The Butterfly King - 5: Caught Red Handed

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Butterfly King – 5: Caught Red Handed

Podcast: Hell in Heaven: A Mysterious Death in Paradise (The Butterfly King Series)
Host: Becky Milligan
Episode Date: April 11, 2024

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Overview

In this gripping fifth installment of “The Butterfly King,” host and journalist Becky Milligan delves deep into the mystery of King Boris III of Bulgaria’s death during WWII. The episode, “Caught Red Handed,” weaves historical intrigue, personal testimony, and expert analysis to explore the enduring suspicion that Stalin’s Soviet Union orchestrated the king’s untimely demise via poisoning, and then spent decades covering it up. Milligan is joined by historians, the late king’s descendants, and local voices to unravel a legacy of paranoia, erased history, and family trauma that endures in modern Bulgaria.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Grave Robbers — Opening Scene (03:35)

• Milligan paints a vivid image: Soviet-aligned grave robbers exhume King Boris’s body in the 1950s, seeking not treasures but the corpse itself.
• The implication: The Communists were desperate to hide something—possibly damning evidence of assassination by poisoning.

2. Uncovering a Lead: The Soviet Motive (06:32 – 09:30)

• A decoded telegram found in archives points to Stalin and the Soviets as culprits.
• King Boris was seen as an obstacle to Soviet control of Bulgaria—a buffer needed for expanded Soviet influence in Eastern Europe.
• Quote:
  “My personal opinion is that the Russian special services killed King Boris. Stalin’s special services killed him.” – George Bozduganov, Bulgarian historian (10:41)

3. Soviet Takeover and Royal Reprisals (09:53 – 12:35)

• After Boris’s death, the Soviets occupied Bulgaria, quickly executing regents and consolidating power through brutal means.
• The royal family, especially the children (Simeon and Maria Luisa), were spared for political reasons but placed under house arrest before being exiled.

4. The Burial Shuffle — Erasing the Monarchy (14:13 – 17:58)

• Boris’s body was repeatedly reburied, first at Rila Monastery, then moved secretly to the palace gardens, then exhumed again.

• The Communists sought to erase Boris’s legacy and minimize popular martyrdom.

• Quote (Maria Luisa on the reburial): “Hideous. It was Holy Thursday and my mother was told, they’ll bring him back tomorrow morning… at dawn a van arrived with a coffin.” (15:46)

5. The Mystery of Boris’s Remains (22:51 – 25:27)

• In the 1950s, after more secret exhumations, Boris’s body vanishes.

• In 1991, a glass jar containing a human heart—confirmed as King Boris’s—was discovered, raising chilling questions about Soviet intentions and methods.

• Quote:
  “It survived because it was checked and it is Papa’s heart. I mean, there’s no doubt about it. So when it was found, of course some people had to parade it. Heart of the King. And my poor mother saw it on the newspaper, which totally unnecessary.” – Maria Luisa (25:51)

6. Means and Methods: The Case for Poison (28:48 – 33:45)

• Soviet expertise with poison assassinations is explored, including secret labs and “undetectable” toxins developed for political killings.
• Quote:
  “From 1938 to 1953, the NKBD, that’s Russian special service, maintained two laboratories for the production of deadly poisons… to do it without leaving any traces.” – George Bozduganov (32:13)
• “Acute heart failure, heart attack. Precisely the official cause of death given for King Boris III.” – Becky Milligan (33:45)
• The diagnosis mirrored results from Soviet poison trials: murder, with no discernible autopsy evidence.

7. The Enduring Legacy and the Battle for History (37:21 – 41:58)

• The Communists rewrote Bulgarian national history, erasing the monarchy’s influence.
• Today, Bulgarians remain divided: royalists blame Soviet assassins for Boris’s death, while others venerate the Communists as liberators.
• Quote:
  “We’re very polarized. And there is a clash between those two kinds of nostalgia which is preventing any sort of normal discussion and truth to come out.” – Anna Blagova & Jana Punkina (Urban Detective podcast) (39:06)

8. Whodunit: Soviet Agents or Bulgarian Communists? (45:21 – 49:58)

• Historian Tessa Dunlop offers a counterpoint: while Soviet involvement is plausible, a Bulgarian Communist inside job is equally possible.
• Becky Milligan weighs these theories, noting Boris had many enemies at home; his life had been threatened before.
• “Whoever hated the king certainly got him in the end. But the fatal poisoning wasn’t a one off attempt. Boris was a marked man from the minute he took the throne. The king had already dodged several serious assassination attempts, and all of them on his own soil.” – Becky Milligan (49:58)

