April 18, 2024 • 50 mins
Accusations fly like bullets as host Becky Milligan discovers that King Boris III has been a hunted man for most of his life and has dodged more assassination attempts than James Bond. Did he ignore the one crucial message that could have saved his life? Becky feels the net closing in on the identity of the Butterfly King’s killer.
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Speaker 1 (02:13):
Goodbye.
Speaker 9 (02:14):
A note before we start. This episode deals with the
topic of suicide. Please listen with caution. The Western Balkan
Mountains April nineteen twenty five and the Royal car navigates
(02:36):
the narrow winding road that snakes through the valley. Rabbits
and rock fall litter the route. On one side of
the pass, there's a sheer drop of one hundred feet.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
The chauffeur needs.
Speaker 9 (02:52):
His wits about him to keep the tires from flirting.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
With the edge.
Speaker 9 (02:58):
On the backseat of the car are two men, King Boris,
the third of Bulgaria, and his friend, a fellow insect enthusiast.
Each time the car swerves, the King rolls into him.
They're giddy with excitement. They've been out walking and have
found some rare flowers and an exquisite new species of butterfly.
(03:23):
They've high hopes for today's hike. The King's gamekeeper is
up front. He's swapped places with the King so Boris
can chat with his friend. An old bus laboring and
puffing up the steep pass forces the chauffeur to slow
his speed. The King glances out at the window, squinting
(03:46):
into the early morning sun. He sees something glinting in
the undergrowth, then a flash, and he instinctively ducks. It's
an ambush. The first bullet is aimed at the front seat,
(04:09):
the King's usual seat. It kills the gamekeeper instantly. The
next one kills the King's friend, and the chauffeur, blinded
by his shattered windscreen, loses control of the car. It
starts veering towards the cliff edge. As the bullets key coming.
(04:30):
Boris seizes the steering wheel and yanks the car back
from the edge just in time. Under a shower of gunfire,
King Boris leaps from the car and races towards the bus.
He jumps in, pushes the driver aside, and screeches off
in the direction of a military garrison. A few minutes
(04:55):
later and the King is back, with the bus now
full of armed soldiers. The soldiers chase the assailants deep
into the mountains. It's clear these aren't ordinary robbers. They're
far too skilled. These men are organized terrorists with one
(05:18):
very specific and very royal target. Tomorrow's newspaper headlines will
rave about the King's cool head, about his gallantry, his
lucky escape from the murderous plot of communist revolutionaries. He'll
be hailed across the world.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
As a hero.
Speaker 9 (05:40):
But kneeling beside his friend's dead bodies, King Boris doesn't
feel heroic. The attempt on his life might have failed
this time, but the King knows they'll get him in
the end, because this this is only the very beginning
of the plot to kill him from Blanchard House and
(06:05):
exactly right, media, this is the Butterfly King. I'm Becky Milligan,
(06:51):
chapter six, an inside Job.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
What I really like is the the really.
Speaker 10 (07:04):
Old gramophone gramophone.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Yes, it's a wind up one, isn't it.
Speaker 9 (07:10):
I'm back at Rana Palace. Not in the plush drawing
room where I usually meet King Simeon and Princess Maria Louisa.
I'm in the building next door, where one of Simeon's
aides is proudly showing me around what was once the
palace powerhouse, King Boris's office, complete with gramophone. Can we players, Yes,
(07:35):
let's play with the Bulgarian Royal National anthem.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Oh I thought it was a bit.
Speaker 5 (07:39):
Of chaer Ok.
Speaker 11 (07:45):
Here we go.
Speaker 9 (07:55):
You can imagine Boris sitting at the big desk in
his office, listening to his gramophone, head in hands, the
weight of the world on his shoulders. It wasn't an
easy job being Bulgaria's king.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
It's a beautiful desk, isn't it.
Speaker 9 (08:09):
And all his uniforms here absolutely military uniforms.
Speaker 11 (08:14):
Aren't thems.
Speaker 10 (08:15):
With his decorations and medals, you can see the White Cross,
the Bravery for Bravery Cross. Yes, he was awarded by
King Ferdinand during the First World War with this medal
and was maybe the most precious In some way.
Speaker 9 (08:39):
Boris's courage was legendary, but it was also very necessary.
In the interwar period when Boris was on the throne,
Bulgaria was a brutal place. Political assassinations and targeted killings
were commonplace. Rival factions for and murdered each other in
(09:01):
the race for power. Ruling over such a viper's nest
was no picnic. The king's governments were more or less
democratically elected, but few politicians really respected the wishes of
the ballot box. Rival parties often tried their luck by force.
(09:22):
They weren't trying to ousk Boris. They just wanted to
unseat his cabinet. Poor Boris had only been in the
job five years before the.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
First coupd'etta happened.
Speaker 9 (09:35):
That one, backed by the military, toppled his leftist government
and brought a block of bourgeois right wingers to power.
And to make it absolutely clear that they meant business,
they chopped the fingers off the ex prime minister, then
allegedly sent his head in a biscuit tin to the palace.
(09:58):
I did tell you those Bulgarian were brutal, So Boris
knew all too well that there was a biscuit tin
somewhere out there with his name on it too. It
was just a matter of time.
Speaker 12 (10:14):
Don't forget, Kings were always being murdered.
Speaker 9 (10:16):
Boris didn't care for his new right wing government, but
he just had to suck it up. His job was
to try to keep everyone sweet. Historian Tessa Dunlop, he is.
Speaker 13 (10:29):
A man who begins feeling anxious at the beginning of rain.
He's got partisans, murderers, discontent, army leaders, communists.
Speaker 12 (10:38):
He's all kicking off.
Speaker 13 (10:40):
In the witches cauldron that is the Balkans Bulgaria. The
bad boy of the Balkans, and there were quite a
lot of bad boys, to be honest with you, in
the Balkans.
Speaker 9 (10:49):
A few months after the right wing coup, the Bulgarian
Bolsheviks the Communists had to go at seizing power themselves,
but they're at at A power grab failed dismally. It
was brutally repressed by Boris's right wing government. Pushed underground,
the Bolsheviks and Communists became bitter if a Red Revolution
(11:14):
was to succeed in Bulgaria. They realized they needed a
major change of strategy, so they came up with a
new plan of action, a targeted campaign of terror, and
their bullseye was King Boris.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Boris would have.
Speaker 9 (11:31):
Known the Communists had marked him out, and he must
have felt so alone in that knowledge. In the early
years of his reign, he was still unmarried, plus his
brother and his sisters were in exile in Germany with
their father, Foxy Ferdinand. Did the king fear his life
was unraveling before it had really begun.
Speaker 12 (11:51):
He's pretty fearful.
Speaker 13 (11:52):
His hands tremble quite a lot to begin with, but
he he.
Speaker 12 (11:57):
Grows a bit of a second skin.
Speaker 9 (12:00):
Tessa means he had to toughen up and that would
prove invaluable. But what he really needed was nine lives
because the next assassination attempt was already brewing.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Podcast studio is here. Oh wow, with a candle, call
a brilliance.
Speaker 9 (12:25):
My producer Eja and I have come to Sofia to
see Anna Blagover. You'll remember she co hosts the Bulgarian
podcast The Urban Detective. We were talking to her in
the last episode about how the Soviets and the Communists
erased large parts of Bulgaria's history when they invaded Sofia.
(12:46):
That was in nineteen forty four, just a year after
King Boris was poisoned. And it's that which makes the
royal family, particularly Maria Louisa, deeply suspicious that the Soviets
were behind her father's murder. But right now we want
to talk to Anna about her dad.
