The Kuřim Case - Part 2 - Wicked and Grim: A True Crime Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
In the last episode, we began discussing the extensive story
known as the Curum Case, so be sure to check
out part one of that story before listening to today's
part two. With that being said, my name's Ben.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
I'm Nicole, and you're listening to Wicked and Grim.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
A true crime podcast. The following material, intended for matial
audience listener discretion is advised. Are you ready for the

(00:56):
rest of the case, Let's do it?

Speaker 2 (00:59):
I think so.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
I think a lot of people were a little bit
upset that we left off where we did.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
I think, well, honestly, the last few Part two is
people have been like, okay, like pretty chill about it.
But yeah, this one, people were like, you drop part
two right now.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
Don't worry. The weight will be worth it. I've got
a lot to go over, so we'll be talking about it,
and of course, I mean, first and foremost, I do
have a recap to do. But even before that, I
have some amazing patrons to think. So people who signed
up over in Patreon this week include Jenna McCreery, Alicia Kimmitt,
Jay Hernandez, Maddie Wade, and Samantha Schroeder. So thank you

(01:37):
very much. To you amazing people for signing up and
supporting our show. We appreciate you, we do.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
You're the best. You are the best, the bestest of
the best.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
And with that being said, you ready for the recap?

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, I do need a good recap.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
I do need a good recap. Okay. So before police
ever found Andre in that cupboard, the situation inside the
Morova family's home had been spiral for years. It started
when Clara took in a girl she believed was a
traumatized thirteen year old girl named Anka, not realizing that
this teenager was actually a grown woman named Barbara Skerlova

(02:11):
pretending to be a child. So, with help from fake
messages written by a so called doctor, Clara slowly isolated
her sons and began following harmful instructions that pushed her
towards harsher discipline. Things escalated further at a remote cottage,
where they orchestrated months of structured abuse, confinement, and psychological

(02:32):
manipulation against both of her two young boys. When the
family moved back to Kurum, Andre was kept in a
locked cupboard under the stairs and watched through a hidden
security camera. Now that camera's signal accidentally leaked and appeared
on a neighbor's baby monitor, leading police to the house,
rescuing the boys, arresting the adults, and unknowingly placing Barbara,

(02:55):
which was you know, Anika, this child into protective care
as if she were just another one of the child
victims of the home. And that is where we left off. Okay,
ring a bell, you got it, it does.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Yeah that it all came flooding back to me in
not a good way, fair, because that was shit.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, all right. So, when eight year old Andre and
ten year old Jacob were finally pulled from the Minerva home,
authorities transferred them, along with Anica, to a child's shelter
in Bruno. Staff, of course, assumed they were dealing with
three different traumatized miners from the same household, each requiring

(03:38):
urgent psychological attension, well and physical attention too. And Andrea, well,
he was in the worst condition. His weight, injuries, and
mental state made it clear he had lived in confinement
for far longer than anyone initially realized. Within a day,
he began showing symptoms of acute stress, like panic attacks,
uncontrollable shaking, and dissociation. Doctors moved him back into the

(04:02):
hospital for stabilization.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
That poor boy right.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
Now, Jacob, being older, physically stronger, and not singled out
like his younger brother, was coped a little more quietly.
He answered staff questions in short, flat sentences and avoided
eye contact. The first evening, he lingered in the doorway
of every single room in that facility before ever stepping
beyond the threshold inside of a room. It was an

(04:27):
instinct that was left over from months of not knowing
what was waiting behind a door in the room if
he enters, what's going to be in their waiting form?
What punishment, what abuse? That sort of thing?

Speaker 2 (04:36):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (04:37):
Will he even be locked in? Who knows? Oh?

Speaker 2 (04:39):
Man?

Speaker 1 (04:40):
Okay, So it was a lingering form of trauma like
a PTSD almost like just entering a room even that people.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yeah, you wouldn't even think like anyone else, You wouldn't
think twice about that, correct? But and then he literally
a doorway is like a pause for him exactly. Oh. Now.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
Anica meanwhile behaved exactly as one would expect from a
frightened teenage girl rescued from a chaotic home. She spoke softly,
kept to herself, and asked repeatedly whether Clara was angry
with her. Now Clara is the mother of the two boys.
Staff interpreted this as attachment trauma. She was supposedly the
adopted daughter, right, so they did what they could to

(05:19):
encourage her, you know, basically rest and reassure that she's safe.
Nothing appeared unusual, But the next night the shelter staff
began noticing some inconsistencies. Anica didn't act like a typical
thirteen year old, not in posture, not in her conversational patterns,
not even in the way she moved around the room.

(05:39):
When asked about school or hobbies, she deflected or claimed
she couldn't remember. Her emotional responses didn't quite match the
situations she was in, and while her file indicated she
was frail and ill, she managed to climb onto her
bunk bed with surprising ease. Still, none of these details
were alarming enough on their own. Staff simply know them

(06:00):
for psychologists to review in the morning. But the morning, well,
the reviews they never came, because during the shelter's nightly rounds,
workers checked every room. Jacob slept curled near the wall
as usual, his breathing shallow and uneasy, but the bed
beside him Anica's. It was empty, and a window in

(06:20):
the room stood wide open. It wasn't a window a
child could open alone. It was heavy, stiff, and fitted
with a catch that required some significant strength to lift it.
Every door was locked, the building was under supervision, Yet
Onnica still managed to disappear without waking anyone. So, considering

(06:40):
the situation, authorities launched an immediate search, assuming she'd had
actually been kidnapped by someone connected to the abuse case,
since it must have been an adult who'd opened the
window to get her out.

