March 13, 2025 • 21 mins
In 2009, 59-year-old Elena Tomova retreated to her countryside villa in Vlado Trichkov, Bulgaria, seeking peace—only to find evidence of an intruder. That evening, she unknowingly invited her own killer, Mihail Leshtarski, inside, offering him food and shelter. The transient drifter repaid her kindness with brutal murder, strangling Elena, mutilating her body, and defacing her home with crosses. Afterward, he lived in a cave until winter forced him into the home of an old cellmate, where he attacked the man and his wife. For four months, he hid in their attic, drilling holes in the walls and ceilings to spy on them, threatening to kill them if they went to the police. A DNA match from Elena’s fingernails finally linked him to the murder, exposing his long history of violence and crime.
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Sources:
No Man’s Land, interview with psychologist Todor Todorov
Sofia News Agency
Music: Eternal moment by Farrell Wooten, Maximum state by Ethan Sloan
Listen to Our New Podcast: Curious Britain!
Explore the mysteries, folklore, and forgotten stories of Britain on all podcasting platforms. Listen now: https://linktr.ee/curiousbritainpodcast
Support Prash’s Murder Map on Patreon and get ad-free episodes: https://www.patreon.com/prashsmurdermap
If you've been enjoying our content, I'd love your support to continue delivering more! A one-off contribution, no matter how small, goes a long way in helping to keep things running. You can donate through PayPal here: https://www.paypal.me/prashsmurdermap
Thank you for your support!
Sources:
No Man’s Land, interview with psychologist Todor Todorov
Sofia News Agency
Music: Eternal moment by Farrell Wooten, Maximum state by Ethan Sloan
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fifty nine year old Elena Tumova could usually be certain
of one thing. She could expect peace and quiet at
her countryside villa. She spent most of her time living
with her daughter and son in law in Sofia, the
capital city of Bulgaria, but when she craved freedom and nature,
she traveled thirty minutes northeast to the small village of
(00:23):
Vlado Tritchikov to stay in a forest bolt hole. The
village is nestled in a calm valley near the Iskar River,
surrounded by the rolling foothills of the Balkan Mountains, overlooked
by rugged slopes carpeted in luch green foliage. To Elena,
it felt very far removed from the city, despite being
(00:47):
just fifteen miles away. It was Thursday, twenty seventh of
August two thousand and nine when she arrived at her
home away from home, arms straining to hold brown paper
bags full of vegetables, eggs, bread and tinned foods. But
when she stepped inside, she was greeted not with the
(01:09):
sense of serenity that she had come to anticipate, but
with something that immediately set her nerves jangling. There was
a fisherman's hat lying on the floor, which didn't belong
to her. Placing her groceries in the kitchen, she opened
the cupboards and saw that a leftover can of mushrooms
(01:31):
had been opened and eaten in her absence. Worse still,
when she walked into the bedroom, she saw that the
sheets were disarranged and a pillow was marked with grime.
Someone had been sleeping in her bed. Cautiously checking each
(01:53):
corner of the modest white stone villa, Elena discovered a
broken window at the back of the house and assumed
the unwelcome visitor had used it to gain entry. She
considered calling the police, but she was a proud and
self sufficient woman and she wasn't willing to be forced
out of her own property. Instead, she went out to
(02:15):
pick some wild berries and continued with her day, but
she kept hold of the acts that she used for
chopping wood in case the intruder returned. She had second
thoughts later that afternoon and went to a neighbour's house
to ask if she could stay with them for the night,
but they were expecting visitors and had no room. Elena
(02:40):
returned to her villa and settled in to read the
latest religious pamphlet from her local Kingdom hall, as she
was an active member in the Jehovah's Witness community. Before
she had finished reading the first page, she heard someone
opening her wooden gate and went to see who it was.
(03:01):
Standing on her doorstep was a pitiful specimen of humanity,
who introduced himself as Mihail Lashtarski. A straggly beard hung
down to his chest its few remaining black hairs, fighting
a losing battle against the advancing suedes of gray. The
(03:21):
top of his head was largely bored, and he peered
at Elena over the rim of a smeared pair of spectacles.