Speaker 6 (13:06):
My father was an investigative journalist, and in fact, he
wrote a book about famous kudatats and political assassinations in
Bulgarian history. He attempted to rank the political assassinations based
on their influence.
Speaker 9 (13:24):
Now, Anna's dad was particularly interested in all the murders
and acts of terrorism that took place during King Boris's reign,
primarily because there were so many of them, but also
because King Boris was so often the target.
Speaker 6 (13:40):
One of the greatest terrorist tacts, and actually the one
that my father ranked number one, was the Saint Nidelia Church,
very close to where we are in the center of Sofia.
Speaker 9 (13:50):
Let's look at the number one assassination on Anna's dad's list.
Bear with me, because at first glance it sounds rather obscure.
In nineteen twenty, just hours after Boris had been ambushed
on that mountain pass, a retired high ranking RB general
was suddenly gunned down in Sofia. Quite why no one
(14:14):
really knew. But this general was also a member of
Parliament and a political big shot, so as befits a dignitary.
His funeral was an all bells and whistles affair. It
was held at the St. Nadalia Cathedral and it was
(14:35):
attended by Bulgaria's great and good. The priest opened the
Gospel and began reading from Saint John, he that heareth
my word hath everlasting life, And at that exact moment
(15:00):
the bomb was so powerful it blew off the roof
of the nave, dismembered bodies and corpses littered the church.
Two hundred and thirteen men, women and children were murdered
in that attack. Over four hundred others were wounded, but
(15:20):
none of them were the intended target. They were just
terrible collateral damage. The real target of that bombing escaped
without a scratch. I imagine you can guess who the
real target was. Yes, King Boris, but he survived unharmed
because he wasn't there. He'd been attending the funerals of
(15:46):
his friends who died in that ambush in the mountains
and was running late.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
And who were the bombers? Yes, the Reds.
Speaker 6 (15:55):
Again the communists said that I am a wing of
the communists, Barty. He bombed the church in the Hawpes
to kill Boris. It was one of the bloodiest theorist
acts in our history, and it actually precipitated a response
of persecution of those communists. It was bloodbud after a bloodbuth.
Speaker 9 (16:17):
But the Communists were foiled again and again. They were
brutally punished by Boris's government, But the Communists were determined.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
They kept trying and trying.
Speaker 9 (16:34):
A couple of years later, a communist activist broke into
the palace at first light, with a pistol ready to
kill the king as he slept in his bedchamber. A
foiled again. The King was already up and about. Boris
was an early riser. He was probably out catching butterflies,
(16:59):
and these assassination attempts just keep coming. In the winter
of nineteen thirty four, the king was on a train
to the Bulgarian coast when a bomb went off in
the engine. Boris was again unhurt. In fact, he even
dressed the engine driver's burns before leaping into his seat
(17:23):
and driving the burning train to safety. Nothing was proved,
but that assassination attempt had all the markings of a
communist attack.
Speaker 13 (17:37):
He survived ambush. He was the original James Bond of
Bulgaria in many respects, but he just didn't have the dashing,
good looks in the charisma to go with it.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
I think he was quite dashing, actually.
Speaker 6 (17:51):
So.
Speaker 9 (17:52):
Bulgaria's own communists had been trying for years to get
Boris out of the picture. They were seriously persistent, but
in the end someone succeeded. As we know, after all
those attempts on his life, the king finally died on
the twenty eighth of August nineteen forty three? Was it
(18:13):
the Communists? Did they finally pull it off? The Communists
certainly had a motive. They were politically weakened and brutally
repressed under King Boris.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
And what about the means? The Soviet Union.
Speaker 9 (18:31):
Would surely have been happy to help out their Bulgarian
comrades by handing over a file of their very best poison,
anything for another Red Revolution. And the Communists had form too.
They bombed trains, cathedrals and mountain passes. They made sure
they were never short of opportunity. But let's not jump
(18:55):
to conclusions, because there is another possibility. I want to
take you somewhere quite different. I want to try and
take you inside King Boris's head. Boris often sought solace
in the mountains, looking for rare plant species.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Or just hiking.
Speaker 9 (19:19):
It was a passion he shared with his uncle, King
Albert of Belgium. But in nineteen thirty four, King Albert
died in a mountaineering accident. He leant against a boulder
which had given way under his weight. That was the
official story, anyway, But in his excellent book Crown of Thorns,
(19:40):
the author Stephen Gruef tells us that Boris wasn't convinced
by that story. Boris believed his uncle had deliberately leapt
to his death. And what's more, according to Gruef, the
king told many friends that his uncle had the right idea,
that he somehow envied him.
Speaker 14 (20:02):
Sar Boris was really on a big pressure, really big pressure.
Speaker 11 (20:06):
This pressure pressure for Boris was not easy.
Speaker 9 (20:11):
Our Bulgarian historians Vladimir s Latarski and George bos Duganov
put it delicately because this is a very sensitive subject.
But I do think we have to examine whether King
Boris may have wanted to take his own life. The
pressure he was under during the Second World War was phenomenal,
(20:36):
and on a number of occasions the king mentioned to
his staff that he wished someone would just shoot him dead,
or that he felt like shooting himself.
Speaker 14 (20:47):
Could you imagine what kind of pressure during a war,
with everything and you are.
Speaker 15 (20:53):
Alone on the top of the of the power pyramid.
Speaker 9 (20:59):
In fact, on the way back from that dreadful meeting
with Hitler at the Wolf's Lair in nineteen forty three,
he reportedly told his aid he wished the plane would crash.
He was constantly saying he'd had enough of being king,
that it would be better if he were dead. After
(21:20):
he flew back to Bulgaria from the Wolf's Lair, Boris
went hiking in the mountains with his brother Kirol and
some close aids, and at a certain point he broke
away from the rest of the party and disappeared. He
was eventually spotted by his secretary. He was standing very
(21:40):
still on the precipice of a huge rock, just staring
into the abyss.
Speaker 4 (21:49):
Ah.
Speaker 11 (21:49):
Yes, that's what the secretary said that he saw him.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Yes, So the rumor was what was the rumor from
that whether he.
Speaker 11 (21:58):
Had sus sadel.
Speaker 5 (22:01):
Thoughts because of this last meeting, which was so dramatic
and with no way out.
Speaker 9 (22:08):
But Simeon doesn't believe his father was planning to jump
all for that matter, to poison himself with pills and
toxins for one very simple reason. King Boris was an
extremely religious man.
Speaker 5 (22:21):
My father was found to believing I think to have
considered suicide.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Do you think so?
Speaker 5 (22:27):
And not only I think, I'm sorry to say it's nonsense.
I think that this is part of the moment's mood,
and people see things like that but to me, it's
really part of not very serious thinking.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Really, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 9 (22:47):
Yes, okay, so Boris was indeed a man pushed to
his limits, but his children are absolutely certain he wasn't
serious about taking his own life. He was very serious
about his faith.
Speaker 11 (23:04):
Though.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
Boris believed in the power of prayer.
Speaker 9 (23:08):
He prayed constantly for guidance and for protection, which is
probably why he became so interested in a Christian group
called the White Brotherhood. Now, despite the name, this is
not a white supremacist group.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Far from it.
Speaker 9 (23:25):
The White Brotherhood was all about finding universal kinship in
a fracturing world. Think meditation, music, and the white in
their name referred only to the ceremonial robes they wore.
