after Darius uh was killed and he was screaming drunkenly that nobody can talk
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to my wife that way. Witnesses said Christian shouted, quote, "I've already taken out a guy like you
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with a rope." Five people held Christian back from attacking the man. Then the detective spoke to a friend of
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Christian's ex-wife who says that one time at a bar uh she had seen Christian Bala's ex-wife
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talking to somebody and it was none other than Darius Janiszewski. We'll be right back.
00:25:12
Jacek Wroblewski had been trying to get Christian Bala's ex-wife to agree to an interview.
00:25:18
So, she had been very resistant to be interviewed for a long time. And I don't know the reason why. You
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know, perhaps it was I mean, I only know what Jacek, you know, wondered. You know,
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could it be because she was afraid of Christian? Was it because she thought he was innocent? Was it because they had a
00:25:35
child together and she didn't want to incriminate him? But eventually, Jacek was to speak with her.
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And she had never read the novel Amok. But then he shows her portions of the novel and these very, very sadistic
00:25:49
descriptions of a woman in the novel who very much mirrors her, the ex-wife. And
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at that point, she's willing to talk. And she says for the first time that she had met Darius Janiszewski in a bar.
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This was in the summer of 2000, the same year she and Christian separated. They had later gone on a date. They had
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gone to a motel. She says they didn't have sex cuz she learned that he had been married. Um but they were
00:26:20
together and and they had gone on this date. He had left. Um they never went on a date again and that was it.
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But that Christian had showed up not long after at her apartment or at her home, broke down the door, hit her,
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screaming, says, "I know you had an affair. I know who with. I I know the hotel. I know the room."
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Christian's ex-wife said he also mentioned that he had visited Darius's office and described it to me.
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After this, Jacek decided he had enough evidence to charge Krystian Bala with murder.
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And so, a Krystian Bala is indicted. Um it creates a sensation. He continues to claim that he is being persecuted for
00:27:07
a novel he wrote, that he compares himself to Salman Rushdie, that he is being crucified uh for his literature.
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It was reported that at one point, before the trial, Krystian confessed to prosecutors that he had killed Darius.
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But he immediately retracted the confession and had a, quote, fainting spell. The trial began on February 22nd, 2007.
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On the first day, the courtroom was packed. One Polish newspaper wrote, "Killing doesn't make much of an
00:27:41
impression in the 21st century, but allegedly killing and then writing about it in a novel is front-page news."
00:27:50
What What did the prosecution argue that it was kind of cut It was a cut-and-dried case? Yeah, I mean they
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put they presented it as um you know, if you take away the novel and you you know, this was a man, allegedly,
00:28:03
who out of a fit of rage kidnapped or abducted uh somebody who who had gone on a date with his ex-wife
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and then and then murdered him in this very barbaric way. Krystian was found guilty of planning
00:28:20
and directing the murder. There wasn't enough evidence to prove that he'd committed the murder himself.
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He was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He later appealed. He did get a new trial, but he was found
00:28:33
guilty in a second trial, as well. And he's still in jail to this day. In 2007, David Grann traveled to Poland
00:28:42
to meet Krystian. At a you know, really tough prison, kind of post-communist prison. There'd been a
00:28:50
a riot there. I mean, it was a you know, very harsh conditions. And I remember going into the
00:28:55
uh the visitor's room. Um, I was surprised I was able to get in and able to see him. And um, as I walked in, you
00:29:02
know, it was just very dismal place and I see someone kind of standing in the visitor's room wearing a a sweatshirt
00:29:08
that said, I think it said University of Wisconsin on it. And had dark hair and the hair was kind of standing up as if
00:29:14
the person had kind of been rubbing their hand through it. Very handsome, but they looked like a grad student. And
00:29:19
I realized I was looking at Christian Bala. David remembers Christian shook his hand. And as they walked to a table to
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sit down, Christian said, "This whole thing is farce, like something out of Kafka."
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While they were talking, Christian would occasionally point to David's notebook and say things like, "Put this down."
00:29:39
Or, "This is important." When we spoke about the novel, he was very excited when we talked about
00:29:46
different theories and truth. And even when he When I asked him about some of the very
00:29:50
specific evidence about the cell phone, where that, you know, why how did he get
00:29:54
hold of that and some of the other like why on the public telephone did had you know, did it look like he had made the
00:30:01
call to the to the to the advertising firm. And he he on those points he was a bit evasive and kind of conspiratorial.
00:30:09
And I didn't feel like I ever got clear answers. But he maintained his innocence
00:30:13
and he kept saying, "I'm the author. I'm the author. I know what I meant. I know
00:30:17
what I meant." David says at one point during their conversation, Christian accidentally said me instead
00:30:25
of him when talking about the narrator, Chris. Do you think that there's any part of him that wrote the
00:30:34
book because he wanted someone to figure out the puzzle? Well, one of the questions that always kind of haunted
00:30:39
this case was you know, and for me as someone who's spent you know, many months researching it was you know, why
00:30:45
did you write why did you write the novel? And you know, had the novel not been written, I don't think Yacik ever
00:30:52
would have had his suspicions raised to the extent that he did. And it did give him to some extent
00:30:58
a road map. Um, you know, the the character in the novel is somebody who is dealing with guilt
00:31:06
and a guilty conscience. I mean, that is kind of one of the themes of the novel.
00:31:09
So was the author dealing with a guilty conscience? Was this his confession? After Christian was arrested, his book
00:31:17
started selling out in bookstores all over Poland. He thought and he still thinks well at
00:31:23
least when I met him, you know, that his novel while it was obscured at the time
00:31:28
would one day be recognized for the masterpiece it was. And then I'll never forget this. He at
00:31:35
one point he said to me, he said I'm working on a second book and he said but the investigators had
00:31:40
confiscated it and so he hadn't been able to finish it yet. And then one a point he leaned towards me as if to make
00:31:46
sure that the guards couldn't hear him and he said, it's going to be even more shocking.
00:32:06
David Grann is the author of The Wager and Killers of the Flower Moon. And his article about Christian Bala is
00:32:13
contained in his collection The Devil and Sherlock Holmes. Criminal is created by Lauren Spor and
00:32:20
me. Nidia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer.
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