April 11, 2024 • 56 mins
It’s 1946, three years after King Boris III’s death and a heavy Iron Curtain has fallen over Bulgaria. What dark secrets does it conceal? Host Becky Milligan learns some disturbing facts about the Soviet secret services and why they couldn’t let sleeping kings lie. And we hear a haunting tale from the royal children as they meet their father again – three years after they buried him…
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Speaker 7 (02:13):
Goodbye.
Speaker 8 (02:32):
A crisp winter's night in the grounds of Varana Palace
mid nineteen fifties, two burly men in thick overcoats trudge
through the long grass. Their breath creates huge clouds of
vapor in the sharp cold air. Their flashlights pick out
(02:54):
a small stone building hidden among the trees. Vrana's a
wild place now. The beautiful tree lined avenues planted by
the king are straggly and overgrown, the flower beds choked
with weeds and garbage. The men take spades from the
(03:21):
tool shed and start to dig.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
There's a large stone slab set in the grass.
Speaker 8 (03:30):
They lever it up and with some difficulty, they haul
it to one side. The light from their flashlights flickers,
but you can just about make out the inscription chiseled
into the weathered stone. It reads King Boris the third.
(03:59):
This is the g of the last crowned King of Bulgaria,
A victim of poisoning. And these men, they're grave robbers.
They work for the new residents of Rana Palace, the
new rulers of Bulgaria, the communists under Russian Soviet control.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Grave robbers usually look for gold or jewels.
Speaker 8 (04:27):
Not these grave robbers, though, thereafter something much more precious,
the body. Why steal a corpse unless you're afraid it's
got something to hide? Did the Soviets fear they were
(04:50):
about to be exposed for the murder of King Boris
from Blanchard House? And exactly right, media, this is the
Butterfly King. I'm Becky Milligan h Chapter five, caught red handed.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Oh yes, what do you want? Do you want to? Well,
I don't we finally discover a nice biscuit. Yeah, yeah,
the eagle has landed. Here we are.
Speaker 9 (06:06):
I'll take one. You haven't been good.
Speaker 7 (06:07):
That's okay?
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Oh just all these type of poison.
Speaker 9 (06:11):
I'm afraid I need to take.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
My own biscuit.
Speaker 8 (06:15):
So we're back in Sofia, Bulgaria's capital, in my producer
EJ's hotel room, and we're taking stock of our day
over tea and biscuits. It's a British custom, of course,
though not necessarily one. The Bulgarians have mastered.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
These biscuits taste of air. It's like, oh sorry, it's
like flower, it's my carpet. Well, the tasting they are
a bit flowering, I'll give you that a bit. Oh
my god, they're just coating the inside of my mouth.
Speaker 8 (06:48):
As well as the biscuits. We're also trying to chew
over what we know about the case so far. You
can sort of cross countries off as you're going along.
You know, I was can vinced that it was Nazis
without a doubt, you know, on the plane with oxygen
mask all a bit of poison or you know, snake venom.
(07:08):
And as we've gone along, we've just crossed off each theory.
And then there's been another twist and another twist. But
now we have a fresh lead on who may have
killed the king thanks to a top secret decoded telegram
we unearthed in the archives. It points the finger of
blame fairly and squarely at Stalin's Soviet Union, the Communists
(07:33):
who occupied Bulgaria in nineteen forty four, a year after Boris'
death and promptly turned the country red.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
So I think it narrows it. Do you know where
the Communist embassy was?
Speaker 9 (07:48):
Russian?
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Don't tell me, next to the palace spot on.
Speaker 8 (07:57):
Yeah, so you could have dug a tunne under well,
you just popped in, Yeah, There'll be more twists, more
twists and turns to come. So was it the Soviets
who killed Boris? And if so, why to help us
investigate this case? We have the best witnesses you could
(08:19):
hope for King Boris's children, Her Royal Highness Maria Louisa
aged ninety, and his Majesty King Simeon, now eighty six.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
I mean, I.
Speaker 8 (08:32):
Don't say this lightly, but it does feel quite a
privilege to have actually sat down with them. They agreed
to do it, and to talk so candidly about how
the hell their father died age I mean, and was
he murdered? And you know, obviously they've been consumed with
it for years and years and years. Both of them
think it wasn't normal. He didn't die a natural death.
(08:52):
You can just tell their faces tell you that. And
they want to know what happened. And they're so with
I mean, more with it than I was actually. But anyway,
well not very much of another biscuit, but anyway, it's
all very intriguing. Okay, So let's talk about the Soviet
(09:17):
Union and the tyrannical Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Stalin dreamt
of spreading communism across eastern Europe, and of creating a
buffer of territory there to protect the motherland, the Soviet Union.
Little Bulgaria was right at that crossroads between East and
(09:39):
West Sandwich, between Romania and Greece, a vital foothold for
anyone trying to consolidate their power in the region. So
Stalin really wanted to control it. The only problem was
that there was a king in the way, a very popular.
Speaker 10 (09:58):
King Boris has been killed.
Speaker 8 (10:02):
Hang on, let's hear that again.
Speaker 10 (10:05):
That's why Boris has been killed.
Speaker 8 (10:08):
Okay, deep breath, before we unpick this bombshell, let me
remind you that's George bos Degaranoff, Bulgaria's leading historian. You
might remember. He's the academic who sometimes gets a little
frustrated with me when I can't keep up with the
minutii of Bulkan politics. But you heard him as well
(10:30):
as I did. He believes the Soviets needed King Boris
out of the way to fulfill an age old Russian
dream of empire expansion, and Boris was the annoying sort
of obstacle who was blocking the route.
Speaker 10 (10:46):
So ah, listen, listen to me a little bit.
Speaker 8 (10:52):
Sorry, I'll let mister Bosdagaranov tell you himself.
Speaker 10 (10:56):
King Boris the only one buffer the Stardi's ambitions to
take Bulgaria. That's very old Russian ambitis, from the time
of Cattering the Great in Russia to centuries before study.
Speaker 8 (11:13):
I need this spelled out clearly.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Who do you think murdered King Boris?
Speaker 10 (11:19):
My personal opinion is that the Russian special services killed
King Boris. Russian special Services, Starling's special services killed him.
Speaker 8 (11:31):
So, if we believe mister Bosdiganov, the power hungry Soviets
decided to get the king out of the way, and
guess what happens. A year after Boris Is murdered, on
the fifth of September nineteen forty four, the Soviet Union
declares war on Bulgaria. Five days later, Stalin's Red Army
(11:54):
rolls into Sofia. They meet with no resistance. Many Bulgarians
welcome the Soviets as liberators. Don't forget Nazi troops have
been stationed in Bulgaria because King Boris had made an
alliance with Hitler. The Soviets team up with communist dissidents
(12:16):
in Bulgaria. The new Red regime wastes no time in
securing power, and they sweep away their opponents ruthlessly. Thousands
are sentenced to death, not just those who'd supported the Nazis,
but basically anyone who didn't support them, like the royals,
(12:39):
the remaining royals.
Speaker 11 (12:40):
That is.
Speaker 8 (12:42):
Now, after Boris dies, little Simeon is on the throne.
But it goes without saying a child can't really run
a country. So there are three regents who rule for him.
One of the regents is Boris's prime minister, another is
a high ranking general in the Bulgarian army, and the
(13:05):
third is King Boris's brother, Prince Kirol.
Speaker 12 (13:10):
You get rid of him because he's going to be
a thorn in your side.
Speaker 8 (13:13):
Our historian Tessa Dunlop could see it coming because a
few months after occupying Bulgaria, the Communists rounded up the regents,
then took them to a bomb crater in Sophia Cemetery
and shot them all dead ruthless. And if the Soviets
(13:38):
could shoot a king's brother in cold blood, doesn't it
stand to reason that they could murder a king too.
But despite their successful power grab, something was making the
reds uneasy, or should I say some one, Because the
Soviets felt haunted by a ghost from the past, a
(14:01):
ghost who continued to make his presence felt from beyond
the grave. We're at the place where King Boris was buried.
After a memorial service in Sofia, the railway men carried
(14:21):
his coffin to the station. His body was then taken
by train here to the beautiful Realer Monastery high up
in the Bulgarian mountains. The sound of the single bell
is plain and modest, but the building is extraordinarily ornate.
(14:42):
It's shaped in a sort of polygon, with black and
white archways striped like candy, and inside it's just amazing,
don't you think.
Speaker 9 (14:51):
Oh but anyway, I mean.
Speaker 8 (14:52):
It's really difficult to convey just how remarkable it is,
how ornate. Every single bit of it is covered with frescoes,
which are sort of a dirty pink.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
And blue and fox blood. Yeah, beautiful.
Speaker 8 (15:11):
That noise you can hear is the monastery being cleaned
and polished. The huge gold chandelier gleams so brightly it
actually makes you squint. It's like looking into the sun.
