The Butterfly King - 3: Snake in the Grass

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Butterfly King - Episode 3: Snake in the Grass

Podcast: Hell in Heaven: A Mysterious Death in Paradise
Host: Becky Milligan
Date: March 28, 2024

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Overview

In this gripping episode, host Becky Milligan delves deep into the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of King Boris III of Bulgaria in 1943. Drawing on personal interviews, archival research, and expert analysis, Milligan explores prevailing theories of assassination—specifically, whether Boris was poisoned by Nazi doctors using exotic snake venom, and the broader political, moral, and personal implications of his rule during WWII. The episode examines conflicting narratives about Boris as both a national unifier and a controversial figure in Bulgaria’s involvement in the Holocaust, ultimately raising the possibility that British intelligence, rather than the Nazis, might have played a role in his death.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Grief at the Royal Funeral & Early Suspicions (01:36–06:02)

• Funeral Atmosphere: The episode opens with powerful first-hand accounts from Boris’s children, Princess Maria Luisa and King Simeon II, during their father's state funeral. Both recall the trauma and shock of kissing their father’s cold forehead as children.
  • “You kiss your father’s forehead and it’s cold… It wasn’t easy.” – Maria Luisa (03:10)
• Family Suspicion: Even as they mourned, the royal family harbored suspicions about the King’s cause of death. Princess Eudoxia and Queen Giovanna suspected possible poisoning, especially by a German doctor, Seitz, who had been close to the family.
  • “The Queen already suspects her husband didn’t die a natural death… Eudoxia is convinced the Nazis poisoned him.” – Becky Milligan (05:20)

2. Investigating Nazi Involvement & The Snake Venom Theory (06:02–18:13)

• German Archives & Goebbels' Diary: Forensic historian Professor Vladimir Zlatarsky shares findings from the diaries of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister, suggesting Hitler was told Boris was poisoned—with the doctors naming an "Asiatic poison," possibly snake venom.
  • “After the death of the King… Hitler said to Goebbels, ‘it is quite sure that the King was poisoned.’” – Professor Zlatarsky (11:17)
  • “It was some kind of poison from India, probably snake poison.” – Professor Zlatarsky (11:52)
• Herpetologist’s Input: Reptile expert Dr. Marco Shea debunks the idea that a live snake could have been used as a murder weapon but confirms that injected venom is potentially lethal and difficult to trace.
  • “If you put a snake in a room and expect it to kill somebody, you better have a lot of time to wait. … Killing people with snakes is not, it’s not guaranteed, it’s not efficient.” – Marco Shea (16:19)
  • “If you’re going to administer venom, the only way you’re going to be able to do that is by injection.” – Marco Shea (18:07)
• Doctors in the Sickroom: Three German doctors attended the King; Seitz, who had longstanding royal ties, Eppinger (an internal medicine specialist who drew attention to suspicious symptoms), and Decrinis (a neurologist and high-ranking SS officer).

3. Doctor’s Motives, Allegiances & Aftermath (19:01–28:42)

• Suspicious Symptoms: All three German doctors were linked to Hitler. Eppinger pointed out "brown spots," potentially indicating poisoning, but also drew similar conclusions about another Balkan leader’s sudden death (Greek Premier Metaxas in 1941).
• Family Loyalty: Despite family suspicions and evasiveness by Dr. Seitz years after the king’s death, both Simeon and Maria Luisa express doubt that he betrayed his royal patients.
  • “He was always so attached to us… to be the, I mean, arch villain, is something that I just can’t—it doesn’t sort of fit in my mind.” – Simeon (25:14)
• Elusive Evidence: Despite rumors, no definitive evidence points to a Nazi order for Boris’s elimination; German archives reviewed during the Nuremberg trials contained no such proof.
  • “Nothing was ever found in the German archives… I’m convinced it wasn’t the Germans.” – Maria Luisa (28:42)

4. Bulgaria, Jews, and the King’s Complicated Legacy (29:00–48:36)

• Hero or Criminal: The episode explores Boris’s dual legacy—hailed by some as the savior of Bulgaria’s 50,000 Jews, vilified by others for his complicity in the deportation of 11,000 Jews from newly occupied Macedonian and Thrace territories.
• First-person Testimony: Survivor Aaron Solomon Barley, who lost 34 relatives, asserts Boris made a “deal with the devil”—land for Jewish lives—and holds him responsible for their deaths despite public myths.
  • “If he had survived, he would be in the Nuremberg process… For me, he’s a criminal.” – Aaron Solomon Barley (34:09)
• Power Limitations: Some historians and Simeon himself argue Boris was limited in power over these territories, with Nazi military direct control, complicating blame.
  • “Command and everything else was in the Nazis. This wasn't directly under us.” – Simeon (35:47)
• Conflicting Realities: Testimonies from families who survived because of Boris contrast sharply with accounts of suffering in so-called “road building camps” and property confiscation.
  • “What did the King do? Nothing. Nothing.” – Aaron Solomon Barley (43:33)
• Church and Parliament’s Role: Significant credit is given to the Orthodox Church and individuals in parliament who pressured Boris to resist Nazi demands for deportations.
  • “He played an important part. … He is a moderate man in an immoderate world, which is either fascist or communist, and he walks the tightrope.” – Tessa Dunlop, historian (47:07)