They just wanted a better future for everyone, and Boris
certainly feared what the future held in store for him,
(23:47):
and that's ultimately what drew him to the White Brotherhood.
They claimed they knew the answers. The White Brotherhood is
still going strong today. In fact, eight members of the
group are putting on a concert for us in Sofia.
They believe that respect for music and for nature bring
(24:09):
peace and harmony to the world. You can't blame a
stressed out king for liking the sound of that. Now,
just to be clear, I'm not lining up the White
Brotherhood as a suspect in Boris's murder. I think they
genuinely wanted to help him. But I want to tell
you about them because well, they kind of guessed what
(24:31):
was coming to Boris and they wanted to try to
stop it.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
It's all a bit freaky. Actually.
Speaker 9 (24:39):
The White Brotherhood was founded at the turn of the
last century by a Bulgarian man called Peter Danov, better
known as the Master. He was a masterful musician. The
pieces you're listening to were actually written by him. As
I've said, it's a Christian movement, but members of un
(25:00):
dressed like druids in white flowing robes.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
They danced barefoot in the mountains.
Speaker 9 (25:08):
Rumors circulated around Bulgaria that the King had joined the
White Brotherhood, that he'd become a disciple.
Speaker 11 (25:15):
Which is not the case.
Speaker 5 (25:17):
That's part of one of the very sweet mythologies.
Speaker 9 (25:22):
Okay, so King Boris may not have been a fully
signed up member of the White Brotherhood, but Simeon does
admit that his father was a big fan of their
ecological ideas and ideals, as is Simeon himself. It's true
they were pretty revolutionary for the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 5 (25:46):
It was a mixture of Christianity of Eastern but everything
very I would say, peace loving, nature, loving.
Speaker 11 (25:55):
God, fearing, what have you? Actually very advanced on the town.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
They're a very prayerful group.
Speaker 6 (26:03):
O jinash.
Speaker 7 (26:07):
The Imituto.
Speaker 9 (26:11):
But it wasn't just the Master's prayers which attracted Boris.
It was the Master's predictions. Because it was claimed that
Peter Denov was a prophet.
Speaker 15 (26:23):
He was like a man who can see in the future.
He was knowing what is.
Speaker 11 (26:29):
Going to happen.
Speaker 9 (26:31):
That's mom chill karamtev. He's a Bulgarian filmmaker and a
member of the White Brotherhood. Now the White Brotherhood, they
love their prophecies. Remember when the king was ambushed on
that road high up in the mountains in nineteen twenty five, Well,
a couple of days before, a disciple who worked in
(26:51):
the palace predicted that the King's life was in danger
somewhere in the highest peaks. The White Brotherhood called it.
But the prophecies didn't end there. Fast forward to World
War II. The Master warned King Boris to stay safe.
He'd need to stay out of the war. He would
(27:14):
need Bulgaria to stay neutral.
Speaker 15 (27:17):
The Master said to King Boris, don't go to Germany
because he was invited by Hitler to go there. And
he didn't follow this advice, and he met Hitler, and
very soon after his return in Bulgaria he was dead.
Speaker 9 (27:36):
But the king did change the date of his last
meeting with Hitler, because the original date Hitler had summoned
him to the Wolf's Lair it was August the thirteenth,
which in nineteen forty three happened to fall on a Friday.
Boris had a very bad feeling about the whole Friday
the thirteenth thing.
Speaker 5 (27:57):
The fact that he was summoned on the third teenth
of August by Hitler.
Speaker 11 (28:03):
He delayed it by a day, which.
Speaker 5 (28:05):
Upset the other man, obviously because of fearing the thirteenth.
Speaker 11 (28:10):
He was a superstitious man.
Speaker 5 (28:11):
There was something irrational in my father's behavior.
Speaker 9 (28:17):
The White Brotherhood believe the king should have paid more
attention to the Master's prophecies. If King Boris had followed
the advice the stories told to him, he would have survived.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
He wouldn't have been killed.
Speaker 12 (28:35):
I say maybe I think it does.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Everyone sort of agree with that.
Speaker 9 (28:40):
I mean that, you know, if he'd just taken that advice,
if he just listened to the person you call the master,
he would have survived. Probably make of that what you will.
But that's not all. It's the really spooky bit. He
(29:02):
may not have taken their advice about Hitler, But according
to the historian Stephan Grueth in his book Crown of Thorns,
it sounds like Boris had also been warned of the
exact date of his own demise. Remember how the king
lay dying in his chamber in the late summer of
(29:22):
nineteen forty three, covered in those strange spots, with all
his organs failing. He was barely conscious, yet very suddenly,
the day before his death, he opened his eyes and
demanded to know the time. When he was told it
was twenty past four, he shook his head. Tomorrow at
(29:47):
the same time, he said tomorrow at the same time.
The next day, on the twenty eighth of August, at
precisely twenty two minutes past four, the king was pronounced dead. Now,
(30:13):
as this podcast is about the murder of King Boris,
inevitably we focus a lot on the sad stuff on
the times when things for Boris were fraught and difficult,
when he was stressed and scared and felt torn in
every direction, But there were happier times too. Did the
White Brotherhood predict the lonely King would one day find
(30:35):
a soulmate? We don't know, but we do know he
did fall in love.
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Speaker 9 (33:56):
We haven't really touched on the romantic side of Boris's
personal store yet, and I think we need to because
some people think that's where we'll find Boris's killer.
Speaker 13 (34:09):
Well, he did take a while to get married. I
think he was like properly old.
Speaker 9 (34:13):
Boris didn't stay a lonely bachelor forever. In October nineteen thirty,
aged thirty six, Boris finally got lucky, so to speak.
He married Princess Giovanna, the daughter of King Victor Emmanuel
the Third and Queen Eleanor of Italy. Our historian Tessa Dunlop.
Speaker 13 (34:34):
I think Boris, you know, had his interests in pulling
levers and pinning butterflies onto.
Speaker 12 (34:39):
Boards, not in lots and lots and lots of sex.
Speaker 13 (34:42):
But back then Boris's marriage had huge political significance.
Speaker 9 (34:48):
It certainly did, and by the time Boris died in
nineteen forty three, when the war was raging, the marriage
was a political hot potato, which is why quite a
few rumors circulated that his murder was an Italian job.
By August nineteen forty three, Mussolini had been deposed and
(35:11):
Italy was just about to switch sides to join the allies,
the British and Americans. Now that would have put Italy
on the opposite side to Bulgaria, made them enemies. And
it was Giovanna's father, the King of Italy, who had
been doing all the negotiating with the Americans, because he
knew if Germany invaded Italy that would mean bye bye
(35:36):
to the Italian royal family. So could the Italian royals
have thrown Boris under the bus to try to secure
their own dynasty? I mean they certainly had a motive.
Their son in law, Boris was an ally of Hitler.
And there's another thing that really got up the nose
of the Italian royal family Boris's baptism. King Boris was
(36:04):
born to Catholic parents, so his father, Foxy Ferdinand didn't
hesitate to baptize Boris a Roman Catholic too. But Bulgaria
is an Eastern Orthodox country, and as a Bulgarian you'd
kind of expect the heir to the throne to share
the national faith. Ferdinand clocked his mistake pretty quickly.
Speaker 13 (36:29):
You've married an Italian girl, a fervent Catholic. You've signed
up and changed the constitution so that you're firstborn will
be a Catholic, and then you think, oh, no, I
better reverse that decision.
Speaker 9 (36:40):
Foxy Ferdinand booked Boris another baptism ceremony pronto.