Reala is a fitting resting place for a king, but
the Soviets didn't see it that way. They wanted to
(15:33):
erase Boris from the collective memory, because even after the
Soviet occupation, thousands of people still came to pray at
Boris's tomb as if it were a shrine. He was
a hero to so many Bulgarians, and that didn't please
the Communists. They wanted bulgarias regal past dead and buried
(15:56):
once and for all. Eighteen forty six, they exhumed King
Boris and told his widow, Queen Giovanna, to rebury him
somewhere else, somewhere private. Maria Louisa was thirteen years old
and sime and nine when their father's body was returned
(16:18):
again to Varana Palace. It was deeply traumatic.
Speaker 9 (16:24):
Hideous, hideous.
Speaker 13 (16:26):
It was Holy Thursday, and my mother was told still
bring him back tomorrow morning. So mother called some of
the gardeners, found a little spot and had a hold
dug in the garden, and a dawn ayvan arrived with
the coffin.
Speaker 8 (16:44):
The royal children remember shivering in the half light, partly
from the cold, but partly from sheer terror. They were
still living in Varana, but the Soviets had put them
under house arrest, cut off from the outside world.
Speaker 13 (17:01):
Obviously, Communists did things all us in the dark. That's
part of their system, you know, so that people don't
see it. So they brought the coffin, and the coffin was,
of course with a little glass window, and so wee
children saw our papa three years after he had died.
Speaker 9 (17:19):
You know, it wasn't easy.
Speaker 13 (17:23):
And then they buried him there, and Mamma then asked
a little chapel to be built on top of it.
Speaker 8 (17:32):
Of course, it would have been easy for Stalin to
order the assassination of the remaining royals. He'd done away
with Boris's brother, and quite possibly with Boris himself too,
But the Soviets knew how popular the royals were. Murdering
the royal children was just too risky, so they played
(17:53):
it softly, softly.
Speaker 12 (17:55):
When you're occupying force, you want to take the hearts
and minds with you too. An extent, there's got to
be a sort of air of respectability.
Speaker 8 (18:04):
Our historian Tessa Dunlop.
Speaker 12 (18:06):
I mean, how much oppositions you get from a six
year old I get quite a lot of opposition from
mine actually, But you know, in real political terms, Boris
was a big hero, so why would you butcher his son,
his little delicate piece of progeny. Why wouldn't you just
keep that politically emasculated as a fig leaf of respectability
(18:28):
to smooth over your accession to power or takeover of power,
which is what the Communists did.
Speaker 8 (18:36):
So once their takeover of power is secure, the Soviets
find a better way of getting rid of Simeon and
his mother and sister. They send them into exile in Egypt,
And as soon as the royal family move out of
Arana Pallas, communist leaders move in. It'll be fifty years
(18:56):
before Simeon and Maria Louisa see their home again. But
even with the royal family now thousands of miles away,
the Communists can't let their beef with royalty rest there.
In fact, they can't let Boris rest at all. Let's
(19:18):
knit back to Varana Palace for a second. The king's
charming age. Jarvl has something to show us, a crime scene.
But on the way, a little digression.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Are you getting chili? It is a bit chill my head?
Speaker 8 (19:38):
How far is the here?
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Oh?
Speaker 7 (19:42):
Perfect?
Speaker 8 (19:43):
Jarvar is taking us to a little clearing in the woodland,
and in the long grass there's a small collection of
flagstone graves. The resting place of some other short lived
members of the royal household four legged ones.
Speaker 12 (19:57):
He is born in May nineteen twenty three and die
in May nineteen twenty six.
Speaker 8 (20:08):
This is quite common, isn't it to have a dog
dog cemetery in royal palaces? Actually, I think the Queen
definitely did have one, and King Charles.
Speaker 12 (20:19):
This is also in Bulgarian, but this is in Latin,
right Booby Booby.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
I like the name Booby.
Speaker 8 (20:27):
The Communists clearly didn't have a problem with royal pets lovely,
so therefore here on two, three, five and the big one.
Speaker 14 (20:36):
The big one is interesting.
Speaker 5 (20:38):
It's not a dog, oh right, yeah, it's a horse
of King Boards, King.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Boris's horse, Oh how lovely?
Speaker 14 (20:47):
And King Signon have one cat, had one cat?
Speaker 7 (20:51):
It's Boobo.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
The tradition continues, Yes it does.
Speaker 8 (20:56):
Moving on from the pet cemetery, we arrive at the
crime scene. I mentioned King Boris's grave, and while all
the pets have headstones, there's nothing now at Varana to
mark the grave of King Boris. The third because the
graves empty.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Let's be real life happens, kids, bill pets.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
Shit and accidents are inevitable.
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Speaker 8 (24:08):
In the nineteen fifties, a few years after they'd ordered
the King's body to be reburied from the real monastery
to Vrana, the Communists did something extraordinary. They decided to
exhume the king again. Remember where we started this episode.
(24:30):
Sometime in the nineteen fifties, In the dead of night,
the Communists dug up Boris's body. They removed it from
its resting place in the gardens of Vrana Palace and
took it away where to is anyone's guests Now, By
the nineteen fifties, Stalin's Red Army had long since left Bulgaria.
(24:54):
They marched back home in nineteen forty seven, but the
new Communist leadership that was established in Sofia wasn't just
loyal to Moscow. It was basically a satellite of the
Soviet Union. When Stalin said, jump Bulgaria just asked how
high so did Stalin order the second exhumation because he
(25:17):
was afraid the Soviet Union might be found out for
the murder of the king? Was he trying to destroy
the evidence by stealing the king's corpse and disposing of it?
And remember that little chapel. Maria Louisa told us it
had been built over the grave to mark her father's tomb.
At first the Communist used it as a tool.
Speaker 9 (25:39):
Shed and then a little blown up.
Speaker 8 (25:46):
Over the years, Maria Luisa and Simeon have tried desperately
to find out what happened to their beloved father's remains.
Maria Luisa even managed to trace the Bulgarian soldiers who
dug up the grave.
Speaker 13 (26:00):
I was told that there were some soldiers that had
taken out the body from the tomb here in the garden.
And I definitely didn't ask to see these poor wretches
because they are not the ones.
Speaker 9 (26:14):
Who did it.
Speaker 13 (26:15):
You know, they were ordered, and God knows what could
have happened to their families if I ever confronted them.
Speaker 9 (26:23):
You know, don't forget that bulgeo.
Speaker 13 (26:26):
Until a few years there were still some of the
old people around, some of the old communists, you know,
and I would never have anybody disappear or get punished them.
Speaker 9 (26:38):
And it is a total mystery what they did with
my father's body.
Speaker 8 (26:42):
So, but the story didn't end there. Many years later
it took an even more sinister turn. In nineteen ninety one,
after the fall of Communism, a dirty glass jar was
found in a medical institute in Sofia. Inside it was
(27:03):
a human heart, preserved, a royal human heart.
Speaker 13 (27:09):
It survived because it was checked and it is Papa's heart.
Speaker 9 (27:12):
I mean, it is not doubt about it.
Speaker 13 (27:14):
So when it was found, of course some people had
to parade it heart of the king and might put
mother's saw it on the newspaper, which totally unnecessary.
Speaker 8 (27:25):
Why did the Soviets preserve the king's heart as a trophy,
a souvenir of their heenous crime. It's not altogether unknown
for a monarch to have his mortal remains divided. Louis
the fourteenth of France had his body buried in one
Parisian church, while his heart was interred at Notre Dame Cathedral.
(27:47):
But Queen Giovanna certainly didn't ask for this to happen
to her husband. King Boris so who removed his heart?
And why then hide that heart unless you fear it
contains proof of a poisonous secret. Now, when I began
this investigation, everyone I spoke to told me to listen
(28:10):
closely to Maria Louisa, because while King Simeon has to
toe the line of diplomacy, she can speak her mind
more freely about who she believes killed her father. So
I'm going to test that theory now and put Maria
Louisa on the spot. Do you have any gut feeling
(28:34):
of who it was?
Speaker 9 (28:36):
I think I can leave that to you by deduction.
Speaker 13 (28:39):
Who had the greatest advantage so gets rid of him.
Speaker 8 (28:45):
It's a nail biting moment. I desperately want Maria Louisa
to tell me who she thinks murdered her father. So
I say nothing and wait, and then in.
Speaker 13 (29:01):
My soul, I see the only people who had it
really an advantage of getting rid of him because they
were there. Yeah, lets the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
There we have it.
Speaker 8 (29:16):
Maria Luisa is convinced the Soviets killed her father, and
not only that, she's sure they spent the next fifty
years rewriting history and covering up the evidence.
Speaker 9 (29:30):
Don't forget that.
Speaker 13 (29:31):
When they occupied Us, they took the whole entire Bulgarian archives,
state archives, and they're still in Moscow.
Speaker 9 (29:39):
They were never returned.
Speaker 13 (29:40):
Bulgaria has asked for them, they never give back.
Speaker 8 (29:45):
Could the proof lie in Moscow in the archives of
the Russian Secret services the KGB.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Nobody can get to those because that could be quite interesting.
Speaker 9 (29:57):
Yes, can't rall anything.