5. Pivoting the Investigation: Motive Shift (48:36–51:16)

• Ruling Out the Nazis: Evidence of ongoing working relationships and lack of clear Nazi motive leads Milligan to refocus suspicion away from Hitler.
  • “I am going to take Hitler out of the frame at this point.” – Becky Milligan (48:53)
• British Motives: The British, and specifically Winston Churchill, become new suspects. Boris was seen as a "snake in the grass" and enemy by the Allies.
  • “Could the cigar chomping British Prime Minister have signed the order to assassinate Boris?” – Becky Milligan (50:31)
  • “You can see it in the different writings and things of Churchill that he was no fan of my father's.” – Simeon (51:01)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Personal Trauma at the Funeral:

  • “That was my father. So we just kissed him and…for a 10 year old, you know, you kiss your father's forehead and it's cold…To this very day, don’t like to talk about it.”
    – Maria Luisa (03:10)

• Snake Venom as a Murder Weapon:

  • “If you want to kill somebody, they're gonna say, can you guarantee this is gonna work? Well, sorry, no...Killing people with snakes is not...efficient and it's fraught with problems.”
    – Marco Shea (15:20, 16:39)

• On Dr. Seitz’s Loyalty:

  • “He was always so attached to us...that this man should have been the, I mean, arch villain is something that I just can’t...fit in my mind.”
    – Simeon (25:14)

• On King Boris’s Legacy:

  • “If he had survived, he would be in the Nuremberg process.”
    – Aaron Solomon Barley (34:09)
  • “He played an important part. The thing is, it might be far easier to exonerate Boris if only he’d been a little more overt…But historian Tessa Dunlop thinks that’s naive. The King was flitting and darting in and out of allegiances like a butterfly, and that's a life saving skill.”
    – Becky Milligan/Tessa Dunlop (46:46–47:07)

• Pivotal Shift in Suspect:

  • “I am going to take Hitler out of the frame at this point.”
    – Becky Milligan (48:53)

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Key Timestamps

• 01:36 – Funeral of King Boris & family’s grief
• 05:20 – Early suspicion of foul play amongst royals
• 11:17–11:52 – Goebbels’ diary: Nazi doctors claim the King was poisoned (snake venom)
• 15:20–16:39 – Dr. Marco Shea deconstructs the feasibility of snakes as murder weapons
• 19:01–20:26 – Doctors’ backgrounds and suspicious symptoms
• 25:43–26:29 – Confrontation with Dr. Seitz about Boris’s death
• 29:00–32:01 – The story shifts to Boris’s WWII legacy and Bulgaria’s Jews
• 34:09–34:15 – Survivor accuses Boris of being a war criminal
• 35:47 – Simeon argues Nazi control limited Boris’s power
• 41:27–46:46 – Diverging Jewish accounts; debate over Boris’s role and culpability
• 48:53 – Milligan rules out Nazi orchestration, pivots to British motives
• 51:01–51:16 – Simeon comments on Churchill’s animosity toward Boris
• 52:08–52:14 – Teaser for next episode: British bombing of Bulgarian royals and a new clue discovered in the archives

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Conclusion

This complex episode interrogates the assumed narratives of history, exposing the ambiguous legacy of Boris III. It challenges listeners to consider the interplay of power, morality, and survival amidst war while refusing to provide easy answers about guilt or innocence. Moving adeptly between personal testimony and scholarly insight, Milligan leaves the audience contemplating the unresolved mystery—and unexpectedly opens a new chapter implicating the British, promising further revelations in the next episode.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Becky Milligan]

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[Marco Shea]

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[Becky Milligan]

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[Simeon]

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[Simeon]

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[Becky Milligan]

Cementmobile.com September 5, 1943. The state funeral of King Boris III of Bulgaria. And the nation is united in grief. The streets outside St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral are packed with weeping crowds. No one speaks and all heads are bowed. Many here have waited hours already. But everyone wants to enter the church to pay their last respects to their beloved king. Inside the cathedral for the service is the royal family, the widowed Queen Giovanna Kirill, the king's younger brother, and his two sisters. And standing in front of the open casket are two small, frightened children, Princess Maria Louisa and the boy King Simeon.

[Simeon]

We first saw him in the chapel in the palace chapel and then in in the cathedral where he was laying in state. As a matter of fact, Queen Elizabeth's funeral brought me back some memories of what occurs after the death of a sovereign.

[Becky Milligan]

They've never seen a dead person before. And now protocol demands that they embrace their father one last time.

[Maria Luisa]

That was my father. So we just kissed him and I Knew it for a 10 year old, you know, you kiss your father's forehead and it's cold and it wasn't easy to this very day. Don't like to talk about it, but you brought it up.

[Becky Milligan]

I'm sorry.

[Maria Luisa]

No, no, because people should know.

[Becky Milligan]

You remember it clearly, as though it was yesterday. Is it never gone?

[Maria Luisa]

Never forget it.

[Becky Milligan]

And it must have been really hard for your brother as well. He was even smaller.

[Maria Luisa]

Yeah, he was four years young, so it was six. Still, you know, you go to a funeral and it all comes back.

[Becky Milligan]

They're both wearing white knee socks and black armbands. Maria Luisa is in a pleated skirt and jacket. Little Simeon has on shorts and a frock coat they clutch at their mother's hand. They look so vulnerable, so achingly bereft. You can't help thinking of the young princes, William and Harry, as they walk behind Princess Diana's coffin.

[Simeon]

It was such a gruesome or terrible feeling to kiss his forehead, being icy cold that I've got this to this day and God knows I'm old at this stage, but I still avoid going to burials where one can see the dead person is just something which has shocked me so deeply that I. I can hardly take it. It's ridiculous, but there it is. It's left something that psychiatrists would. Would probably find all sorts of explanations.