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• George Bozduganov: “That’s why Boris has been killed.” (09:21)
• Maria Luisa: “Obviously, Communists did things always in the dark. That’s part of their system...” (16:23)
• Michael (Tour Guide at Rila): “King Boris III is the most prominent, respected and loved Bulgarian ruler from the modern Bulgarian history… People still venerated King Boris III as a saint.” (35:07 – 35:40)
• Maria Luisa: “Don’t forget that when they occupied us, they took the whole entire Bulgarian archives. State archives. And they’re still in Moscow. They were never returned.” (28:12)
• Tessa Dunlop: “If he was murdered at the command of a Communist, then it would have been done by, I think, a Bulgarian Communist. Someone with the know how, with the wherewithal, and with the contacts. Sorry, but we never look for the most obvious.” (48:08)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 03:35 – Open: Grave robbers and erasure of Boris’s legacy
• 09:21 – 10:53 – Historian points to Soviet involvement
• 15:46 – 16:54 – Maria Luisa recalls traumatic reburial
• 22:51 – 25:27 – Mystery of Boris’s remains and the heart in the jar
• 28:48 – 33:45 – Soviet poison research and parallels to Boris’s official cause of death
• 35:07 – 35:40 – Boris’s posthumous veneration and Communist motives
• 37:21 – 41:58 – Historical legacy, polarization, and generational guilt
• 45:21 – 49:58 – Debating Soviet vs. Bulgarian Communist culpability

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Tone and Style

The episode maintains a conversational, investigative tone filled with historical asides, family recollections, and touches of sardonic British humor. Becky Milligan’s narrative voice is curious and skeptical, with moments of empathy and reflection, especially when hearing from the aging royal children.

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Conclusion

Episode 5, “Caught Red Handed,” brings listeners to the very edge of the mystery behind King Boris III’s death, strongly suggesting Soviet complicity via poison, motivated by realpolitik and empire-building, but doesn’t rule out the possibility of a domestic plot. Through personal testimony, archival discoveries, and expert opinions, the podcast explores the layers of historical revisionism, generational trauma, and the elusive search for truth amid Bulgaria’s tangled 20th-century legacy.

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Stay tuned for Episode 6, where the psychological toll of war on Boris and fresh, spiritual prophecies around his death come into focus.

Transcript

[Tessa Dunlop]

This is exactly right.

[Michael (Tour Guide at Rila)]

The detective said missing kids usually come home.

[Becky Milligan]

What happens when they don't? Based on a true story Police looking for John Gacy. We discovered bodies. By the looks of it, they're younger men.

[George Bozduganov]

The things he did to those kids.

[Becky Milligan]

He's sick. The system failed these families. Devil in disguise. John Wayne Gacy Streaming now only on Peacock. Do you know how many there are?

[George Bozduganov]

Up to you to find out.

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[Becky Milligan]

$15 per month equivalent required. New customer only.

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[Becky Milligan]

See mintmobile.com A crisp winter's night in the grounds of Rana palace, mid-1950s. Two burly men in thick overcoats trudge through the long grass. Their breath creates huge clouds of vapor in the sharp, cold air. Their flashlights pick out a small stone building hidden among the trees. Vrana's a wild place now. The beautiful tree lined avenues planted by the king are straggly and overgrown, the flower beds choked with weeds and garbage. The men take spades from the tool shed and start to dig. There's a large stone slab set in the grass. They lever it up and with some difficulty, they haul it to one side. The light from their flashlights flickers, but you can just about make out the inscription chiseled into the weathered stone. It reads, king Boris iii. This is the grave of the last crowned king of Bulgaria, a victim of poisoning. And these men? They're grave robbers. They work for the new residents of Rana palace, the new rulers of Bulgaria, the Communists under Russian Soviet control. Grave Robbers usually look for gold or jewels. Not these grave robbers, though. They're after something much more precious. The body. Why steal a corpse unless you're afraid it's got something to hide? Did the Soviets fear they were about to be exposed for the murder of King Boris from Blanchard House and. Exactly right. Media. This is the Butterfly King. I'm Becky Milligan. Chapter five. Caught red handed. Oh, yes. What do you want? Do you want. Well, I think we finally discovered a nice biscuit. Yeah, yeah. The eagle has landed.

[Anna Blagova and Jana Punkina]

Here we are.

[Tessa Dunlop]

I'll take one.

[Becky Milligan]

You haven't fingered. That's okay. Oh, just all these talk of poison. I'm afraid I need to take my own biscuit. So we're back in Sofia, Bulgaria's capital, in my producer EJ's hotel room, and we're taking stock of our day over tea and biscuits. It's a British custom, of course, though not necessarily one the Bulgarians have mastered. These biscuits. Taste of air. I like them. It's like. Oh, sorry, it's like flour. It's my carpet. Well, they taste. They are a bit floury, I'll give you that.

[Maria Luisa]

They're a bit flour.