Speaker 8 (30:05):
I think we've now established the Soviets had a very
clear motive for killing Boris. As for their means, well,
Russian assassins have long had a love affair with poison.
Speaker 14 (30:21):
They have no morals or scruples, They have no limits.
Speaker 8 (30:24):
Colonel Hamish de Breton Gordon is our chemical weapons expert.
He told us about the nerve agents that the Nazis
were developing in the war. But it turns out that
the Germans were novices compared to the Soviets.
Speaker 14 (30:38):
You know, most of the poisons that we're talking about.
The most knowledge we have about assassination is again coming
from the Russians, the Russian Secret Service.
Speaker 8 (30:48):
In the last few decades, there've been several high profile
poisoning cases involving the Russian secret Services. Russian dissidents have
been attacked with deadly nervys and chemical weapons like ricin,
polonium and novichok, and with chilling success. And unlike snake venom,
(31:12):
which has to be injected to kill someone, nerve agents
can work their way through the skin. Some are so
powerful you just need to brush against them to suffer
serious consequences, as the Russian opposition leader Alexi Navalni found
out in twenty twenty.
Speaker 14 (31:30):
With Navalni, there's a view actually that the nerve agent
was put in his patents, it's underpants, and that's how
it got into him.
Speaker 8 (31:42):
Now, King Boris was a canny politician. So despite Bulgaria
officially being an enemy of the Soviet Union, remember Bulgaria
was allied with Germany, Boris had managed to keep up
diplomatic relations with Stalin and that meant the Russian embassy
maid open throughout the war, right next door to the
(32:03):
Royal Palace. It wouldn't have been difficult for the Russians
to sneak in poison on a door handle, perhaps in food,
maybe even in documents or letters. And before you remind
me that nerve agents like novechok weren't invented until much
later believe me, their predecessors were equally terrifying. How do
(32:26):
we know that, Well, the Soviets might have hidden all
of Bulgaria's archives, but some of their own intelligence surfaced
in the nineteen nineties. Basically after the fall of communism,
top secret documents from Russia were very briefly declassified, and
in those papers the proof that by nineteen forty three,
(32:49):
the year of King Boris's death, two poison laboratories were
up and running in the Soviet Union. And guests who
saw those papers about the poison factories.
Speaker 10 (33:02):
I saw them in the nineties.
Speaker 8 (33:06):
Our very own favorite Bulgarian historian, George Bostergaranoff. And there's
something I haven't told you yet about George Bostergaranoff, something
that will make you really pay attention to what he's
saying here, because apart from being an eminent historian, mister
Bosdegaranoff's also a doctor, a medical doctor.
Speaker 10 (33:29):
That is, from ninety thirty eight to nineteen fifty three,
the Anchovied that's Ursian Special Service, maintained two laboratories for
the production of deadly poisonous toxicological one and bacteriological one.
Speaker 8 (33:46):
And these laboratories had a specific brief not just to
silence Stalin's enemies, but.
Speaker 10 (33:54):
To do it without leaving any traces.
Speaker 8 (33:58):
In other words, to get away with it, and to
make sure they did. The Soviets practiced on real people,
on prisoners, and this is where it all starts to
sound like some sort of gruesome parlor game. Once the
prisoner died, external pathologists were brought in to play guests
(34:21):
the cause of death.
Speaker 10 (34:23):
Two hundred to fifty people were cute during these experiments.
The corps of the persons cute are taken to the
marks of medical institutes or unsuspecting doctors perform autopsy.
Speaker 8 (34:37):
So you're telling me that they were developing poisons, toxins
that could be used to kill people, and they tested
them on prisoners mostly didn't they And yet no doctor
could ever tell that poison had been used.
Speaker 10 (34:55):
The diagnosis is usually unequivocal acute heart heart.
Speaker 8 (35:01):
Attack, acute heart failure, heart attack precisely the official cause
of death given for King Boris, the third of Bulgaria.
So is that how the Soviets got away with murder?
(35:23):
Bulgaria's national archives never resurfaced, but we know the Communists
did mysteriously unearth Boris's heart preserved in a jar from
that medical institute in Sofia, and when the royal family
was made aware that Boris's heart had been found, they
asked for it to be reburied again at the realer monastery,
(35:45):
where it remains today. So will you show us where
the remains of King Boris.
Speaker 17 (35:53):
On the right side. What we see here is the
grave of King Boris, a toute that's gone inside.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
This is amazing because we've heard so much about it
every mad just amazing. And to be let into the
private bit.
Speaker 8 (36:08):
This is where where his son Simeon comes to pay
his respects every year. Listen to Michael, the official tour
guide at RelA, talk about the king, and you really
get why the Soviets needed Boris out of the way.
Speaker 17 (36:24):
King Boys thirty is the most prominent, respected and loved
Bulgarian ruler from the modern Bulgarian history. He was famous
for his deep concern for the life of the common people,
his great care towards the poor and the Sikh.
Speaker 8 (36:43):
The Soviets could never have marched in and occupied Bulgaria
if the adored king had still been on the throne.
The Bulgarian people just wouldn't have stood for it.
Speaker 17 (36:53):
People still venerated King Boris as a saint, did they
as a saint as they venerated him with great love.
Speaker 8 (37:00):
As for the communists sacrilegious treatment to the King's body
after his death, well they nearly didn't get away with it.
Remember the first time, the Communists decided to dig up
the king at Reela and to dump him at Rana.
When the habbit of Reela got wind of the plan,
he refused the grave digger's access. He reminded them that
(37:22):
Reela was a holy place. But the Communists had no
truck with either monarchs or monks. Plus, they had a
visit from a Soviet big wig pending, and they couldn't
have fought for that Soviet big wig to think. The
Bulgarians were still pining for their royals, So that night
they came with their spades.
Speaker 17 (37:43):
The monks were locked inside their rooms and they were
warrant that if anyone goes out, they would be killed immediately.
Speaker 8 (37:52):
Yes, the Communists knew how to get their own way,
and they knew that dead or alive, Boris still pos
threat to their regime, so they did what our historian
Tessa Dunlop says, is standard Communist practice. There raised him
from history after.
Speaker 12 (38:11):
The Iron Curtain comes down, and even before you want
to eradicate the memory of the individual monarch who gives
the nation something nostalgic, romantic and a world or a
vision other than the Communist vision. And it's one of
the reasons why we haven't heard of some of these
great personalities like Ferdinand, like Boris of Bulgaria, because the
(38:33):
Communist did a really good job of burying their legacy,
their history.
Speaker 8 (38:39):
So we know the Soviet specialty was rewriting history, but
they could hardly write a new national story with an
old protagonist in the starring role. So they needed to
write King Boris clean out of the script, and once
he was bumped off, they were free to write a
brand new chapter of their own, one in which the
(39:00):
Communists were the heroes.
Speaker 5 (39:08):
Servative is This is on a gradty Detective.
Speaker 8 (39:11):
Anna Blagova and Gianna Punkiner host a Bulgarian podcast called
The Urban Detective. Their show explores all kinds of different
cultural and social topics, but they've never dared tackle the
death of King Boris because despite the fact they're highly educated,
(39:32):
Anna admits their own history is a bit of a
mystery to them. Under the Communists, any debate about Bulgaria's
past was completely squashed.
Speaker 5 (39:44):
One of the reasons I guess we don't know much
about it is that Bulgarian history is still very contested.
It was very contested when we were in school, and
to be honest, I only studied twentieth century Bulgarian history
in sixth grade, so this period he's kind of I
feel faded from memory.
Speaker 8 (40:04):
Both women were born around the time the Communist regime
collapsed in Bulgaria. That's almost fifty years after King Boris's death.
But Anna says there's still a huge divide in her
country between those who are royalists and those who are
Communist sympathizers.
Speaker 5 (40:23):
We're very polarized, and there is a clash between those
two kinds of nostalgia, which is preventing any sort of
normal discussion and truth to come out.
Speaker 8 (40:35):
In fact, Yanna wonders if the truth about who killed
King Boris maybe needs to stay buried because it's still
such a poisonous subject.
Speaker 18 (40:45):
I don't know if it would be good to know,
even maybe it would have a bad effect on people.
Speaker 8 (40:51):
It's just interesting when you say it might be bad
for people to know the truth, why would it be bad?
Speaker 1 (40:59):
Because I think that there is this thing about Bulgaria.
Speaker 18 (41:01):
You know that Bulgaria is such a small country that
everything that could be a political question is not really
political questions.
Speaker 9 (41:08):
Of family question.
Speaker 18 (41:09):
Like everybody is everybody's relative. Everybody knows someone who knows
someone who knows someone, or who has seen something, and
every political change or turbulence or argument in the country
is somehow happening inside the families. It's very different from
a like a big country with the century long history
(41:32):
of democracy, because here everybody is related.
Speaker 8 (41:37):
Both Anna and Yanna have seen fierce clashes within their
own families over the interpretation of Bulgarian history. There are
two conflicting narratives, those who believe the Soviets murdered the
king so they could invade and occupy Bulgaria, and those
who believe the Communists heroically liberated their country from fascism
(41:59):
from Boris's alliance with Hitler.