Speaker 13 (36:46):
So Boris, having been christened a Catholic, is then re
christened or baptized into the Orthodox Church. Hallelujah. You know,
he's certainly like covered by both stumps, as Boris covered
both stumps. Is one of those quaint British sayings.
Speaker 9 (37:05):
It refers to cricket but translated into baseball, and it
would be like saying he was covering all the bases. Anyway,
Fox's defensive play was enough to satisfy the Bulgarian people,
but it didn't go down quite so well in Rome.
The Pope excommunicated him, poor old Foxy. Anyway, fast forward again,
(37:31):
and here's now Orthodox Boris on his wedding day marrying
an Italian Catholic princess in the Catholic cathedral in Assisi.
They also had a blessing in an Orthodox church. Now,
by all accounts, Boris really loved Giovanna, but he also
had a royal duty to marry. To provide an heir
(37:53):
to the throne.
Speaker 12 (37:55):
You need progeny. First of all. He had to acquire
a womb that he considered suitable.
Speaker 9 (37:59):
The problem was the royal womb Boris had found belonged
to a Catholic, and a Catholic is supposed to bring
up her children as Catholics. Now that put Boris, the
king of an Orthodox country, in a tricky situation. But
he didn't want to annoy his new in laws or
(38:20):
the Pope, so he promised his firstborn child would be
baptized a Catholic. But when his daughter was born, Boris
reneged on his promise. Maria Louisa was baptized into the
Orthodox Faith, and the church was so relieved it even
bent the rules.
Speaker 14 (38:40):
Well, I'm called Maria Louisa, and that's it, because in
the Orthodox Church you don't have more than one name,
except she does, of course, because it's a double burialed name.
They had to have a special permission with the church
and they make it like one name. But Maria Aluisa,
after my paternal grandmother.
Speaker 9 (38:58):
But when Simeon was born four years later, he was
also baptized into the Orthodox Faith. Queen Giovanna accepted this,
but what about her family? Were the Italian king and
queen horrified that their grandchildren were not Catholics. I mean,
they quite liked their son in law Boris, but he'd
(39:20):
basically just hoodwinked them. Is this what they wanted for
their daughter? And here's another thing. Remember Joseph Goebels, the
Nazi propaganda minister who kept a diary. He wrote that
King Boris had been poisoned with snake venom.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
But when we ran that.
Speaker 9 (39:40):
Theory past our snake expert Mark O'Shea, he pretty much rubbished.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
It.
Speaker 9 (39:46):
Turns out it's pretty impossible to get a snake to
bite someone if it doesn't feel like it. Plus the
snake has to bite in the right place with the
right amount of venom. So admittedly Gebels was a bit
off the mark with the whole snake venom idea. But
(40:06):
a few days after he penned that, Gebels wrote one
more entry about the murder, and this time he pointed
the finger of blame fairly and squarely at someone specific
in the Italian royal family.
Speaker 5 (40:26):
Goebels claims that it was my mother's sister, Princess Mafalda,
that she had poisoned him.
Speaker 9 (40:36):
Now, Princess Mafalda was married to the German Prince Philip
of Hesse, who was disillusioned with the Nazi Party and
everything hit the stood for and Mafalda was absolutely on
the same page as her husband and her parents. She
wouldn't have been impressed that her brother in law Boris
was in league with the FURA. So, according to gerbl,
(41:00):
Mafalder paid a little visit to Bulgaria to the palace
with a bottle of poison in her bag. Four weeks
after her departure the king was dead. Could Mafalda be
the royal assassin?
Speaker 5 (41:17):
This is nonsense, because I was at the station to
receive my aunt after my father was dead, because she
came to the funeral.
Speaker 9 (41:27):
Let's not forget that Simeon was an eye witness, and
neither he nor Maria Louisa can recall Aunt Mafalda paying
a visit before Boris' death. In fact, no one can
remember Mafalda coming to visit her sister and brother in
law before the funeral. For one simple reason, she didn't come.
Speaker 11 (41:52):
So there was no way that she could have poisoned him.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
So you know that for a fact, because he were
a witnessed.
Speaker 14 (41:58):
Yes, definitely not Italians, because why you know, Italians had
no advantage whatsoever.
Speaker 5 (42:05):
Goebels was blaming the Italian court because the Nazis were
very upset when Italy changed sides before my father's death.
But that's why I say that sometimes documents which are
supposed to be what you call it official, can also
be misleading.
Speaker 9 (42:23):
Point taken, it's all propaganda. That's the very last time
I cite the diary of Joseph Goebel's promise. I suppose
there's something else I may have overlooked. Families and particularly sisters,
tend to talk. Mafalder would have known King Boris was
unhappy with Hitler and that he was also in secret
(42:47):
talks about switching sides. She'd have respected him. She wouldn't
have wanted him dead. There's a PostScript to Mifalder's story.
It's not a happy ending. The Nazis found out that
she and her husband had been helping Jews get to safety,
(43:08):
and while Mafalda was in Bulgaria supporting her sister at
Boris's funeral, her husband was arrested and sent to a
concentration camp. When Mafalda returned to Italy, the Nazis tricked
her into visiting the German embassy in Rome, claiming they
had a message for her from her husband. But when
(43:31):
she arrived, she was immediately arrested for subversive activities and
sent to a concentration camp called Buchenwald. Mafalda grew very
sick and thin at the camp, and then the Allies
(43:51):
started to bomb. You see, there was a munitions factory
right next door, a prime target, and during one raign,
Princess Mafalda was badly wounded. The SS doctors made a
half hearted attempt to operate, but she died of her
injuries in the summer of nineteen forty four, exactly a
(44:15):
year after her brother in law Boris. So where does
that leave us? Suicide is off the list. Simeon's adamant
about that, And despite their differences in faith and in politics,
it can't have been the Italians. They were too fond
(44:35):
of Boris. But I cannot dismiss the Communists. They tried
to kill the king again and again, but I still
don't have concrete proof. I don't even have a name
for the poison that was used to kill the king.
You know, at a certain point in every investigation I've
(44:59):
ever done. Something unexpected always turns up, and in my experience,
it most often comes at that exact moment I think
I'm done, Just as I'm about to take stock of
what I know and draw up my final conclusions, I
receive an intriguing voicemail. It's very cryptic. It suggests we
(45:24):
meet up in Sofia to talk about the death of
King Boris the Third. And who's the message from? Well,
when he says his name, I'm honestly speechless because this
voicemails from someone who has a microscopic knowledge of King Boris,
a man who claims he knows exactly how the king died.
(45:48):
He almost never gives interviews, but now he's offering to tell.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
Us all he knows.
Speaker 9 (45:56):
He says, it's time the world knows the whole truth
about what killed the Butterfly King. That's next time coming
up on the Butterfly King.
Speaker 5 (46:12):
I I simply regret, And now that you bring it up,
I think of it again.
Speaker 11 (46:18):
It's disturbing. You know, one has to make one's peace
with these things.
Speaker 9 (46:25):
Painful revelations for the royal children, and we're delta brand
new line of inquiry.
Speaker 10 (46:32):
Cocaine can cause the arteries to your heart to spasm
close down?
Speaker 1 (46:38):
Ye are you saying?
Speaker 9 (46:38):
King Boris may have been on cocaine. 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,
(47:02):
Louis Nankmanow and Toby Mattamong Sound design and engineering by
Toby Mattamoon 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
(47:25):
head of content at Blanchard House is Lawrence Grizzell. For
Exactly Right Media, the executive producers are Karen Kilgareth Georgia
Hardstark and Daniel Kramer, with consulting producer Kyle Ryan. The
Butterfly King is inspired by the book Hitler and the
(47:46):
King by John Hall Spencer.