[Becky Milligan]

Oh my God. They're just coating the inside of my mouth. As well as the biscuits, we're also trying to chew over what we know about the case so far. You can sort of cross countries off as you're going along. You know, I was convinced it was Nazis, without a doubt, you know, on the plane with oxygen mask or a bit of poison or, you know, snake venom. And as we've gone along, we've just crossed off each theory and then there's been another twist and another twist. But now we have a fresh lead on who may have killed the King, thanks to a top secret decoded telegram we unearthed in the archives. It points the finger of blame fairly and squarely at Stalin's Soviet Union, the Communists who occupied Bulgaria in 1944, a year after Boris's death, and promptly turned the country red. So I think it narrows it. Do you know where the Communist Embassy was? Russia. Don't tell me. Next to the palace. Spot on. Yeah. So you could have dug a tunnel under. Well, you just popped in. Yeah, there'll be more twists, more twists and turns to come. So was it the Soviets who killed Boris, and if so, why? To help us investigate this case. We have the best witnesses you could hope for. King Boris, children, Her Royal Highness Maria Luisa, aged 90, and His Majesty King Simeon, now 86. I mean, I don't say this lightly, but it does Feel quite a privilege to have actually sat down with them. They agreed to do it. And to talk so candidly about how the hell their father died. I agree. I mean, and was he murdered? And you know, obviously they've been consumed with it for years and years and years. Both of them think it wasn't normal. He didn't die a natural death. You can just tell. Their faces tell you that. And they want to know what happened. And they're so with it. I mean more with it than I was actually. But anyway. Well, not so much. Have another biscuit. But anyway, it's all very intriguing. Okay, so let's talk about the Soviet Union and the tyrannical Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin. Stalin dreamt of spreading communism across Eastern Europe and of creating a buffer of territory there to protect the motherland, the Soviet Union. Little Bulgaria was right at that crossroads between east and west, sandwiched between Romania and Greece. A vital foothold for anyone trying to consolidate their power in the region. So Stalin really wanted to control it. The only problem was that there was a king in the way. A very popular king.

[George Bozduganov]

That's why Boris has been killed.

[Becky Milligan]

Hang on, let's hear that again.

[George Bozduganov]

That's why Boris has been killed.

[Becky Milligan]

Okay, deep breath. Before we unpick this bombshell, let me remind you that's George Bozduganov, Bulgaria's leading historian. You might remember he's the academic who sometimes gets a little frustrated with me when I can't keep up with the minutiae of Balkan politics. But you heard him as well as I did. He believes the Soviets needed King Boris and out of the way to fulfill an age old Russian dream of empire expansion. And Boris was the annoying sort of obstacle who was blocking the route. So.

[George Bozduganov]

Listen, listen to me a little bit.

[Becky Milligan]

Sorry. I'll let Mr. Bozdanov tell you himself.

[George Bozduganov]

King Boris the only one buffer to study his ambitions to take Bulgaria. This very old Russian ambitions from the time of Catherine the Great in Russia to centuries before starting.

[Becky Milligan]

I need this spelled out clearly. Who do you think murdered King Boris?

[George Bozduganov]

My personal opinion is that the Russian special services killed King Boris. Russian special services? Stalins special services killed him.

[Becky Milligan]

So if we believe Mr. Bozdaganov, the power hungry Soviets decided to get the King out of the way. And guess what happens a year after Boris is murdered. On 5th September 1944, the Soviet Union declares war on Bulgaria. Five days later, Stalin's Red army rolls into Sofia. They meet with no resistance. Many Bulgarians welcome the Soviets as liberators. Don't forget Nazi troops have been stationed in Bulgaria because King Boris had made an alliance with Hitler. The Soviets team up with Communist dissidents in Bulgaria. The new red regime wastes no time in securing power and they sweep away their opponents ruthlessly. Thousands are sentenced to death, not just those who'd supported the Nazis, but basically anyone who didn't support them. Like the royals. The remaining royals, that is. Now, after Boris dies, little Simeon is on the throne. But it goes without saying a child can't really run a country. So there are three regents who rule for him. One of the regents is Boris, Prime Minister. Another is a high ranking general in the Bulgarian army. And the third is King Boris brother Prince Kiril.

[Tessa Dunlop]

Yeah, get rid of him, because he's going to be a thorn in your side.

[Becky Milligan]

Our historian Tessa Dunlop could see it coming, because a few months after occupying Bulgaria, the Communists rounded up the regions, then took them to a bomb crater in Sofia cemetery and shot them all dead. Ruthless. And if the Soviets could shoot a king's brother in cold blood, doesn't it stand to reason that they could murder a king too? But despite their successful power grab, something was making the Reds uneasy, or should I say someone? Because the Soviets felt haunted by a ghost from the past. A ghost who continued to make his presence felt from beyond the grave. We're at the place where King Boris was buried. After a memorial service in Sofia, the railway men carried his coffin to the station. His body was then taken by train here to the beautiful Rila Monastery, high up in the Bulgarian mountains. The sound of the single bell is plain and modest, but the building is extraordinarily ornate. It's shaped in a sort of polygon with black and white archways striped like candy. And inside, it's just amazing, don't you think?

[Maria Luisa]

Oh, blown away.