[Becky Milligan]

It must be an unimaginable trial for the children's mother.

[Maria Luisa]

Queen Giovanna to my mother, was heroic. She was standing there, never shed a tear in front of us. Never, never, ever. She was stoic, that's all I can say. And then, of course, she was on her own.

[Becky Milligan]

But on top of all the pain and grief of that day, there's also a deep sense of disquiet about how the King comes to be lying there at all. The Queen already suspects her husband didn't die a natural death. And King Boris sister Eudoxia shares that hunch. Eudoxia is convinced the Nazis poisoned him. Specifically, she blames one of the German doctors who tended the monarch on his sick bed. She doesn't trust him. Did she share that intuition with the Queen? Because if she did, if Eudoktya did mention the name Dr. Seitz, the Queen's blood must have frozen in her veins.

[Simeon]

Seitz was the head of a clinic where my mother had gone. He was almost like a sort of private physician.

[Becky Milligan]

Dr. Seitz was not just any old doctor. He was a personal friend of the Queen's. And so I have to ask, did he use that friendship to Infiltrate the palace and commit the ultimate act of treachery. The murder of the King from Blanchard House and. Exactly right. Media. This is the Butterfly King. I'm Becky Milligan. Sake in the grass. Remember that lead on the Asiatic poison. Well, I'm back in Bulgaria with my producer, EJ following it up. There's a historian here who's promised us some new information about Boris's death. Our route to his office takes us right past the Royal palace, the one where he spent his final days. The palace is over there. That's where they all lived, the royal family. And it's where he died, I think. I think so. It's right in the middle, isn't it? That is quite grand. That's grander than the palace that we've been to. It's quite yellow. I'm freezing. I forgot to put on another. So far, we've only been to Vrana palace, the family's country retreat. But it's this one, the one in downtown Sofia. That was King Boris's main residence, and it's here he was taken ill and died. The palace was built in the late 19th century, but after the Second World War, when the Soviet Union invaded and abolished the monarchy, it became an art gallery. Pity. It's a national gallery.

[Aaron Solomon Barley]

Yeah.

[Becky Milligan]

Mind you, if you think about Buckingham Palace, I mean, that's. That has to open up to visitors. Yes, it does. Yeah. Actually, he doesn't like it, does he, the King? He doesn't want to live there, so maybe it will become more open. Well, poor old Simeon doesn't have much choice, does he? Because this is no longer a royal palace. It's the art gallery. And that's just it. I wonder if he did have his own eye on it, and they just, you know, he couldn't get it back after he came back after the Communist regime. Yeah, it's. It's okay. It is handsome. Large palace, like, but not extraordinary in my view. All right, I won't buy it for your birthday. The historian we've come to meet, Professor Vladimir Zlatarsky, is a forensic researcher.

[Professor Vladimir Zlatarsky]

You know, the work of the historian is that you start with an article, a document, and you are trying to make the whole story concerning the death of King Boris step by step.

[Becky Milligan]

So step by step, he's turned the archives inside out, looking for evidence about the King's murder. Not the Bulgarian archives. We already know those were stolen when the Communists occupied Bulgaria after the war. The German archives. He discovered some very interesting things among the Nazis. Personal papers, information that was never meant to be shared completely off the record. And the evidence came from this man.

[Maria Luisa]

This is your man and Jesus.

[Professor Vladimir Zlatarsky]

The diaries of Joseph Goebbels, the minister.

[Becky Milligan]

Of the Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels was Hitler's right hand man as propaganda minister, he was effectively the voice of the Nazi party. His diaries are full of twisted anti Semitic dogma, but they also give us access to some of the most secret goings on within the regime. The originals are kept in the Hoover Library in Iowa, but Professor Zlatarski read copies in Berlin and in one particular entry he spotted a very intriguing passage. It talks directly about the death of King Boris and about how he was killed.

[Professor Vladimir Zlatarsky]

After the death of the King, there was a meeting between the doctor, Tim and Hitler. But after the conversation of. Obviously, Hitler spoke with Goebbels and Hitler.

[Becky Milligan]

Told Goebbels that the doctors had revealed to him the cause of the King's death.

[Professor Vladimir Zlatarsky]

Hitler said to Goebbels, it is quite sure that the King was poisoned. That is what he had heard from the doctors.

[Becky Milligan]

But the doctors went much further than that. They actually named the poison.

[Professor Vladimir Zlatarsky]

It was some kind of poison from India, probably snake poison.

[Becky Milligan]

Snake poison from India. Now that adds up, because India plus snakes equals Asiatic poison. So is snake venom what killed King Boris III of Bulgaria? I need to speak to a herpetologist, basically a reptile expert and preferably one with a thing for snakes.

[Marco Shea]

I had a lot of snakes. I mean, I was keeping and breeding snakes at home. I had probably about 200 at one time. In the 70s.

[Becky Milligan]

Snake experts don't come more expert than Marco Shea. He's a professor of herpetology at the University of Wolverhampton in the uk. He's got long grey hair and a flowing white beard. He'd make a brilliant wizard. I can safely say he knows a thing or two about snakes and absolutely everything about snakes.

[Marco Shea]

From Asia around the world, every year, up to 138,000 people die of snakebite. Out of the 138,000, the majority, the lion's share, die in South Asia. Tropical Asia has a horrendous snakebite death rate.

[Becky Milligan]

Can you name the venomous snakes in Asia? Just a short, you know, five or six of them.

