It began with a body. In December 2000, the remains of a missing man surfaced in the Oder River in southwestern Poland. Dariusz Janiszewski—a young entrepreneur who had vanished weeks earlier—was found floating in the river by three fishermen. He was bound by rope in a ‘reverse hog tie’ position with evidence that he’d been starved, tortured and then dumped in the icy river while he was still alive. The brutality of the murder left investigators stunned. But despite the shocking nature of the crime, the case quickly went cold...
It began with a body. In December 2000, the remains of a missing man surfaced in the Oder River in southwestern Poland. Dariusz Janiszewski—a young entrepreneur who had vanished weeks earlier—was found floating in the river by three fishermen. He was bound by rope in a ‘reverse hog tie’ position with evidence that he’d been starved, tortured and then dumped in the icy river while he was still alive. The brutality of the murder left investigators stunned. But despite the shocking nature of the crime, the case quickly went cold. For three years, there were no suspects, no motive, and no answers—just a trail that led nowhere.
That is, until Detective Jacek Wroblewski felt an unshakable pull to reopen the case—and stumbled onto something bizarre.... a novel. A dark, unsettling piece of crime fiction that described a murder with eerie similarities to the unsolved death of Dariusz Janiszewski. The book’s author? Krystian Bala, a former PhD student with a warped fascination for nihilism and philosophy. Was this fiction mimicking life? Or was it a real-life murder disguised as literature?
The investigation proceeds to unfold like a psychological thriller, filled with disturbing clues, academic arrogance, and an intellectual game of cat and mouse. It was an investigation that brought together psychology, clues from a crime novel, and digital forensics.
In this episode, we dive into one of the most bizarre and unsettling murders in modern European history—a story that blurs the line between art and evidence, and forces us to ask: what kind of person writes a story that may reveal the truth behind a real-life killing?
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References:
Grann, D. (2008, February 11). True crime: A postmodern murder mystery. The New Yorker.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/02/11/true-crime
Struzińska, K. (2020). The murderer as writer, storyteller and protagonist: The case of Krystian Bala. International Journal for the
Semiotics of Law, 33(2), 447–472.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-020-09685-x
