'BULGARIA'S TWIN PEAKS'

Тhe first people to arrive at the crime scene were not the police. It was Borislav Sarafov, the controversial interim chief prosecutor, and members of the DANS, or National Security Agency. None of them should have been there. Murder in Bulgaria is usually a matter for the homicide cops – unless national security, terrorism, drug enforcement or exceptional circumstances warrant the involvement of the DANS.

Before any police investigation, autopsy or forensic tests were made, the cause of death of three adult men was propagated as "two murders and a suicide." Then several magic words that would make the head of every Bulgarian spin were put into circulation: "drugs," "child abuse," "illegal migrants" and "religious sect." Since 2 February, when the bodies of the three men were found, killed by a single bullet in the head, spread out drugs cartel-like next to a burning mountain chalet, the Bulgarian nation collectively has fantasised about the possible reasons for the execution.

As if to facilitate the conspiracy theorists, the police were slow and, importantly, not very convincing in their briefings. The half-burned mountain chalet had an owner, one Ivaylo Kalushev, and the police identified him as the chief suspect. Kalushev reportedly travelled with two other men, one of whom 15-year-old, to another property he owned, in the village of Balgari in southeastern Bulgaria. As they had their mobile phones switched off, the police were unable to establish their precise location. The trio was discovered on 8 February in a van parked off road, near the Vratsa mountain peak of Okolchitsa, in northwestern Bulgaria. The van was first noticed by a local shepherd. The shepherd looked inside the parked vehicle and froze: the three passengers were dead. Shot in the head at close range.

The six murders grabbed the imagination of the nation from day one. Fed by, on the one hand, the apparent reluctance or inability of the police to make a meaningful statement and, on the other hand, by the plethora of odd, bizarre and at time even juicy details, often contradicting each other, that started to emerge, the conspiracy theories proliferated exponentially. Kalushev, it transpired, was a Buddhist. Or was he not a Buddhist deviant who had founded his own "sect," luring underage boys as "pupils"? Child abuse "naturally" followed. But then it emerged that the parents of those children willingly, and sometimes paying cash, sent their children to Kalushev, who among other things, had a property, a "retreat," in Mexico. From there he may have been importing drugs into Bulgaria while using the Petrohan chalet (near the border with Serbia) and the Balgari house (near the Turkish border) to facilitate illegal immigration. A mother of one of the "pupils" of Kalushev, who was also a notorious mountaineer, diver and spelunker, appeared in a long podcast interview, which will probably go down in history as one of the strangest pieces of Bulgarian journalism. The woman disclosed she had donated about half a million euros of (her husband's) money to Kalushev and his causes, and had purposefully sent her then underage son, who was addicted to smoking pot, to Kalushev to "rectify." Her son, the woman claimed, was the moral assassin of Kalushev. She wished him (her son) a long life "to carry the burden" of assassination to the fullest. The son also appeared in another podcast. He claimed sexual abuse by Kalushev, who allegedly gave him a present when he was 17: a vibrator. Kalushev's mother, a renowned classical pianist, rejected any implication her son was a criminal: "My son was killed." One conspiracy theorist "established" that the Kalushev gang had unearthed the semi-mythical gold treasure of the 19th century Valchan Voyvoda and were killed by a rival gang. Another was happy to disclose Kalushev's father, a former economics professor, had been recruited  by the Communist-era State Security in 1972. State Security was disbanded almost immediately after the collapse of Communism, in 1990, but there are still people who like to vilify the former secret police for anything that's gone wrong in Bulgaria in the past century – and the beginning of the 21st.

The Petrohan case assumed entirely new dimensions when it emerged that senior figures in the CC-DB, or Changes Continued-Democratic Bulgaria, political party were involved. Vasil Terziev, the CC-DB mayor of Sofia, was a visitor to the Petrohan chalet, and had donated 80,000 euros to Kalushev to buy a new SUV with. Boyko Rashkov, the former CC-DB government interior minister, issued 16 (!) weapons licences to Kalushev in a single day (!). Kalushev ran a non-profit organisation calling itself National Agency for the Protection of Restricted Territories. It had been registered by that name – strictly speaking, very unusual as under Bulgarian law no private agency can mimic what sounds like an organ of the state. He was a wonderful man, according to people who knew him: a peaceful lama who trained his followers in meditation and Tibetan Buddhism.