He wore black dungarees over a gray woolen sweater. His
cheeks were hollow, and his forehead and eyes were lined
with age, although he was nine years younger than Elena
and had recently turned fifty. Lashtarski explained that he was
(03:45):
tired and hungry and asked if she would be kind
enough to give him some food and a place to stay.
Elena paused for only a moment before agreeing. She was
kind hearted and hospitable by nature, and she believed the
world would be a better place if people looked out
for their neighbors and those in need, and besides, she
(04:07):
still had her axe. She welcomed the unfortunate creature inside,
gave him two slices of bread, and invited him to
make an omelet while Lushtarsky used the stove. Elena called
her daughter Zoritza, to tell her that she was putting
up a traveler for the night. She knew Zoritza would
(04:29):
be concerned about her safety, so she told a white
lie and reassured her that her ex husband, Zornitza's father
was also visiting and would be staying overnight too. Her
daughter's fears assuaged, Elena put down the phone and went
to join her guest at the wooden table in her
bedroom for dinner. The temporary roommates ate pickles with their
(04:55):
omelets and bread, washed down with a glass of gin.
After their meal, they went outside to smoke a cigarette
as they watched the sun sink down behind the green
mountains which stood sentinel over the village. Despite being forbidden
under Jehovah's witness law, smoking was one of the few
(05:17):
vices in which Elena occasionally indulged. As they sat companionably
in the porch, Lushtarsky told her he had arrived in
the area yesterday and he had been wandering around Vladotrichikov
looking for a place to lay his head. He confessed
that he had beden the one to enter her villa
(05:37):
the night before, and had slept in her bed and
eaten her mushrooms. He gave a small smile as he explained,
stretching his skin tort across his gaunt features, and placed
his arm around Elena's shoulders. As they went back inside.
Beginning to feel rather uncomfortable, Elena picked up her New
(06:01):
World Bible and told her uninvited HouseGuest about her faith.
She had an intuition that Lushtarski was a tormented soul
and might benefit from religious instruction, so she invited him
to come to the next Jehovah's witness gathering. Until now,
the gray haired vagabond had been polite, if a little taciturn,
(06:25):
but Elena's well intentioned preaching was like a red rag
to a bull. Lushtarsky indignantly shouted at her to stop,
telling her that she reminded him of his mother. Drawing
on her reserves of patience, Elena persevered, hopeful that she
could lead the agitated man towards spiritual solace. Lustashki's carefully
(06:52):
hidden ferocity irrupted like a volcano. He pushed the fifty
nine year old woman off her chair and forcibly ragged
her onto the bed, where he raped her, then wrapped
his calloused hands around her throat and choked her to death. Afterwards,
Lushtashky pulled down Elena's dress to reveal her chest, then
(07:16):
took a kitchen knife and cut off her left breast.
He carved across into her forehead before placing the weapon
and the severed body part under the bed. Still trapped
in a rancorous frenzy, he took a black pen and
drew hundreds of crosses on the walls until there was
(07:36):
barely an inch left uncovered. Finally, as the haze of
his wrath slowly lifted and he gradually returned to his senses,
he pulled the sheets over his victim and placed her
bible on one side of the pillow and the Jehovah's
Witness pamphlet on the other. Taking one last look at
(07:59):
the deceased woman, he pocketed the bottle of gin. They
had drunk from and fled the villa. The next morning,
Zornitza called her mother to check that everything was all right,
but the phone rang endlessly. Believing that her father was
there with her, she shrugged off her worries, thinking that
(08:22):
they must have gone out somewhere. Although her parents had
been divorced for ten years, they still kept in touch,
and she knew her dad wouldn't let anything happen to Elena.
But when the hours ticked by and the phone remained unanswered,
her qualms intensified, and when she called her dad, he
(08:43):
told her in confusion that he hadn't seen Elena for weeks.
On Saturday, twenty ninth of August, Zornitza and her husband
traveled to Vlado Tritchikov to set their minds at rest.
When they opened the front door, the first thing they
(09:03):
noticed was the unearthly silence. The villa felt completely abandoned.
