Krystian Bala, a Polish thriller “fiction” writer, was recently convicted of planning the abduction, torture, and murder of Dariusz Janiszewski, a lover of Bala’s estranged wife. After a long court case, Bala was sentenced to 25 years in prison. How did he get caught? He detailed the crime in his bestselling book.
Here’s what happened. After the body was found in a river in December of 2000, there was little evidence and the case was eventually dropped. In 2003 Bala published Amok, a story about the malaise of sadists. Torture and murder can be so humdrum.
A number of people tipped off detectives and in 2005 the case was reopened as the murder described in the book made sense of the Janiszewski murder. The allusion in the news reports I’ve read is that Bala was bragging about the “Perfect Crime” while on a SCUBA trip in East Asia because while he was there several people from his trip destinations called police advising them to read Amok. This isn’t clear though.
Neverthless, they did detain Bala. But there was insufficient evidence to prosecute and he was released. Later police discovered that Bala knew Janiszewski, had called him around the time of his murder, and had sold his cell phone on the internet a few days after the murder. The case was reopened and Bala was prosecuted and convicted.
The Bala camp is appealing. Naturally, Bala, with his keen imagination, dreamed up the details of the fictional murder and any similarity between the events or people depicted and real events or people, living or dead, was purely coincidental. I guess that disclaimer isn’t iron clad.