[Becky Milligan]

I mean, it's just. It's really difficult to convey just how remarkable it is, how ornate. Every, every single bit of it is covered with frescoes which are sort of a dirty pink and blue and oxblood. Yeah, beautiful. That noise you can hear is the monastery being cleaned and polished. The huge gold chandelier gleams so brightly it actually makes you squint. It's like looking into the sun. Rila is a fitting resting place for a king. But the Soviets didn't see it that way. They wanted to erase Boris from the collective memory, because even after the Soviet occupation, thousands of people still came to pray at Boris's tomb as if it were a shrine. He was a hero to so many Bulgarians, and that didn't please the Communists. They Wanted Bulgaria's regal past dead and buried once and for all. So in 1946, they exhumed King Boris and told his widow, Queen Giovanna, to rebury him somewhere else, somewhere private. Maria Luisa was 13 years old and Simeon nine when their father's body was returned again to Vrana Palace. It was deeply traumatic.

[Maria Luisa]

Hideous. Hideous. It was Holy Thursday and my mother was told, they'll bring him back tomorrow morning. So mother called some of the gardeners, found a little spot and had hole dug in the garden. And at dawn a van arrived with a coffin.

[Becky Milligan]

The royal children remember shivering in the half light, partly from the cold, but partly from sheer terror. They were still living in Vrana, but the Soviets had put them under house arrest. Cut off from the outside world.

[Maria Luisa]

Obviously, Communists did things always in the dark. That's part of their system, you know, so the people don't see it. So they brought the coffin. And the coffin was of course, with a little glass window. And so we children saw our Papa three years after he had died. It wasn't easy. And then they buried him there. And Mama then asked a little chapel to be built on top of it.

[Becky Milligan]

Of course, it would have been easy for Stalin to order the assassination of the remaining royals. He'd done away with Boris brother, and quite possibly with Boris himself too. But the Soviets knew how popular the royals were. Murdering the royal children was just too risky. So they played it softly. Softly.

[Tessa Dunlop]

When you're an occupying force, you want to take the hearts and minds with you to an extent. There's got to be a sort of air of respectability.

[Becky Milligan]

Our historian Tessa Dunlop.

[Tessa Dunlop]

I mean, how much opposition do you get from a 6 year old? I get quite a lot of opposition from mine, actually. But you know, in real political terms, Boris was a big hero. So why would you butcher his son, his little delicate piece of progeny? Why wouldn't you just keep that politically emasculated as a fig leaf of respectability to smooth over your accession to power or takeover of power, which is what the communists did.

[Becky Milligan]

So once their takeover of power is secure, the Soviets find a better way of getting rid of Simeon and his mother and sister. They send them into exile in Egypt. And as soon as the Royal family move out of Rana palace, communist leaders move in. It'll be 50 years before Simeon and Maria Luisa see their home again. But even with the Royal family now thousands of miles away, the communists can't let their beef with royalty rest there. In fact, they can't let Boris rest at all. Let's knit Back to Vrana palace for a second. The king's charming aide Jarvor has something to show us. A crime scene. But on the way, a little digression. Are you getting chilly? It is a bit chilly. Only my hair is. Yeah. How far is the cemetery? The cemetery is here. Oh, perfect. Javor is taking us to a little clearing in the woodland. And in the long grass there's a small collection of flagstone graves. The resting place of some other short lived members of the royal household. Four legged ones. He is born in May 1923 and died in May 1926. This is quite common, isn't it, to have a dog's cemetery in royal palaces? Actually, I think the Queen definitely did have one. And now King Charles. This is also in Bulgarian, but this is in Latin, right? Booby. Booby. I like the name.

[Michael (Tour Guide at Rila)]

Booby.

[Becky Milligan]

The communists clearly didn't have a problem with royal pets. Lovely. So there are four here, aren't there? All together.

[Maria Luisa]

2, 3, 4, 5.

[Becky Milligan]

5. And the big one? The big one is interesting. It's not a dog. Oh, right, yeah.

[George Bozduganov]

It's a horse. King Boris.

[Becky Milligan]

King Boris's horse, Harmony. Oh, how lovely. And King Simeon have one cat hat. One cat. It's Booboo. The tradition continue. Yes, it does. Moving on from the pet cemetery, we arrive at the crime scene. I mentioned King Boris's grave. And while all the pets have headstones, there's nothing now at Vrana to mark the grave of King Boris iii. Because the grave's empty. What kind of man would let this.

[Tessa Dunlop]

Happen to his family?

[Becky Milligan]

Inspired by shocking actual events, I'm working on a story about the Murdochs. Their abuses of power are playing out in real time. Starring Academy Award winner Patricia Arquette and Jason Clark.

[George Bozduganov]

It's only cheating if you get caught.