The second thing they noticed was a stack of unwashed
plates in the kitchen with the remnants of some bread
and eggs. The third thing they noticed was the walls
stippled with hundreds of little black crosses. It was then
(09:28):
that they entered the bedroom and found Elena When the
police arrived, their assumption was that the murder was the
work of a madman. The body was examined by a
forensic pathologist to determine that the cause of death was
a broken hyoid bone, which indicated strangulation. They profiled the
(09:53):
killers a male in his mid thirties who was living
as a nomad, unemployed, and had a hatred of women,
including a problematic relationship with his own mother. As Zornita
told them about the itinerant man who asks for a
bed for the night, but Elena had given no further
details over the phone that would help the police to
(10:15):
track him down. The fact that crossers had been drawn
on the walls and carved into Elena's body led to
speculation that the murder had something to do with her
membership of the Jehovah's Witnesses, but the Kingdom Hall where
she worshiped, issued a statement of condolences and confirmed that
(10:35):
no members of their congregation were under suspicion. DNA was
recovered from Elena's fingernails, but there was little that detectives
could do with it. The unknown suspect was a transient
who was probably miles away by now, and they didn't
even have a physical description. After a few months, the
(10:58):
case went cold. Nearly two years later, the killer was
found in the most unexpected of ways. There'd been a
string of robberies near the town of Mezdra, fifty miles
from Vlado. Trichikov and police trace their suspect to a
cave hideout in the wilderness, where they arrested a balding
(11:22):
man with a gray beard and angular cheekbones. His name
was Mihail Lashtarsky. Inside his hideaway were twelve pairs of glasses,
some of them belonging to women, giving police grounds to
charge him with burglary. When they asked him why he
(11:44):
was lurking in a cave, he claimed he had been
filmed on camera stealing heroin from a wealthy woman and
feared being recognized. They would have been none the wiser
that he was responsible for something far more heinous, but
down at the state, Lashtarsky freely admitted that he had
killed Elena tom Over in two thousand and nine. He
(12:08):
soon recanted his confession and claimed to have been harassed
by the police, but it was too late. They had
swabbed his cheek and compared the DNA to the samples
recovered from Elena's fingernails. It was a match. During the interrogation,
detectives learned about the perpetrators passed and were left wondering
(12:32):
whether this malevolent individual was responsible for other unsolved cases.
Mihail Lushtarski was born in nineteen fifty nine in the
rustic village of Saravets to a dosile mother and an
harascable father who ran a thriving grocery business. Despite his
(12:52):
predilection for alcohol, Mihail had been a disruptive and hyperactive child,
and his father methods for dealing with his behavior were
either to beat him or to chain him to his
bed with a plate of food just out of reach.
The young boy would cry out for his mother, who
would open the bedroom door and give him a gentle smile,
(13:15):
but she knew better than to go against her husband's
wishes and was frightened of incurring his anger. On occasions
when Mihael had behaved particularly badly, his father chose a
more brutally imaginative punishment, chaining him to the family car
and driving around their yard. Lustavsky excelled at art, and
(13:40):
particularly enjoyed painting religious icons, but he dropped out of
school at thirteen and spent most of his time wandering
around the countryside looking for opportune places to rob and
abandon houses in which to sleep. He spent his youth
in and out of jail, where he reported being sexually
(14:00):
assorted by other inmates. He was called up at sixteen
for mandatory service in the Bulgarian army, which many other
young men may have resented, but for Mihail it offered
him a way out of his volatile home life. One day,
he was allowed a short period of leave from his regiment,
(14:21):
and his parents came to pick him up. In the car,
his heavily intoxicated father was behind the wheel, and they
were involved in a serious car accident minutes after their departure.