Speaker 3 (42:01):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (42:02):
Where to stand on this, and now it's very hard
to come to an independent conclusion by yourself.
Speaker 18 (42:09):
We're still learning what was going on during the Communist regime. Yeah,
we don't know everything.
Speaker 8 (42:17):
Anna Anyana both feel uncomfortable about this disputed history, particularly
because through Bulgaria's past alliance with Nazi Germany, they feel
their country was implicated in the deportation of those eleven
thousand Jews from Thrace and Macedonia.
Speaker 5 (42:39):
I feel some sort of guilt as a descendant, some
sort of generational guilt. And even though, of course Bulgarian
civil society, in one of its greatest acts, managed to
prevent the Jewish people on the territory of Bulgaria from
being sent off to a concentration camps, the ones from
(43:02):
our presumed old territories were deported. So I think it's
impossible not to feel this sort of guilt. So it
doesn't make me feel angry, it makes me feel sad.
Speaker 18 (43:15):
Of course, I don't think that I feel guilt. I
definitely feel shamed, because, yeah, we were on the wrong
side of history. King Boris was probably he was also
against deportation. But I think King Boris was probably in
an extremely delicate position during the Second World War, and
I think he was working on a very thin tightrope.
Speaker 8 (43:40):
And someone couldn't wait for Boris to fall off that tightrope,
so someone gave him a shove. I want you to
hear just one more bit of evidence about the Soviets
and their deep seated hatred of royalty.
Speaker 19 (43:58):
I will tell you something which maybe haven't mentioned.
Speaker 8 (44:02):
But listen closely, because Simeon rarely bears his soul, and
this story tells us a lot about the callousness of
the Soviets, about what they were capable of and what
they were prepared to do to make sure history went
their way. You'll remember that just a few months after
the Red Army marched into Sofia, Boris's brother, Prince Kirol,
(44:26):
and the other regents were rounded up to be executed.
Queen Giovanna was distraught, and she was terrified for her
children's safety. What if they were next? So she wrote
a letter, a begging letter, pleading for help. It was
smuggled out of the palace and addressed to King Boris's
(44:47):
English cousins, to the Windsors, to King George the sixth
of Great Britain, and she.
Speaker 19 (44:54):
Wrote them would say a desperate letter to his Majesty
to say if something could be done, And there was
never an answer or anything like it.
Speaker 8 (45:06):
Whole Queen Giovanna went to her grave believing King Boris's
British family had turned their backs on their Bulgarian relatives,
but Simeon felt sure something was amiss. So one day
in the nineteen eighties, he was hanging out with Queen
Elizabeth I and Princess Margaret at Balmoral, the royal estate
(45:28):
in Scotland, as one does, and perhaps emboldened by some
good Scotch whiskey. Okay, admittedly that's just how I imagine
the scene, he dared to ask them the question, why
did your father ignore our plea for help?
Speaker 19 (45:49):
I was also looking if that letter had ever arrived.
It didn't. They had never received it, so it was
intercepted from here where my mother gave it to somebody,
who gave it to somebody else who should have passed
it on, although we were already occupy the Soviets.
Speaker 8 (46:09):
Exactly, Bulgaria was already occupied by the Soviets, who certainly
didn't want the royal family a family they were intent
on wiping out being aided in any way at all.
So if we suspect it was the Soviets who intercepted
that letter, can we also now conclude that it was
also very probably the Soviets who murdered King Boris. They
(46:33):
had their motive, they had the means, and they had
the opportunity.
Speaker 12 (46:39):
I'm not saying it wasn't possible. I'm not saying it
didn't happen.
Speaker 8 (46:43):
But that's the one problem with historian Tessa Dunlop, there's
always a butt sure.
Speaker 12 (46:49):
I am not refuting the capacity of the Soviet Union
to murder most foul. They had many ingenious ways of
bopping people off and would go on hone those faculties
for many decades to come. Nor am I denying that
Boris wasn't a potential target. I just think that it's unlikely.
Speaker 8 (47:13):
But even Maria Luisa has stuck her neck out to
blame the Soviets.
Speaker 12 (47:18):
That's certainly what the family would want you to think
that the royal family, because they lost their entire livelihood
and their country to the Communists who took away Simian's kingdom,
who rubbed out the royal family in Bulgaria was the Russians.
Wasn't it so convenient in terms of that narrative if
you're a monarchist and Bulgaria to blame the Russians?
Speaker 8 (47:37):
Well, okay, yes, I can see that. Obviously, Simeon and
Maria Luisa are going to be resentful of the Soviets.
They did abolish the monarchy after all, and went on
to steal all their palaces. But what about the Soviet
embassy in Sofia? Now, for me, the proximity of that
(47:58):
embassy to the royal provided the Soviets with the perfect
opportunity to kill the king. Why but not for Tessa?
Speaker 12 (48:10):
Sure that the Soviets had much better intelligence going on
in Bulgaria. It's laughters laugh, But Bulgaria hadn't declared war
on the Soviets. They've never put boots on the ground
in Russia. And given that he's revered in Bulgaria, he
has the hearts and minds of the people.
Speaker 3 (48:29):
Why would you pick him of all.
Speaker 12 (48:30):
People to poison to practice your poisoning on? Why?
Speaker 8 (48:36):
I suppose Tessa has a point there?
Speaker 14 (48:39):
I mean.
Speaker 8 (48:39):
King Boris repeatedly refused Hitler's demands to send Bulgarian troops
to fight the Russians on the Eastern Front. He also
deliberately left Russia out of his symbolic declaration of war
against the Allies.
Speaker 12 (48:54):
This is a man who held the door open he
said himself, My people are Prousian. I am pro Bulgaria.
Speaker 8 (49:03):
But this still doesn't quite add up for me. I'm
afraid because the fact is we know King Boris hated Communism.
He feared correctly as it turned out that Bulgaria would
be swallowed up by the Soviet Union. And we also
know that loathing was mutual.
Speaker 12 (49:25):
The Communists had beef with the king, certainly they're not
easy bedfellows. But if he was murdered at the command
of a communist, then it would have been done by
I think a Bulgarian communist, someone with the nohow, with
the war with all and with the contacts. Sorry, but
we never looked for the most obvious.
Speaker 8 (49:46):
Right, let's just unpick that for a second. So Tessa
is not saying I'm wrong to blame Communist assassins for
the King's murder. She's just saying I should perhaps focus
on home growth communists assassins rather than the Soviets themselves
on Bulgarian communists.
Speaker 12 (50:07):
I'm not saying that any of these individual parties weren't
capable of it. And this was the Second World War.
It was the biggest period of mass murder known to humankind. Ever,
I'm just saying, don't rule out the Communist on the ground.
Speaker 5 (50:20):
Now.
Speaker 8 (50:20):
That's interesting because I happen to know that the Bulgarian
Communist Party had a really rocky relationship with the king.
In fact, Boris banned the Communist Party altogether in the
nineteen thirties, so the Bulgarian Communists had a major grudge
against him. Does this mean the killer was one of
(50:43):
the King's own subjects. It's certainly a theory that chimes
with podcaster Janna Punkinner, even if it is rather difficult
to admit out loud. Could have been a Bulgarians, an
inside job because we don't like each other very much.
Speaker 9 (51:04):
I don't think that our.
Speaker 18 (51:07):
Political life is so civilized as to you know, spare prison.
Speaker 8 (51:15):
Well, here's the thing, political life during Boris's reign was
anything but civilized. Whoever hated the king certainly got him
in the end. But the fatal poisoning wasn't a one
off attempt. Boris was a marked man from the minute
he took the throne. The king had already dodged several
(51:38):
serious assassination attempts, and all of them on his own soil.
Was the murder of the Bulgarian King an inside job.
Speaker 1 (51:54):
Coming up.
Speaker 8 (51:55):
In The Butterfly King, the stress of war catches up
with Boris.
Speaker 19 (52:00):
He had a suicidal thoughts because of the dramatic meeting
with Hitler with no issue.
Speaker 8 (52:07):
Way out, and we learn how the leader of a
Christian sect prophesied the king's impending death. If King Boris
had followed the advice, if he just listened to the
person you call the master, he would have survived.
Speaker 1 (52:29):
Probably he wouldn't have been killed.
Speaker 7 (52:32):
I say maybe I think this.
Speaker 8 (52:51):
The Butterfly King is a production of Blanchard House and
Exactly Right Media, hosted by me Becky Milligan. It's written
and produced by Emma Jane Kirby. Original music is by
Daniel Lloyd Evans, Louis nank Manell, and Toby Mattamong. Sound
(53:11):
design and engineering by Toby Mattamong and Daniel Lloyd Evans.
Artwork by Vanessa Lilac. The managing producer is Amka Schortino Nolan.
The creative director of Blanchard House is Rosie Pye. The
executive producer and head of content at Blanchard House is
(53:32):
Lawrence Grisell. For Exactly Right Media, the executive producers are
Karen Kilgarreth, Georgia Hardstark, and Daniel Kramer, with consulting producer
Kyle Ryan. The Butterfly King is inspired by the book
Hitler and the King by John Paul Spencer.