[Becky Milligan]

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[Becky Milligan]

In the 1950s, a few years after they'd ordered the King's body to be reburied from the Rila Monastery, Tefrana, the communists did something extraordinary. They decided to exhume the king again. Remember where we started this episode? Sometime in the 1950s, in the dead of night, the communists dug up Boris's body. They removed it from its resting place in the gardens of Vrana palace and took it away. Where to is anyone's guess. Now. By the 1950s, Stalin's Red army had long since left Bulgaria. They marched back home in 1947. But the new communist leadership that was established in Sofia wasn't just loyal to Moscow. It was basically a satellite of the Soviet Union. When Stalin said, jump, Bulgaria just asked how high? So did Stalin order the second exhumation because he was afraid the Soviet Union might be found out for the murder of the king? Was he trying to destroy the evidence by stealing the king's corpse and disposing of it? And remember that little chapel? Maria Luisa told us it had been built over the grave to mark her father's tomb. At first the communists used it as.

[Maria Luisa]

A tool shed, and then it was blown up.

[Becky Milligan]

Over the years, Maria Luisa and Simeon have tried desperately to find out what happened to their beloved father's remains. Maria Luisa even managed to trace the Bulgarian soldiers who dug up the grave.

[Maria Luisa]

I was told that there were some soldiers that were taken out the body from the tomb here in the garden. And I definitely didn't ask to see these poor wretches because they are not the ones who did it, you know, they were ordered. And God knows what could have happened to their families if I ever confronted them. You know, don't forget that Bulgaria, until a few years, there were still some of the old people around, some of the old communists, you know, and I would never have anybody disappear or get punished. And it is a total mystery what they did with my father's body, so.

[Becky Milligan]

But the story didn't end there. Many years later, it took an even more sinister turn. In 1991, after the fall of communism, a dirty glass jar was found in a medical institute in Sofia. Inside it was a human heart preserved, a royal human heart.

[Maria Luisa]

It survived because it was checked and it is papa's heart. I mean, there's no doubt about it. So when it was found, of course some people had to parade it. Heart of the King. And my poor mother saw it on the newspaper, which totally unnecessary.

[Becky Milligan]

Why did the Soviets preserve the King's heart as a trophy, a souvenir of their heinous crime. It's not altogether unknown for a monarch to have his mortal remains divided. Louis XIV of France had his body buried in one Parisian church while his heart was interred at Notre Dame Cathedral. But Queen Giovanna certainly didn't ask for this to happen to her husband, King Boris. So who removed his heart? And why then hide that heart? Unless you fear it contains proof of a poisonous secret? Now, when I began this investigation, everyone I spoke to told me to listen closely to Maria Luisa. Because while King Simeon has to toe the line of diplomacy, she can speak her mind more freely about who she believes killed her father. So I'm going to test that theory now and put Maria Luisa on the spot. Do you have any gut feeling of who it was?

[Maria Luisa]

I think I can leave that to you. By deduction, who had the greatest advantage to get rid of him.

[Becky Milligan]

It's a nail biting moment. I desperately want Maria Luisa to tell me who she thinks murdered her father. So I say nothing and wait.

[Maria Luisa]

And then in my soul I see the only people who had really an advantage of getting rid of him. Because they were there. A year later, the Soviet Union.

[Becky Milligan]

There we have it. Maria Luisa is convinced the Soviets killed her father. And not only that, she's sure they spent the next 50 years rewriting history and covering up the evidence.

[Maria Luisa]

Don't forget that when they occupied us, they took the whole entire Bulgarian archives. State archives. And they're still in Moscow. They were never returned. Bulgaria has asked for them. They never came back.

[Becky Milligan]

Could the proof lie in Moscow, in the archives of the Russian secret services.

[Maria Luisa]

The kgb, nobody can get to those.

[Becky Milligan]

Because that could be quite interesting.

[Maria Luisa]

Yes. I can't rule out anything.

[Becky Milligan]

I think we've now established the Soviets had a very clear motive for killing Boris. As for the means, well, Russian assassins have long had a love affair with poison. They have no morals or scruples. They have no limits. Colonel Hamish de Breton Gordon is our chemical weapons expert. He told us about the nerve agents that the Nazis were developing in the war. But it turns out that the Germans were novices compared to the Soviets. You know, most of the poisons that we're talking about. The most knowledge we have about assassination is again coming from the Russians, the Russian Secret Service. In the last few decades, there have been several high profile poisoning cases involving the Russian secret services. Russian dissidents have been attacked with deadly nerve agents and chemical weapons like ricin, polonium and novichok, and with chilling success. And unlike snake venom, which has to be injected to kill someone, nerve agents can work their way through the skin. Some are so powerful you just need to brush against them to suffer serious consequences, as the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny found out in 2020. With Navalny, there's a view actually that the nerve agent was put in his pants, his underpants, and that's how it got into him. Now, King Boris was a canny politician. So despite Bulgaria officially being an enemy of the Soviet Union, remember Bulgaria was allied with Germany. Boris had managed to keep up diplomatic relations with Stalin, and that meant the Russian embassy stayed open throughout the war, right next door to the Royal Palace. It wouldn't have been difficult for the Russians to sneak in poison on a door handle, perhaps in food, maybe even in documents or letters. And before you remind me that nerve agents like novichok weren't invented until much later, believe me, their predecessors were equally terrifying. How do we know that? Well, the Soviets might have hidden all of Bulgaria's archives, but some of their own interior intelligence surfaced in the 1990s. Basically after the fall of communism, top secret documents from Russia were very briefly declassified. And in those papers, the proof that by 1943, the year of King Boris's death, two poison laboratories were up and running in the Soviet Union. And guess who saw those papers about the poison factories.