Lush Tasky was unharmed, but his father sustained multiple leg
fractures and his mother had a severe concussion. She was
(14:44):
never the same after the crash and suffered from ongoing
mental health challengers, which drove her to commit several acts
of arson, including burning down the family's sheep pens. Sometime thereafter,
she accused her son of rei, and he was sentenced
to eighteen years in jail. It was unclear whether Lashtarsky
(15:07):
really did sexually assort his mother, but either way he
held her responsible for the turn his life had taken
and nurtured a blistering resentment towards older women, who reminded
him of a matriarchal figure. On the surface, he was
a model prisoner and carried out his assigned community service
(15:27):
without complaint, becoming friends with cellmate Stoyin Lanudov, who was
imminently due to be released. His good behaviour brought him
a reduced sentence, and he was released in two thousand
and five after twelve years. Around this time, his mother
had a catastrophic stroke and was left completely unable to communicate.
(15:54):
Lushtarsky sought work after his release, but few employers were
willing to hire an ex convy, so he resorted to
stealing food and money to get by. He fell in
love with an underage Romany sex worker and paid her
to live with him, but she ran away, and the
collapse of this inauthentic relationship added to his emotional instability.
(16:18):
From two thousand and seven to two thousand and eight,
he managed to hold down a job at the Chiker
Hotel complex in Ratsa, fifteen miles from his home village.
He was known as a diligent and capable worker, but
after successfully completing his probationary period, he inexplicably vandalized all
(16:39):
the company vehicles and ran from the scene. A Lushtawsky
had enough self awareness to understand that he was incapable
of assimilating into mainstream society, so it was at this
point that he found shelter in the nooks and crannies
of ancient limestone caves in the mountains, stealing from houses
(17:00):
in town during the day, then returning to the caves
at night. To survive, he consumed four spoons of honey
each day and hunted game with a handmade bow. When
birds and rabbits were scarce, he resorted to eating the
life bats that dwelt in the dark recesses of the
cave network. Despite his limited diet and advancing age, Lestahsky
(17:26):
was strong and wily, living on his wits and stamina.
He was able to cover nineteen miles on foot to
reach neighboring towns and villagers to find money and valuables
to steal, and he was a proficient climber who navigated
the rugged terrain with ease. Each time he committed a burglary,
(17:46):
he took the homeowner spectacles with him and kept them
on a shelf of rock in his cave, like a
corrupted version of a mantlepiece. When he got fed up
with a dank, cold cave during the winter months, he
forced his way into the home of old cellmate store
And Nandanov, who was now a free man. Lustarsky attacked
(18:08):
Nadanov with a kitchen stool and assaulted his wife, and
then made a home in their attic for four months,
drilling holes in the walls and ceilings so they could
keep an eye on the family below, and threatening to
kill them if they told the police. After his arrest,
a psychological evaluation found Lustasky to be sane with no
(18:32):
diagnosable mental illness. On twenty ninth September twenty eleven, he
was found guilty of the murder of Elena Tomova and
sentenced to life in prison. He later appeared on the
Bulgarian TV show No Man's Land, where he publicly confessed
to two additional murders during an interview with high profile
(18:54):
criminal psychologist Toder Todorov. His first foray into violence had
been in nineteen ninety nine, when he fatally assorted a
female neighbour while inebriated. He also admitted responsibility for the
death of a midwife, which had previously been attributed to
heart problems. He refused to disclose the date, location, or
(19:19):
any other specifics of the crime, so police were unable
to follow it up. Detectives suspected that Lushtarsky was also
behind the death of a fifty nine year old woman
named Marianna dan Dover in two thousand and seven, who
was found strangled and brutalized in a deserted spot, her
(19:40):
breast cut off with a hack saw, in a gruesome
precursor to the murder of Elenor tom Over. Lushtarsky was
known to frequent the crime scene and had met prostitutes there,
but by the time the body was discovered, it had
been partially eaten by stray dogs, so DNA proved inconclusive
and could not be prosecuted for the crime. A seventy
(20:04):
five year old man named Vladimir Tashovsky had also been
fatally beaten and robbed in his home nearby, and police
wondered if this was yet another hallmark of Lashtarsky and
his hatred towards aged citizens who resembled his parents. Lushtarsky
denied his involvement in these murders and still alleges that
(20:26):
he was framed by the police. He harbours a profound
disdain for the media, and in twenty sixteen he announced
that when he is released, he plans to exact his
revenge by skinning alive five individuals of his choosing. The
authorities intend to continue investigating the earlier murders and are
(20:48):
determined to pursue new charges if sufficient evidence is uncovered.
