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Krystian BALA
Classification: Murderer
Characteristics: Jealousy
- Suspect
that the victim was sleeping with his ex-wife
Number of victims: 1
Date of murder:
November 13,
2000
Date of arrest: 2005
Date of birth: 1973
Victim profile: Dariusz Janiszewski,
35
Method of murder: Stabbing
with knife
Location: Wroclaw, Poland
Status: Sentenced to 25 years in prison on September 5, 2007.
Resentenced in December 2008
Krystian Bala
(born 1973) is a Polish writer and photographer. In 2007, Bala was
sentenced to jail for 25 years for planning and committing the murder of
Dariusz Janiszewski, a Polish small business owner, in Wrocław in 2000.
For a number of years the Wrocław police had failed
to solve the murder, until a detective found some physical clues linking
the murder to Bala. More sensationally, clues to the killing were found
in Bala's first novel Amok (2003), published several years after
Janiszewski's killing. It was as if Bala had written a "fictional"
version of the real-life killing into his novel, using information only
the killer could have known. The case drew widespread media coverage in
Poland and resulted in increased sales of the novel as readers looked
for clues in the novel to the real-life events of Janiszewski's killing.
In 2007, while Bala stayed in prison, an appeals
court ordered a retrial of the case. In December 2008, Bala had a new
trial and was again found guilty and continued to serve a twenty-five
year sentence. Bala is working on a second novel tentatively titled
De Liryk. Police report evidence found on his computer of plans for
killing a new victim to tie in with his second novel.
The case was the subject of a 2008 investigative
article by David Grann in The New Yorker, called "True Crime",
later published in The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder,
Madness, and Obsession (2010). In 2010, Grann's article was optioned
to be made into a movie by Focus Films.
Wikipedia.org
Polish author jailed over killing he used as plot
Pole
orchestrated murder of suspected love rival
Police stumped until they read gruesome thriller
Ian
Traynor in Warsaw - The Guardian
Thursday, September 6, 2007
A Polish pulp fiction writer was sentenced to 25 years in jail
yesterday for his role in a grisly case of abduction, torture and murder,
a crime that he then used for the plot of a bestselling thriller.
In a remarkable case that has gripped Poland for months, Krystian
Bala, a writer of blood-curdling fiction, was found guilty of
orchestrating the murder seven years ago of a Wroclaw businessman,
Dariusz Janiszewski, in a crime of passion brought on by the suspicion
that the victim was sleeping with his ex-wife.
In the novel, the villain gets away with kidnapping,
mutilating and murdering a young woman.
In real life, however, Bala got his comeuppance, even
though it was seven years after the disappearance of the advertising
executive whose murder confounded detectives until they read the book.
The killing of Janiszewski was one of the most
gruesome cases to come before a Polish court in years, with the "Murder,
He Wrote" sub-plot unfolding in the district court in Wroclaw and
keeping the country spellbound.
Janiszewski, said to have been having an affair with
Bala's ex-wife, was scooped out of the river Oder near Wroclaw in south-west
Poland by fishermen in December 2000, four weeks after going missing.
The police tests revealed that he was stripped almost
naked and tortured. His wrists had been bound behind his back and tied
to a noose around his neck before he was dumped in the river.
The police had little to go on. Within six months,
Commissar Jacek Wroblewski, leading the investigation, dropped the case.
It remained closed for five years despite the publication in 2003 of the
potboiler Amok, by Bala, a gory tale about a bunch of bored sadists,
with the narrator, Chris, recounting the murder of a young woman. The
details of the murder matched those of Janiszewski almost exactly.
Bala, who used the first name Chris on his frequent
jaunts abroad, was arrested in 2005 after Commissar Wroblewski received
a tip-off about the "perfect crime" and was advised to read the thriller.
But Bala was released after three days for insufficient evidence,
despite the commissar's conviction that he had his villain. When further
evidence came to light, Bala was re-arrested. The case against him,
however, remained circumstantial.
Police uncovered evidence that Bala had known the
dead man, had telephoned him around the time of his disappearance and
had then sold the dead man's mobile phone on the internet within days of
the murder.
When Poland's television equivalent of Crimewatch
aired details of the case in an attempt to generate fresh police leads,
the programme's website received messages from various places in the far
east, places that Bala, a keen scuba diver, was discovered to have been
visiting at the time of the messages.