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Speaker 1 (02:13):
Goodbye.
Speaker 9 (02:14):
A note before we start. This episode deals with the
topic of suicide. Please listen with caution. The Western Balkan
Mountains April nineteen twenty five and the Royal car navigates
(02:36):
the narrow winding road that snakes through the valley. Rabbits
and rock fall litter the route. On one side of
the pass, there's a sheer drop of one hundred feet.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
The chauffeur needs.
Speaker 9 (02:52):
His wits about him to keep the tires from flirting.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
With the edge.
Speaker 9 (02:58):
On the backseat of the car are two men, King Boris,
the third of Bulgaria, and his friend, a fellow insect enthusiast.
Each time the car swerves, the King rolls into him.
They're giddy with excitement. They've been out walking and have
found some rare flowers and an exquisite new species of butterfly.
(03:23):
They've high hopes for today's hike. The King's gamekeeper is
up front. He's swapped places with the King so Boris
can chat with his friend. An old bus laboring and
puffing up the steep pass forces the chauffeur to slow
his speed. The King glances out at the window, squinting
(03:46):
into the early morning sun. He sees something glinting in
the undergrowth, then a flash, and he instinctively ducks. It's
an ambush. The first bullet is aimed at the front seat,
(04:09):
the King's usual seat. It kills the gamekeeper instantly. The
next one kills the King's friend, and the chauffeur, blinded
by his shattered windscreen, loses control of the car. It
starts veering towards the cliff edge. As the bullets key coming.
(04:30):
Boris seizes the steering wheel and yanks the car back
from the edge just in time. Under a shower of gunfire,
King Boris leaps from the car and races towards the bus.
He jumps in, pushes the driver aside, and screeches off
in the direction of a military garrison. A few minutes
(04:55):
later and the King is back, with the bus now
full of armed soldiers. The soldiers chase the assailants deep
into the mountains. It's clear these aren't ordinary robbers. They're
far too skilled. These men are organized terrorists with one
(05:18):
very specific and very royal target. Tomorrow's newspaper headlines will
rave about the King's cool head, about his gallantry, his
lucky escape from the murderous plot of communist revolutionaries. He'll
be hailed across the world.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
As a hero.
Speaker 9 (05:40):
But kneeling beside his friend's dead bodies, King Boris doesn't
feel heroic. The attempt on his life might have failed
this time, but the King knows they'll get him in
the end, because this this is only the very beginning
of the plot to kill him from Blanchard House and
(06:05):
exactly right, media, this is the Butterfly King. I'm Becky Milligan,
(06:51):
chapter six, an inside Job.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
What I really like is the the really.
Speaker 10 (07:04):
Old gramophone gramophone.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Yes, it's a wind up one, isn't it.
Speaker 9 (07:10):
I'm back at Rana Palace. Not in the plush drawing
room where I usually meet King Simeon and Princess Maria Louisa.
I'm in the building next door, where one of Simeon's
aides is proudly showing me around what was once the
palace powerhouse, King Boris's office, complete with gramophone. Can we players, Yes,
(07:35):
let's play with the Bulgarian Royal National anthem.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Oh I thought it was a bit.
Speaker 5 (07:39):
Of chaer Ok.
Speaker 11 (07:45):
Here we go.
Speaker 9 (07:55):
You can imagine Boris sitting at the big desk in
his office, listening to his gramophone, head in hands, the
weight of the world on his shoulders. It wasn't an
easy job being Bulgaria's king.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
It's a beautiful desk, isn't it.
Speaker 9 (08:09):
And all his uniforms here absolutely military uniforms.
Speaker 11 (08:14):
Aren't thems.
Speaker 10 (08:15):
With his decorations and medals, you can see the White Cross,
the Bravery for Bravery Cross. Yes, he was awarded by
King Ferdinand during the First World War with this medal
and was maybe the most precious In some way.
Speaker 9 (08:39):
Boris's courage was legendary, but it was also very necessary.
In the interwar period when Boris was on the throne,
Bulgaria was a brutal place. Political assassinations and targeted killings
were commonplace. Rival factions for and murdered each other in
(09:01):
the race for power. Ruling over such a viper's nest
was no picnic. The king's governments were more or less
democratically elected, but few politicians really respected the wishes of
the ballot box. Rival parties often tried their luck by force.
(09:22):
They weren't trying to ousk Boris. They just wanted to
unseat his cabinet. Poor Boris had only been in the
job five years before the.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
First coupd'etta happened.
Speaker 9 (09:35):
That one, backed by the military, toppled his leftist government
and brought a block of bourgeois right wingers to power.
And to make it absolutely clear that they meant business,
they chopped the fingers off the ex prime minister, then
allegedly sent his head in a biscuit tin to the palace.
(09:58):
I did tell you those Bulgarian were brutal, So Boris
knew all too well that there was a biscuit tin
somewhere out there with his name on it too. It
was just a matter of time.
Speaker 12 (10:14):
Don't forget, Kings were always being murdered.
Speaker 9 (10:16):
Boris didn't care for his new right wing government, but
he just had to suck it up. His job was
to try to keep everyone sweet. Historian Tessa Dunlop, he is.
Speaker 13 (10:29):
A man who begins feeling anxious at the beginning of rain.
He's got partisans, murderers, discontent, army leaders, communists.
Speaker 12 (10:38):
He's all kicking off.
Speaker 13 (10:40):
In the witches cauldron that is the Balkans Bulgaria. The
bad boy of the Balkans, and there were quite a
lot of bad boys, to be honest with you, in
the Balkans.
Speaker 9 (10:49):
A few months after the right wing coup, the Bulgarian
Bolsheviks the Communists had to go at seizing power themselves,
but they're at at A power grab failed dismally. It
was brutally repressed by Boris's right wing government. Pushed underground,
the Bolsheviks and Communists became bitter if a Red Revolution
(11:14):
was to succeed in Bulgaria. They realized they needed a
major change of strategy, so they came up with a
new plan of action, a targeted campaign of terror, and
their bullseye was King Boris.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Boris would have.
Speaker 9 (11:31):
Known the Communists had marked him out, and he must
have felt so alone in that knowledge. In the early
years of his reign, he was still unmarried, plus his
brother and his sisters were in exile in Germany with
their father, Foxy Ferdinand. Did the king fear his life
was unraveling before it had really begun.
Speaker 12 (11:51):
He's pretty fearful.
Speaker 13 (11:52):
His hands tremble quite a lot to begin with, but
he he.
Speaker 12 (11:57):
Grows a bit of a second skin.
Speaker 9 (12:00):
Tessa means he had to toughen up and that would
prove invaluable. But what he really needed was nine lives
because the next assassination attempt was already brewing.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Podcast studio is here. Oh wow, with a candle, call
a brilliance.
Speaker 9 (12:25):
My producer Eja and I have come to Sofia to
see Anna Blagover. You'll remember she co hosts the Bulgarian
podcast The Urban Detective. We were talking to her in
the last episode about how the Soviets and the Communists
erased large parts of Bulgaria's history when they invaded Sofia.
(12:46):
That was in nineteen forty four, just a year after
King Boris was poisoned. And it's that which makes the
royal family, particularly Maria Louisa, deeply suspicious that the Soviets
were behind her father's murder. But right now we want
to talk to Anna about her dad.