Speaker 2 (06:53):
See, I'm just on the edge of my seat, like,
how are they going to They gotta figure this out
sooner or later, because this is it's just its part
just pisses me off.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
It's a wild ride through all this coercion masquerading and
basically like horror cause play, it's not play, but you
know what I mean, it's a wild ride. So yeah,
just buckle up.

Speaker 2 (07:18):
Who the fuck does she think she is? Basically is
all that is going through my mind.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
No kidding. So the working theory was that a person
involved in the whole cottage situation or the Curum house
had broken in to remove her, possibly fearing that she
might talk and become a witness in later trials. Police
patrolled bus stations and searched wooded areas. A helicopter with
thermal imaging even swept nearby forests. Within twenty four hours,

(07:45):
national media picked up the story. There was a possible
missing teenage girl out there who was frail, sick, and
she was possibly abducted by the same network of individuals
that had harmed these two young boys. It was an
all out search. But then in the thick of it all,
something happened. Letters arrived. Three handwritten envelopes appeared in different locations,

(08:11):
the bernou On Budsman Office, a national newspaper, and the
office of the President of the Czech Republic. Each contained
the same nine page message, written in an oddly formal
style and signed Onika Merova at the end the letters,
though I couldn't find exact copies online of exactly what

(08:33):
they said, but I did find information on you know,
summing it up, The letters insisted that Clara was a
loving mother who had been simply misunderstood. They also claimed
that Andre had lied to save himself and had often
hurt her Onica when no one was watching. Onnica pleaded
in the letters for forgiveness on Clara's behalf and said

(08:56):
that she had run away because she couldn't bear to
see her mother for it all. Experts who examined the
letters immediately doubted that they came from a child. The
well formed sentences, the phrasing and structure of it all
suggested an adult with a high degree of emotional awareness
was actually the one behind them. So they didn't believe

(09:19):
this was actually written by Anica. They believed it was
written by whoever had taken her.

Speaker 2 (09:24):
Okay, well, I just have to say to anyone who
saw what kind of state the one boy was in
would know that he wasn't like, really capable of hurting
anyone else.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
Well, exactly why they think it's coming from one of
the adults, right, So it's an adult lying. They don't
think this is actually Honica's writing. So the structure, the
way it's written, it doesn't sound like a child because
they at this point they.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
Still think still think she's a child.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
They still think she's a child, So they think, okay, well,
Honica clearly didn't write this. This boy is clearly a victim,
so it's clearly lying it's someone who's taken her, who's
written this framing and trying to you know, save their
own skin. Okay, So like the biggest clue of it all, honestly,
was that tone. It didn't sound like a frightened girl.
It was yeah, okay, something else is going on here.

(10:12):
Someone trying to manage a narrative, trying to manipulate the situation.
And most likely that would be yeah, an adult, well.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
Someone walking into this case too. It would sure be
quite confusing for them, hey, Like it just would make
no sense. Yeah, and the different ways that you would
be going and stuff. For us sitting here's like, well,
she's a child, but you would just have no idea.
It would be quite a hard case to solve.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
I feel like, literally the next thing I've written is
police didn't really know what to make of it.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
Okay, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:43):
All they knew though, like honestly, is that they needed
to find her. That's the biggest thing. They don't know
really what the hell to make of these letters. They're confusing,
and they're just like, Okay, well she's still out there,
and in their mind she's still a victim, so they
need to keep pursuing and looking so the search for
Anica intensified as days passed with outsidings. Posters were spread
across Bruno and police they combed through forests and apartments

(11:06):
linked to the Merova family, trying to see if they
could find any clue of her. News anchors continued to
describe her as a fragile, thirteen year old girl in
need of medical care, likely terrified in hiding after witnessing
the abuse of her brothers. But inside the children's shelter,
forensic teams were examining the room Anica had stayed in.
They expected to find evidence of whoever had taken her.

(11:28):
That's what they were looking for, you know, fingerprints on
the windowsill, footprints, traces of anything. But instead they found
something odd, something stranger, something they didn't expect to find.
DNA swabbed from the surfaces around the bed did not
match Clara or Katerina or any staff member either, and
it didn't match Anica, whose samples they had on file

(11:51):
from the adoption process. So this DNA was of someone
they had no clue who it would be. What this
DNA did match, at least though was partially, was a
man named Han Scurl. Now remember last episode in part one,
during the whole cottage time, I did mention that there
were adults, quote unquote who took part in the abuse.

(12:14):
You remember that. Yeah, so there were more than just
the two sisters and the onnica which Barbara. There was
more than that. Hence why I said the adults end. Okay,
I'll be getting into them in this part.

Speaker 2 (12:28):
Too, Okay, because things are kind of coming together. Because
even when you were talking about anaka being taken and
you were saying, like the network of people, and I
was like, who else was involved in this shit? But okay,
here we go.

Speaker 1 (12:40):
Yeah, so this was the DNA that partially matched Han
Skirl he was arrested in the connection with that cottage abuse.
And now the DNA, as I mentioned, it's a partial match.
But the thing is, it wasn't his. It was only
a partial match, so it means that it belongs to
a close relative, and in this case, it was a

(13:02):
close female relative and the only one that fit was
his older sister, Barbara Scarlova.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
What the shit? This was already freaking confusing and messed up.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
It is a little bit, which is exactly why I
brought this into part two, because it needs that time
to explain. There was a So Barbara is a thirty
something year a woman that we already know, and she
had worked at Katerina's youth center for years. So when
she initially was there as this child that Katerina brought
home to her sister Clara, right as this you know,

(13:37):
frail child, she was actually working there. She had taught
at this youth center. Barbara had attended staff functions, she
had walked the hallways as an adult woman there, not
initially as a child. Now, when staff from that Bruno
youth center looked at the photograph that the media were
circulating as Anica, that's when the stars started to align.