All along, Bala protested his innocence, insisting
that he derived the details for the Amok thriller from media reports of
the Janiszewski murder.
Sentencing Bala to 25 years' jail yesterday, Judge
Lidia Hojenska admitted that he could not be found directly guilty of
carrying out the murder. But the evidence sufficed to find him guilty of
planning and orchestrating the crime. "The evidence gathered gives
sufficient basis to say that Krystian Bala committed the crime of
leading the killing of Dariusz Janiszewski," she said.
The court heard expert and witness evidence that Bala
was a control freak, eager to show off his intelligence, "pathologically
jealous" and inclined to sadism. "He was pathologically jealous of his
wife," said Judge Hojenska. "He could not allow his estranged wife to
have ties with another man."
His lawyer said yesterday that Bala would appeal
against the verdict and sentence.
Stranger than Fiction
·William Burroughs' accidental killing
of his wife Joan while attempting to shoot a glass off her head was
later documented in his novel Queer. He wrote: "I am forced to the
appalling conclusion that I would have never become a writer but for
Joan's death."
· Thirteen years after OJ Simpson's
acquittal for the murder of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her
friend Ron Goldman, his controversial account of how he would have
committed the crime was published. In a chapter entitled The Night in
Question, Simpson describes his confrontation with Goldman, "Then
something went horribly wrong, and I know what happened, but I can't
tell you exactly how."
· In 2001 the son of author Errol
Trzebinski was murdered in a similar manner to that described in her
book The Life and Death of Lord Erroll. She believes the killing was a
warning against an investigation she was conducting into the suspicious
death of the 22nd Earl of Erroll, whom she believes was killed by the
British intelligence services.
Polish Murder Stranger Than Fiction
By Andrew Purvis - Time.com
Thursday, Sep. 06, 2007
In his debut 2003 novel Amok, Polish author
Krystian Bala describes the torture and murder of a young woman whose
hands are bound behind her back with a cord that is then looped to form
a noose around her neck. According to a judge's ruling this week in the
western Polish city of Wroclaw, Bala was drawing not on his imagination
for that scene, but on his own experience.
The author, 34, has been
sentenced to 25 years in jail for having a
role in the murder of a Polish businessman
whose body was discovered in the river Oder
with a cord binding his hands behind his
back that was also looped into a noose
around his neck. "The evidence gathered
gives sufficient basis to say that Krystian
Bala committed the crime of leading the
killing," the judge, Lidia Hojenska, told a
packed courtroom. She added: "There are
certain shared characteristics between the
book's narrator and the author."
Prosecutor Liliana
Lukasiewicz told TIME that the sentence, in
her view, fits the crime. "We are satisfied,"
she said. Bala, who has protested his
innocence and who contends that the details
in his book were gleaned from press reports,
is planning to appeal, according to his
lawyer.
The verdict caps months
of intense speculation in Poland about
Bala's role in one of the grisliest murder
cases in recent memory. The body of the
victim, Dariusz Janiszewski, showing signs
of torture, was discovered by fishermen in
the river Oder four weeks after he went
missing in 2000. But police were unable to
make progress in their investigation, and
six months later they shelved the case. The
publication of Amok, a sex-driven
potboiler about a group of sadists
recounting their exploits and taunting
police revived speculation about the murder.
But it was another two years before an
anonymous tip-off about the contents of the
book prompted police to reopen their
investigation.
In their arguments,
prosecutors said that Janiszewski was
believed to be seeing Bala's ex-wife at the
time of the businessman's disappearance.
(Bala has denied knowing him.) They also
noted similarities between the character
Chris in the novel, and the author, who also
goes by that nickname while traveling abroad
and in email communications. In addition,
police traced the sale of the victim's
mobile phone on an Internet auction site
four days after his disappearance to an
account registered to Bala. And they said
that a phone card was used to place calls to
the victim on the morning of his
disappearance as well as to Bala's
girlfriend and parents.
In Amok, which has turned out to
be a best-seller in Poland, Chris is never
caught and gets away with murder. Fiction
imitated life, it would seem, but only so
far.
Murder, he wrote: Polish author convicted
Similarity to grisly work of pulp fiction led police
to arrest writer for killing
The Associated
Press - Sept. 5, 2007
WROCLAW, Poland - Fishermen dragged the dead man's
body — hands bound behind his back and tied to a noose around his neck —
from the cold waters of the Oder River in Poland in December 2000.