[Marco Shea]

Oh, short list. Well, the big four. Common cobra, common krait, Russell's viper, saw scale viper. That's the big four. But there's plenty of others and there are several species of cobras. There are several species of kraits.

[Becky Milligan]

At last, I feel we're getting somewhere. I've just looked up A picture of the Indian krait. It's glossy jet black with milky white bands. According to Mark, its highly toxic venom makes it an efficient killer. But the cobra, she's an even better murder weapon because she sinks her fangs far more deeply into flesh. A precision killing.

[Marco Shea]

My favorite snakes, my favorite species is king cobra. There's something going on behind those eyes. Anyone who's worked with kings will tell you that. And I've met king cobras in India and I had a king cobra for many years. Sleeping Beauty. She's my wallpaper. On my computer.

[Becky Milligan]

Is the king cobra the one that stands up and looks at you?

[Marco Shea]

Yeah. All cobras will rise up and hood spitting cobras much less than non spitters because they tend to raise their head a bit, spit and drop again.

[Becky Milligan]

Oh, the poetic irony. A king killing the king. Now, in Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes, the snakes themselves are used as murder weapons. And Mark has actually given evidence in homicide trials where snakes were involved.

[Marco Shea]

I do think that some snakes are more intelligent than we used to think.

[Becky Milligan]

So before His Majesty arrived at the wolf's Lair, could Hitler or one of his henchmen have hidden the snake in the bunker under the king's bed? And then that night, as the king slept, could the venomous serpent have slithered across the floor, up onto the king's bed and bitten him as he slept?

[Marco Shea]

Couldn't happen, really. If you want to kill somebody, they're gonna say, can you guarantee this is gonna work? Well, sorry, no.

[Becky Milligan]

Oh, right.

[Marco Shea]

I doubt very much whether Agatha Christie or Conan Doyle interviewed her pathologist when they were thinking of murdering somebody with snake venom.

[Becky Milligan]

Of course, there's James Bond as well. There's always a snake in the bed there, isn't there? Doing some, you know, ready with his venom.

[Marco Shea]

Yes, but I saw a cobra up at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine quite a few years ago. It was quite a manky specimen with an odd eye, which was supposed to have been put into a hotel room to kill somebody. Oh, my God. You could stay in that hotel room for a fortnight and never see the snake. He's curled up behind the wastebasket. You know, it's just. If you put a snake in a room and expect it to kill somebody, you better have a lot of time to wait because the chances of that happening. A snake hides, they could die a.

[Becky Milligan]

Natural death and the snake could just continue living there.

[Marco Shea]

Potentially, yes. Or the maid comes in and turns the bed and she gets bitten. So it's really. It's just. It sounds great in theory, but Killing people with snakes is not, it's not guaranteed, it's not efficient and it's fraught with problems.

[Becky Milligan]

Ok, so you can't just put a snake in a room and instruct it to kill someone. But then to kill someone with a snake, you don't need the actual serpent, you just need its venom.

[Marco Shea]

When you milk a snake, you get what looks like it's a liquid. It may be yellow, it may be slightly orange, it may be a bit clear. And that is the liquid venom. And generally that would be freeze dried to get a dry weight.

[Becky Milligan]

Yes. Mark milks snakes. Just to be clear, he's not doing it with an eye to murdering anyone. He sends the extracted venoms to a lab which then produces antivenoms to help save those who've been bitten. But milking a snake is not for the faint hearted.

[Marco Shea]

You hold the snake and you hold a receptacle and retort stand and you encourage the snake to bite through a latex membrane which folds back the fang sheaths along the fangs. And then gently squeezing the venom glands, the snake should produce venom into the receptacle underneath. And that's your liquid venom.

[Becky Milligan]

Please don't try that at home. But if we're to believe that entry in Goebbels diary, someone did try it. Someone milked a snake and extracted deadly venom. But once you've got that venom, how do you turn it into a murder weapon?

[Marco Shea]

If you're going to administer venom, the only way you're going to be able to do that is by injection.

[Becky Milligan]

By injection? Remember what Professor Zlatarski found out from reading Goebbels diary?

[Professor Vladimir Zlatarsky]

Hitler said it is quite sure that the King was poisoned. That is what he had heard from the doctors.

[Becky Milligan]

Doctors. Doctors have syringes, doctors perform injections. And we now know one thing for certain. If you get the method right, it's perfectly possible to kill a king with snake venom. I think it's time to find out a bit more about the King's doctors. And remember, they weren't Bulgarian doctors. So who were they and what were they doing in the King's sick room in August 1943?

[Professor Vladimir Zlatarsky]

Actually first came Professor Rudolf Seitz from Berlin, Professor Hans Eppinger. And they decided to call the third one, Professor Maximilian Decrinis, neurologist.

[Becky Milligan]

Okay, so three highly specialized doctors, all known to Hitler, surround the King in his sickroom. Let's start with the last one. De Krynis was a celebrated shrink. He was also a high ranking SS officer. But he only flew in at the very last minute. So even if he was in on some Nazi plot to kill the King, it couldn't have been to Crinis who administered the venom. The damage was done before he showed up. So let's have a look at Eppinger. He was a highly sought after professor of internal medicine. His speciality was the liver. He treated quite a few celebrity patients in his time, including the Soviet tyrant Joseph Stalin and Queen Marie of Romania. And it was Eppinger who first raised the alarm after the doctors examined the King.

[Professor Vladimir Zlatarsky]

Because of what they see on the.