(14:00):
They realized, wait, that's Barbara. They realized they hadn't recognized
her at first because when she was presenting herself as
a child at this place, she had this downward gaze glasses,
you know, she was often with her soft posture, her
now shaved head, oversized clothes, and it all was presenting
this Onnica and they never looked close enough to see Barbara.

(14:24):
But now that they had the photo in front of them,
they realized, that's that's Barbara. She looked younger, thinner, and
styled different, Yes, and pasted as a teenager. But as
one employee remembered, that's not a girl, quote, that's Barbara,
and they called police immediately.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
Okay, is that not super odd that she would be
doing this at this same center? You think that you
would pick a center you didn't also had previously worked at,
because the chances of someone recognizing you and stuff you
know or higher. You're right, it's amazing she got away
with it, really.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
Definitely, But I don't know if she really walked the
halls as a child too much. It was more so
some of the people working there that she was presenting to. Okay,
So I'm sure she was there at times, yes, and
she made herself very scarce to some of these other employees,
but it was targeting certain individuals, like Katerina for example.

Speaker 2 (15:19):
Hmm, okay.

Speaker 1 (15:20):
Well, so the revelation hit the case like an absolute shockwave.
It was a sudden, clear moment that the child they've
been trying to adopt, protect and search for had never
actually been a child at all, and the focus of
the investigation shifted as they began piecing together what they
could of Barbara's life now that they had her name.

(15:43):
So she Barbara had struggled with physical and developmental conditions
since childhood, which kept her stature small and her features
quite youthful. She grew up in a fractured home with
an alcoholic mother and an absent father deeply involved infringed
spiritual groups to cults. As she entered adulthood, she began
drifting between identities, sometimes appearing in psychiatric facilities as a

(16:06):
runaway team, other times inserting herself into families she had
convinced to care for her. Her ability to mimic adolescent
behavior wasn't perfect, I want to mention that, but it
was good enough to work. She acted timid around authority figures,
hunched her shoulders as she wore oversized children's clothes, and
adopted the mannerisms of kids trying not to upset adults.

(16:29):
Combined with her naturally small frame, it was enough to
fool teachers, doctors, social workers, and experienced psychologists as well. Honestly,
anyone who didn't examine her too closely. You know, maybe
those doctors were just trying to get the session done.
The psychologists assuming it's a child and treating her like

(16:49):
a child and not really thinking outside the box.

Speaker 2 (16:53):
Yeah, but also in those situations, why I don't blame
them because why would exactly why would you be sitting
there and be questioning if this person is actually a child.

Speaker 1 (17:05):
Yeah, so if you look at her as an adult,
I'm sure each one of them would have found it
out relatively fast. But why would.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
You You're looking at her other issues, like bigger issues. Really,
how can I try to solve these for her? Not like,
holy shit, this isn't a kid.

Speaker 1 (17:23):
Definitely. So, with help from her brother Keyan and Katerina Morova,
she built this Anica persona from the ground up. The
tragic backstory, the sickly appearance, the carefully timed tears, all
of it reinforced by this mysterious doctor, whose messages, by
the way, were later traced back to email accounts controlled

(17:45):
by Katina Clara's sister.

Speaker 2 (17:49):
Wholely shit.

Speaker 1 (17:52):
So, in short, Katerina was one of the puppet masters
behind this whole thing.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
You know, this that crossed my mind. I was like,
I kept questioning if the sister was involved, but I
was like, no, no, there's no way, but holy frick,
she is an evil monster, Like she's doing this to
her sister and her freaking nephews then correct, Okay, that
is okay, it just keeps going with the messed up shit.

Speaker 1 (18:21):
In this case, it does because guess what, even the
adoption exam member from part one, when Anica went into
you know, had her birth certificate, age ass asked all
that sort of stuff. They exam and there was an
actual child who filled in for her against Clara being
aware of it well during that exam, which seemed like
solid proof of her age and all that, it was

(18:43):
of course an illusion. The girl who underwent the X
rays the DNA testing was not Barbara. It was a
friend's daughter, coach styled and presented as Anica for one afternoon,
and doctors had no reason to spect. They were evaluating
an impostor, which was this girl that Katerina helped bring in.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
Okay, okay, yeah, I am just shocked here.

Speaker 1 (19:09):
Every official document issued afterwards, the birth certificate, adoption approval,
legal identity, it all sat on the foundation of this fraud.
And when the system finally started to crack, when the
boys were rescued at the house and cureum, when it
was rated, Barbara did exactly what she had done in
the past. She ran and she vanished.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
Okay, I'm I have like serious questions.

Speaker 1 (19:34):
Okay, shoot, what do you got?

Speaker 2 (19:36):
I mean, you're probably gonna answer them, But what the
fuck that's your question? What the fuck that is a
that is a pretty good question. Actually, what was the
sister gaining from this? I honestly is she just an evil,
evil person?

Speaker 1 (19:53):
I don't have a solid answer for it. The best
thing that I can have to answer that for you
is its cult like mentality and thought process behind it.
That's really what it boils down to. I have a
little bit of some details that we might discuss that
might help voute your thought process, but there's not really

(20:13):
a solid foundation for that answer.

Speaker 2 (20:16):
So really, I guess in a way, Clara is also
a victim here in.

Speaker 1 (20:20):
A sense, yes, definitely, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:23):
Not near to the extent that her boys are, but
like to a degree.

Speaker 1 (20:27):
To a degree. But she is also very much so
responsible still, So she was victimized, but she was also
perpetuating the abuse and is not innocent.