Police struggled to dig up any clues until a tip five
years later led them to a novel with an eerily similar murder — and its
author, Krystian Bala, who suspected the victim of having an affair with
his estranged wife.
The killer in Bala's alcohol- and sex-fueled "Amok"
gets away with his grisly crime. But on Wednesday, a court in Wroclaw
sentenced Bala to 25 years in prison for planning and directing the
murder of Dariusz Janiszewski.
The case fueled intense
media interest in Poland — TV crews and journalists
crowded the courtroom Wednesday — largely because of
the 2003 novel, in which the narrator, Chris,
fatally stabs a woman named Mary after binding her
hands behind her back and running the rope to a
noose around her neck.
"The
evidence gathered gives sufficient basis to say that
Krystian Bala committed the crime of leading the
killing of Dariusz Janiszewski," Judge Lidia
Hojenska said. "He was the initiator of the murder;
his role was leading and planning it."
Hojenska said it was not clear who actually did the
killing and who might have aided Bala in the crime,
but the evidence overwhelmingly pointed to Bala's
involvement in the events that led to Janiszewski's
disappearance.
Dressed in a blue pinstriped sports coat, muted
yellow tie and thin wire glasses, the 34-year-old
Bala stood stone-faced between two policemen as the
judge read the verdict. Bala showed no emotion, but
occasionally glanced at his mother, who sat in the
back of the courtroom.
His family and lawyer said they planned to appeal.
"Justice was served, but
the verdict will never be adequate to the crime,"
said Janiszewski's father, Tadeusz, who caressed a
photo of his son on the table in front of him. "It's
tough to talk about being happy with it because
nothing will bring my son back."
Body found with signs of torture
Janiszewski's body — stripped to a shirt and
underwear — was discovered in the Oder River on Dec.
10, 2000. His body showed signs of starvation and
torture.
Police quickly identified
the victim as Janiszewski, the owner of a local
advertising agency who had disappeared four weeks
earlier. But authorities struggled to solve the case
and abandoned it after six months.
Five years later, a tip led them to Bala's novel,
and the similarities between the fictional and real-life
murders. The shared traits aroused investigators'
suspicions, although the parallels were not part of
the court case.
The judge said Bala was
driven by jealousy to kill Janiszewski, whom Bala
suspected of having an affair with his estranged
wife. Prosecutors said Janiszewski and Bala's wife
had become friends, and spent a night together in a
Wroclaw hotel in the fall of 2000.
Wife seen as 'property'
"He was pathologically jealous
of his wife," the judge said.
"He could not allow his
estranged wife, whom he treated
as property, to have ties with
another man."
Hojenska said a host of
circumstantial evidence led to
the verdict.
While Bala maintained he had
never met or talked to
Janiszewski, police tracked down
a phone card used to make calls
from a public phone to
Janiszewski's office and then to
his cell phone the morning he
disappeared.
Calls were made the same day using the same card to
Bala's girlfriend and to his parents.
Prosecutors also said
someone using Bala's account on an Internet auction
site sold Janiszewski's cell phone four days after
he disappeared. Bala could not explain that.
International help
In 2003, a
Polish TV show broadcast a segment on Janiszewski's
murder. Soon after the clip aired, the program's Web
site dedicated to the case received hits from
computers in Singapore, South Korea and Japan.
Prosecutors say Bala was visiting those countries on
those dates.
Then, during questioning by prosecutors in April
2006, Bala confessed to killing Janiszewski, only to
immediately retract his statement and suffer a
fainting spell. A doctor was called and declared
there was nothing physically wrong with Bala. Since
then, the author has not spoken to prosecutors.
The court also noted that a psychological assessment
found Bala had "sadistic tendencies" and a need to
demonstrate superiority. Experts said the narrator-killer
in his book bears a psychological resemblance to
Bala.
"Amok" is a work of pulp
fiction set in Paris and Mexico, narrated by a young
translator who moves from one sexual conquest to
another, killing one of his lovers, Mary.
"There are certain similar characteristics between
the book's narrator and the author — shared
psychological characteristics, life experiences,
studying philosophy, parties, travel," the judge
said Wednesday, while noting there were also
differences between the fictional and the actual
crimes.
The most glaring
difference: In the book, the narrator gets away with
murder.