[Becky Milligan]

Body, which was a very peculiar rash.

[Professor Vladimir Zlatarsky]

They seen a brown kind of spots.

[Becky Milligan]

Brown spots. We know this because Professor Eppinger spoke to the German Air Force attache in Sofia. Just like Goebbels, that attache kept a diary. And in it he wrote that he'd met with Dr. Eppinger, who told him the brown spots on Boris skin indicated the absorption of poison. Eppinger described it as a typical Balkan death. What do you mean by a typical Balkan death?

[Professor Vladimir Zlatarsky]

I mean in the Balkans there were more political murders than in the rest of Europe for, for this period.

[Becky Milligan]

Basically the Balkans at the time went hand in hand with assassinations. And it's one of those other typical Balkan deaths that particularly interests me because it has a striking similarity to Boris death. In January 1941, the Greek premier, Joannes Metaxas died very suddenly. And just a few weeks earlier, Metaxas had refused to let Germany's ally Italy occupy his country.

[Marco Shea]

The news of the sudden death of Premier John Metaxas of Greece has been received with deep regret both at home and abroad. General Metaxas is said to have died of a streptococcal throat infection which led to sepsis. Rumors circulating in the Balkan press suggest the Greek general did not meet a natural death, though we have been unable to to confirm such reports. Before he became a politician, word had.

[Becky Milligan]

Spread that Metaxas had also been poisoned. And get this, his skin was covered with brown blotches. And we know that from a firsthand witness. None other than Professor Hans Eppinger. It turns out that the same doctor who tended King Boris on his deathbed also attended the autopsy of General Metaxas. Coincidence? Or is there something more sinister going on? Here were the Austrian doctor and his German colleagues hired as Hitler's hitmen, with a brief to kill off anyone who crossed him. But on the other hand, if Eppinger had poisoned both King Boris and the Greek general, why would he draw attention to those telltale brown blotches? Let's put Eppinger to one side for a moment and examine the last of this trio who flew in to be at the king's bedside. Dr. Seitz. He's the medic who Boris sister Princess Eudoxia, didn't trust. Simeon recalls she wrote to him that.

[Simeon]

This Dr. Seitz, Rudolph, who came from Berlin, was. I mean, there was something suspicious about him.

[Becky Milligan]

Now, Dr. Seitz knew the royal family literally inside out. He was their go to medic because he'd helped the King and his wife on the most intimate and important of their royal duties, providing an heir.

[Simeon]

Seitz was the head of a clinic where my mother had gone because she had problems in being able to have a second child. Yours truly. So she was there and she knew Professor Seitz and he came, obviously, because he was almost like a sort of private physician.

[Becky Milligan]

So if Seitz was responsible for the King's murder, that would be an incredible act of treachery. After all, you can imagine how grateful the King and Queen were to Dr. Seitz. When Simeon was born on June 16, 1937, there was a national celebration. 4,000 prisoners were released, fines were pardoned, and every school child and student in the country had their exam papers increased by one grade. Thanks to Dr. Seitz, the Bulgarian throne was secure. He was a hero in the royal family. So when the Queen heard that Dr. Seitz was flying in to help her ailing husband, I imagine she must have felt relieved. She would have felt her husband was in safe hands. Or was he? What could have made arch Eudoxia doubt Dr. Seitz? After the war, he moved to Spain where the Queen, Simeon and Maria Luisa were living in exile. And there he soon won the trust of the family all over again. He became the family doctor and even attended the birth of Simeon's eldest son.

[Simeon]

He was always so attached to us. That this man should have been the, I mean, arch villain is something that I just can't. It doesn't sort of fit in my mind.

[Becky Milligan]

It doesn't make sense.

[Aaron Solomon Barley]

No.

[Becky Milligan]

But something must have worried Maria Luisa because many years later, she confronted Dr. Seitz what went on in her father's sick room.

[Maria Luisa]

One day I asked him, you know, dear Professor Seitz, what do you know? And he said that, you know, Papa just died.

[Becky Milligan]

That seems a bit of a cop out to me.

[Maria Luisa]

No, he said, you know, he had given his word and he didn't. He wasn't alone, you know, there were three of them, so he didn't blame anybody else, but he just was evasive. I mean, you know, he was an old man and I was very young and said he didn't want to talk about it. Well, that's what it is.

[Becky Milligan]

Did it make you suspicious?

[Maria Luisa]

No, no, no, because he used to be Papa's doctor in Berlin too. Papa used to go and he was a friend. But you know, he didn't just.

[Simeon]

He didn't want to reveal anything. This is what he meant, that he had given his word to.

[Maria Luisa]

But no, I don't see it there and I'll never see it there. So we are all dealing with hearsay. That's the word.

[Becky Milligan]

There's a strange postscript to the tale of the three doctors. We know that Dr. Seitz went to live in Spain after 1945. But the others from this trio, two.

[Professor Vladimir Zlatarsky]

People have committed suicide at the end of the war. So Professor Seitz, he's the only person that stay alive after the war.

[Becky Milligan]

Actually, make of that what you will. But Simeon and Maria Luisa are adamant that Dr. Seitz would never have harmed their father. He certainly seemed incredibly loyal to the royal family. Apparently he even arrived at the King's bedside covered in plaster dust. That morning, his Berlin clinic had been flattened by an Allied air raid attack. Yet he leapt on a plane to Bulgaria the minute he heard the King was sick. Not really. The actions of a callous killer. And there's something else. That's the timing of all of this. The King was already very sick when the three doctors arrived. So if Boris was injected with snake venom, then it couldn't have been one of them wielding that needle. That must have been done by someone who was already there. Plus, Hitler didn't force his doctors on the palace. The Bulgarians actually asked Germany to send help. And there's something Professor Zlatarski said I can't get out of my head. Something that the doctors told Hitler when he summoned them to a meeting after King Boris death.