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Speaker 7 (02:13):
Goodbye.
Speaker 8 (02:32):
A crisp winter's night in the grounds of Varana Palace
mid nineteen fifties, two burly men in thick overcoats trudge
through the long grass. Their breath creates huge clouds of
vapor in the sharp cold air. Their flashlights pick out
(02:54):
a small stone building hidden among the trees. Vrana's a
wild place now. The beautiful tree lined avenues planted by
the king are straggly and overgrown, the flower beds choked
with weeds and garbage. The men take spades from the
(03:21):
tool shed and start to dig.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
There's a large stone slab set in the grass.
Speaker 8 (03:30):
They lever it up and with some difficulty, they haul
it to one side. The light from their flashlights flickers,
but you can just about make out the inscription chiseled
into the weathered stone. It reads King Boris the third.
(03:59):
This is the g of the last crowned King of Bulgaria,
A victim of poisoning. And these men, they're grave robbers.
They work for the new residents of Rana Palace, the
new rulers of Bulgaria, the communists under Russian Soviet control.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Grave robbers usually look for gold or jewels.
Speaker 8 (04:27):
Not these grave robbers, though, thereafter something much more precious,
the body. Why steal a corpse unless you're afraid it's
got something to hide? Did the Soviets fear they were
(04:50):
about to be exposed for the murder of King Boris
from Blanchard House? And exactly right, media, this is the
Butterfly King. I'm Becky Milligan h Chapter five, caught red handed.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Oh yes, what do you want? Do you want to? Well,
I don't we finally discover a nice biscuit. Yeah, yeah,
the eagle has landed. Here we are.
Speaker 9 (06:06):
I'll take one. You haven't been good.
Speaker 7 (06:07):
That's okay?
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Oh just all these type of poison.
Speaker 9 (06:11):
I'm afraid I need to take.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
My own biscuit.
Speaker 8 (06:15):
So we're back in Sofia, Bulgaria's capital, in my producer
EJ's hotel room, and we're taking stock of our day
over tea and biscuits. It's a British custom, of course,
though not necessarily one. The Bulgarians have mastered.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
These biscuits taste of air. It's like, oh sorry, it's
like flower, it's my carpet. Well, the tasting they are
a bit flowering, I'll give you that a bit. Oh
my god, they're just coating the inside of my mouth.
Speaker 8 (06:48):
As well as the biscuits. We're also trying to chew
over what we know about the case so far. You
can sort of cross countries off as you're going along.
You know, I was can vinced that it was Nazis
without a doubt, you know, on the plane with oxygen
mask all a bit of poison or you know, snake venom.
(07:08):
And as we've gone along, we've just crossed off each theory.
And then there's been another twist and another twist. But
now we have a fresh lead on who may have
killed the king thanks to a top secret decoded telegram
we unearthed in the archives. It points the finger of
blame fairly and squarely at Stalin's Soviet Union, the Communists
(07:33):
who occupied Bulgaria in nineteen forty four, a year after Boris'
death and promptly turned the country red.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
So I think it narrows it. Do you know where
the Communist embassy was?
Speaker 9 (07:48):
Russian?
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Don't tell me, next to the palace spot on.
Speaker 8 (07:57):
Yeah, so you could have dug a tunne under well,
you just popped in, Yeah, There'll be more twists, more
twists and turns to come. So was it the Soviets
who killed Boris? And if so, why to help us
investigate this case? We have the best witnesses you could
(08:19):
hope for King Boris's children, Her Royal Highness Maria Louisa
aged ninety, and his Majesty King Simeon, now eighty six.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
I mean, I.
Speaker 8 (08:32):
Don't say this lightly, but it does feel quite a
privilege to have actually sat down with them. They agreed
to do it, and to talk so candidly about how
the hell their father died age I mean, and was
he murdered? And you know, obviously they've been consumed with
it for years and years and years. Both of them
think it wasn't normal. He didn't die a natural death.
(08:52):
You can just tell their faces tell you that. And
they want to know what happened. And they're so with
I mean, more with it than I was actually. But anyway,
well not very much of another biscuit, but anyway, it's
all very intriguing. Okay, So let's talk about the Soviet
(09:17):
Union and the tyrannical Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Stalin dreamt
of spreading communism across eastern Europe, and of creating a
buffer of territory there to protect the motherland, the Soviet Union.
Little Bulgaria was right at that crossroads between East and
(09:39):
West Sandwich, between Romania and Greece, a vital foothold for
anyone trying to consolidate their power in the region. So
Stalin really wanted to control it. The only problem was
that there was a king in the way, a very popular.
Speaker 10 (09:58):
King Boris has been killed.
Speaker 8 (10:02):
Hang on, let's hear that again.
Speaker 10 (10:05):
That's why Boris has been killed.
Speaker 8 (10:08):
Okay, deep breath, before we unpick this bombshell, let me
remind you that's George bos Degaranoff, Bulgaria's leading historian. You
might remember. He's the academic who sometimes gets a little
frustrated with me when I can't keep up with the
minutii of Bulkan politics. But you heard him as well
(10:30):
as I did. He believes the Soviets needed King Boris
out of the way to fulfill an age old Russian
dream of empire expansion, and Boris was the annoying sort
of obstacle who was blocking the route.
Speaker 10 (10:46):
So ah, listen, listen to me a little bit.
Speaker 8 (10:52):
Sorry, I'll let mister Bosdagaranov tell you himself.
Speaker 10 (10:56):
King Boris the only one buffer the Stardi's ambitions to
take Bulgaria. That's very old Russian ambitis, from the time
of Cattering the Great in Russia to centuries before study.
Speaker 8 (11:13):
I need this spelled out clearly.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Who do you think murdered King Boris?
Speaker 10 (11:19):
My personal opinion is that the Russian special services killed
King Boris. Russian special Services, Starling's special services killed him.
Speaker 8 (11:31):
So, if we believe mister Bosdiganov, the power hungry Soviets
decided to get the king out of the way, and
guess what happens. A year after Boris Is murdered, on
the fifth of September nineteen forty four, the Soviet Union
declares war on Bulgaria. Five days later, Stalin's Red Army
(11:54):
rolls into Sofia. They meet with no resistance. Many Bulgarians
welcome the Soviets as liberators. Don't forget Nazi troops have
been stationed in Bulgaria because King Boris had made an
alliance with Hitler. The Soviets team up with communist dissidents
(12:16):
in Bulgaria. The new Red regime wastes no time in
securing power, and they sweep away their opponents ruthlessly. Thousands
are sentenced to death, not just those who'd supported the Nazis,
but basically anyone who didn't support them, like the royals,
(12:39):
the remaining royals.
Speaker 11 (12:40):
That is.
Speaker 8 (12:42):
Now, after Boris dies, little Simeon is on the throne.
But it goes without saying a child can't really run
a country. So there are three regents who rule for him.
One of the regents is Boris's prime minister, another is
a high ranking general in the Bulgarian army, and the
(13:05):
third is King Boris's brother, Prince Kirol.
Speaker 12 (13:10):
You get rid of him because he's going to be
a thorn in your side.
Speaker 8 (13:13):
Our historian Tessa Dunlop could see it coming because a
few months after occupying Bulgaria, the Communists rounded up the regents,
then took them to a bomb crater in Sophia Cemetery
and shot them all dead ruthless. And if the Soviets
(13:38):
could shoot a king's brother in cold blood, doesn't it
stand to reason that they could murder a king too.
But despite their successful power grab, something was making the
reds uneasy, or should I say some one, Because the
Soviets felt haunted by a ghost from the past, a
(14:01):
ghost who continued to make his presence felt from beyond
the grave. We're at the place where King Boris was buried.
After a memorial service in Sofia, the railway men carried
(14:21):
his coffin to the station. His body was then taken
by train here to the beautiful Realer Monastery high up
in the Bulgarian mountains. The sound of the single bell
is plain and modest, but the building is extraordinarily ornate.
(14:42):
It's shaped in a sort of polygon, with black and
white archways striped like candy, and inside it's just amazing,
don't you think.
Speaker 9 (14:51):
Oh but anyway, I mean.
Speaker 8 (14:52):
It's really difficult to convey just how remarkable it is,
how ornate. Every single bit of it is covered with frescoes,
which are sort of a dirty pink.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
And blue and fox blood. Yeah, beautiful.
Speaker 8 (15:11):
That noise you can hear is the monastery being cleaned
and polished. The huge gold chandelier gleams so brightly it
actually makes you squint. It's like looking into the sun.
Reala is a fitting resting place for a king, but
the Soviets didn't see it that way. They wanted to
(15:33):
erase Boris from the collective memory, because even after the
Soviet occupation, thousands of people still came to pray at
Boris's tomb as if it were a shrine. He was
a hero to so many Bulgarians, and that didn't please
the Communists. They wanted bulgarias regal past dead and buried
(15:56):
once and for all. Eighteen forty six, they exhumed King
Boris and told his widow, Queen Giovanna, to rebury him
somewhere else, somewhere private. Maria Louisa was thirteen years old
and sime and nine when their father's body was returned
(16:18):
again to Varana Palace. It was deeply traumatic.
