Cluster of mystery deaths in western Bulgarian mountains confounds police

By Alex Lefkowitz

SOFIA, Feb 9 (Reuters) – Six people were found dead in the mountains of western Bulgaria over the past week, in a case marked by conflicting accounts and strange circumstances that led a prosecutor to liken the two triple deaths to the 1990s mystery series “Twin Peaks”.

“This is a case without comparison in our country,” Zahari Vaskov, the director of the national police general directorate, told a press conference on Monday.

Prosecutors suspect the deaths may have been murder-suicides or suicides, a lack of clarity that has fuelled speculation and conspiracy theories among Bulgarians.

On Sunday, the police discovered the bodies of three people, including a 15-year-old boy, in a camper van in the Okolchitsa Peak area. Investigators believe they were connected to a triple killing that took place a week earlier by a mountain hut near Petrohan, which was later burned down.

The hut was used as the base of a non-governmental organisation devoted to nature protection, though some accounts have also described its members as “forest rangers” who for years patrolled the area near the Serbian border and assisted border police.

Five of the dead were members of the National Agency for Control of Protected Areas NGO and had lived at the hut, police said. The boy was the son of a friend.

No member of the group could be reached for comment.

Police released CCTV footage from outside the hut recorded on February 1, the day of the killings, showing all six deceased bidding each other farewell. The three who remained at the hut were later filmed setting it on fire.

Police said the NGO members were involved in Tibetan Buddhism, adding that Buddhist books and banners were found inside the hut. Police also cited a relative of one member who spoke of “exceptional psychological instability” within the group.

Four shell casings, two handguns and a rifle were found near the bodies, police said, and forensic experts determined that shots were fired from close range.

Police later tracked down the other trio, only to find them dead in the camper van. Two of the dead had head injuries, while the autopsy of the third was still ongoing.

“We can conclude, for both investigations, that one of the main versions that we are working on is murder-suicide and suicide,” said Natalia Nikolova, the acting chief prosecutor at the Appeal Prosecutor’s Office in the capital Sofia.

(Reporting by Alex Lefkowitx, writing by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Ros Russell)