The Tourist

When recent college graduates Kelsey Chang and Eva Liu decided to take a celebratory trip to Europe before starting their careers, neither young woman could have prevented the horrors that awaited them when they got to Germany. It’d be a trip that would change their lives forever.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:11):
When you're young, you feel invincible. Mortality is a half
baked concept pushed into the furthest recesses of our mind.
It's simply incomprehensible that we won't be here forever. Of course,
this pattern of thinking is inherently risky. This mentality is

(00:34):
the reason that teenagers and well pretty much everyone under
twenty five has to pay a lot more for car insurance.
The insurance companies know you're a risk. You engage in
risky behavior, risky business if I want to date myself

(00:55):
a little bit there. It's also the reason the leading
cause of death and people ages twelve through twenty five
is unintentional injury, most notably accidental poisoning and car accidents.
While it is true that we tend to put ourselves
more at risk in our younger years, it's not all bad.

(01:18):
This impulsivity often results in some of our fondest memories,
our most exhilarating experiences, oftentimes things we would never even
dare to think of doing again. Twenty years later, in
the beginning of the summer of twenty twenty three, twenty

(01:38):
one year old Eva Lou and her friend twenty two
year old Kelsey Chang we're living out their youth adventurously.
After graduating from their shared university, both with flying colors
and numerous accolades, they decided to take an international trip.
Neither young woman could have done anything to prevent the

(02:01):
tragedy that awaited them. Welcome to Sword and Scale Nightmares,

(02:24):
True Crime for Bedtime or Nightmare Beginnings Now. Eva and

(02:52):
her twin sister were both born on October thirtieth, two
thousand and one in Guangzhou, China. The city, which is
also known as Canton, is the capital and largest city
of Guangdong Province in southern China. According to Wikipedia, that is,
they were adorable identical babies, bouncing around together hand in

(03:14):
hand as soon as they could walk. These two girls
were clearly very intelligent, and they did everything together from
an early age. Their philosophy was there is no point
to doing everything yourself when you have someone who can
do part of it. This meant that even when it
came to things like piano lessons, they'd be doing it together.

(03:37):
Eva played the left hand and Alice, her twin, played
the right. The Lu family eventually made the decision to
move to Waterloo in Canada, before finally settling in Naperville,
Illinois in twenty thirteen. Moving to two different countries in
the formative years can be a bit destabilizing Eva at

(04:01):
her family. When Eva got to high school, she didn't
attend public school. She was smart enough to get into
the esteemed Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, a STEM boarding school. Basically,
though you have to pay no tuition to attend this school,
getting admitted is highly competitive. Eva started processes very similar

(04:24):
to the college application process when she was just thirteen
years old. To get into IMSA, you have to show
that you've got a strong combination of academic achievement, passion
for science, technology, engineering in math, and the ability to
thrive in a residential school. Thirteen year old Eva sent

(04:46):
in two essays a list of her STEM activities and
achievements thus far. And remember she's literally just completed middle
school at this point. She also submitted three evaluations on
her performance done by her former middle school teachers, a
form from her former school counselor, the last two and
a half years of her official grades, and her official

(05:09):
SAT and or ACT scores. I mean, damn. Most people
take the SAT or ACT in high school and use
it to get into college. Eva was taking it in
middle school and using it to get into high school.
After all the application business was out of the way,

(05:30):
Eva got in. The boarding school was where she met
one of her closest friends, Kelsey Chang. Eva is described
as being decisive and open, which drew a lot of
people to her. It wasn't hard for her to make friends.
Eva and her friend Kelsey were model students and model citizens. Eva,

(05:53):
her twin Alice, and Kelsey Chang went on to attend
the University of Illinois at her Bana Champagne. Eva's sweet
nature meant that she volunteered to give tours of the
school to new students, and she made her dormitory the
homiest place on campus. Eva loved to bake, and she

(06:14):
often made fun treats for her dormitory neighbors. Eva's favorite
thing to make was cakes, pouring her heart into every
single one of them. I mean, this young woman kept
chocolate in her dormitory drawers just in case anyone was
having a bad day and needed a treat. She was
a sweetheart. Her twin sister, Alice, even remembers walking into