Speaker 2 (20:40):
No oh, no, one hundred percent nod.

Speaker 1 (20:43):
So, after the escape from the children's shelter, Barbara slipped
across the border, first heading east, then heading quietly north,
moving through Europe with the ease of someone who lived
in the shadows for honestly most or life like, almost
like she knew what she was doing. Her first confirmed
appearance came in June of two thousands at the Czech
embassy in Copenhagen. She walked in with her father, a lawyer,

(21:05):
and two journalists, an odd entourage honestly for someone who's
in hiding and terrified of the public eye. But I
digress regardless. She presented identification in the name of Barbara
Skerlova and calmly asked embassy staff to take DNA samples,
as if she were simply clearing a misunderstanding. She confirmed

(21:25):
her identity, answered a handful of questions, then left as
abruptly as she arrived. Now embassy staff didn't really know
what to make of this. They were a little bit confused,
and they notified the police of the incident, but when
they got there it'd be too late. She was already gone.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
Now.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
Where she went next seemed almost impossible, even for her.
It was by late two thousand and seven when a
thirteen year old boy named Adam appeared at a school
in Oslo, Norway. He was introverted and he was strange
and quiet, with traits that didn't immediately stand out classroom
full of awkward teenagers. Teachers noted that Adam kept his

(22:04):
head down and rarely spoke unless spoken to. His clothes
hung loose on his frame, and his hair was buzzed short.
Staff members did think something was off, but there was
nothing really alarming enough to trigger an investigation. To say,
Some believe he looked more like a girl dressed in
boy's clothes, but shrugged it off, as you know, maybe
hormones or late bloomer. Who knows, there's a plethora of

(22:25):
things that it could be. Some also thought he behaved
older than his peers, but attributed it to whatever family
issues he had. See not only was Adam now in
this new school, but he was also in a youth
foster home. What no one realized was this Adam was,
of course, what you' already suspecting. Adam was a thirty
three year old woman named Barbara Scarlova.

Speaker 2 (22:47):
So she's just doing it again.

Speaker 1 (22:48):
She's doing it again. She had reshaped herself over, she
had gained weight, shaved her head again, and adopted the
slouching posture of a teenage boy who didn't want any
sort of attention, and like before, mimic the speech patterns,
emotional flatness of someone withdrawn overwhelmed. And of course it worked,
but her new identity began to unravel the very same

(23:10):
way her last one did. Quietly and through small inconsistencies
see Adam quote unquote struggled to answer routine questions about
his past, His recollections contradicted themselves at times, and he
avoided medical exams. He reacted with fear when paperwork was
mentioned and when school staff contacted the address listed on

(23:31):
its file. While more discrepancies piled up, then came the
breaking point, the real Adam, who Barbara was being an
impostor of. While their relatives reported the boy missing and
authorities realized the teenager living in Oslo could simply not
be Adam, so Norway's police acted quickly, but again they

(23:56):
were too late. Adam realized that you know what they
were running at a time, and it vanished from his
foster placement and followed a trail leading back toward the
Czech Republic. Meanwhile, Chech investigators confirmed what they had feared,
Adam was in fact Barbara this whole time.

Speaker 2 (24:14):
Okay, well, where did the real Adam go. They didn't
kill them, did they. No.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
I don't believe that had anything to do. I think
it was an opening of well, here's an identity.

Speaker 2 (24:23):
Okay, okay.

Speaker 1 (24:25):
Now it didn't take long before she was found shortly after, thankfully,
in a rural area north of Oslo, alive, uninjured and
carrying a children's book and a Teddy Bear when she
was arrested.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (24:37):
Yeah, the items almost looked staged, as though she was
like stepping back into character for a moment when she
saw the officers approaching. But thankfully it didn't fool them.
Norway extradited her to the Czech Republic and the facade
collapsed immediately. The girl in the adoption photo, the missing teen,
the fragile child rescued from Kurum, the runaway danger, the

(25:00):
the boy sitting quietly in the Norwegian classroom. They were
all the same person, and it all pointed to her.
Barbara had successfully fooled teachers, foster parents, social workers, medical staff,
border authorities, crossing two countries, and more, not through magic
or genius, but because she manipulated how people react to

(25:23):
vulnerability and their kindness towards it. She knew exactly which
behaviors invited sympathy, which mannerisms lowered suspicion, and how to
slip into the background just long enough to avoid scrutiny.
But once she was back on Czech soil, there were
no more identities left to run too. Now there were

(25:46):
a lot more names to this story than just Barbara.
In fact, in total, there would be six defendants that
would be in the courtroom, and once they were all
in custody, investigators began sifting through years of messages, documents, emails,
and testimony to understand how they were all connected and
how an ordinary family spiraled into something that looked like

(26:10):
organized madness. And the first major discovery was surprisingly simple.
Doctor andre Z, the specialist Clara referred to for you know,
every child rearing decision, they did not exist. As I mentioned,
every email, medical instruction, all of it, the toll treatment
plan had come from accounts controlled by her sister, Katerina Morova.

(26:33):
There was no trained psychiatrists, no oncologist, no trauma expert.
The all of it was simply being manipulated. The authoritative
voice that Clara believed was saving Anka was nothing more
than a mass created by her own family circle. Her
own sister. Now, this revelation was a wild one, but

(26:54):
it didn't answer the question everyone was asking, and the
question you've already been asking why, And this is the
best I have for you here, So to try and
understand that, investigators turned towards the Skirl family, Barbara and
her brother Yan, and specifically their father, Joseph's girl. So,
Joseph had once been a leader in a boy's scouting

(27:16):
group that blended outdoor survival with rigid spiritual doctrine. Former
members later described the environment as very obsessive and punishing,
framing as character building, of course, but it was saturated
with fear and control. Some compared it to break them
down and build them up philosophy. But whatever the case,

(27:39):
it was extreme. Authorities were careful not to label it
a cult in the legal sense, but there were clear
signs of a closed belief system, strict dominance, for example,
higher chys, moral absolutism, and a fixation on purifying behavior.