[George Bozduganov]

I saw them in 90s.

[Becky Milligan]

Our very own favorite Bulgarian historian, George Bozdoganov. And there's something I haven't told you yet about George Bozdoganov, something that will make you really pay attention to what he's saying here. Because apart from being an eminent historian. Mr. Bozdoganov's also a doctor, a medical doctor, that is.

[George Bozduganov]

From 1938 to 1953, the NKBD, that's Russian special service, maintained two laboratories for the production of deadly poisons, toxicological one and bacteriological one.

[Becky Milligan]

And these laboratories had a specific brief. Not just to silence Stalin's enemies, but.

[George Bozduganov]

To do it without leaving any traces.

[Becky Milligan]

In other words, to get away with it. And to make sure they did, the Soviets practiced on real people, on prisoners. And this is where it all starts to sound like some sort of gruesome parlor game. Once the prisoner died, external pathologists were brought in to play guess the cause of death.

[George Bozduganov]

Two hundred and fifty people were killed during these experiments. The corpse of the persons killed are taken to the morgues of medical institutes where unsuspecting doctors perform autopsy.

[Becky Milligan]

So you're telling me that they were developing poisons, toxins that could be used to kill people, and they tested them on prisoners mostly, didn't they? Yeah.

[George Bozduganov]

Yeah.

[Becky Milligan]

And yet no doctor could ever tell that poison had been used.

[George Bozduganov]

The diagnosis is usually unequivocal. Acute heart failure, heart attack.

[Becky Milligan]

Acute heart failure, heart attack. Precisely the official cause of death given for King Boris III of Bulgaria. So is that how the Soviets got away with murder? Bulgaria's national archives never resurfaced. But we know the Communists did mysteriously unearth Boris heart, preserved in a jar from that medical institute in Sofia. And when the royal family was made aware that Boris heart had been found, they asked for it to be reburied again at the Rila Monastery, where it remains today. So will you show us where the remains of King Boris?

[Michael (Tour Guide at Rila)]

Follow me. On the right side. What we see here is the grave of King Boris iii. Let us come inside.

[Becky Milligan]

This is amazing because we've heard so much about it, haven't we? Just amazing. And to be let into the private bit. Is this where where his son Simeon comes to pay his respects every year? Listen to Michael, the official tour guide at Rila, talk about the king and you really get why the Soviets needed Boris out of the way.

[Michael (Tour Guide at Rila)]

King Boris III is the most prominent, respected and loved Bulgarian ruler from the modern Bulgarian history. He was famous for his deep concern for the life of the common people, his great care towards the poor and the sick.

[Becky Milligan]

The Soviets could never have marched in and occupied Bulgaria if the adored king had still been on the throne. The Bulgarian people just wouldn't have stood for it.

[Michael (Tour Guide at Rila)]

People still venerated King Boris III as.

[Becky Milligan]

A saint, did they? As a.

[Michael (Tour Guide at Rila)]

Yes, they venerated him with Great love.

[Becky Milligan]

As for the Communists sacrilegious treatment to the king's body after his death, well, they nearly didn't get away with it. Remember the first time the Communists decided to dig up the king at Rila and to dump him at Frana? When the abbot of Rila got wind of the plan, he refused the gravediggers access. He reminded them that Rila was a holy place. But the Communists had no truck with either monarchs or monks. Plus, they had a visit from a Soviet bigwig pending, and they couldn't afford for that Soviet bigwig to think the Bulgarians were still pining for their royals. So that night, they came with their spades.

[Michael (Tour Guide at Rila)]

The monks were locked inside their rooms, and they were warned that if. If anyone goes out, they would be killed immediately.

[Becky Milligan]

Yes, the Communists knew how to get their own way. And they knew that, dead or alive, Boris still posed a threat to their regime. So they did what our historian Tessa Dunlop says is standard Communist practice. They erased him from history after the.

[Tessa Dunlop]

Iron Curtain comes down, and even before you want to eradicate the memory of the individual monarch who gives the the nation something nostalgic, romantic, and a world or a vision other than the Communist vision. And it's one of the reasons why we haven't heard of some of these great personalities, like Ferdinand, like Boris of Bulgaria, because the Communists did a really good job of burying their legacy, their history.

[Becky Milligan]

So we know the Soviet speciality was rewriting history, but they could hardly write a new national story with an old protagonist in the starring role. So they needed to write King Bong clean out of the script. And once he was bumped off, they were free to write a brand new chapter of their own, one in which the Communists were the heroes. Anna Blagova and Jana Punkina host a Bulgarian podcast called the Urban Detective. Their show explores all kinds of different cultural and social topics. But they've never dared tackle the death of King Boris, because despite the fact they're highly educated, Anna admits their own history is a bit of a mystery to them. Under the Communists, any debate about Bulgaria's past was completely squashed.