(06:37):
their shared dorm one night and seeing Eva tutoring a
fellow student while simultaneously consoling another who had curled up
under Eva's bed. In just four years at the University
of Illinois, Eva managed to complete not only a Bachelor
of Science degree in computer science, but also her master

(07:01):
She graduated with honors in May of twenty twenty three
and had just finished up an internship with Microsoft, where
they guaranteed her a job she was set to start
in July. While many kids are out partying their grades
into the dirt, Eva gave herself no breaks except for

(07:21):
this one month period between college graduation and the start
of her new career. Eva loved to travel, so she
and her friend Kelsey began making plans to take a
tour of Europe. They were determined to make the most
out of the short time they had before their lives

(07:42):
really took off. So it's June of twenty twenty three

(08:08):
and Eva and Kelsey are getting ready for this trip.
They are so excited. They're planning to see lots of
the spots they have on their bucket lists, including the
famous Disney Castle, which attracts more than a million visitors
every year. The sprawling white nineteenth century palace sits on

(08:28):
a hill within the foothills of the Alps in Bavaria,
the south of Germany. The New Schwanstein Castle is its
real name meaning New swan Stone, and it was the
inspiration for the castle you see before the start of
every Disney movie before they start pushing woke crap on you. Okay, okay, relax, relax, Sorry,

(08:52):
I won't do it again, promise. The castle was also
featured in the nineteen sixty eight movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,
which is much better than the book written by a
grifter in Baltimore with a similar sounding name. Perhaps most notably,
this behemoth of a palace was used during World War
II in Hitler's attempts to build himself a quote Furer's

(09:16):
museum full of stolen artworks and valuables and nus schwastein
castle was declared the headquarters housing over twenty thousand stolen items.
The castle has tours inside, of course, but because it's
perched on top of a hill that rises about six
hundred and sixty feet above the Hohensvangau Valley, the best

(09:38):
views of the massive palace are from a bridge and
hiking trail on the other side of the valley. Imagine
a V shape. On one side you've got your castle,
and on the other is the bridge and the hiking trail,
and the two face each other with the valley in between.

(09:58):
Eva and Kelsey are staying in this little hotel near
the castle, so they drive over to start their tour,
eventually ending up at the start of the hiking trail
that takes visitors to the historic Marion brook Bridge, which
they must cross before they can get to the part
of the trail offering the best views. So they're walking

(10:20):
along taking pictures amongst the beautiful trees and other tourists.
This is a well known tourist hotspot and it's one
of those special places that just constantly has people from
all over the world buzzing around the grounds. Kelsey and
Eva being English speaking Americans, or just like the rest
of us. If you've ever been on vacation to a

(10:43):
non English speaking country, you know how another American's voice
sticks out in the crowd. So the girls hear someone
speaking English, which is a welcome familiarity on this trip
to Europe. The guy is super friendly and they strike
a conversation with him. His name is Troy Bowling. I

(11:05):
hope I'm pronouncing that right. There's not a lot of
information about the correct pronunciation. But he's only a few
years older than the girls, and he lives in Lincoln Park, Michigan,
only a four and a half hour drive from where
kelseon Eva live. It is truly a small world, after all.

(11:26):
Troy works for an oil rig so he's got a
schedule that has him working for a period of time
and then off work entirely for a period of time.
He loves to travel, so during this stretch of time off,
he chose to travel to Germany, somewhere he'd always wanted
to see. Troy tells the girls about a spot he's

(11:48):
just been to up ahead on the trail a bit further.
There's one spot everyone knows to be the best place
for pictures. There are no trees or anything obstructing the
view of the castle, and it's where everyone goes for selfies. Yolo,
So Kelsey and Eva happily trot along after him as

(12:09):
he leads them to that spot. When they get there,
as you may be thinking if you've ever seen the
movie Hostile, the friendly smile on Troy's face quickly turns
to a malicious evil expression, and he lunges at Eva,
obviously trying to sexually assault her. Kelsey acts fast and

(12:33):
tries to get Troy off of her friend, but he
grabs her by the neck, squeezing harder and harder, his
eyes bulging out of his skull, before flinging her off
the side of the cliff into the valley. He then
turns his attention back to Eva. He again tries to
resume his sexual assault, but ends up pushing Eva over