(27:59):
There was all also a long history of psychological manipulation
in the household that Barbara and her brother Jan had
grown up in. Now, it is important to note that
nothing actually tied Joseph directly to the events in Curum,
but the imprint he had on the mindset that shaped
his children, especially Barbara, was extremely difficult to ignore. In

(28:22):
this case, it was the same pattern of control, secrecy,
self reinvention that appeared repeatedly, which explains a fair amount
of the psychology where this all stemmed from. Now, the
father may not have been involved in this case, but
Barbara's brother Jan was, and he, along with another woman
named Hannah and another man named Jan, joined in at

(28:45):
the cottage and in forced the so called re education
with increasingly sadistic methods. Now, Hannah and this other person, Yan,
both worked at the youth center where Katerina and Barbara worked,
So you have four individuals working at this youth center

(29:07):
who then created this whole story about this Onnica to
be adopted by Clara and then in doctrine the whole
abuse system upon her two young boys. Basically because of
the whole history Barbara and Jan grew up with and
their fathers Joseph cult like experiences. It's a lot to

(29:31):
take in.

Speaker 2 (29:33):
That is, all of this is so unexpected to me.
I Like, I knew the story was a law, but
this is it's huge. It's way more than I ever respected.

Speaker 1 (29:43):
It's so in depth and it goes back a long time,
and exactly why I can't answer that, Well, why did
they do this? There is no real answer. It's just
very cult life. Cult like messed up ideologies is basically
what it boils down to. But there's no no real
explanation of why. Jeez, sure you may have had these ideologies.

(30:06):
Clara and Katerina might have been very susceptible from a
young age for their ritualistic, very extreme spiritualistic and religious
upbringings and the ideologies of grandeurism that they had as children,
So they may have been susceptible to these ideas too,
but there's still no full explanation.

Speaker 2 (30:27):
Hmm. Okay, I was sitting down here to record this today.
I was not prepared for all this shit at all.

Speaker 1 (30:36):
Which is a reasonable response. Can't imagine that anyone really
would be. Yeah, So all six of these adults that
were discussing were involved and had participated in the abuse
at some level, some getting giving orders of abuse, some
carrying them out, some supporting the system that allowed it
to continue in some shape or form. They took part. Now,

(30:59):
whileations swirled publicly about secret sex ritual motives or coordinated networks.
The court focused on what could be proven. There's a
lot of you know, discussions and theories, that sort of stuff.
The court needed to focus on the facts and what
the evidence showed was horrifying enough without any mythmaking. Clara

(31:20):
had been manipulated and may have been partially blinded by
what had happened, but she also made choices. Katerina, on
the other hand, knew full well what she was doing,
as she orchestrated much of the structure, but of course
she denied being responsible. By the time the trial approached,
the line between delusion and manipulation, as well as cruelty

(31:41):
honestly had blurred almost completely. But that wouldn't stop the
pursuit of justice in the name of these two boys
who were abused. On June seventeenth, two thousand and eight,
the court room in Bruno was crowded as six defendants
sat across from the judge, each responsible for a different
part of a story that horrified the tire country. Clara

(32:02):
Morova appeared exhausted from the moment she entered the room,
and when she testified, she surprisingly didn't try to deny
the events. Instead, she admitted pulling her sons out of school.
She admitted to isolating them and using punishments she now
described as unthinkable. In fact, she even cried so hard
at points that the court had to pause for her

(32:22):
to regain her composure. According to her, everything began with
the instructions she believed were coming from a trauma specialist
treating Anika. She said she was convinced that if she
did not follow the guidance exactly as written, she would
lose the girl that she had promised to save, and
that her own sons would spiral into something dangerous if

(32:45):
left undisciplined. Listening to her, it was clear she wanted
the court to understand that she hadn't set out to
harm her children, even though that was exactly what she
ended up doing. Now. Psychologists did support part of her claim.
They described her as highly vulnerable to influence, emotionally dependent,

(33:06):
and operating in the state of constant stress. But they
were very firm in one conclusion too, Despite the pressure
she was under, she still understood what she was doing,
and she still made those choices to do it. As
for her sister, Katerina, she entered the trial with far
more composure she admitted to helping create onnica and form

(33:28):
the whole identity of the documents in the hospital deception,
but the moment the conversation shifted to the abuse, her
tone changed. She insisted she never intended for things to
go so far, She never met harm or never even
expected her sister Clara to follow the quote unquote doctor's
messages so literally. And when the judge asked who wrote

(33:49):
the emails signed by the imaginary physician, while she simply
refused to answer, and her refusal honestly says a whole
lot more than confession.

Speaker 2 (33:58):
Ever could say something that doesn't make any sense. She
doesn't she didn't expect her sister to follow them, right,
and then so that makes her not like at fault
for sending them.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
Right, and then it's okay, well if you even if
that is the argument, Okay, even if she is correct
in saying that you send a message to your sister,
you don't expect her to actually follow it, and you
see her actually follow it, and you continue sending the message,
you know she's gonna follow it.

Speaker 2 (34:27):
Now, Yeah, okay, right, there just makes no sense. She
is okay, so.

