Crime Author On Trial For Murder

A sinister and controversial case has arisen in Wroclaw containing shades of Paul Verhoeven's 1992 thriller Basic Instinct. Here in Wroclw crime author Krystian Bala is being accused of carrying out a murder identical to the one which he describes in his supposedly fictional work 'Amok'.

The murder in question is that of a well-liked businessman, referred to in the case as Dariusz J, whose mutilated body was fished out of the river Odra in 2000. No clues to the killing were found and the police were left helpless until they received an anonymous tip off telling them to read Bala's book 'Amok'.

In the book Bala describes a murder in precise and gruesome details that exactly match the torture and murder of Dariusz J, including many details which were not released to the press and could be known only to the police... or murderer. In the light of this strange evidence, further police investigation revealed a number of other telling facts. That Bala's estranged wife was a friend of Dariusz J, that Bala had sold a mobile phone on the internet four days after the murder that was the same model as the victim's, and that the Polish crime programme '997' had received emails from South East Asia describing the murder as 'the perfect crime' at the very time Bala was on holiday, diving in Indonesia and South Korea. Suspicious stuff indeed.

Meanwhile Bala's defence has claimed that the author was beaten and manhandled in police custody, that the actual evidence in support of the allegation is very thin, and that his novel is simply a work of fiction vividly imagined from the press reports of the murder.

The trial continues.