(12:56):
the side of the cliff as well. Both girls fall
nearly one hundred and sixty five feet. Just to give
you a better idea, the Statue of Liberty from the
ground to the tip of its torch is one hundred
and fifty one feet. On her way down, Kelcey is
stopped by some trees, holding on for dear life as

(13:20):
Troy flees from the scene deeper into the woods. Authorities
would then launch a full scale search effort to find him.
Tourists walking around the outside of the castle can see
this hiking trail and the unfolding catastrophe from across the valley,

(13:40):
and they watch with confusion and horror, some even filming
with their phones as the fuson Mountain rescue lower someone
down by rope to grab Kelcey from the log she
was clinging onto. Kelsey is alive. She's got some injuries,
but they airlift her to the nearest hospital. Eva, on

(14:04):
the other hand, isn't so lucky. Eva Lou is dead
and Troy Bowling is being carted out of the wooden
hiking area and handcuffs by German authorities. Thirty year old

(14:41):
Troy Bowling was not at all who you might picture
lurking on a hiking trail waiting for victims to rape
and murder. No, Troy was your average white guy. To
Newsffenstein Castle, he wore a T shirt, work jeans, work boots,
and a baseball cap from Yellowstone National Park, another excursion

(15:06):
he'd been to just two weeks prior. His long, straggly
goatee and soul patch jutted out in all directions as
he posed for a toothy, smiled selfie sticking up the
peace sign for his internet friend in Thailand. Just like
his other trips, he had been sending photos to his

(15:26):
pen pal, a young woman named Chanita, someone he'd met
on discord for People who play an Obscure MMO RPG
game called simple Mmo. It's like a weird, simplified online
version of Dungeons and Dragons, but there are no graphics.
It's just text based. What a psychopath. Apparently Troy liked

(15:51):
to play not only this online game, but he also
enjoyed traditional Dungeons and Dragons with a group of friends
in person. This guy really likes D and D. What
is it about Dungeons and Dragons and weirdos anyway? I
don't get the correlation, but it sounds like he had
several concurrent games going on at any given time, both

(16:15):
online and in real life. Troy and his friend Chanita
connected after Troy came upon one of Janita's streams. She
was live streaming her artwork process on Discord and chatting
with viewers, and she says Troy liked her energy, whatever
the fuck that means. They talked here and there and

(16:37):
became close friends over the course of two months, mostly
talking on the phone, but sometimes texting back and forth.
That's exactly what Troy was doing on his Yellowstone trip
in early June and this trip to Germany two weeks
later on June thirteenth, when he arrived with a tourist
visa in the small town of Uberstaft. He sent Chanita

(17:00):
photos of the room he had rented for his stay, saying,
I just got here, was getting the tour around all
five minutes of it. Just upstairs. There are a few
other rooms on the same floor as me. Troy just
happened to be staying at the same hotel. Eva Lou
and Kelsey Chang were at The room itself looked cozy

(17:22):
and well maintained, and it seemed to have a good
view being on an upper floor. At four fifteen pm,
Troy said to his friend, very sleepy. This is perfect
nap weather right now. Later that night, at around seven pm,
when Chanita asked Troy what he was doing, he said,

(17:43):
just saved a butterfly because it got stuck in my room,
and back to uploading my pictures to Injure. Don't have
many from Germany so far. Also, I took a nap
and I still want to sleep more. But if I
do then it'll be two am and I'll be wide awake.
Once I finished uploading the picks, I'll probably watch a movie.

(18:04):
He then sent her links to the photo dumps of
his Injure. Anyway, he sent her pictures of his trip
to Devil's Tower in Wyoming and Yellowstone National Park. This
guy had extra money from his job at the oil
rig and extra time to travel because of his job schedule.
Troy was a quiet, reserved, nerdy guy who lived in

(18:28):
a small house in Michigan with his brother. The rent
that he split with his sibling was only about fourteen
hundred dollars a month, and the guy didn't have any
wife for kids, so his income was disposable. Neighbors didn't
see much of either brother, only catching glimpses of them

(18:48):
as they'd walk their cat on a leash in the garden.
What a bunch of weirdos. They described both men as
unfriendly and unapproachable. Person said verbatim, the family is weird.
Troy would never look you in the eye when he
came and went, I'm shocked what he's been accused of.