Apparently, Kalushev also had the propensity to charm rich and powerful friends. Sasha Bezuhanova, the former general manager of HP Bulgaria who does not conceal her affinity for the CC-DB went to visit with her daughter. So did Asen Asenov, a former TV and events producer. And so did Borislav Sandov, a former CC-DB government minister. In some peculiar Bulgarian way, the affair started to transcend the Twin Peaks scenario and resemble  Jeffrey Epstein.

But things are just beginning. Ahead of the snap election in April politicians of all hues and colours joined in the conspiracy cacophony. "There are no killed DANS agents," Kostadin "Kostya Kopeykin" Kostadinov of the extreme nationalist and pro-Putin Vazrazhdane, or Revival, said, and added: "But there is political protection." Toshko Yordanov of the ITN, or There Is Such a People party, intoned: "What we have is a paedophilic sect patronised by the CC-DB." Kiril Petkov, the former leader of the CC-DB and prime minister, responded: "The ITN and Vazrazhdane make nauseating statements because they are scared." Rumen Radev, the former president who resigned his post to be able to stand in the next general election with his own political party, commented: "The Petrohan case is a political earthquake and a diagnosis of the state this country is in." Radev was a rare bird among Bulgaria's politicians as he actually expressed condolences to the families of those killed.

As the CC-DB felt under pressure from the accusations of supporting a paedophile network, it resorted to the very unusual measure to demand the State Prosecution to make all the evidence related to Petrohan available in parliament. Strictly speaking, illegal because it concerned an ongoing investigation. Even more unusually, the State Prosecution complied – also, strictly speaking, unprecedented because it is illegal.

Not even that could appease the angry Bulgarians. Some think the Bulgarian police, the DANS and the whole apparatus of the state as such erred gravely at Petrohan. They think that the six men were "executed" by a mysterious hit squad, ran by the secret services themselves, because they had seen or learned of "something" they were supposed to see. They tend to think that the government is withholding important information from the public and will eventually close the case without any denouement.

Others think that the police, the DANS and the government are right in  not disclosing information while the investigation is still ongoing. They also think that Buddhism, the protection of forested areas and the high "connections" in politics were used as a cover by Kalushev and his associates to conceal their "paedophile" network and their "drugs and illegal immigration" businesses.

Yet others reject any mention of illegal migrants, drugs and so on. Kalushev was, according to them a charismatic leader, who founded a sect of his own. Then that sect committed, Branch Davidian-style, a collective suicide. Petrohan will go down in history as Bulgaria's Waco, Texas... And there is no conspiracy in the secret services and the police. Any discrepancy, omission or wrong information being released by the police now can be explained with their thorough incompetence and their neglect of various reports and indications being given to them in the course of several years prior to Petrohan.

The Petrohan case illustrates perhaps more vividly some not very pleasant characteristics of latterday Bulgaria and the Bulgarians. First, few would trust the official agencies of the state. This is not just a communications or a publicity problem. It is the deeply ingrained conviction that the authorities – any authority – always have something to hide and that the real truth – any truth – is elsewhere. This is obviously a leftover from the times of Communism when the authorities did just that. It is also an obvious failure of post-Communism to reform its agencies in such a manner as to make them trustworthy to ordinary Bulgarians. It is also a materialisation of the fear that this country is run by some clandestine elite who indulge in unorthodox if not outright criminal practices, and there is no one to hold them to account. It shows that no matter what the actual crime is, and no matter how many people are dead, unscrupulous politicians will always jump at the opportunity to make some hay for themselves – regardless of the human and moral cost and of their declared subscription to moral and ethical standards.

Most importantly, it manifests that since the mid-20th century the main job of the Bulgarian police, moulded under Communism and re-moulded in the post-Communist period, is not to solve crimes. It has left the overwhelming majority of major crimes – the assassination of Former Prime Minister Andrey Lukanov (shot in front of his home in Sofia, in 1996); of the richest man in Eastern Europe at the time, Iliya Pavlov (murdered in Sofia, in 2003); of Ivan "Doctor" Todorov (assassinated in 2006) and many other real or imaginary members of organised crime gangs, unsolved. The Bulgarian police's main job is to obey the orders of their superiors. And to protect them from anyone who may be curious – or stupid – enough to come in the way. Unfortunately, the Petrohan murders may follow in the same pattern.