Given Lustarski's unrestrained threats of violence, it's to be hoped
that the justice system again sees fit to let him
loose on the people of Bulgaria. Thank you for listening
(21:08):
to this episode of Pressure's Murder Map. If you'd like
to support the show, please like, subscribe, and leave a
comment or review. My wife and I have also set
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major podcast platforms. In the show, we explore the myths,
legends and mysteries of the British Isles, from ancient stone
(21:29):
circles to cryptids and ghost stories uncovering the quirky tales
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(21:51):
and I'll see you again soon
Fifty nine year old Elena Tumova could usually be certain
of one thing. She could expect peace and quiet at
her countryside villa. She spent most of her time living
with her daughter and son in law in Sofia, the
capital city of Bulgaria, but when she craved freedom and nature,
she traveled thirty minutes northeast to the small village of
(00:23):
Vlado Tritchikov to stay in a forest bolt hole. The
village is nestled in a calm valley near the Iskar River,
surrounded by the rolling foothills of the Balkan Mountains, overlooked
by rugged slopes carpeted in luch green foliage. To Elena,
it felt very far removed from the city, despite being
(00:47):
just fifteen miles away. It was Thursday, twenty seventh of
August two thousand and nine when she arrived at her
home away from home, arms straining to hold brown paper
bags full of vegetables, eggs, bread and tinned foods. But
when she stepped inside, she was greeted not with the
(01:09):
sense of serenity that she had come to anticipate, but
with something that immediately set her nerves jangling. There was
a fisherman's hat lying on the floor, which didn't belong
to her. Placing her groceries in the kitchen, she opened
the cupboards and saw that a leftover can of mushrooms
(01:31):
had been opened and eaten in her absence. Worse still,
when she walked into the bedroom, she saw that the
sheets were disarranged and a pillow was marked with grime.
Someone had been sleeping in her bed. Cautiously checking each
(01:53):
corner of the modest white stone villa, Elena discovered a
broken window at the back of the house and assumed
the unwelcome visitor had used it to gain entry. She
considered calling the police, but she was a proud and
self sufficient woman and she wasn't willing to be forced
out of her own property. Instead, she went out to
(02:15):
pick some wild berries and continued with her day, but
she kept hold of the acts that she used for
chopping wood in case the intruder returned. She had second
thoughts later that afternoon and went to a neighbour's house
to ask if she could stay with them for the night,
but they were expecting visitors and had no room. Elena
(02:40):
returned to her villa and settled in to read the
latest religious pamphlet from her local Kingdom hall, as she
was an active member in the Jehovah's Witness community. Before
she had finished reading the first page, she heard someone
opening her wooden gate and went to see who it was.
(03:01):
Standing on her doorstep was a pitiful specimen of humanity,
who introduced himself as Mihail Lashtarski. A straggly beard hung
down to his chest its few remaining black hairs, fighting
a losing battle against the advancing suedes of gray. The
(03:21):
top of his head was largely bored, and he peered
at Elena over the rim of a smeared pair of spectacles.
He wore black dungarees over a gray woolen sweater. His
cheeks were hollow, and his forehead and eyes were lined
with age, although he was nine years younger than Elena
and had recently turned fifty. Lashtarski explained that he was
(03:45):
tired and hungry and asked if she would be kind
enough to give him some food and a place to stay.
Elena paused for only a moment before agreeing. She was
kind hearted and hospitable by nature, and she believed the
world would be a better place if people looked out
for their neighbors and those in need, and besides, she
(04:07):
still had her axe. She welcomed the unfortunate creature inside,
gave him two slices of bread, and invited him to
make an omelet while Lushtarsky used the stove. Elena called
her daughter Zoritza, to tell her that she was putting
up a traveler for the night. She knew Zoritza would
(04:29):
be concerned about her safety, so she told a white
lie and reassured her that her ex husband, Zornitza's father
was also visiting and would be staying overnight too. Her
daughter's fears assuaged, Elena put down the phone and went
to join her guest at the wooden table in her
bedroom for dinner. The temporary roommates ate pickles with their
(04:55):
omelets and bread, washed down with a glass of gin.