(19:10):
I'm scared he may have done stuff here and no
one has figured it out yet. His former friends and
high school girlfriend describe him as having been a chill
marching band musician. He was quiet in high school, but
he was an upbeat, cheerful person. No one could have
ever in a million years predicted that he would go

(19:32):
on to murder anyone. Of course, if you're cynical like
I am, you know that the quiet, chill, always friendly
person is probably the serial killer. Someone who never looks
at their dark side, never analyzes internally their demons cannot
be trusted. But even Troy's international penpal was startled by

(19:57):
the news of what he had done. Chanita was tracked
down purely with luck. A reporter must have been scrolling
through Troy's public Facebook friends list before the account was
locked down and clicked on Chanita's profile randomly. They decided
to send her a message and unknowingly opened up a

(20:19):
huge can of worms. The reporter had no idea Janita
had actually been talking to Troy around the time of
the murders. On June fourteenth, the day after arriving at
Uberstorff in the early afternoon, Troy sent Chanita a photo

(20:40):
of the vast landscape, presumably from the bridge or hiking area,
circling a small spot where he had parked. Then just
a few minutes later, he sent a series of selfies
from the hiking trail, showing that he had climbed a
natural staircase made of tree roots. He said, I climbed it.

(21:01):
It went about one hundred meters up, only tree roots
and branches for steps and grabbing Another selfie, the one
with the peace sign, is accompanied with a message saying,
and now I get to sit here and look at
these two try to get the perfect insta. The final
picture is of two men crouched on the edge of

(21:26):
the drop off looking at photos they had taken of
the castle, which can be seen further in the background.
That was the last message Troy sent Chanita for approaching
Eva and Kelsey and committing is horrible crimes. Janita continued

(21:49):
to message Troy, confused by his sudden disappearance. Her confusion
was only cleared up when that reporter reached out to
her on a whim. Troy Bowling was on the fringes
of society. It seems he had no real friends outside
of his immediate family. Most of his social interactions occurred

(22:12):
online or remotely with people he met online. There's a
lot of those people around nowadays, many of them on Reddit.
Janita said that his logic is too intense for most
people when it comes to fights. I know that's a
weird statement. I'll explain. Apparently, he had dated several people

(22:36):
that he'd met in the same discord that he met
Chanita on and got into numerous altercations in those virtual relationships,
all things he would tell Chanita about over the phone.
Though his high school friends describe him differently. Janita describes
him as short tempered, adding that he cursed a lot

(23:00):
during their phone calls. It seems that either Troy's real
life friends and family didn't know his true nature, or
Troy experienced a total upheaval of his personality, character, and
moral compass once he reached adulthood. But it's puzzling that
he managed to maintain such a cheerful demeanor during high school,

(23:24):
then later appearing trustworthy enough to engage with Eva and
Kelsey on a hiking trail in another country. On the contrary,
his neighbors perceived him as peculiar and unsociable, and his
closest friend, someone he only knew online, described him as angry.

(23:46):
Sometimes psychopaths can just turn on the charm and fool you.
That's why they're so scary. After the news of this
international crime involving three Americans made it back to the
United States, media swarmed to Troy's house trying to get
footage and interviews with his family. When a German outlet

(24:09):
called Troy's mother and asked what she thought of the accusations,
she basically said, son, what son? I don't have a
son in Germany. Must be a case of mistaken identity.
That's one way to deal with the situation. I guess
if you've raised a murderer. For now, Troy is in

(24:32):
German custody. In Germany, once you've been arrested and detained,
authorities must bring you before a judge within twenty four
hours to decide whether you'll be detained even longer then
the formal investigation begins. A judge has already ordered that
Troy remain in custody pending a likely indictment. Authorities are

(24:55):
actively pursuing charges of murder, attempted murder, and sexual assault.
You will not be extradited to the United States before
his case is tried in Bavaria. Perhaps something was brewing
deep in Troy's mind and he finally acted impulsively on

(25:16):
a dark desire. We may never know the real reason
behind his crimes now that it's in the hands of
the German authorities, but we do know that Troy took
a life that was certainly poised to make a real
difference in the world, and that is truly an unforgivable crime.

(25:44):
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Sweet Dreams and good Night,