Amok | Criminal Podcast | Forensic Files

This episode includes graphic descriptions of violence. Please use discretion. One day in Southwest Poland, um there
were a couple fishermen and one of them noticed something uh floating and then the other came over and they realized it
was a body. Um 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. This is author David Grann.
The men who found the body called the police who came to remove it. It was decayed, um and it was evident
once the pathologist looked at the person that they also had lack food uh in them. So, somebody had clearly
deprived uh the person of nourishment. Um some indications that they had been beaten uh and tortured. Um 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, very, very painful position
so that if the figure had moved at all or struggled to move, um they would have been choking themselves.
Um it was clear that the body had been through a lot. It suggested almost an anger. Um it was
almost uh it did not seem like some detached uh 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 Janiszewski. Darius was from the city of Wrocław, 60
miles away, and it last been seen about 4 weeks earlier, on November 13th, 2000.
He was a young businessman in his 30s. He worked in advertising. He was married. He was known as kind of
a happy, cheerful. He played guitar, got along with people, no history of violence,
very personable. Darius's 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? He had last been seen leaving his business. He had
left in the afternoon around 4:00 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 cuz he 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 what What did his family think? I mean, what when they reported him missing, what
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, and 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?" 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 a perfect crime because there were so few clues.
Um and eventually, out of frustration and being stymied, uh the case was closed and it gradually became the
coldest of cold cases. About 3 years went by. The case was eventually passed along to
a 38-year-old detective named Jacek Roblewski. He was a really interesting figure. Um
he had had many uh professions. He'd been a mechanic. Uh he'd been a municipal clerk. Um but
then after um the fall of communism, he joins the police department and he kind of finally found his calling. He was um
a large man, but he was very unthreatening and uh people said uh they trusted him because they didn't think
there was anything to fear him. And he was able to solve many cases. Interestingly enough, his his first name
uh Jacek translates to Jack and his last name of Roblewski, uh the first part uh
i- is is sparrow. So, people called him Jack Sparrow after the Hollywood movie uh Pirates of the Caribbean. And um and
he used to like to say, uh 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 he had one suspicion, which was when he was looking at the way the body had been um abused,
the way uh 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. He did notice one clue or was the absence of a
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,
"Can we trace? Can we figure out what had happened to that cellphone?" 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 cellphone from the widow. And lo and behold, that cellphone
turned out to have been sold on an internet auction just days after the murder. And not only that, he was able to tell
from the that the person who had sold this was somebody who had identified themselves
as Chris B. Chris 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 he has to 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 him and try to learn about him. Um
One of the things he does is he learns that he was this kind of very young, bright philosopher student. He'd been
the equivalent of his valedictorian in high school and he got a scholarship to get a PhD in philosophy, which he
eventually dropped out of in order to work. He had been married, although he was now divorced. He had a
child, and he had also written a novel called Amok. Jacek Wroblewski learned that Christian
Bala had published Amok in 2003, several years after Darius had been murdered, and not long before Jacek began
investigating the case, Jacek decided to get a copy. And he begins to read through the novel.
At first, almost kind of casually, almost out of curiosity as who is this person? How could I learn about him? Um
and the novel's a bit of a shock to him. I mean, Jacek is a very kind of straightforward person, you know, very
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 grizzly
kind of rampage in the novel, indulging in sex, and eventually ends up murdering
the girl, his girlfriend in the novel. And so as Jacek is reading the novel, he suddenly notices certain details that
catch his attention. One of those details is that the the victim of this murder, the girlfriend,
had a noose around her neck. So he pauses on that. 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's cell phone had been sold on an internet auction site
had never been made public. Detective Jacek Wroblewski 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 Janiszewski's murder. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.
David Grann says Christian Bale's novel didn't get very much attention when it was first published.
And half 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 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. Um 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. Um he would tell people he'd gone on some adventure, had some romance, or he was at a brothel, or
he'd debased himself. And if people would repeat it several times, he would say, "Ah, it's become true." There was
always in Christian, both in the novel, but also in his own life, this play between what is real and what is false,
is what is true and what is a fiction. And in the character in the novel, was that Christian or was that just a
character he created in the 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.
Do you agree?" Christian responded, "I know what you are driving at, but I won't comment.
It might turn out that Christian Bale is the creation of Chris, not the other way
around." Christian 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 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
he She said, "Yeah, but for you to have those thoughts, you know, you you must have had those thoughts." He said,
"Well, anybody who would think that is a fool." Still, as the detectives combed through
the novel, they found more similarities. And they create like almost like a check
board. I mean, you 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 Saint Anthony from a church. Jacek Wroblewski 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."
And 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 uh Jacek, uh
was that um Chris, the narrator, not only confesses to murdering uh 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. He 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? We'll be right back. To listen without ads, join Criminal
Plus. To 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 Jacek would acknowledge that the case was extraordinarily thin. I mean, all
they had at that point, well they had the cell phone. They knew that the that Christian Bala had somehow obtained
Darius's cell phone within a few days and sold it on a internet site. And that's kind of
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
people around the apartment are looking at Jacek like I think you've lost your mind. Like you're looking at a novel as
a road map for a crime. So Jacek 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. Jacek also didn't want word of the investigation to reach Christian.
Then 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. Jacek decided to look through the profile for Chris B on the internet
auction site that Christian had used to sell Darius's cell phone. And they looked and realized that very
shortly like a week before 10 days before Darius was murdered that Chris B, 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. They don't know if that book was ever found. But at least in Jacek's mind again, it's
suggestive to him. Why is Chris B looking at a police manual detective manual about criminal hangings 10 days
before a noose is found around Darius's neck. And then they learn that Christian is
going to return to Poland. That he's coming back to visit. And so they've decided they're going to
bring him in for questioning. Christian Bala returned to Poland about 2 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. Officers arrested Christian on September
5th, 2005, as he was coming out of a drugstore in a town near Wroclaw. 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." But 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.
Jacek 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 do you have any suspicion that that Christian was