After their meal, they went outside to smoke a cigarette
as they watched the sun sink down behind the green
mountains which stood sentinel over the village. Despite being forbidden
under Jehovah's witness law, smoking was one of the few
(05:17):
vices in which Elena occasionally indulged. As they sat companionably
in the porch, Lushtarsky told her he had arrived in
the area yesterday and he had been wandering around Vladotrichikov
looking for a place to lay his head. He confessed
that he had beden the one to enter her villa
(05:37):
the night before, and had slept in her bed and
eaten her mushrooms. He gave a small smile as he explained,
stretching his skin tort across his gaunt features, and placed
his arm around Elena's shoulders. As they went back inside.
Beginning to feel rather uncomfortable, Elena picked up her New
(06:01):
World Bible and told her uninvited HouseGuest about her faith.
She had an intuition that Lushtarski was a tormented soul
and might benefit from religious instruction, so she invited him
to come to the next Jehovah's witness gathering. Until now,
the gray haired vagabond had been polite, if a little taciturn,
(06:25):
but Elena's well intentioned preaching was like a red rag
to a bull. Lushtarsky indignantly shouted at her to stop,
telling her that she reminded him of his mother. Drawing
on her reserves of patience, Elena persevered, hopeful that she
could lead the agitated man towards spiritual solace. Lustashki's carefully
(06:52):
hidden ferocity irrupted like a volcano. He pushed the fifty
nine year old woman off her chair and forcibly ragged
her onto the bed, where he raped her, then wrapped
his calloused hands around her throat and choked her to death. Afterwards,
Lushtashky pulled down Elena's dress to reveal her chest, then
(07:16):
took a kitchen knife and cut off her left breast.
He carved across into her forehead before placing the weapon
and the severed body part under the bed. Still trapped
in a rancorous frenzy, he took a black pen and
drew hundreds of crosses on the walls until there was
(07:36):
barely an inch left uncovered. Finally, as the haze of
his wrath slowly lifted and he gradually returned to his senses,
he pulled the sheets over his victim and placed her
bible on one side of the pillow and the Jehovah's
Witness pamphlet on the other. Taking one last look at
(07:59):
the deceased woman, he pocketed the bottle of gin. They
had drunk from and fled the villa. The next morning,
Zornitza called her mother to check that everything was all right,
but the phone rang endlessly. Believing that her father was
there with her, she shrugged off her worries, thinking that
(08:22):
they must have gone out somewhere. Although her parents had
been divorced for ten years, they still kept in touch,
and she knew her dad wouldn't let anything happen to Elena.
But when the hours ticked by and the phone remained unanswered,
her qualms intensified, and when she called her dad, he
(08:43):
told her in confusion that he hadn't seen Elena for weeks.
On Saturday, twenty ninth of August, Zornitza and her husband
traveled to Vlado Tritchikov to set their minds at rest.
When they opened the front door, the first thing they
(09:03):
noticed was the unearthly silence. The villa felt completely abandoned.