[Anna Blagova and Jana Punkina]

One of the reasons, I guess, we don't know much about it is that Bulgarian history is still very contested. It was very contested when we were in school, and to be honest, I only studied 20th century Bulgarian history in 6th grade. So this period has kind of. I feel, faded from memory.

[Becky Milligan]

Both women were born around the time the Communist regime collapsed in Bulgaria. That's almost 50 years after King Boris death. But Anna says there's still a Huge divide in her country between those who are royalists and those who are communist sympathisers.

[Anna Blagova and Jana Punkina]

We're very polarized. And there is a clash between those two kinds of nostalgia which is preventing any sort of normal discussion and truth to come out.

[Becky Milligan]

In fact, Yana wonders if the truth about who killed King Boris maybe needs to stay buried because it's still such a poisonous subject.

[Michael (Tour Guide at Rila)]

I don't know if it would be good to know even. Maybe it would have a bad effect on people.

[Becky Milligan]

It's just interesting when you say it might be bad for people to know the truth. Why would it be bad?

[Michael (Tour Guide at Rila)]

Because I think that there is this thing about Bulgaria. You know, Bulgaria is such a small country that everything that could be a political question is not really a political question. It's a family question. Like everybody is everybody's relative. Everybody knows someone who knows someone, who knows someone or who has seen something. And every political change or turbulence or argument in the country is somehow happening inside the family. It's very different from a big country with a century long history of democracy, because here everybody's related.

[Becky Milligan]

Both Anna and Jana have seen fierce clashes within their own families over the interpretation of Bulgarian history. There are two conflicting narratives. Those who believed the Soviets murdered the King so they could invade and occupy Bulgaria, and those who believed the Communists heroically liberated their country from fascism, from Boris, alliance with Hitler.

[Anna Blagova and Jana Punkina]

I don't know where to stand on this. And now it's very hard to come to an independent conclusion by yourself.

[Michael (Tour Guide at Rila)]

We're still learning what was going on during the Communist regime. We don't know everything.

[Becky Milligan]

Anna and Jana both feel uncomfortable about this disputed history, particularly because through Bulgaria's past alliance with Nazi Germany, they feel their country was implicated in the deportation of those 11,000 Jews from Thrace and Macedonia.

[Anna Blagova and Jana Punkina]

I feel some sort of guilt as a descendant, some sort of generational guilt. And even though, of course, Bulgarian civil society, in one of its greatest acts, managed to prevent the Jewish people on the territory of Bulgaria from being sent off to concentration camps, the ones from our presumed old territories were deported. So I think it's impossible not to feel this sort of guilt. So it doesn't make me feel angry, it makes me feel sad.

[Michael (Tour Guide at Rila)]

Of course, I don't think that I feel guilt. I definitely feel shame because we were on the wrong side of history. King Boris was probably. He was also against deportation. But I think King Boris was probably in an extremely delicate position during the Second World War. And I think he was walking on a very thin tightrope and someone Couldn't.

[Becky Milligan]

Wait for Boris to fall off that tightrope, so someone gave him a shove. I want you to hear just one more bit of evidence about the Soviets and their deep seated hatred of royalty.

[George Bozduganov]

I will tell you something which I really haven't mentioned, but listen closely because.

[Becky Milligan]

Simeon rarely bears his soul. And this story tells us a lot about the callousness of the Soviets, about what they were capable of and what they were prepared to do to make sure history went their way. You'll remember that just a few months after the Red army marched into Sofia, Boris's brother, Prince Kirill and the other Regents were rounded up to be executed. Queen Giovanna was distraught and she was terrified for her children's safety. What if they were next? So she wrote a letter, a begging letter, pleading for help. It was smuggled out of the palace and addressed to King Boris, English cousins to the Windsors, to King George VI of Great Britain.

[George Bozduganov]

And she wrote, I would say desperately letter to His Majesty to say if something could be done. There was never an answer or anything like it.

[Becky Milligan]

Poor Queen Giovanna went to her grave believing King Boris's British family had turned their backs on their Bulgarian relatives. But Simeon felt sure something was amiss. So one day in the 1980s, he was hanging out with Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret at Balmoral, the royal estate in Scotland, as one does, and perhaps emboldened by some good Scotch whiskey. Okay. Admittedly, that's just how I imagine the scene. He dared to ask them the question, why did your father ignore our plea for help?

[George Bozduganov]

I was also looking if that letter had ever arrived. It didn't.

[Becky Milligan]

Oh, right.

[George Bozduganov]

They had never received it. So it was intercepted from here, where my mother gave it to somebody who gave it to somebody else who should have passed it on. Although we were already occupied by the Soviets.