in some ways threatened, tortured by Jacek 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's strains
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
of time by authorities and they found no evidence of it. And there's no evidence
ever in uh, Jacek's career of of doing anything like this. Um, but it is the one time where suddenly you have um,
Jacek saying this story, this story, this thing that Krystian Bala is saying this time is definitely a fiction. He is
making this story up. According to Jacek, he questioned Krystian in his office starting with
simple questions about his work and relationships. When Jacek brought up Dariusz
Janiszewski's murder, Krystian said he didn't know him. Uh, Jacek doesn't yet reveal the one
kind of trump card he has, which isn't that much, but he knows about the phone that that Krystian Bala had somehow sold
the murder victim's phone on uh, this internet auction site. And so he starts to ask him some questions and um,
Krystian about a muck, about his life and he and Krystian just kind of denies saying um, and then he asked him about
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
that phone. Now, it was a while back." I says many years before. And he said, "Well, then later he said, 'Well, maybe
I got it at a pawn shop.'" Um, and 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 uh, to a polygraph test. The
polygrapher thought that at certain points during the polygraph that uh, Krystian, who was a scuba diver, might
have been using certain breathing exercises. Um, it's hard to say. I mean, these polygraphs are notoriously
unreliable. And the results were inconclusive in any case Um, and in the end the case seems to be unraveling and
Christian is let 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. And 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 the 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 this
someone's being investigated for a novel they were wrote would say this is outrageous. And Yacik always says, "I
need corroborating evidence. The novel is a road map 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 Yacik 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.
They'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 realized the same caller had placed a lot of other calls. Who were those calls
to? They were to 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 uh Darius out. The next question though was
what is the What is the connection? The detectives 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 uh what ex-wife flirting with a bartender.
This was uh just a few weeks after Darius uh 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 uh she had seen Christian Bala's ex-wife
talking to somebody and it was none other than Darius Janiszewski. We'll be right back.
Jacek Wroblewski had been trying to get Christian Bala's ex-wife to agree to an interview.
So, she had been very resistant to be interviewed for a long time. And I don't know the reason why. You
know, perhaps it was I mean, I only know what Jacek, you know, wondered. You know,
could it be because she was afraid of Christian? Was it because she thought he was innocent? Was it because they had a
child together and she didn't want to incriminate him? But eventually, Jacek was to speak with her.
And she had never read the novel Amok. But then he shows her portions of the novel and these very, very sadistic
descriptions of a woman in the novel who very much mirrors her, the ex-wife. And
at that point, she's willing to talk. And she says for the first time that she had met Darius Janiszewski in a bar.
This was in the summer of 2000, the same year she and Christian separated. They had later gone on a date. They had
gone to a motel. She says they didn't have sex cuz she learned that he had been married. Um but they were
together and and they had gone on this date. He had left. Um they never went on a date again and that was it.
But that Christian had showed up not long after at her apartment or at her home, broke down the door, hit her,
screaming, says, "I know you had an affair. I know who with. I I know the hotel. I know the room."
Christian's ex-wife said he also mentioned that he had visited Darius's office and described it to me.
After this, Jacek decided he had enough evidence to charge Krystian Bala with murder.
And so, a Krystian Bala is indicted. Um it creates a sensation. He continues to claim that he is being persecuted for
a novel he wrote, that he compares himself to Salman Rushdie, that he is being crucified uh for his literature.
It was reported that at one point, before the trial, Krystian confessed to prosecutors that he had killed Darius.
But he immediately retracted the confession and had a, quote, fainting spell. The trial began on February 22nd, 2007.
On the first day, the courtroom was packed. One Polish newspaper wrote, "Killing doesn't make much of an
impression in the 21st century, but allegedly killing and then writing about it in a novel is front-page news."
What What did the prosecution argue that it was kind of cut It was a cut-and-dried case? Yeah, I mean they
put they presented it as um you know, if you take away the novel and you you know, this was a man, allegedly,
who out of a fit of rage kidnapped or abducted uh somebody who who had gone on a date with his ex-wife
and then and then murdered him in this very barbaric way. Krystian was found guilty of planning
and directing the murder. There wasn't enough evidence to prove that he'd committed the murder himself.
He was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He later appealed. He did get a new trial, but he was found
guilty in a second trial, as well. And he's still in jail to this day. In 2007, David Grann traveled to Poland
to meet Krystian. At a you know, really tough prison, kind of post-communist prison. There'd been a
a riot there. I mean, it was a you know, very harsh conditions. And I remember going into the
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
know, it was just very dismal place and I see someone kind of standing in the visitor's room wearing a a sweatshirt
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
the person had kind of been rubbing their hand through it. Very handsome, but they looked like a grad student. And
I realized I was looking at Christian Bala. David remembers Christian shook his hand. And as they walked to a table to
sit down, Christian said, "This whole thing is farce, like something out of Kafka."
While they were talking, Christian would occasionally point to David's notebook and say things like, "Put this down."
Or, "This is important." When we spoke about the novel, he was very excited when we talked about
different theories and truth. And even when he When I asked him about some of the very
specific evidence about the cell phone, where that, you know, why how did he get
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
call to the to the to the advertising firm. And he he on those points he was a bit evasive and kind of conspiratorial.
And I didn't feel like I ever got clear answers. But he maintained his innocence
and he kept saying, "I'm the author. I'm the author. I know what I meant. I know
what I meant." David says at one point during their conversation, Christian accidentally said me instead
of him when talking about the narrator, Chris. Do you think that there's any part of him that wrote the
book because he wanted someone to figure out the puzzle? Well, one of the questions that always kind of haunted
this case was you know, and for me as someone who's spent you know, many months researching it was you know, why
did you write why did you write the novel? And you know, had the novel not been written, I don't think Yacik ever
would have had his suspicions raised to the extent that he did. And it did give him to some extent
a road map. Um, you know, the the character in the novel is somebody who is dealing with guilt
and a guilty conscience. I mean, that is kind of one of the themes of the novel.
So was the author dealing with a guilty conscience? Was this his confession? After Christian was arrested, his book
started selling out in bookstores all over Poland. He thought and he still thinks well at
least when I met him, you know, that his novel while it was obscured at the time
would one day be recognized for the masterpiece it was. And then I'll never forget this. He at
one point he said to me, he said I'm working on a second book and he said but the investigators had
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
sure that the guards couldn't hear him and he said, it's going to be even more shocking.
David Grann is the author of The Wager and Killers of the Flower Moon. And his article about Christian Bala is
contained in his collection The Devil and Sherlock Holmes. Criminal is created by Lauren Spor and
me. Nidia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer.
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While investigating a murder, a Polish detective discovered an unusual clue – a novel that contained an odd number of similarities to the real-life crime.