[Professor Vladimir Zlatarsky]

It is quite sure that the King was poisoned.

[Becky Milligan]

Were they informing the Fuhrer that they'd accomplished their mission? That they'd somehow poisoned King Boris as they'd been ordered to do? Or were they simply reporting their suspicions that someone else must have poisoned the King? And unless it's typed in code or invisible ink, Maria Luisa can find no proof the Germans killed King Boris.

[Maria Luisa]

Nothing was ever found in the German archives. And Germans were very precise. You know, everything was sealed and stamped and signed 10 times. Whatever they did, you know, nothing was ever found in Nuremberg about it. So I'm convinced it wasn't. It wasn't the Germans.

[Becky Milligan]

The Nuremberg trials took place after the war. High ranking Nazis were put on trial for crimes against humanity. And after scouring the German archives himself, Professor Zlatarsky agrees with Maria.

[Professor Vladimir Zlatarsky]

There are no logical signs that Hitler wanted to make revenge. Actually, they have a good connection until very last moment.

[Becky Milligan]

So the jury's out on whether Hitler and the Nazis were behind Boris's untimely death. Not just because it looks like Hitler was genuinely concerned for the ailing king, but also because. Okay, there's something I haven't told you about King Boris. Something really important. To many Bulgarians, Boris is revered as the saviour of Bulgaria's Jews. But to others, he's reviled as just the opposite. And in terms of his murder, this is extremely significant because it points us away from the theory that Hitler signed Boris's death warrant. Let's go back to September 1940. After the memorial service at the cathedral, Boris's coffin was taken through the streets of Sofia to the railway station, where it was transported by train to the mountains for burial. The crowds wept to see their hero go. They called him the unifier King, not because he brought the Bulgarian people closer together. It was because he'd won back the land Bulgaria had lost after the First World War. Remember, as part of the peace treaty signed by Boris Father Foxy Ferdinand, Bulgaria lost lots of territory. Thrace, which became part of Greece, and Macedonia, which became part of Yugoslavia. But in 1941, a month after Boris allied with Nazi Germany, Hitler's army overran those countries. And as a reward for Bulgaria's cooperation, Hitler allowed Bulgaria to occupy Thrace and Macedonia again. And that was a moment of huge national pride. Basically, Boris had restored Bulgaria's dignity, her international standing. But at what price? Because everything comes at a price someone always has to pay. And in some people's eyes, that achievement was paid for by the deaths of thousands of Jews.

[Aaron Solomon Barley]

We were doomed, and we knew it. All our relatives from Macedonia were killed.

[Becky Milligan]

Aaron Solomon Barley was only three when King Boris signed an alliance with Nazi Germany. He's Jewish and he's lived all his life in mainland Bulgaria. And he doesn't buy the stories about King Boris being the savior of the Jews. He thinks King Boris made a very simple pact with the devil. That land in exchange for these Jews.

[Aaron Solomon Barley]

Oh, definitely. I have a very negative attitude towards King Boris. People need fairy tales. People like to hear nice stories.

[Becky Milligan]

And Aaron believes Boris's story is not a nice one at all. In March 1943, 11,000 Jews from Thrace and Macedonia, which Bulgaria had just got back, were rounded up and forced aboard trains. They were Taken through Bulgaria and on to the Treblinka concentration camp in Poland. Only a handful of those 11,000 people survived. Many of Aaron's family were on those trains. He lost 34 relatives. It's still hard for him to talk about what happened. He calls it a deep wound.

[Aaron Solomon Barley]

I don't like this subject. I don't like it because, you see, I have a wound here. Don't touch it. It's a pain.

[Becky Milligan]

Why didn't King Boris stop those trains? We know he managed to cancel two other deportations of Jews from mainland Bulgaria. And we know the King always had the first final say on any political decision. Aaron Solomon Barley doesn't accuse Boris of being a fully paid up member of the Nazi party. But neither can he absolve him from blame. Had Boris lived, he says, he'd have found himself on trial for war crimes.

[Aaron Solomon Barley]

If he had survived, he would be in the Nuremberg process.

[Becky Milligan]

Really?

[Aaron Solomon Barley]

Well, it's quite a lot of blood. For me, he's a criminal.

[Becky Milligan]

This is an ugly chapter in the reign of Boris III. But it's also a contested chapter. It's true. 11,000 Jews from Thrace and Macedonia were sent to concentration camps. Bulgarian soldiers did help load the trains. But what we don't know is, is whether the king could have stopped it. How much power did he really have over those territories? Hitler allowed Bulgaria to occupy Thrace and Macedonia. He didn't actually hand them back. Bulgaria's leading historian, George Bozdoganov, says the whole question of ownership was supposed to be discussed later, after the war. Massi didn't give these territories to Bulgaria. They didn't. Didn't. But they occupied that land there. Occupied. Occupation is military action. It's another matter. But he could have stepped in and said, hang on a moment. I, as King, say that deportation mustn't happen. He could have done, couldn't he? He could have saved them. No, no, because he has not power, the real power over these territories. But did King Boris have enough power to try to stop the deportation? Simeon believes his father's hands were tied.