Speaker 6 (13:06):
My father was an investigative journalist, and in fact, he
wrote a book about famous kudatats and political assassinations in
Bulgarian history. He attempted to rank the political assassinations based
on their influence.
Speaker 9 (13:24):
Now, Anna's dad was particularly interested in all the murders
and acts of terrorism that took place during King Boris's reign,
primarily because there were so many of them, but also
because King Boris was so often the target.
Speaker 6 (13:40):
One of the greatest terrorist tacts, and actually the one
that my father ranked number one, was the Saint Nidelia Church,
very close to where we are in the center of Sofia.
Speaker 9 (13:50):
Let's look at the number one assassination on Anna's dad's list.
Bear with me, because at first glance it sounds rather obscure.
In nineteen twenty, just hours after Boris had been ambushed
on that mountain pass, a retired high ranking RB general
was suddenly gunned down in Sofia. Quite why no one
(14:14):
really knew. But this general was also a member of
Parliament and a political big shot, so as befits a dignitary.
His funeral was an all bells and whistles affair. It
was held at the St. Nadalia Cathedral and it was
(14:35):
attended by Bulgaria's great and good. The priest opened the
Gospel and began reading from Saint John, he that heareth
my word hath everlasting life, And at that exact moment
(15:00):
the bomb was so powerful it blew off the roof
of the nave, dismembered bodies and corpses littered the church.
Two hundred and thirteen men, women and children were murdered
in that attack. Over four hundred others were wounded, but
(15:20):
none of them were the intended target. They were just
terrible collateral damage. The real target of that bombing escaped
without a scratch. I imagine you can guess who the
real target was. Yes, King Boris, but he survived unharmed
because he wasn't there. He'd been attending the funerals of
(15:46):
his friends who died in that ambush in the mountains
and was running late.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
And who were the bombers? Yes, the Reds.
Speaker 6 (15:55):
Again the communists said that I am a wing of
the communists, Barty. He bombed the church in the Hawpes
to kill Boris. It was one of the bloodiest theorist
acts in our history, and it actually precipitated a response
of persecution of those communists. It was bloodbud after a bloodbuth.
Speaker 9 (16:17):
But the Communists were foiled again and again. They were
brutally punished by Boris's government, But the Communists were determined.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
They kept trying and trying.
Speaker 9 (16:34):
A couple of years later, a communist activist broke into
the palace at first light, with a pistol ready to
kill the king as he slept in his bedchamber. A
foiled again. The King was already up and about. Boris
was an early riser. He was probably out catching butterflies,
(16:59):
and these assassination attempts just keep coming. In the winter
of nineteen thirty four, the king was on a train
to the Bulgarian coast when a bomb went off in
the engine. Boris was again unhurt. In fact, he even
dressed the engine driver's burns before leaping into his seat
(17:23):
and driving the burning train to safety. Nothing was proved,
but that assassination attempt had all the markings of a
communist attack.
Speaker 13 (17:37):
He survived ambush. He was the original James Bond of
Bulgaria in many respects, but he just didn't have the dashing,
good looks in the charisma to go with it.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
I think he was quite dashing, actually.
Speaker 6 (17:51):
So.
Speaker 9 (17:52):
Bulgaria's own communists had been trying for years to get
Boris out of the picture. They were seriously persistent, but
in the end someone succeeded. As we know, after all
those attempts on his life, the king finally died on
the twenty eighth of August nineteen forty three? Was it
(18:13):
the Communists? Did they finally pull it off? The Communists
certainly had a motive. They were politically weakened and brutally
repressed under King Boris.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
And what about the means? The Soviet Union.
Speaker 9 (18:31):
Would surely have been happy to help out their Bulgarian
comrades by handing over a file of their very best poison,
anything for another Red Revolution. And the Communists had form too.
They bombed trains, cathedrals and mountain passes. They made sure
they were never short of opportunity. But let's not jump
(18:55):
to conclusions, because there is another possibility. I want to
take you somewhere quite different. I want to try and
take you inside King Boris's head. Boris often sought solace
in the mountains, looking for rare plant species.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Or just hiking.
Speaker 9 (19:19):
It was a passion he shared with his uncle, King
Albert of Belgium. But in nineteen thirty four, King Albert
died in a mountaineering accident. He leant against a boulder
which had given way under his weight. That was the
official story, anyway, But in his excellent book Crown of Thorns,
(19:40):
the author Stephen Gruef tells us that Boris wasn't convinced
by that story. Boris believed his uncle had deliberately leapt
to his death. And what's more, according to Gruef, the
king told many friends that his uncle had the right idea,
that he somehow envied him.
Speaker 14 (20:02):
Sar Boris was really on a big pressure, really big pressure.
Speaker 11 (20:06):
This pressure pressure for Boris was not easy.
Speaker 9 (20:11):
Our Bulgarian historians Vladimir s Latarski and George bos Duganov
put it delicately because this is a very sensitive subject.
But I do think we have to examine whether King
Boris may have wanted to take his own life. The
pressure he was under during the Second World War was phenomenal,
(20:36):
and on a number of occasions the king mentioned to
his staff that he wished someone would just shoot him dead,
or that he felt like shooting himself.
Speaker 14 (20:47):
Could you imagine what kind of pressure during a war,
with everything and you are.
Speaker 15 (20:53):
Alone on the top of the of the power pyramid.
Speaker 9 (20:59):
In fact, on the way back from that dreadful meeting
with Hitler at the Wolf's Lair in nineteen forty three,
he reportedly told his aid he wished the plane would crash.
He was constantly saying he'd had enough of being king,
that it would be better if he were dead. After
(21:20):
he flew back to Bulgaria from the Wolf's Lair, Boris
went hiking in the mountains with his brother Kirol and
some close aids, and at a certain point he broke
away from the rest of the party and disappeared. He
was eventually spotted by his secretary. He was standing very
(21:40):
still on the precipice of a huge rock, just staring
into the abyss.
Speaker 4 (21:49):
Ah.
Speaker 11 (21:49):
Yes, that's what the secretary said that he saw him.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Yes, So the rumor was what was the rumor from
that whether he.
Speaker 11 (21:58):
Had sus sadel.
Speaker 5 (22:01):
Thoughts because of this last meeting, which was so dramatic
and with no way out.
Speaker 9 (22:08):
But Simeon doesn't believe his father was planning to jump
all for that matter, to poison himself with pills and
toxins for one very simple reason. King Boris was an
extremely religious man.
Speaker 5 (22:21):
My father was found to believing I think to have
considered suicide.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Do you think so?
Speaker 5 (22:27):
And not only I think, I'm sorry to say it's nonsense.
I think that this is part of the moment's mood,
and people see things like that but to me, it's
really part of not very serious thinking.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Really, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 9 (22:47):
Yes, okay, so Boris was indeed a man pushed to
his limits, but his children are absolutely certain he wasn't
serious about taking his own life. He was very serious
about his faith.
Speaker 11 (23:04):
Though.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
Boris believed in the power of prayer.
Speaker 9 (23:08):
He prayed constantly for guidance and for protection, which is
probably why he became so interested in a Christian group
called the White Brotherhood. Now, despite the name, this is
not a white supremacist group.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Far from it.
Speaker 9 (23:25):
The White Brotherhood was all about finding universal kinship in
a fracturing world. Think meditation, music, and the white in
their name referred only to the ceremonial robes they wore.
They just wanted a better future for everyone, and Boris
certainly feared what the future held in store for him,
(23:47):
and that's ultimately what drew him to the White Brotherhood.