Speaker 1 (34:33):
She's just completely out to lunch in bullshitting, trying to
save her own skin. Now then there was of course Barbarauskerlova,
sitting small and strangely expressionless behind the others. Her testimony
was almost surreal. She presented herself as, of course, a victim,
someone terrified, coerced, and confused. She claimed that the boys
attacked her and that she had been tied up, as well,

(34:56):
that she fled only because she feared for her life.
She didn't address the part that you didn't fit, or
her escape from the children's home really, or anything like that,
the appearance in Norway is Adam, or any of these
other years masquerading as a child long before she had
ever met Clara. She never explained any of that, only
the convenient parts that made her look like a traumatized

(35:17):
victim as well. The psychiatric experts didn't buy her version,
not even for a second. They emphasized that she exhibited
no signs of psychosis, delusion, or dissociative identity disorder. But
what she also showed was an extraordinary ability to manipulate
the people around her. One expert described her behavior as

(35:39):
quote calculated innocence. Now, the remaining defendants Yon's Girl, which
is Barber's brother, Jan Turk and Hannah Basova, who were
two other employees at the youth center, denied outright that
they were abusers whatsoever. They claimed they believe the boy
suffered from severe behavioral issues and that the punishments were
part of a structured method to correct them. But the

(36:02):
injuries told a very different story, and so did the boys.
Their descriptions of who hit them, who dragged them, who
took part in all the agonizing abuse was painfully clear,
and the defendant's claims of ignorance simply couldn't stand against
the physical evidence and everything else that was against them.
And as the trial went on, a clear pattern emerged.

(36:23):
Each adult had relied on others to justify their own actions.
Clara believed Katerina and the doctor. Katerina leaned on Barbara's
authority within the invented world they built. Barbara made use
of Clara's desperation and Katerina's loyalty, and the others followed along,
accepting you know what instructions as truth because challenging them

(36:45):
would have required actual critical thinking, which they clearly lacked,
and confronting the horror of what they were participating in
was clearly too much for them. It was influence, manipulation,
and pressure. Those were all the real factors, but none
of that erased their responsibility. Every adult in that room

(37:05):
had seen the boy's condition, heard their cries, and chosen
not to step in or stop it. Whatever brought them
into the situation, whatever convinced them it was necessary, they
continued long after any reasonable person would have recognized the reality.
It was clear that the trial wasn't really about figuring
out whether something terrible had happened. That much had been

(37:29):
undeniable from the start. It was more about determining how
a group of seemingly ordinary adults became the architects of
an absolute nightmare, and which of them understood the truth,
even as they claimed they didn't. When the trial finally
came to a close in Bernou in two thousand and eight,
the evidence and witness testimonies left very little room for doubt.

(37:50):
Clara Morova, the boy's mother, was found guilty and convicted
of torture and abuse of a minor. The court acknowledged
that she had been manipul related, but not to a
degree that excused her actions. Katerina Morova, her older sister,
was found guilty in the same way and was convicted
of child abuse. Barbara Skerlova, who had spent years passing

(38:13):
as a teenage Onika, was found guilty and convicted of
involvement in the abuse, including participating in the confinement, manipulation,
and rituals inflicted on the boys while posing as a
teenage girl. Hans Skirla, Barbara's older brother, and Han Turlik,
the youth center instructor, were each found guilty and convicted
of child abuse after witnesses and boys confirmed their involvement.

(38:36):
And finally, Hanna Bosova, a longtime acquaintance of the Skerlova
siblings who had also spent time in the cottage, was
also found guilty and convicted of child abuse for her
role in enforcing the punishments, helping maintain control over the boys,
and supporting the groups twisted ideology. But by the time
the judge finished reading the verdicts, every adult tied to

(38:59):
the case had been found guilty. Then finally came sentencing.
Each defendant stood as the sentences were delivered, and for
a moment it seems as though justice had finally arrived,
But for many people, the numbers handed down told a
very different story.

Speaker 2 (39:18):
I'm about to get real pissed you think so. I
have a feeling by how you just stated that.

Speaker 1 (39:25):
Well. Clara Morova, the mother of the two young boys,
was sentenced to nine years in prison.

Speaker 2 (39:32):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (39:32):
The judge acknowledged her emotional vulnerability and the psychological pressure
that she was under, but also made it clear that
none of it excused what she had done to her
own children. She had participated willingly, even if she understood
later how manipulated she'd been. As for her sister, Katerina Morova,
while she was given ten years, the court pointed to

(39:54):
her role in constructing the fake identity, forging documents, and
orchestrating much of the deception that kept professional and authorities fooled.
She had acted with a level of planning that went
far beyond emotional influence.

Speaker 2 (40:06):
Okay, that's way too low for her.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
Barbara Skerlova, the woman in her thirties posing as a child,
received five year sentence.

Speaker 2 (40:15):
What the actual shit?

Speaker 1 (40:17):
She received only five years in prison. Her long history
of masquerading as child in these childish identities, like her
critical role in the whole manipulation of Clara, all of
it and her presence throughout the abuse. Somehow it didn't
translate into a harsher penalty, and she only got that.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
Oh my gosh, that's not enough time. She's going to
be out in the five years and be doing all
this shit again.

Speaker 1 (40:38):
The three other adults received the following sentences for their
roles in the abuse and torture as well. Jan Turik
received five years, Yon Skirl, Barbara's brother, received seven years,
and Hannah Basova received seven years. Each of their sentences
was given depending on the level of physical harm the
court was able to directly attribute to them. With each

(41:01):
sentence handed out, the courtroom filled with shock. None of
the penalties match the severity of what the boys had endured.

Speaker 2 (41:09):
No shit is okay, especially barbarus. Oh my gosh, some
of the like the brother or whatever the fuck got
longer time than her.

Speaker 1 (41:19):
Correct.

Speaker 2 (41:21):
She is literally just like completely nuts.