The second thing they noticed was a stack of unwashed
plates in the kitchen with the remnants of some bread
and eggs. The third thing they noticed was the walls
stippled with hundreds of little black crosses. It was then
(09:28):
that they entered the bedroom and found Elena When the
police arrived, their assumption was that the murder was the
work of a madman. The body was examined by a
forensic pathologist to determine that the cause of death was
a broken hyoid bone, which indicated strangulation. They profiled the
(09:53):
killers a male in his mid thirties who was living
as a nomad, unemployed, and had a hatred of women,
including a problematic relationship with his own mother. As Zornita
told them about the itinerant man who asks for a
bed for the night, but Elena had given no further
details over the phone that would help the police to
(10:15):
track him down. The fact that crossers had been drawn
on the walls and carved into Elena's body led to
speculation that the murder had something to do with her
membership of the Jehovah's Witnesses, but the Kingdom Hall where
she worshiped, issued a statement of condolences and confirmed that
(10:35):
no members of their congregation were under suspicion. DNA was
recovered from Elena's fingernails, but there was little that detectives
could do with it. The unknown suspect was a transient
who was probably miles away by now, and they didn't
even have a physical description. After a few months, the
(10:58):
case went cold. Nearly two years later, the killer was
found in the most unexpected of ways. There'd been a
string of robberies near the town of Mezdra, fifty miles
from Vlado. Trichikov and police trace their suspect to a
cave hideout in the wilderness, where they arrested a balding
(11:22):
man with a gray beard and angular cheekbones. His name
was Mihail Lashtarsky. Inside his hideaway were twelve pairs of glasses,
some of them belonging to women, giving police grounds to
charge him with burglary. When they asked him why he
(11:44):
was lurking in a cave, he claimed he had been
filmed on camera stealing heroin from a wealthy woman and
feared being recognized. They would have been none the wiser
that he was responsible for something far more heinous, but
down at the state, Lashtarsky freely admitted that he had
killed Elena tom Over in two thousand and nine. He
(12:08):
soon recanted his confession and claimed to have been harassed
by the police, but it was too late. They had
swabbed his cheek and compared the DNA to the samples
recovered from Elena's fingernails. It was a match. During the interrogation,
detectives learned about the perpetrators passed and were left wondering
(12:32):
whether this malevolent individual was responsible for other unsolved cases.
Mihail Lushtarski was born in nineteen fifty nine in the
rustic village of Saravets to a dosile mother and an
harascable father who ran a thriving grocery business. Despite his
(12:52):
predilection for alcohol, Mihail had been a disruptive and hyperactive child,
and his father methods for dealing with his behavior were
either to beat him or to chain him to his
bed with a plate of food just out of reach.
The young boy would cry out for his mother, who
would open the bedroom door and give him a gentle smile,
(13:15):
but she knew better than to go against her husband's
wishes and was frightened of incurring his anger. On occasions
when Mihael had behaved particularly badly, his father chose a
more brutally imaginative punishment, chaining him to the family car
and driving around their yard. Lustavsky excelled at art, and
(13:40):
particularly enjoyed painting religious icons, but he dropped out of
school at thirteen and spent most of his time wandering
around the countryside looking for opportune places to rob and
abandon houses in which to sleep. He spent his youth
in and out of jail, where he reported being sexually
(14:00):
assorted by other inmates. He was called up at sixteen
for mandatory service in the Bulgarian army, which many other
young men may have resented, but for Mihail it offered
him a way out of his volatile home life. One day,
he was allowed a short period of leave from his regiment,
(14:21):
and his parents came to pick him up. In the car,
his heavily intoxicated father was behind the wheel, and they
were involved in a serious car accident minutes after their departure.
Lush Tasky was unharmed, but his father sustained multiple leg
fractures and his mother had a severe concussion. She was
(14:44):
never the same after the crash and suffered from ongoing
mental health challengers, which drove her to commit several acts
of arson, including burning down the family's sheep pens. Sometime thereafter,
she accused her son of rei, and he was sentenced
to eighteen years in jail. It was unclear whether Lashtarsky
(15:07):
really did sexually assort his mother, but either way he
held her responsible for the turn his life had taken
and nurtured a blistering resentment towards older women, who reminded
him of a matriarchal figure. On the surface, he was
a model prisoner and carried out his assigned community service
(15:27):
without complaint, becoming friends with cellmate Stoyin Lanudov, who was
imminently due to be released. His good behaviour brought him
a reduced sentence, and he was released in two thousand
and five after twelve years. Around this time, his mother
had a catastrophic stroke and was left completely unable to communicate.
(15:54):
Lushtarsky sought work after his release, but few employers were
willing to hire an ex convy, so he resorted to
stealing food and money to get by. He fell in
love with an underage Romany sex worker and paid her
to live with him, but she ran away, and the
collapse of this inauthentic relationship added to his emotional instability.
(16:18):
From two thousand and seven to two thousand and eight,
he managed to hold down a job at the Chiker
Hotel complex in Ratsa, fifteen miles from his home village.