[Becky Milligan]

Exactly. Bulgaria was already occupied by the Soviets, who certainly didn't want the royal family, a family they were intent on wiping out, being able in any way at all. So if we suspect it was the Soviets who intercepted that letter, can we also now conclude that it was also very probably the Soviets who murdered King Boris? They had their motive, they had the means, and they had the opportunity.

[Tessa Dunlop]

I'm not saying it wasn't possible. I'm not saying it didn't happen.

[Becky Milligan]

But that's the one problem with historian Tessa Dunlop. There's always a but.

[Anna Blagova and Jana Punkina]

Sure.

[Tessa Dunlop]

I am not refuting the capacity of the Soviet Union to murder most foul. They had many ingenious ways of bopping people off and would go on and hone those faculties for many decades to come. Nor am I denying that Boris wasn't a potential target. I just think that it's unlikely.

[Becky Milligan]

But even Maria Luisa has stuck her neck out to blame the Soviets.

[Tessa Dunlop]

That's certainly what the family would want you to think. That the royal family, because they lost their entire livelihood and their country to the Communists, who took away Simeon's kingdom, who robbed out the royal family in Bulgaria, was the Russians. Wasn't it so convenient, in terms of that narrative, if you're a monarchist in Bulgaria, to blame the Russians?

[Becky Milligan]

Well, okay, yes, I can see that. Obviously, Simeon and Maria Luisa are going to be resentful of the Soviets, and they did abolish the monarchy, after all, and went on to steal all their palaces. But what about the Soviet Embassy in Sofia? Now, for me, the proximity of that embassy to the Royal palace provided the Soviets with the perfect opportunity to kill the King.

[Tessa Dunlop]

Why?

[Becky Milligan]

But not for Tessa.

[Tessa Dunlop]

Sure, the Soviets had much better intelligence going on in Bulgaria, Slav to Slav. But Bulgaria hadn't declared war on the Soviets. They'd never put boots on the ground in Russia. And given that he's revered in Bulgaria, he has the hearts and minds of the people, why would you pick him, of all people, to poison, to practice your poisoning on? Why?

[Becky Milligan]

I suppose Tessa has a point there. I mean, King Boris repeatedly refused Hitler's demands to send Bulgarian troops to fight the Russians on the Eastern Front. He also deliberately left Russia out of his symbolic declaration of war against the Allies.

[Tessa Dunlop]

This is a man who held the door open. He said himself, my people are pro Russian. I am pro Bulgaria.

[Becky Milligan]

But this still doesn't quite add up for me, I'm afraid, because the fact is, we know King Boris hated Communism. He feared, correctly, as it turned out, that Bulgaria would be swallowed up by the Soviet Union. And we also know that loathing was mutual.

[Tessa Dunlop]

The Communists had beef with the King. Certainly, they're not easy bedfellows. But if he was murdered at the command of a Communist, then it would have been done by, I think, a Bulgarian Communist. Someone with the know how, with the wherewithal, and with the contacts. Sorry, but we never look for the most obvious.

[Becky Milligan]

Right, let's just unpick that for a second. So Tessa is not saying I'm wrong to blame Communist assassins for the King's murder. She's just saying I should perhaps focus on homegrown Communist assassins rather than the Soviets themselves, on Bulgarian Communists.

[Tessa Dunlop]

I'm not saying that any of these individual parties weren't capable of it. This was the Second World War. It was the biggest period of mass murder known to humankind ever. I'm just saying don't rule out the communists on the ground.

[Becky Milligan]

Now that's interesting, because I happen to know that the Bulgarian Communist Party had a real, really rocky relationship with the King. In fact, Boris banned the Communist Party altogether in the 1930s. So the Bulgarian Communists had a major grudge against him. Does this mean the killer was one of the king's own subjects? It's certainly a theory that chimes with podcaster Yana Punkina, even if it is rather difficult to admit out loud. Could have been the Bulgarians. An inside job.

[Michael (Tour Guide at Rila)]

Yeah, because we don't like each other very much. I don't think that our political life is so civilized as to, you know, spare a person.

[Becky Milligan]

Well, here's the thing. Political life during Boris reign was anything but civilized. Whoever hated the king certainly got him in the end. But the fatal poisoning wasn't a one off attempt. Boris was a marked man from the minute he took the throne. The king had already dodged several serious assassination attempts, and all of them on his own soil. Was the murder of the Bulgarian king an inside job? Coming up in the Butterfly King, the stress of war catches up with Boris.

[George Bozduganov]

He had suicidal thoughts because of the dramatic meeting with Hitler with no issue or way out.

[Becky Milligan]

And we learn how the leader of a Christian sect prophesied the king's impending death. If King Boris had followed the advice, if he just listened to the person you call the master, he would have survived. Probably he wouldn't have been killed. I say maybe.

[Michael (Tour Guide at Rila)]

I think this.

[Becky Milligan]

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 Jennifer 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 Pyeongton. 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. Stage Spencer.

[Ryan Seacrest]

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[Maria Luisa]

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[Becky Milligan]

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[Tessa Dunlop]

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