Speaker 9 (16:24):
Hideous, hideous.
Speaker 13 (16:26):
It was Holy Thursday, and my mother was told still
bring him back tomorrow morning. So mother called some of
the gardeners, found a little spot and had a hold
dug in the garden, and a dawn ayvan arrived with
the coffin.
Speaker 8 (16:44):
The royal children remember shivering in the half light, partly
from the cold, but partly from sheer terror. They were
still living in Varana, but the Soviets had put them
under house arrest, cut off from the outside world.
Speaker 13 (17:01):
Obviously, Communists did things all us in the dark. That's
part of their system, you know, so that people don't
see it. So they brought the coffin, and the coffin was,
of course with a little glass window, and so wee
children saw our papa three years after he had died.
Speaker 9 (17:19):
You know, it wasn't easy.
Speaker 13 (17:23):
And then they buried him there, and Mamma then asked
a little chapel to be built on top of it.
Speaker 8 (17:32):
Of course, it would have been easy for Stalin to
order the assassination of the remaining royals. He'd done away
with Boris's brother, and quite possibly with Boris himself too,
But the Soviets knew how popular the royals were. Murdering
the royal children was just too risky, so they played
(17:53):
it softly, softly.
Speaker 12 (17:55):
When you're occupying force, you want to take the hearts
and minds with you too. An extent, there's got to
be a sort of air of respectability.
Speaker 8 (18:04):
Our historian Tessa Dunlop.
Speaker 12 (18:06):
I mean, how much oppositions you get from a six
year old I get quite a lot of opposition from
mine actually, But you know, in real political terms, Boris
was a big hero, so why would you butcher his son,
his little delicate piece of progeny. Why wouldn't you just
keep that politically emasculated as a fig leaf of respectability
(18:28):
to smooth over your accession to power or takeover of power,
which is what the Communists did.
Speaker 8 (18:36):
So once their takeover of power is secure, the Soviets
find a better way of getting rid of Simeon and
his mother and sister. They send them into exile in Egypt,
And as soon as the royal family move out of
Arana Pallas, communist leaders move in. It'll be fifty years
(18:56):
before Simeon and Maria Louisa see their home again. But
even with the royal family now thousands of miles away,
the Communists can't let their beef with royalty rest there.
In fact, they can't let Boris rest at all. Let's
(19:18):
knit back to Varana Palace for a second. The king's
charming age. Jarvl has something to show us, a crime scene.
But on the way, a little digression.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Are you getting chili? It is a bit chill my head?
Speaker 8 (19:38):
How far is the here?
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Oh?
Speaker 7 (19:42):
Perfect?
Speaker 8 (19:43):
Jarvar is taking us to a little clearing in the woodland,
and in the long grass there's a small collection of
flagstone graves. The resting place of some other short lived
members of the royal household four legged ones.
Speaker 12 (19:57):
He is born in May nineteen twenty three and die
in May nineteen twenty six.
Speaker 8 (20:08):
This is quite common, isn't it to have a dog
dog cemetery in royal palaces? Actually, I think the Queen
definitely did have one, and King Charles.
Speaker 12 (20:19):
This is also in Bulgarian, but this is in Latin,
right Booby Booby.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
I like the name Booby.
Speaker 8 (20:27):
The Communists clearly didn't have a problem with royal pets lovely,
so therefore here on two, three, five and the big one.
Speaker 14 (20:36):
The big one is interesting.
Speaker 5 (20:38):
It's not a dog, oh right, yeah, it's a horse
of King Boards, King.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Boris's horse, Oh how lovely?
Speaker 14 (20:47):
And King Signon have one cat, had one cat?
Speaker 7 (20:51):
It's Boobo.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
The tradition continues, Yes it does.
Speaker 8 (20:56):
Moving on from the pet cemetery, we arrive at the
crime scene. I mentioned King Boris's grave, and while all
the pets have headstones, there's nothing now at Varana to
mark the grave of King Boris. The third because the
graves empty.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Let's be real life happens, kids, bill pets.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
Shit and accidents are inevitable.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
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Speaker 8 (24:08):
In the nineteen fifties, a few years after they'd ordered
the King's body to be reburied from the real monastery
to Vrana, the Communists did something extraordinary. They decided to
exhume the king again. Remember where we started this episode.
(24:30):
Sometime in the nineteen fifties, In the dead of night,
the Communists dug up Boris's body. They removed it from
its resting place in the gardens of Vrana Palace and
took it away where to is anyone's guests Now, By
the nineteen fifties, Stalin's Red Army had long since left Bulgaria.
(24:54):
They marched back home in nineteen forty seven, but the
new Communist leadership that was established in Sofia wasn't just
loyal to Moscow. It was basically a satellite of the
Soviet Union. When Stalin said, jump Bulgaria just asked how
high so did Stalin order the second exhumation because he
(25:17):
was afraid the Soviet Union might be found out for
the murder of the king? Was he trying to destroy
the evidence by stealing the king's corpse and disposing of it?
And remember that little chapel. Maria Louisa told us it
had been built over the grave to mark her father's tomb.
At first the Communist used it as a tool.
Speaker 9 (25:39):
Shed and then a little blown up.
Speaker 8 (25:46):
Over the years, Maria Luisa and Simeon have tried desperately
to find out what happened to their beloved father's remains.
Maria Luisa even managed to trace the Bulgarian soldiers who
dug up the grave.
Speaker 13 (26:00):
I was told that there were some soldiers that had
taken out the body from the tomb here in the garden.
And I definitely didn't ask to see these poor wretches
because they are not the ones.
Speaker 9 (26:14):
Who did it.
Speaker 13 (26:15):
You know, they were ordered, and God knows what could
have happened to their families if I ever confronted them.
Speaker 9 (26:23):
You know, don't forget that bulgeo.
Speaker 13 (26:26):
Until a few years there were still some of the
old people around, some of the old communists, you know,
and I would never have anybody disappear or get punished them.
Speaker 9 (26:38):
And it is a total mystery what they did with
my father's body.
Speaker 8 (26:42):
So, but the story didn't end there. Many years later
it took an even more sinister turn. In nineteen ninety one,
after the fall of Communism, a dirty glass jar was
found in a medical institute in Sofia. Inside it was
(27:03):
a human heart, preserved, a royal human heart.
Speaker 13 (27:09):
It survived because it was checked and it is Papa's heart.
Speaker 9 (27:12):
I mean, it is not doubt about it.
Speaker 13 (27:14):
So when it was found, of course some people had
to parade it heart of the king and might put
mother's saw it on the newspaper, which totally unnecessary.
Speaker 8 (27:25):
Why did the Soviets preserve the king's heart as a trophy,
a souvenir of their heenous crime. It's not altogether unknown
for a monarch to have his mortal remains divided. Louis
the fourteenth of France had his body buried in one
Parisian church, while his heart was interred at Notre Dame Cathedral.
(27:47):
But Queen Giovanna certainly didn't ask for this to happen
to her husband. King Boris so who removed his heart?
And why then hide that heart unless you fear it
contains proof of a poisonous secret. Now, when I began
this investigation, everyone I spoke to told me to listen
(28:10):
closely to Maria Louisa, because while King Simeon has to
toe the line of diplomacy, she can speak her mind
more freely about who she believes killed her father. So
I'm going to test that theory now and put Maria
Louisa on the spot. Do you have any gut feeling
(28:34):
of who it was?
Speaker 9 (28:36):
I think I can leave that to you by deduction.
Speaker 13 (28:39):
Who had the greatest advantage so gets rid of him.
Speaker 8 (28:45):
It's a nail biting moment. I desperately want Maria Louisa
to tell me who she thinks murdered her father. So
I say nothing and wait, and then in.
Speaker 13 (29:01):
My soul, I see the only people who had it
really an advantage of getting rid of him because they
were there. Yeah, lets the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
There we have it.
Speaker 8 (29:16):
Maria Luisa is convinced the Soviets killed her father, and
not only that, she's sure they spent the next fifty
years rewriting history and covering up the evidence.
Speaker 9 (29:30):
Don't forget that.
Speaker 13 (29:31):
When they occupied Us, they took the whole entire Bulgarian archives,
state archives, and they're still in Moscow.
Speaker 9 (29:39):
They were never returned.
Speaker 13 (29:40):
Bulgaria has asked for them, they never give back.
Speaker 8 (29:45):
Could the proof lie in Moscow in the archives of
the Russian Secret services the KGB.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Nobody can get to those because that could be quite interesting.
Speaker 9 (29:57):
Yes, can't rall anything.
Speaker 8 (30:05):
I think we've now established the Soviets had a very
clear motive for killing Boris. As for their means, well,
Russian assassins have long had a love affair with poison.
Speaker 14 (30:21):
They have no morals or scruples, They have no limits.