Speaker 1 (41:25):
Yeah, I mean honestly, even the fact of just you know,
false identities, that shit, Yeah, a fucking massive thing right there.

Speaker 2 (41:33):
Because they're just gonna let her enter into this into
the world again, and she's gonna just keep doing this
kind of shit. It's clearly just going and getting a
job and living life. Is not in the yards for her,
not her forte. I still stand by that would be
much easier than all this shit.

Speaker 1 (41:49):
But well, I do have to say a certain point
she will become old enough to not portray children anymore.
But that's not to say she won't manipulate others, you know,
pretending to be sickly or who knows what right, Oh.

Speaker 2 (42:00):
Yeah, she'll think of some sort of other thing exactly. So.

Speaker 1 (42:04):
Once the trial ended, the public's reaction was immediate, and
it was also visceral. In newsrooms, cafes and living rooms
across the Czech Republic. People asked the same question, how
could torture this extreme result in such short prison terms? Commentators, reporters,
they all called the sentencing insulting, incomprehensibly light, and a

(42:25):
failure of the justice system. Even veteran journalists admitted that
they had never seen such a gap between the brutality
of a case and the punishment that followed afterwards. What
unsettled everyone the most, honestly, though, was the knowledge that
everyone in this case, all the adults involved, would be
freed within a decade, every single one of them, and

(42:48):
by the early twenty tens, they had all completed their
reduced minimum terms and walked out of prison, legally finishing
with the consequences behind them.

Speaker 2 (43:00):
They're all out at this point.

Speaker 1 (43:01):
They are. Meanwhile, the two young boys who suffered the
most in all of this, Jacob and Andrea, would never
escape the legacy of what happened to them. No legal sentence,
regardless of the term, could erase the psychological scars or
the years that they lost. In the days after the
two of them were rescued, Jacob and Andrea were kept
under close medical watch, and the full extent of the

(43:23):
trauma became impossible to ignore. They were pale, dangerously underweight,
and carried injuries that told their story long before either
boy was able to get the courage to tell them
what happened themselves. Nurses documented all their injuries and scars,
while doctors described them as children who had been systematically broken.
Sleep was honestly, at times almost impossible for them. Every

(43:47):
noise jolted them awake. They avoided eye contact and moved cautiously,
as if expecting consequences for every single thing that they did.
The simplest tasks eating at a table or holding utensils,
even choosing a place to sit felt overwhelming. They even
began to experience developmental delays as a result of what
they went through. Therapists did their best working with them,

(44:09):
and progress was slow, but there were signs of healing
too now. Once their health did eventually stabilize, the question
of where they would live took center stage. Social workers
determined that returning to Clara was out of the question,
and the courts quickly stripped her of any custody rites
So the boys replaced in foster care, which was an

(44:30):
environment that proved a lot gentler and far more stable
than anything they've known for years. They began building the
routines of normal childhood, with schools, meals, friends, hobbies, and
all the things that a young kid should have. Their
father re entered their lives as well. The divorce had
pushed him away long before the abuse began, but the
boys still recognized him, still had memories of weekends together

(44:51):
before everything changed, and slowly that relationship started to rebuild,
and soon he would be granted custody of them both
for all all the progress they made. Though trauma never
disappears cleanly, certain triggers stay, and so do certain habits.
But compared to children who once slept on concrete floors
and flinched at the sound of footsteps. Jacob and Andre

(45:13):
grew into young men with the chance to take on
the world and choose their own futures, something that should
never have been taken from them in the first place.
In the years following the trial, the people responsible for
this whole ordeal slipped quietly back into the world, each
of them released after serving the minimum required portion of
their sentence. Their re entry into ordinary life didn't spark

(45:35):
the kind of public outrage the verdicts did, unfortunately, mostly
because the news of their release was given little attention.
It felt as though the system wanted to move on
from the case as quickly as possible, even if the
public didn't. Clara Morova left prison in twenty thirteen. By then,
she had completed therapy, undergone evaluations, and she said she

(45:56):
understood the gravity of what she'd done. The courts, as
I mentioned, reinstated none of her parental rights, and she
has remained out of the public eye ever since. No
official updates mentioned where she lives or what she does now,
only that she is barred from working with children in
any capacity. Her sister, Katerina was released a year later.

(46:16):
There was even less information about her. Journalists attempted to
track her down after her release, but every lead ended
with a dead end. What is certain is that she
also received standard restrictions preventing her from taking any job
involving miners. Beyond that, her whereabouts remain unknown. Barbara Skulova,
the woman who once lives Anica and later described herself

(46:38):
as the teenage Adam, completed her sentence in twenty twelve.
Authorities allowed her to change her name, and she reportedly
survives on disability benefits while living somewhere undisclosed. There have
been no confirmed sighting since, only rumors online about someone
who resembles her. None have ever been verified. The remaining

(46:59):
three defenders, Yon Turrek, Yon Skirl and Hannah Basova serve
their sentences and live lives that the public no longer
have access to. All of them were also legally prohibited
from working with children. Beyond that, their paths remained largely untracked.
As for the boys, their public lives, well, they're not
really so public, and that's definitely a good thing. Privacy

(47:22):
is the kind of mercy the world certainly owes them.
The Kurrum case became one of those stories that spread
far beyond the borders of the Czech Republic, and with
that attention, while it came layers of speculation that often
overshadows the verified facts. The crimes themselves were already disturbing enough,
but the gaps in the timeline, the secrecy surrounding certain details,

(47:42):
it created a kind of void that rumors rushed into.
One of the most persistent claims involved cannibalism in this story.
During the trial, witnesses described an incident which Andre suffered
injuries to the back of his thigh. The explanation given
was that the wound had been intentionally inflicted as part
of a punishment ritual. Investigators documented the injury, and the