They claimed they knew the answers. The White Brotherhood is
still going strong today. In fact, eight members of the
group are putting on a concert for us in Sofia.
They believe that respect for music and for nature bring
(24:09):
peace and harmony to the world. You can't blame a
stressed out king for liking the sound of that. Now,
just to be clear, I'm not lining up the White
Brotherhood as a suspect in Boris's murder. I think they
genuinely wanted to help him. But I want to tell
you about them because well, they kind of guessed what
(24:31):
was coming to Boris and they wanted to try to
stop it.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
It's all a bit freaky. Actually.
Speaker 9 (24:39):
The White Brotherhood was founded at the turn of the
last century by a Bulgarian man called Peter Danov, better
known as the Master. He was a masterful musician. The
pieces you're listening to were actually written by him. As
I've said, it's a Christian movement, but members of un
(25:00):
dressed like druids in white flowing robes.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
They danced barefoot in the mountains.
Speaker 9 (25:08):
Rumors circulated around Bulgaria that the King had joined the
White Brotherhood, that he'd become a disciple.
Speaker 11 (25:15):
Which is not the case.
Speaker 5 (25:17):
That's part of one of the very sweet mythologies.
Speaker 9 (25:22):
Okay, so King Boris may not have been a fully
signed up member of the White Brotherhood, but Simeon does
admit that his father was a big fan of their
ecological ideas and ideals, as is Simeon himself. It's true
they were pretty revolutionary for the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 5 (25:46):
It was a mixture of Christianity of Eastern but everything
very I would say, peace loving, nature, loving.
Speaker 11 (25:55):
God, fearing, what have you? Actually very advanced on the town.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
They're a very prayerful group.
Speaker 6 (26:03):
O jinash.
Speaker 7 (26:07):
The Imituto.
Speaker 9 (26:11):
But it wasn't just the Master's prayers which attracted Boris.
It was the Master's predictions. Because it was claimed that
Peter Denov was a prophet.
Speaker 15 (26:23):
He was like a man who can see in the future.
He was knowing what is.
Speaker 11 (26:29):
Going to happen.
Speaker 9 (26:31):
That's mom chill karamtev. He's a Bulgarian filmmaker and a
member of the White Brotherhood. Now the White Brotherhood, they
love their prophecies. Remember when the king was ambushed on
that road high up in the mountains in nineteen twenty five, Well,
a couple of days before, a disciple who worked in
(26:51):
the palace predicted that the King's life was in danger
somewhere in the highest peaks. The White Brotherhood called it.
But the prophecies didn't end there. Fast forward to World
War II. The Master warned King Boris to stay safe.
He'd need to stay out of the war. He would
(27:14):
need Bulgaria to stay neutral.
Speaker 15 (27:17):
The Master said to King Boris, don't go to Germany
because he was invited by Hitler to go there. And
he didn't follow this advice, and he met Hitler, and
very soon after his return in Bulgaria he was dead.
Speaker 9 (27:36):
But the king did change the date of his last
meeting with Hitler, because the original date Hitler had summoned
him to the Wolf's Lair it was August the thirteenth,
which in nineteen forty three happened to fall on a Friday.
Boris had a very bad feeling about the whole Friday
the thirteenth thing.
Speaker 5 (27:57):
The fact that he was summoned on the third teenth
of August by Hitler.
Speaker 11 (28:03):
He delayed it by a day, which.
Speaker 5 (28:05):
Upset the other man, obviously because of fearing the thirteenth.
Speaker 11 (28:10):
He was a superstitious man.
Speaker 5 (28:11):
There was something irrational in my father's behavior.
Speaker 9 (28:17):
The White Brotherhood believe the king should have paid more
attention to the Master's prophecies. If King Boris had followed
the advice the stories told to him, he would have survived.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
He wouldn't have been killed.
Speaker 12 (28:35):
I say maybe I think it does.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Everyone sort of agree with that.
Speaker 9 (28:40):
I mean that, you know, if he'd just taken that advice,
if he just listened to the person you call the master,
he would have survived. Probably make of that what you will.
But that's not all. It's the really spooky bit. He
(29:02):
may not have taken their advice about Hitler, But according
to the historian Stephan Grueth in his book Crown of Thorns,
it sounds like Boris had also been warned of the
exact date of his own demise. Remember how the king
lay dying in his chamber in the late summer of
(29:22):
nineteen forty three, covered in those strange spots, with all
his organs failing. He was barely conscious, yet very suddenly,
the day before his death, he opened his eyes and
demanded to know the time. When he was told it
was twenty past four, he shook his head. Tomorrow at
(29:47):
the same time, he said tomorrow at the same time.
The next day, on the twenty eighth of August, at
precisely twenty two minutes past four, the king was pronounced dead. Now,
(30:13):
as this podcast is about the murder of King Boris,
inevitably we focus a lot on the sad stuff on
the times when things for Boris were fraught and difficult,
when he was stressed and scared and felt torn in
every direction, But there were happier times too. Did the
White Brotherhood predict the lonely King would one day find
(30:35):
a soulmate? We don't know, but we do know he
did fall in love.
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Speaker 9 (33:56):
We haven't really touched on the romantic side of Boris's
personal store yet, and I think we need to because
some people think that's where we'll find Boris's killer.
Speaker 13 (34:09):
Well, he did take a while to get married. I
think he was like properly old.
Speaker 9 (34:13):
Boris didn't stay a lonely bachelor forever. In October nineteen thirty,
aged thirty six, Boris finally got lucky, so to speak.
He married Princess Giovanna, the daughter of King Victor Emmanuel
the Third and Queen Eleanor of Italy. Our historian Tessa Dunlop.
Speaker 13 (34:34):
I think Boris, you know, had his interests in pulling
levers and pinning butterflies onto.
Speaker 12 (34:39):
Boards, not in lots and lots and lots of sex.
Speaker 13 (34:42):
But back then Boris's marriage had huge political significance.
Speaker 9 (34:48):
It certainly did, and by the time Boris died in
nineteen forty three, when the war was raging, the marriage
was a political hot potato, which is why quite a
few rumors circulated that his murder was an Italian job.
By August nineteen forty three, Mussolini had been deposed and
(35:11):
Italy was just about to switch sides to join the allies,
the British and Americans. Now that would have put Italy
on the opposite side to Bulgaria, made them enemies. And
it was Giovanna's father, the King of Italy, who had
been doing all the negotiating with the Americans, because he
knew if Germany invaded Italy that would mean bye bye
(35:36):
to the Italian royal family. So could the Italian royals
have thrown Boris under the bus to try to secure
their own dynasty? I mean they certainly had a motive.
Their son in law, Boris was an ally of Hitler.
And there's another thing that really got up the nose
of the Italian royal family Boris's baptism. King Boris was
(36:04):
born to Catholic parents, so his father, Foxy Ferdinand didn't
hesitate to baptize Boris a Roman Catholic too. But Bulgaria
is an Eastern Orthodox country, and as a Bulgarian you'd
kind of expect the heir to the throne to share
the national faith. Ferdinand clocked his mistake pretty quickly.
Speaker 13 (36:29):
You've married an Italian girl, a fervent Catholic. You've signed
up and changed the constitution so that you're firstborn will
be a Catholic, and then you think, oh, no, I
better reverse that decision.
Speaker 9 (36:40):
Foxy Ferdinand booked Boris another baptism ceremony pronto.
Speaker 13 (36:46):
So Boris, having been christened a Catholic, is then re
christened or baptized into the Orthodox Church. Hallelujah. You know,
he's certainly like covered by both stumps, as Boris covered
both stumps. Is one of those quaint British sayings.