Speaker 8 (30:24):
Colonel Hamish de Breton Gordon is our chemical weapons expert.
He told us about the nerve agents that the Nazis
were developing in the war. But it turns out that
the Germans were novices compared to the Soviets.
Speaker 14 (30:38):
You know, most of the poisons that we're talking about.
The most knowledge we have about assassination is again coming
from the Russians, the Russian Secret Service.
Speaker 8 (30:48):
In the last few decades, there've been several high profile
poisoning cases involving the Russian secret Services. Russian dissidents have
been attacked with deadly nervys and chemical weapons like ricin,
polonium and novichok, and with chilling success. And unlike snake venom,
(31:12):
which has to be injected to kill someone, nerve agents
can work their way through the skin. Some are so
powerful you just need to brush against them to suffer
serious consequences, as the Russian opposition leader Alexi Navalni found
out in twenty twenty.
Speaker 14 (31:30):
With Navalni, there's a view actually that the nerve agent
was put in his patents, it's underpants, and that's how
it got into him.
Speaker 8 (31:42):
Now, King Boris was a canny politician. So despite Bulgaria
officially being an enemy of the Soviet Union, remember Bulgaria
was allied with Germany, Boris had managed to keep up
diplomatic relations with Stalin and that meant the Russian embassy
maid open throughout the war, right next door to the
(32:03):
Royal Palace. It wouldn't have been difficult for the Russians
to sneak in poison on a door handle, perhaps in food,
maybe even in documents or letters. And before you remind
me that nerve agents like novechok weren't invented until much
later believe me, their predecessors were equally terrifying. How do
(32:26):
we know that, Well, the Soviets might have hidden all
of Bulgaria's archives, but some of their own intelligence surfaced
in the nineteen nineties. Basically after the fall of communism,
top secret documents from Russia were very briefly declassified, and
in those papers the proof that by nineteen forty three,
(32:49):
the year of King Boris's death, two poison laboratories were
up and running in the Soviet Union. And guests who
saw those papers about the poison factories.
Speaker 10 (33:02):
I saw them in the nineties.
Speaker 8 (33:06):
Our very own favorite Bulgarian historian, George Bostergaranoff. And there's
something I haven't told you yet about George Bostergaranoff, something
that will make you really pay attention to what he's
saying here, because apart from being an eminent historian, mister
Bosdegaranoff's also a doctor, a medical doctor.
Speaker 10 (33:29):
That is, from ninety thirty eight to nineteen fifty three,
the Anchovied that's Ursian Special Service, maintained two laboratories for
the production of deadly poisonous toxicological one and bacteriological one.
Speaker 8 (33:46):
And these laboratories had a specific brief not just to
silence Stalin's enemies, but.
Speaker 10 (33:54):
To do it without leaving any traces.
Speaker 8 (33:58):
In other words, to get away with it, and to
make sure they did. The Soviets practiced on real people,
on prisoners, and this is where it all starts to
sound like some sort of gruesome parlor game. Once the
prisoner died, external pathologists were brought in to play guests
(34:21):
the cause of death.
Speaker 10 (34:23):
Two hundred to fifty people were cute during these experiments.
The corps of the persons cute are taken to the
marks of medical institutes or unsuspecting doctors perform autopsy.
Speaker 8 (34:37):
So you're telling me that they were developing poisons, toxins
that could be used to kill people, and they tested
them on prisoners mostly didn't they And yet no doctor
could ever tell that poison had been used.
Speaker 10 (34:55):
The diagnosis is usually unequivocal acute heart heart.
Speaker 8 (35:01):
Attack, acute heart failure, heart attack precisely the official cause
of death given for King Boris, the third of Bulgaria.
So is that how the Soviets got away with murder?
(35:23):
Bulgaria's national archives never resurfaced, but we know the Communists
did mysteriously unearth Boris's heart preserved in a jar from
that medical institute in Sofia, and when the royal family
was made aware that Boris's heart had been found, they
asked for it to be reburied again at the realer monastery,
(35:45):
where it remains today. So will you show us where
the remains of King Boris.
Speaker 17 (35:53):
On the right side. What we see here is the
grave of King Boris, a toute that's gone inside.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
This is amazing because we've heard so much about it
every mad just amazing. And to be let into the
private bit.
Speaker 8 (36:08):
This is where where his son Simeon comes to pay
his respects every year. Listen to Michael, the official tour
guide at RelA, talk about the king, and you really
get why the Soviets needed Boris out of the way.
Speaker 17 (36:24):
King Boys thirty is the most prominent, respected and loved
Bulgarian ruler from the modern Bulgarian history. He was famous
for his deep concern for the life of the common people,
his great care towards the poor and the Sikh.
Speaker 8 (36:43):
The Soviets could never have marched in and occupied Bulgaria
if the adored king had still been on the throne.
The Bulgarian people just wouldn't have stood for it.
Speaker 17 (36:53):
People still venerated King Boris as a saint, did they
as a saint as they venerated him with great love.
Speaker 8 (37:00):
As for the communists sacrilegious treatment to the King's body
after his death, well they nearly didn't get away with it.
Remember the first time, the Communists decided to dig up
the king at Reela and to dump him at Rana.
When the habbit of Reela got wind of the plan,
he refused the grave digger's access. He reminded them that
(37:22):
Reela was a holy place. But the Communists had no
truck with either monarchs or monks. Plus, they had a
visit from a Soviet big wig pending, and they couldn't
have fought for that Soviet big wig to think. The
Bulgarians were still pining for their royals, So that night
they came with their spades.
Speaker 17 (37:43):
The monks were locked inside their rooms and they were
warrant that if anyone goes out, they would be killed immediately.
Speaker 8 (37:52):
Yes, the Communists knew how to get their own way,
and they knew that dead or alive, Boris still pos
threat to their regime, so they did what our historian
Tessa Dunlop says, is standard Communist practice. There raised him
from history after.
Speaker 12 (38:11):
The Iron Curtain comes down, and even before you want
to eradicate the memory of the individual monarch who gives
the nation something nostalgic, romantic and a world or a
vision other than the Communist vision. And it's one of
the reasons why we haven't heard of some of these
great personalities like Ferdinand, like Boris of Bulgaria, because the
(38:33):
Communist did a really good job of burying their legacy,
their history.
Speaker 8 (38:39):
So we know the Soviet specialty was rewriting history, but
they could hardly write a new national story with an
old protagonist in the starring role. So they needed to
write King Boris clean out of the script, and once
he was bumped off, they were free to write a
brand new chapter of their own, one in which the
(39:00):
Communists were the heroes.
Speaker 5 (39:08):
Servative is This is on a gradty Detective.
Speaker 8 (39:11):
Anna Blagova and Gianna Punkiner host a Bulgarian podcast called
The Urban Detective. Their show explores all kinds of different
cultural and social topics, but they've never dared tackle the
death of King Boris because despite the fact they're highly educated,
(39:32):
Anna admits their own history is a bit of a
mystery to them. Under the Communists, any debate about Bulgaria's
past was completely squashed.
Speaker 5 (39:44):
One of the reasons I guess we don't know much
about it is that Bulgarian history is still very contested.
It was very contested when we were in school, and
to be honest, I only studied twentieth century Bulgarian history
in sixth grade, so this period he's kind of I
feel faded from memory.
Speaker 8 (40:04):
Both women were born around the time the Communist regime
collapsed in Bulgaria. That's almost fifty years after King Boris's death.
But Anna says there's still a huge divide in her
country between those who are royalists and those who are
Communist sympathizers.
Speaker 5 (40:23):
We're very polarized, and there is a clash between those
two kinds of nostalgia, which is preventing any sort of
normal discussion and truth to come out.
Speaker 8 (40:35):
In fact, Yanna wonders if the truth about who killed
King Boris maybe needs to stay buried because it's still
such a poisonous subject.
Speaker 18 (40:45):
I don't know if it would be good to know,
even maybe it would have a bad effect on people.
Speaker 8 (40:51):
It's just interesting when you say it might be bad
for people to know the truth, why would it be bad?
Speaker 1 (40:59):
Because I think that there is this thing about Bulgaria.
Speaker 18 (41:01):
You know that Bulgaria is such a small country that
everything that could be a political question is not really
political questions.
Speaker 9 (41:08):
Of family question.
Speaker 18 (41:09):
Like everybody is everybody's relative. Everybody knows someone who knows
someone who knows someone, or who has seen something, and
every political change or turbulence or argument in the country
is somehow happening inside the families. It's very different from
a like a big country with the century long history
(41:32):
of democracy, because here everybody is related.
Speaker 8 (41:37):
Both Anna and Yanna have seen fierce clashes within their
own families over the interpretation of Bulgarian history. There are
two conflicting narratives, those who believe the Soviets murdered the
king so they could invade and occupy Bulgaria, and those
who believe the Communists heroically liberated their country from fascism
(41:59):
from Boris's alliance with Hitler.
Speaker 3 (42:01):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (42:02):
Where to stand on this, and now it's very hard
to come to an independent conclusion by yourself.