(48:05):
court accepted that it had been caused deliberately. What no
one could confirm, though, was establishing what had happened afterwards.
Some accounts claimed that a piece of skin or flesh
of being cut and then consumed by the adults present
in the cottage. Others say Andre himself was forced to
eat it. What we do know is the injury was real,

(48:26):
but everything beyond that it entered a gray area where
evidence ran thin and memories conflicted. It became one of
the cases most sensational elements, often repeated more boldly than
it should ever have been. Another set of rumors suggested
that the abuse in the cottage had been recorded for
paying viewers, sometimes framed as dark web content or part

(48:47):
of a larger exploitation ring. This idea spread quickly online,
likely because there were in fact cameras involved and the
family had their ties to a fringe religious group that
encouraged this strict con over children. But during the investigation,
police never found any footage of the boys being abused
that appeared to be created for profit, nor did they

(49:08):
uncover any distribution network. They did find personal recordings and
surveillance used inside the home. But despite this, the idea
of a hidden audience watching from afar it still circulates
among people who follow the case casually, even though it
was never supported by physical evidence. Then there's a theory
that a cult directed everything from behind the scenes, and

(49:29):
there's even a theory that connects this story to the
horror film called Orphan, and it became part of the
mythology behind this whole story. The parallels, well, they're obvious.
An adult woman posing as a child to infiltrate a family.
Many viewers assumed the movie was actually based on Barber Skerlova,
especially since the case received international coverage around the same

(49:51):
time the film was being developed, but the filmmakers never
cited her as an inspiration, and the timeline honestly it
suggests the script was already underway before the Curum case
was ever fully public. The resemblance is striking, but it
appears to be just that resemblance, a coincidence rather than
a direct adaptation. All in all, a lot of rumors

(50:14):
cling to this story because parts of it still feel unfinished.
People disappeared from public view, others refused interviews, authorities never
release certain details, and some documents remained sealed from the public.
Silence often breeds imagination, and the Curum Case contains enough
unanswered questions to keep those questions alive for decades. But

(50:35):
when separating truth from speculation, the core story remains horrifying
without any of that added embellishment. Though two young boys
were tortured for a fabricated narrative that convinced adults to
do the unthinkable, the documented facts show more than enough
cruelty on their own, and cases like this tend to

(50:56):
also be remembered for their villains, for the shocking photos,
the unbelievable twists, but at the center of it, while
it was two young boys who didn't deserve a single
hour of what was done to them, the horror of
their story is in the simple fact that adults chose
to torture children, and a pair of brothers had to
learn how to live afterwards. The Curum case remains a

(51:20):
reminder of evil, for sure, but it also stands as
proof that even the smallest window, like a glitching baby monitor,
for example, can be enough to pull someone out of
the dark. Two boys survived because a neighbor happened to
turn on the wrong device at the right time, and
it saved their lives. And that is the story of

(51:43):
the Kurum case.

Speaker 2 (51:46):
Right, I have forgotten how this kind of started and
went down.

Speaker 1 (51:50):
Well, there's so much to this story it's easy to
kind of lose track of how it really started off
in the first place.

Speaker 2 (51:55):
Huh. Well, I mean, gosh, the fact that like these
two boys, they had their childhood just destroyed. And that's
like when it's supposed to be one of your most
magical times of life, you know, yeah, fortunure, it just
got taken away from them. Is just that's really what
this is all about.

Speaker 1 (52:12):
It is and I mean, I don't mean to overshadow
what they went through, but the silver lining is at
the very least they managed to come out of it.
They have some semblance of their life afterwards, and they
have you know what they've they've got someone like their dad,
they're now there for them. Right.

Speaker 2 (52:29):
Well, yeah, I mean what they endured, it could have
gone with quite differently, some of the stuff they had
to go through. It's like, it's surprising they, you know,
didn't die, so right, the fact that they still get
to live their life and it's got to be better
than It's better than that, right, one hundred percent.

Speaker 1 (52:45):
And it's who's to say that, Hey, if that guy
didn't buy the right baby monitor model or turned it
on the next day, who knows that that signal could
have been intercepted. Yeah, and that could have been the
thing that saved their lives. Probably was the thing that
saved their life, which honestly, in retrospect, puts it in
this perspective like, Okay, what small thing can any of

(53:08):
us do to help save someone else's life? You never
know what thing you're going to do could pull someone
out of the dark, whether it's physically like that, pulling
a person out of a literal dark cramp space being abused,
or just a mental space, pulling them into a better
spot where you know what, that could save their life too.
So remember, be kind, just do the little thing. Be human,

(53:32):
You never know what impact you can make.

Speaker 2 (53:34):
And observant really too. Yes, So on that note, hey.

Speaker 1 (53:38):
Yeah, thank you for being here. This was definitely a
heavy and in depth case.

Speaker 2 (53:43):
It was.

Speaker 1 (53:45):
We appreciate you being here. If you want to check
out all the description stuff in the podcast, we got socials,
all that good stuff. I'm just going to leave it
at that for now, we appreciate you being here.

Speaker 2 (53:54):
And until next time, I just have to say, have
like a nice warm hot chocolate today.

Speaker 1 (54:00):
This something to warm the soul from head.

Speaker 2 (54:02):
I think I think that that's our recommendation.

Speaker 1 (54:04):
So okay, warm hot chocolate. We'll make one after

Speaker 2 (54:06):
This, yes, and until next time, stay wicked.

All Episodes

The Kuřim Case - Part 2

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

The Burden

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Kuřim Case - Part 2