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It has been dubbed Bulgaria’s “Twin Peaks”: a grim saga involving the mysterious deaths of six people in the middle of the mountains that has gripped the eastern European country.
Zahari Vaskov, the director of the national police general directorate, told a press conference on Monday that the deaths were “a case without comparison in our country”.
Fittingly, perhaps, for an investigation that has been shrouded in sensationalised conspiracy, conflicting accounts and fevered speculation, Borislav Sarafov, the general prosecutor, gave his own verdict. “Life has given us more shocking details here than in the Twin Peaks series,” he told local media, alluding to the 1990s US television drama.
The case began at the start of February, when three men aged 45, 49, and 51 were found dead in a the burned-out remains of a lodge near the Petrohan pass, a mountain pass that connects Sofia province with the northwestern Montana province.
All three had gunshot wounds to the head, which forensic experts said were apparently self-inflicted, either point-blank or at close range. DNA traces detected on the firearms belonged only to the deceased men, they said.
Then, on Sunday, the police discovered the bodies of three more people, two men aged 51 and 22 and a 15-year-old boy, in a campervan in the Okolchitsa Peak area, about 62 miles (100km) north of the capital, Sofia. The trio was tracked down by law enforcement as investigators suspected they were linked to the Petrohan pass deaths.
Agence France-Presse reported that the prosecutors’ office said on Tuesday: “Based on the autopsy data for the [latter] three bodies, it appears that there were probably two murders committed successively and one suicide.”
According to the police, five of the deceased were members of the National Protected Areas Control Agency, a non-governmental organisation devoted to nature protection which used the Petrohan pass lodge as a headquarters and also hosted rural holiday camps for young people.
Some accounts have described its members as “forest rangers” who for years patrolled the area near the Serbian border and assisted border police. Meanwhile, law enforcement have said the men were involved in Tibetan Buddhism and quoted a relative of one member who spoke of “exceptional psychological instability” within the group.
Those close to the deceased have said they must have been killed because they witnessed criminal activity around the Bulgarian-Serbian border, where people smuggling and illegal logging activities are not uncommon.
Ralitsa Asenova, the mother of one of the victims found in the campervan, dismissed reports of tensions within the group. “They obviously witnessed something. For me, this is a professionally committed murder,” she said in an interview with Nova, a Bulgarian TV station.
As details remain sparse, a lack of official information has led to often groundless speculation spreading online and has further undermined Bulgarians’ low trust in their institutions and authorities. The country is without a government and is headed towards its eighth parliamentary election in five years.
The former president Rumen Radev called the case “a political shock and a sign of the country’s condition”, according to his press office. Radev, who resigned as head of state last month after nine years in office, offered his condolences to the deceaseds’ families and urged the authorities to solve the case.
“I will not comment on this tragedy, which must be investigated by the competent authorities. The causes of these murders must be clarified as quickly as possible, because the public expects answers,” he said.
In 2024 a survey found that 70% of Bulgarians believed in conspiracy theories while 37% had fallen foul of misinformation – so much so that the authors of the study, by the Centre for the Study of Democracy (CSD) and the Bulgarian-Romanian Observatory of Digital Media, said Bulgaria was living in a “post-truth” situation.