David Grann is the author of The Wager and Killers of the Flower Moon, and his article about Krystian Bala is contained in his collection The Devil and Sherlock Holmes (https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-devil-and-sherlock-holmes-david-grann/9fa01286707b5028?ean=9780307275905&next=t).

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Episode 349 originally published January 23, 2026. https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-349-amok-1-23-2026

Music in this episode: “Dark Sky 224” by Blue Dot Sessions “Throughput” by Blue Dot Sessions “Corner at Mirabel” by Blue Dot Sessions “Cabin Porch 11” by Blue Dot Sessions “Darning in the Night” by Blue Dot Sessions “Campsite 9” by Blue Dot Sessions “Median Point” by Blue Dot Sessions “Blazing Filament” by Blue Dot Sessions “Dead Creek” by Blue Dot Sessions “Marble Chase” by Blue Dot Sessions “Veins of Silver” by Blue Dot Sessions

Brief Summary

David Grann discusses the murder of Darius Janiszewski and the novelist Christian Bala's chilling connection to the crime.

Key points

The Discovery of a Body. Fishermen in Poland discover a body with signs of murder and torture.
Detective Jacek's Investigation. Detective Jacek Roblewski takes on the cold case of Darius Janiszewski's murder.
Christian Bala's Novel. Detective Jacek reads Christian Bala's novel, uncovering disturbing similarities to the murder case.
Christian's Arrest. Christian Bala is arrested upon returning to Poland, claiming he was attacked.
Public Outcry. Christian's case garners public attention and human rights concerns.
Christian Bala's Arrest. Christian Bala is indicted for murder, claiming persecution for his novel.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It suggested almost an anger.

Describing the nature of the murder.

1:27WatchMay 22, 2026

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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