He was known as a diligent and capable worker, but
after successfully completing his probationary period, he inexplicably vandalized all
(16:39):
the company vehicles and ran from the scene. A Lushtawsky
had enough self awareness to understand that he was incapable
of assimilating into mainstream society, so it was at this
point that he found shelter in the nooks and crannies
of ancient limestone caves in the mountains, stealing from houses
(17:00):
in town during the day, then returning to the caves
at night. To survive, he consumed four spoons of honey
each day and hunted game with a handmade bow. When
birds and rabbits were scarce, he resorted to eating the
life bats that dwelt in the dark recesses of the
cave network. Despite his limited diet and advancing age, Lestahsky
(17:26):
was strong and wily, living on his wits and stamina.
He was able to cover nineteen miles on foot to
reach neighboring towns and villagers to find money and valuables
to steal, and he was a proficient climber who navigated
the rugged terrain with ease. Each time he committed a burglary,
(17:46):
he took the homeowner spectacles with him and kept them
on a shelf of rock in his cave, like a
corrupted version of a mantlepiece. When he got fed up
with a dank, cold cave during the winter months, he
forced his way into the home of old cellmate store
And Nandanov, who was now a free man. Lustarsky attacked
(18:08):
Nadanov with a kitchen stool and assaulted his wife, and
then made a home in their attic for four months,
drilling holes in the walls and ceilings so they could
keep an eye on the family below, and threatening to
kill them if they told the police. After his arrest,
a psychological evaluation found Lustasky to be sane with no
(18:32):
diagnosable mental illness. On twenty ninth September twenty eleven, he
was found guilty of the murder of Elena Tomova and
sentenced to life in prison. He later appeared on the
Bulgarian TV show No Man's Land, where he publicly confessed
to two additional murders during an interview with high profile
(18:54):
criminal psychologist Toder Todorov. His first foray into violence had
been in nineteen ninety nine, when he fatally assorted a
female neighbour while inebriated. He also admitted responsibility for the
death of a midwife, which had previously been attributed to
heart problems. He refused to disclose the date, location, or
(19:19):
any other specifics of the crime, so police were unable
to follow it up. Detectives suspected that Lushtarsky was also
behind the death of a fifty nine year old woman
named Marianna dan Dover in two thousand and seven, who
was found strangled and brutalized in a deserted spot, her
(19:40):
breast cut off with a hack saw, in a gruesome
precursor to the murder of Elenor tom Over. Lushtarsky was
known to frequent the crime scene and had met prostitutes there,
but by the time the body was discovered, it had
been partially eaten by stray dogs, so DNA proved inconclusive
and could not be prosecuted for the crime. A seventy
(20:04):
five year old man named Vladimir Tashovsky had also been
fatally beaten and robbed in his home nearby, and police
wondered if this was yet another hallmark of Lashtarsky and
his hatred towards aged citizens who resembled his parents. Lushtarsky
denied his involvement in these murders and still alleges that
(20:26):
he was framed by the police. He harbours a profound
disdain for the media, and in twenty sixteen he announced
that when he is released, he plans to exact his
revenge by skinning alive five individuals of his choosing. The
authorities intend to continue investigating the earlier murders and are
(20:48):
determined to pursue new charges if sufficient evidence is uncovered.
Given Lustarski's unrestrained threats of violence, it's to be hoped
that the justice system again sees fit to let him
loose on the people of Bulgaria. Thank you for listening
(21:08):
to this episode of Pressure's Murder Map. If you'd like
to support the show, please like, subscribe, and leave a
comment or review. My wife and I have also set
up a new podcast called Curious Britain, available on all
major podcast platforms. In the show, we explore the myths,
legends and mysteries of the British Isles, from ancient stone
(21:29):
circles to cryptids and ghost stories uncovering the quirky tales
that shape Britain's cultural history. If that sounds interesting to you,
then we'd appreciate you trying it and letting us know
what you think. I'll leave a link in the show notes,
but don't worry, I'll still be releasing true crime episodes
here on Pressure's murder Map. Thank you for your support,
(21:51):
and I'll see you again soon
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