[Simeon]

Command and everything else was in the Nazis. This wasn't directly under us. With that, you can see how much you can blame King boritz. For those 11,000 people, may they really rest in peace. It's something so.

[Becky Milligan]

Simeon can't finish his sentence. He just stares at the floor and shakes his head. But if you subscribe to Aaron Solomon Barley's theory that King Boris was really didn't care about the fate of those 11,000 Jews from Thrace and Macedonia, then why would the Nazis murder him? I'm beginning to feel less and less convinced about the theory that Hitler killed the King because the King seemed to be towing Nazi Germany's line in other ways, too. What kind of man would let this happen to his family?

[Aaron Solomon Barley]

Inspired by Shuck Actual Events I'm working.

[Narrator/Announcer]

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[Aaron Solomon Barley]

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[Becky Milligan]

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[Aaron Solomon Barley]

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[Becky Milligan]

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[Ryan Seacrest]

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[Becky Milligan]

I warned you at the start of this investigation that that we'd be delving into the darkest depths of the Second World War, where the truth is often questionable and murky or very hard to come by at all. I also promised you that you can always trust me and that's why I'm giving you all the facts I have. I'm not holding anything back, but I think in this part of the story, I really have to leave it to you to decide where the truth lies. Boris government was distinctly pro German. And in 1941, a few months before Bulgaria officially became a partner of Nazi Germany, anti Jewish laws were passed in the country which seriously restricted Jewish citizens civil rights. And one of his friends all of a sudden just slapped him in the face and called him a dirty Jew out of nowhere. You'll remember meeting Elaine Asa in our last episode. Her late husband, Rabbi Haim, grew up in Bulgaria. He was 10 when those laws were passed. As an adult he campaigned to get King Boris recognition, recognition for his role in saving mainland Bulgaria's 50,000 Jews. And yet when he was a child in Bulgaria, the anti Semitic laws got tougher and tougher. Jews lost the right to vote and had taxes imposed on their property and possessions. And then they had to wear the yellow star. Really? Yeah. His father had to have a non Jew run his business. Like all the Jews who lived in the big cities. Heim's family were forced to move out of their home to, to a much smaller place out of town. And one day there was a bunch of, I guess, Nazis that came and took his father. And the people who took home's father were Bulgarians, Bulgarian Nazis. So they brought him back with all of his bones broken in his body. And it took him about nine months to recover. And at that point he says, I'm out of here. But most Bulgarians met these changes with anger. Jewish writer Michael Barzoha also grew up in Bulgaria.

[Aaron Solomon Barley]

There was a kind of civil revolt.

[Becky Milligan]

Against these laws, he says. There were petitions to parliament and the Prime Minister's office signed by Bulgarians from all walks of life, starting with doctors.

[Simeon]

And, and engineers and lawyers and going down to restaurant waiters, to cobblers, to, even to peasants who didn't know to write, who signed the petitions with their fingers.

[Becky Milligan]

Michael's father was one of the thousands of Jews sent to work in Bulgaria's so called road building camps. You'll remember that was the King's ruse to keep Bulgaria's 50,000 Jews safe from the threat of deportation. Michael says his father had an easy life in the camp and that they were given back their property after the war. But Aaron Solomon Barley's father had a very different experience. Aaron believes those camps have been misrepresented.

[Aaron Solomon Barley]

It's a story, it's a falsifying of history. The reality was that they were suffering that they were not paid at all. My mother, grandmother and so on had to collect some money, buy some food and send it to my father because they didn't have enough food, for example. And it was a problem how to maintain the. Because there were many people depending on his income so that they can survive, really.

[Becky Milligan]

And remember, this was all happening in Bulgaria itself, where King Boris did hold power. And things got even worse for Arron's family when they were eventually allowed to return home. They found little comfort there. Every possession they owned had been stolen.

[Aaron Solomon Barley]

We were poor enough, but, well, they had some property. And when they came back from the countryside, they didn't have anything. What did the King do? Nothing. Nothing.

[Becky Milligan]

Now, that's very hard to hear for Her Royal Highness, Maria Luisa. She's met hundreds of Jewish people who say her parents helped them.

[Maria Luisa]

The excuse my father invented, you know, is that they had to work in construction and that the country needed them. They were not concentration camps. And after that, you know, a lot of them managed to leave. My mother helped by getting Italian passports and arranging with the Catholic Church, and she was a team with my father. You know, it's a matter of saving lives.

[Becky Milligan]

But even Maria Luisa says that King Boris wasn't acting alone. The Orthodox Church put huge pressure on King Boris to protect Bulgaria's Jews. One of the Orthodox bishops, Archbishop Kirill, actually threatened to lie across the railway tracks to make sure those deportation trains could never depart. And the Vice President of the Parliament, Dmitry Peshev, constantly petitioned the King, begging him to give the Jews protection. And the King clearly listened to these individuals. In fact, before he'd gone into politics, Peshev had been the King's advisor. Aaron Solomon Barley believes Bulgaria's Jews definitely owe thanks to Peshev and to certain individuals in the church and community. But he feels no gratitude to the King or the Bulgarian people.

[Aaron Solomon Barley]

More widely, I feel offended that I have to say thank you to the Bulgarian nation as a whole. No, no. It was personal act and there are too few people who did it. But I cannot honor the people who were guarding our fathers in the camps and who took our property and who put us these yellow badges. No, I cannot thank Tuka. And there were fascists here, there were anti Semites, and they were in power.