Speaker 18 (42:09):
We're still learning what was going on during the Communist regime. Yeah,
we don't know everything.
Speaker 8 (42:17):
Anna Anyana both feel uncomfortable about this disputed history, particularly
because through Bulgaria's past alliance with Nazi Germany, they feel
their country was implicated in the deportation of those eleven
thousand Jews from Thrace and Macedonia.
Speaker 5 (42:39):
I feel some sort of guilt as a descendant, some
sort of generational guilt. And even though, of course Bulgarian
civil society, in one of its greatest acts, managed to
prevent the Jewish people on the territory of Bulgaria from
being sent off to a concentration camps, the ones from
(43:02):
our presumed old territories were deported. So I think it's
impossible not to feel this sort of guilt. So it
doesn't make me feel angry, it makes me feel sad.
Speaker 18 (43:15):
Of course, I don't think that I feel guilt. I
definitely feel shamed, because, yeah, we were on the wrong
side of history. King Boris was probably he was also
against deportation. But I think King Boris was probably in
an extremely delicate position during the Second World War, and
I think he was working on a very thin tightrope.
Speaker 8 (43:40):
And someone couldn't wait for Boris to fall off that tightrope,
so someone gave him a shove. I want you to
hear just one more bit of evidence about the Soviets
and their deep seated hatred of royalty.
Speaker 19 (43:58):
I will tell you something which maybe haven't mentioned.
Speaker 8 (44:02):
But listen closely, because Simeon rarely bears his soul, and
this story tells us a lot about the callousness of
the Soviets, about what they were capable of and what
they were prepared to do to make sure history went
their way. You'll remember that just a few months after
the Red Army marched into Sofia, Boris's brother, Prince Kirol,
(44:26):
and the other regents were rounded up to be executed.
Queen Giovanna was distraught, and she was terrified for her
children's safety. What if they were next? So she wrote
a letter, a begging letter, pleading for help. It was
smuggled out of the palace and addressed to King Boris's
(44:47):
English cousins, to the Windsors, to King George the sixth
of Great Britain, and she.
Speaker 19 (44:54):
Wrote them would say a desperate letter to his Majesty
to say if something could be done, And there was
never an answer or anything like it.
Speaker 8 (45:06):
Whole Queen Giovanna went to her grave believing King Boris's
British family had turned their backs on their Bulgarian relatives,
but Simeon felt sure something was amiss. So one day
in the nineteen eighties, he was hanging out with Queen
Elizabeth I and Princess Margaret at Balmoral, the royal estate
(45:28):
in Scotland, as one does, and perhaps emboldened by some
good Scotch whiskey. Okay, admittedly that's just how I imagine
the scene, he dared to ask them the question, why
did your father ignore our plea for help?
Speaker 19 (45:49):
I was also looking if that letter had ever arrived.
It didn't. They had never received it, so it was
intercepted from here where my mother gave it to somebody,
who gave it to somebody else who should have passed
it on, although we were already occupy the Soviets.
Speaker 8 (46:09):
Exactly, Bulgaria was already occupied by the Soviets, who certainly
didn't want the royal family a family they were intent
on wiping out being aided in any way at all.
So if we suspect it was the Soviets who intercepted
that letter, can we also now conclude that it was
also very probably the Soviets who murdered King Boris. They
(46:33):
had their motive, they had the means, and they had
the opportunity.
Speaker 12 (46:39):
I'm not saying it wasn't possible. I'm not saying it
didn't happen.
Speaker 8 (46:43):
But that's the one problem with historian Tessa Dunlop, there's
always a butt sure.
Speaker 12 (46:49):
I am not refuting the capacity of the Soviet Union
to murder most foul. They had many ingenious ways of
bopping people off and would go on hone those faculties
for many decades to come. Nor am I denying that
Boris wasn't a potential target. I just think that it's unlikely.
Speaker 8 (47:13):
But even Maria Luisa has stuck her neck out to
blame the Soviets.
Speaker 12 (47:18):
That's certainly what the family would want you to think
that the royal family, because they lost their entire livelihood
and their country to the Communists who took away Simian's kingdom,
who rubbed out the royal family in Bulgaria was the Russians.
Wasn't it so convenient in terms of that narrative if
you're a monarchist and Bulgaria to blame the Russians?
Speaker 8 (47:37):
Well, okay, yes, I can see that. Obviously, Simeon and
Maria Luisa are going to be resentful of the Soviets.
They did abolish the monarchy after all, and went on
to steal all their palaces. But what about the Soviet
embassy in Sofia? Now, for me, the proximity of that
(47:58):
embassy to the royal provided the Soviets with the perfect
opportunity to kill the king. Why but not for Tessa?
Speaker 12 (48:10):
Sure that the Soviets had much better intelligence going on
in Bulgaria. It's laughters laugh, But Bulgaria hadn't declared war
on the Soviets. They've never put boots on the ground
in Russia. And given that he's revered in Bulgaria, he
has the hearts and minds of the people.
Speaker 3 (48:29):
Why would you pick him of all.
Speaker 12 (48:30):
People to poison to practice your poisoning on? Why?
Speaker 8 (48:36):
I suppose Tessa has a point there?
Speaker 14 (48:39):
I mean.
Speaker 8 (48:39):
King Boris repeatedly refused Hitler's demands to send Bulgarian troops
to fight the Russians on the Eastern Front. He also
deliberately left Russia out of his symbolic declaration of war
against the Allies.
Speaker 12 (48:54):
This is a man who held the door open he
said himself, My people are Prousian. I am pro Bulgaria.
Speaker 8 (49:03):
But this still doesn't quite add up for me. I'm
afraid because the fact is we know King Boris hated Communism.
He feared correctly as it turned out that Bulgaria would
be swallowed up by the Soviet Union. And we also
know that loathing was mutual.
Speaker 12 (49:25):
The Communists had beef with the king, certainly they're not
easy bedfellows. But if he was murdered at the command
of a communist, then it would have been done by
I think a Bulgarian communist, someone with the nohow, with
the war with all and with the contacts. Sorry, but
we never looked for the most obvious.
Speaker 8 (49:46):
Right, let's just unpick that for a second. So Tessa
is not saying I'm wrong to blame Communist assassins for
the King's murder. She's just saying I should perhaps focus
on home growth communists assassins rather than the Soviets themselves
on Bulgarian communists.
Speaker 12 (50:07):
I'm not saying that any of these individual parties weren't
capable of it. And this was the Second World War.
It was the biggest period of mass murder known to humankind. Ever,
I'm just saying, don't rule out the Communist on the ground.
Speaker 5 (50:20):
Now.
Speaker 8 (50:20):
That's interesting because I happen to know that the Bulgarian
Communist Party had a really rocky relationship with the king.
In fact, Boris banned the Communist Party altogether in the
nineteen thirties, so the Bulgarian Communists had a major grudge
against him. Does this mean the killer was one of
(50:43):
the King's own subjects. It's certainly a theory that chimes
with podcaster Janna Punkinner, even if it is rather difficult
to admit out loud. Could have been a Bulgarians, an
inside job because we don't like each other very much.
Speaker 9 (51:04):
I don't think that our.
Speaker 18 (51:07):
Political life is so civilized as to you know, spare prison.
Speaker 8 (51:15):
Well, here's the thing, political life during Boris's reign was
anything but civilized. Whoever hated the king certainly got him
in the end. But the fatal poisoning wasn't a one
off attempt. Boris was a marked man from the minute
he took the throne. The king had already dodged several
(51:38):
serious assassination attempts, and all of them on his own soil.
Was the murder of the Bulgarian King an inside job.
Speaker 1 (51:54):
Coming up.
Speaker 8 (51:55):
In The Butterfly King, the stress of war catches up
with Boris.
Speaker 19 (52:00):
He had a suicidal thoughts because of the dramatic meeting
with Hitler with no issue.
Speaker 8 (52:07):
Way out, and we learn how the leader of a
Christian sect prophesied the king's impending death. If King Boris
had followed the advice, if he just listened to the
person you call the master, he would have survived.
Speaker 1 (52:29):
Probably he wouldn't have been killed.
Speaker 7 (52:32):
I say maybe I think this.
Speaker 8 (52:51):
The Butterfly King is a production of Blanchard House and
Exactly Right Media, hosted by me Becky Milligan. It's written
and produced by Emma Jane Kirby. Original music is by
Daniel Lloyd Evans, Louis nank Manell, and Toby Mattamong. Sound
(53:11):
design and engineering by Toby Mattamong and Daniel Lloyd Evans.
Artwork by Vanessa Lilac. The managing producer is Amka Schortino Nolan.
The creative director of Blanchard House is Rosie Pye. The
executive producer and head of content at Blanchard House is
(53:32):
Lawrence Grisell. For Exactly Right Media, the executive producers are
Karen Kilgarreth, Georgia Hardstark, and Daniel Kramer, with consulting producer
Kyle Ryan. The Butterfly King is inspired by the book
Hitler and the King by John Paul Spencer.
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