Krystian Bala

Krystian Bala (born 1973) is a Polish murderer, self-published writer, and photographer. In 2000, Bala murdered Dariusz Janiszewski, a small business owner in Wrocław, after Janiszewski went on a date with Bala's wife. The case was not solved until three years later, when a detective linked the murder to events in Bala's 2003 novel Amok, which contained events that were incredibly similar to the murder and details that would be only known by the murderer. Bala was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Murder of Dariusz Janiszewski

In 2007, Bala was sentenced to jail for 25 years for planning and committing the murder of Dariusz Janiszewski, a Polish small business owner, in Wrocław in 2000. Janiszewski's dead body was discovered floating in a lake. For three years the Wrocław police had failed to solve the murder, until a detective found some physical clues linking the murder to Bala. More sensationally, clues to the killing were found in Bala's first novel Amok (2003), published three years after Janiszewski's death. It was as if Bala had written a "fictionalized" version of the real-life killing into his novel, using information only the murderer could have known. The case drew widespread media coverage in Poland and resulted in increased sales of the novel as readers looked for clues in the novel to the real-life events of Janiszewski's death.

Prosecutors believed the motive for the killing was tied to jealousy, as Bala had hired a private investigator to spy on his wife, and found out she went on a date with Janiszewski.