[Becky Milligan]

The anti Jewish law that passed in 1941 was signed off by King Boris. It was called the Law for the Protection of the Nation, as if Jews somehow threatened Bulgaria's future. And King Boris did make anti Semitic comments about Bulgaria's Jews and their financial interests. But the reports are conflicting. He also expressed concern for their safety and well being under the new Lawrence Solomon. Barley doesn't think Boris deserves any thanks, but he doesn't think the King was a Nazi either.

[Aaron Solomon Barley]

He was not a fascist, but his hands are not clean.

[Becky Milligan]

But did Boris make the best of the hand he'd been dealt? Across Europe, the Jewish population was decimated during the war. Around 6 million were killed. But Bulgaria's Jewish population actually increased during the Second World War. Elaine's husband, Rabbi Haim, was convinced that they would have been wiped out had it not been for King Boris. Haim recognized that protecting Bulgaria's Jews was very much a collective effort. But he also insisted that King Boris played a significant role. He was part, not the only one, but part of the story that was responsible for saving the Jews of Bulgaria. He played an important part. The thing is, it might be far easier to exonerate Boris if only he'd been a little more overt in his efforts to save the Jews or even a little more consistent. But historian Tessa Dunlop thinks that's naive. The King was flitting and darting in and out of allegiances like a butterfly, and that's a life saving skill. He is a moderate man in an immoderate world, which is either fascist or communist, and he walks the tightrope. And I think we have to commend him for that. If he had actually said, you know, treat Jews as equal Bulgarian citizens, we wouldn't be talking about him now because he'd have been snuffed out much earlier. He knew that he had to do some dirty stuff. He lived in a dirty world. But for Aaron Solomon Barley, Boris was too much a part of that dirty world.

[Aaron Solomon Barley]

He was a very sneaky person. Very, very sneaky. And it's right to call him the Fox of the Balkans. He was a fox. But foxes are sometimes killed, and this.

[Becky Milligan]

Fox certainly was killed. But by whom? I think I am going to take Hitler out of the frame at this point. Not just because we've seen that King Boris wasn't a complete, completely disloyal ally of the Nazis, but also because we have to remember none of this is happening in isolation. We're in the middle of a war here, the biggest war in history. And in the summer of 1943, Germany really needed all the friends she could get. Abroad she'd lost major battles on the Eastern Front and at home, cities were being pummeled by Allied air raids. The Germans had other things to think about than Boris. So I have to widen the Search for my suspects. We think we know the means now. A poison of Asiatic origin. Probably snake poison. But who else had a motive? Well, I think I can tell you who. We might not want to go there, but maybe we have to. I mean, the Allies hated Boris. Remember, this is a man who's not only in league with Hitler, he signed a symbolic declaration of war against America and Britain. And one man hated him more than anyone. Give us the tools, Winston Churchill, and we will finish the job. Yes, I'm serious. Could the cigar chomping British Prime Minister have signed the order to assassinate Boris when he was murdered? Churchill apparently said, oh, see what happens if you support Hitler. In other words, nothing good comes as getting into bed with Germany. Churchill, the irascible British bulldog, hero of the Allies, certainly had beef with Boris and Simeon thinks so too.

[Simeon]

You can see it in the different writings and things of Churchill that he was no fan of my father's.

[Becky Milligan]

What do you think of that?

[Simeon]

What I think of it. As I say, it's St. Winston's privilege and may he rest in peace.

[Becky Milligan]

So the British do have a motive. To them, King Boris was a snake in the grass. And with thousands of British and Commonwealth troops deployed in Asia and in the Asian jungles, the British had ready access to a means snake venom. Now, this puts me, being British, in a bit of an awkward position with King Snow, Simeon and Princess Maria Louisa. But I have to ask the question, did the British kill King Boris? Next time on the Butterfly King. The British target the Bulgarian royals.

[Maria Luisa]

A huge bomb fell in the garden. The roof was burning. There were, of course, wounded people. Other people panicked and were screaming.

[Becky Milligan]

And a disturbing discovery in the archives casts our investigative net far wider. It's really quite dramatic, isn't it? No wonder it's marked. Must never be taken from the office to be kept always under lock and key. And yet it was intercepted, decoded. Decoded. And here it is for me that. That adds a whole new dimension to this. The Butterfly King is a production of Blanchard House and Exactly Right Media. Hosted by me, Becky Milligan. It's written and produced by Emma Jane Kirby. Original music is by Daniel Lloyd Evans, Louis Nankmanel and Toby Matamong. Sound design and engineering by Toby Matamong and Daniel Lloyd Evans. Artwork by Vanessa Lilac. The managing producer is Amica Shortino Nolan. The creative director of Blanchard House is Rosie Pye. The executive producer and head of content at Blanchard House is Lawrence Grizzel. For Exactly Right Media, the executive producers are Karen Kilgarraff, Georgia Hardstark. And Daniel Kramer with consulting producer Kyle Ryan. The Butterfly King is inspired by the book Hitler and the King by John Hall Spencer.

[Ryan Seacrest]

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[Maria Luisa]

This is Alec Murdock.

[Marco Shea]

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[Narrator/Announcer]

Murdoch Death in the Family Official Podcast is here. I'm joining Patricia Arquette, Jason Clark and the cast to uncover all things Murdoch family first. To unravel the story piece by piece was really surprising because you don't want to believe it. Murdoch Death in the Family Official podcast Wednesdays and stream Murdoch Death in the Family on Hulu and Hulu on Disney for bundle subscribers.

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