Speaker 9 (37:05):
It refers to cricket but translated into baseball, and it
would be like saying he was covering all the bases. Anyway,
Fox's defensive play was enough to satisfy the Bulgarian people,
but it didn't go down quite so well in Rome.
The Pope excommunicated him, poor old Foxy. Anyway, fast forward again,
(37:31):
and here's now Orthodox Boris on his wedding day marrying
an Italian Catholic princess in the Catholic cathedral in Assisi.
They also had a blessing in an Orthodox church. Now,
by all accounts, Boris really loved Giovanna, but he also
had a royal duty to marry. To provide an heir
(37:53):
to the throne.
Speaker 12 (37:55):
You need progeny. First of all. He had to acquire
a womb that he considered suitable.
Speaker 9 (37:59):
The problem was the royal womb Boris had found belonged
to a Catholic, and a Catholic is supposed to bring
up her children as Catholics. Now that put Boris, the
king of an Orthodox country, in a tricky situation. But
he didn't want to annoy his new in laws or
(38:20):
the Pope, so he promised his firstborn child would be
baptized a Catholic. But when his daughter was born, Boris
reneged on his promise. Maria Louisa was baptized into the
Orthodox Faith, and the church was so relieved it even
bent the rules.
Speaker 14 (38:40):
Well, I'm called Maria Louisa, and that's it, because in
the Orthodox Church you don't have more than one name,
except she does, of course, because it's a double burialed name.
They had to have a special permission with the church
and they make it like one name. But Maria Aluisa,
after my paternal grandmother.
Speaker 9 (38:58):
But when Simeon was born four years later, he was
also baptized into the Orthodox Faith. Queen Giovanna accepted this,
but what about her family? Were the Italian king and
queen horrified that their grandchildren were not Catholics. I mean,
they quite liked their son in law Boris, but he'd
(39:20):
basically just hoodwinked them. Is this what they wanted for
their daughter? And here's another thing. Remember Joseph Goebels, the
Nazi propaganda minister who kept a diary. He wrote that
King Boris had been poisoned with snake venom.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
But when we ran that.
Speaker 9 (39:40):
Theory past our snake expert Mark O'Shea, he pretty much rubbished.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
It.
Speaker 9 (39:46):
Turns out it's pretty impossible to get a snake to
bite someone if it doesn't feel like it. Plus the
snake has to bite in the right place with the
right amount of venom. So admittedly Gebels was a bit
off the mark with the whole snake venom idea. But
(40:06):
a few days after he penned that, Gebels wrote one
more entry about the murder, and this time he pointed
the finger of blame fairly and squarely at someone specific
in the Italian royal family.
Speaker 5 (40:26):
Goebels claims that it was my mother's sister, Princess Mafalda,
that she had poisoned him.
Speaker 9 (40:36):
Now, Princess Mafalda was married to the German Prince Philip
of Hesse, who was disillusioned with the Nazi Party and
everything hit the stood for and Mafalda was absolutely on
the same page as her husband and her parents. She
wouldn't have been impressed that her brother in law Boris
was in league with the FURA. So, according to gerbl,
(41:00):
Mafalder paid a little visit to Bulgaria to the palace
with a bottle of poison in her bag. Four weeks
after her departure the king was dead. Could Mafalda be
the royal assassin?
Speaker 5 (41:17):
This is nonsense, because I was at the station to
receive my aunt after my father was dead, because she
came to the funeral.
Speaker 9 (41:27):
Let's not forget that Simeon was an eye witness, and
neither he nor Maria Louisa can recall Aunt Mafalda paying
a visit before Boris' death. In fact, no one can
remember Mafalda coming to visit her sister and brother in
law before the funeral. For one simple reason, she didn't come.
Speaker 11 (41:52):
So there was no way that she could have poisoned him.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
So you know that for a fact, because he were
a witnessed.
Speaker 14 (41:58):
Yes, definitely not Italians, because why you know, Italians had
no advantage whatsoever.
Speaker 5 (42:05):
Goebels was blaming the Italian court because the Nazis were
very upset when Italy changed sides before my father's death.
But that's why I say that sometimes documents which are
supposed to be what you call it official, can also
be misleading.
Speaker 9 (42:23):
Point taken, it's all propaganda. That's the very last time
I cite the diary of Joseph Goebel's promise. I suppose
there's something else I may have overlooked. Families and particularly sisters,
tend to talk. Mafalder would have known King Boris was
unhappy with Hitler and that he was also in secret
(42:47):
talks about switching sides. She'd have respected him. She wouldn't
have wanted him dead. There's a PostScript to Mifalder's story.
It's not a happy ending. The Nazis found out that
she and her husband had been helping Jews get to safety,
(43:08):
and while Mafalda was in Bulgaria supporting her sister at
Boris's funeral, her husband was arrested and sent to a
concentration camp. When Mafalda returned to Italy, the Nazis tricked
her into visiting the German embassy in Rome, claiming they
had a message for her from her husband. But when
(43:31):
she arrived, she was immediately arrested for subversive activities and
sent to a concentration camp called Buchenwald. Mafalda grew very
sick and thin at the camp, and then the Allies
(43:51):
started to bomb. You see, there was a munitions factory
right next door, a prime target, and during one raign,
Princess Mafalda was badly wounded. The SS doctors made a
half hearted attempt to operate, but she died of her
injuries in the summer of nineteen forty four, exactly a
(44:15):
year after her brother in law Boris. So where does
that leave us? Suicide is off the list. Simeon's adamant
about that, And despite their differences in faith and in politics,
it can't have been the Italians. They were too fond
(44:35):
of Boris. But I cannot dismiss the Communists. They tried
to kill the king again and again, but I still
don't have concrete proof. I don't even have a name
for the poison that was used to kill the king.
You know, at a certain point in every investigation I've
(44:59):
ever done. Something unexpected always turns up, and in my experience,
it most often comes at that exact moment I think
I'm done, Just as I'm about to take stock of
what I know and draw up my final conclusions, I
receive an intriguing voicemail. It's very cryptic. It suggests we
(45:24):
meet up in Sofia to talk about the death of
King Boris the Third. And who's the message from? Well,
when he says his name, I'm honestly speechless because this
voicemails from someone who has a microscopic knowledge of King Boris,
a man who claims he knows exactly how the king died.
(45:48):
He almost never gives interviews, but now he's offering to tell.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
Us all he knows.
Speaker 9 (45:56):
He says, it's time the world knows the whole truth
about what killed the Butterfly King. That's next time coming
up on the Butterfly King.
Speaker 5 (46:12):
I I simply regret, And now that you bring it up,
I think of it again.
Speaker 11 (46:18):
It's disturbing. You know, one has to make one's peace
with these things.
Speaker 9 (46:25):
Painful revelations for the royal children, and we're delta brand
new line of inquiry.
Speaker 10 (46:32):
Cocaine can cause the arteries to your heart to spasm
close down?
Speaker 1 (46:38):
Ye are you saying?
Speaker 9 (46:38):
King Boris may have been on cocaine. 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,
(47:02):
Louis Nankmanow and Toby Mattamong Sound design and engineering by
Toby Mattamoon 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
(47:25):
head of content at Blanchard House is Lawrence Grizzell. For
Exactly Right Media, the executive producers are Karen Kilgareth Georgia
Hardstark and Daniel Kramer, with consulting producer Kyle Ryan. The
Butterfly King is inspired by the book Hitler and the
(47:46):
King by John Hall Spencer.
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