Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - He Killed a Guy And Then Wrote a Crime Novel About It - The Krystian Bala story

Episode Date: February 1, 2025

Krystian Bala murdered a man and then he wrote a crime novel about it.

So this guy brutally unalives a man gets away with it and then publishes a novel about it. So the guy, his name's Christian. He's from Poland. He's an average guy. He runs a cleaning business. But one day, the worst happens. His life starts falling apart. His business is failing and so he has to file for bankruptcy.

He's drinking a lot. He's cheating on his wife. Now his wife is this woman, Stasha. And pretty quickly, Stasha decides all the drinking and cheating, it's too much for her. And she and Christian officially separate. Now this separation really gets to Christian. He doesn't take it well. He's depressed and he wants her back. He's thinking about her all the time and he starts obsessing over her. And eventually he decides to hire a private investigator to start following her to see what she's up to. Yeah,

because that's going to win her back. But hiring that private investigator is how he finds out about this guy, Darius. And Darius is this local man who runs an advertising business. He's a normal guy and he has no connection to Christian. But one night, Darius is out at a nightclub and that is when he meets Stasha. And he and Stasia, they hit it off and eventually they agree to go on a date. And so later they go out on this date and nothing materializes from the date. They don't go out again after that.

Except the private investigator Christian hired is still following Stasia around. And he reports back to Christian like, hey, you know, she went out on a date with this guy, Darius. And of course, Christian is pissed. And one night, he gets all drunk and he goes over to Stasia's house to confront her. And boom, he breaks her front door down. And he's screaming at her and he hits her. And he confesses that he hired a private investigator to follow her. And that's how he found out that she went out on a date with this Darius guy.

In fact, he's so mad. Eventually, after this, Christian comes up. with a plan to get rid of Darius for good. And one morning, Christian goes to a payphone near Daudius's office, and he calls the office pretending to be a client who wants to buy advertising. And he's like, look, I need to speak to Darius right now. Otherwise, you'll lose my business. So they give him Darius's cell number, and he calls the cell number, and he sets up a meeting with Darius later that day. So then later, Christian and Darius meet up. And we don't know exactly how their conversation went, but somehow Christian gets Darius into a car with him

and he drives him to an unknown location. Now, this next part is actually pieced together by forensic evidence because there were no witnesses to what happened. But here's what we know. While at this unknown location, Christian suddenly gets violent with Darius and he beats him up and he ties him up and he tortures him and he holds him hostage for a few days.

He doesn't give him food or anything. Then when he's done with him, he takes Darius to a local. river and he throws him in and Darius is too weak to swim and unfortunately he drowns. Then Christian takes Darius's cell phone, goes on the internet to an auction site, it's kind of like eBay, and he sells it to make a little money. Around four weeks later, some fishermen are out fishing in that river and they see something floating by the shore that kind of looks like a body because it is a body, Darius's body. So they call police. Now immediately, police look in

to this because you know a body floating in the river this is obviously a murder but unfortunately after investigating they find very little and after six months they still have no real leads and the case gets dropped meanwhile christian he's just viving he's like sweet no one suspects it was me because bro just got away with murder and then this crazy motherfucker starts writing a crime novel about all this And this crime novel is about a fictional character named Chris B., who brutally murders someone in a similar way that he had murdered Darius. And a lot of the details about Chris B's life are similar to the details of Christian's life. And Chris B, in the novel, even sells the murder weapon on an online auction site

just like Christian did with Darius' phone. So yeah, this fictional novel appears to be based on the actual murder that he committed. And to make it worse, then the book is. actually gets published. Like some publisher read this and was like, yeah, this is great. Now, at the end of the day, he only sells a couple thousand copies, so it's not a huge success.

But still, Christian got away with murder, and he wrote a freaking book about it, and no one has connected him to the crime. Until. Three years later, after the murder, a local detective is looking into cold cases, and he starts working on this one to see if he can find

anything new. And Detective suddenly realizes Darius, he would have had his cell phone on him. Like everyone always has their cell phone on them. But when they found the body, they never found his phone. So Detective gets a hold of the serial number for that phone and he finds a way to track it. And he discovers that after the murder, it had been sold on an internet auction site. And the person who sold it, their username was Chris B. Like the character in Christian's novel. So of course, they traced the account back to Christian. So detective, he investigates this Christian guy he's never heard of and he deep dives into his life and that's when he finds out about the crime novel he wrote. So he and a bunch of other police officers, they scour through every chapter of that novel looking for any details

that might lead them to connect Christian to the crime. And eventually, boom, he's a suspect and they bring him in for questioning. But they don't get much information out of him and they have to let him go. Oh, but it's not over because then they get another break in the case. Apparently, when Christian called Darius's office that day from the payphone, he used a phone card. I guess it was one of those prepaid ones that some countries use. And so detectives discovered that a phone card was used, and whoever used that phone card that day also made other calls. Calls to Christian's parents, Christian's girlfriend, to Christian's friends.

So obviously it was Christian using the phone card because obviously he's the freaking killer. But this phone card isn't what gets embusted. Here's what gets him busted. Remember Stasia? Well, up to this point, Stasia hasn't been super cooperative with police. Like, she doesn't really want to talk to them. They've tried to talk to her several times, but she's just one of those people who doesn't trust them.

Regardless, they try speaking with her one last time. And this last time, they show her parts of Christian's novel. Specifically, they show her parts of the book with this character named Sonia. And Sonia, in the novel, appears to be based on Stasia. And this little factoid freaks Stasia the fuck out. She's like, this weirdo Christian was writing crime novels about me? And so, boom, she finally agrees to talk. And she tells police everything.

That one night she went on on a date with Darius and how Christian found out about it and he tracked her down and broke her door down. He got violent and he admitted that he hired a private investigator to follow her. And that then that private investigator saw her with Darius. and that Christian was all butt hurt and super jealous of him. And that is all the info police needed. And so then, bam, they go and arrest Christian. And I don't have a mugshot of him, but here he is in real life.

This is actually him sitting in court after he got busted. And like, notice he's got like kind of a little smile on his face? What is he smiling about a creepy bastard? And so he's charged with murdering Darioche and he's found guilty and he's sentenced to 25 years in prison. And so just to be clear, if he had never written that novel loosely based on his crimes, then he probably would have gotten away with it. And that is wild to think about.