My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Presents...The Butterfly King: A WWII Murder Mystery
Episode Date: March 22, 2024My Favorite Murder presents The Butterfly King, a historical true crime limited series from Exactly Right and Blanchard House. Join multi-award-winning journalist Becky Milligan as she unravels eighty... years of lies, deceit and cover-ups to answer one question: Who killed the Butterfly King? You’re about to hear “The Mender of Broken Dishes,” episode one of The Butterfly King. It’s 1943 during a critical point in the Second World War. Caught in the crossfire, King Boris III of Bulgaria has a crucial meeting with a key ally. Someone resents his influence and wants him out of the way for good. The second episode, “Lies, Lies, Lies,” is available now in The Butterfly King podcast feed. Follow, rate and review The Butterfly King wherever you get your podcasts. See historical photos by going to @exactlyright on Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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This is Exactly Right.
Hello.
We'd like to introduce you to Exactly Right's newest historical true crime limited series,
The Butterfly King.
The premiere episode you're about to hear is called The Mender of Broken Dishes, which
takes place during a crucial turning point in World War II.
Join journalist Becky Milligan as she unravels 80 years of history, lies, and deceit to answer
the question, who killed the Butterfly King?
Please enjoy this premiere episode of the Butterfly King and then when you're done,
go to the Butterfly King feed in your podcast app and listen to the second episode.
And don't forget to follow, rate, and review to show your support for our newest limited
series, The Butterfly King.
Goodbye!
Europe, August 1943. Location classified. Across the globe, the Second World War, the deadliest war in history, is raging. This summer is a crucial turning point.
In the southwest Pacific, the US has just overcome the Japanese.
On the eastern front, the Soviets have inflicted huge losses on Nazi Germany.
Mussolini has fallen and Italy is about to defect to the Allies.
The balance of power is wavering.
Could we possibly cut the typewriter effects, please?
Thanks, I think it's just a bit of a cliché.
So, as I was saying, this location's classified.
It's a military complex.
But what I can tell you is there's a plane coming into land on a narrow airstrip.
A military plane in the middle of dense woodland.
It's baking hot, the grass is scorched, there's a pungent smell of pine.
And this place is top secret.
Almost no one knows it exists.
The bunker walls are seven metres thick. This place is top secret. Almost no one knows it exists.
The bunker walls are seven metres thick.
They're surrounded by ten kilometres of mines.
I'm Becky Milligan, and I reported and broke stories for the BBC for almost 30 years.
You can trust me to report the facts, the truth.
It's what I do.
But I warn you to be on your guard, because where I'm about to take you,
the truth is extremely hard to find.
War is a terrible thing.
You never know who your enemy or your friend is.
You just don't know who is who.
Millions have already died in this war,
and millions more lives are now at stake.
Trust is
fraying between the conflict's key players as countries U-turn and switch
sides. The passenger in the plane has just landed in the midst of it. He knows
this place, he's been here before. He's sweating but not just because of the
heat. He's nervous, really nervous.
Tomorrow morning he has the most crucial meeting of his life.
For him, pretty much everything's riding on it.
Could you imagine what kind of pressure during a war
and you are alone on the top of the power pyramid?
What kind of pressures you have?
The man is His Majesty King Boris III of Bulgaria.
Look on the map and you'll see Bulgaria is a small country in south-eastern Europe,
in the Balkans, squashed between Romania to the north and Greece and Turkey to the south,
and at this moment in the conflict, Bulgaria finds itself in a very tight spot.
This meeting is crucial to the direction of the war.
The reception seems cordial enough,
but only a fool would take a man at his word here.
This is the last place on earth the king wants to be.
That night, he sleeps in a concrete bunker.
It's airless, stifling.
The king tosses and turns.
Next morning, the meeting takes place.
It lasts eight hours, eight long and very difficult hours, and it all takes place behind
closed doors with no witnesses. There are just two men in that room, the Bulgarian king and...
Actually, no, let's not go into that room quite yet, because that meeting was ugly.
The king returns home to Bulgaria, but after a day or so he starts to feel a bit unwell.
He's usually fit and sporty, but soon he's so sick he has to take to his bed.
He goes seriously downhill.
Until... after six days of agony.
The 49-year-old monarch is dead.
The news reports tell us he died suddenly of a heart attack.
That was the official line, and it's been the official line ever since.
But hang on a minute. This is where my journalistic instincts kick in.
Suddenly. Since when does a sudden death span six days?
And here's another thing that strikes me as odd. King Boris's skin was covered with
spots. Now I'm no doctor, but that does not sound like a heart attack to me.
And I'm not the only one. Plenty of people think the official cause of death was a complete lie.
The blotches do sound like a hypersensitive reaction to me to something. They do. Maybe a poison.
Poison.
The kink was poisoned. I think it's a poisoning.
Poison, a cocktail of toxins. I'm convinced that
something was put into his soup. This blameless king has fallen victim to a most vulgar murder.
In the middle of a global war and with Bulgaria's future hanging in the balance,
and with Bulgaria's future hanging in the balance.
The King is dead.
Who killed him?
And why?
From Blanchard House and Exactly Right Media, this is The Butter butterfly king. I'm Becky Milligan. Chapter 1 The Mender of Broken Dishes
Let me tell you a little bit about me. I'm Becky Milligan and I covered stories all over
the world for the BBC, wars in Afghanistan, armed scandals in Sierra Leone, and I've uncovered a whole raft of abuse and misconduct in the British Parliament.
But I've never investigated a story quite like this one before.
Because regicide, the killing of a king, that's a big brief to take on.
But once my curiosity is piqued, I just can't walk away, because for years people across
Bulgaria, people in the know, have been saying that someone silenced Boris III of Bulgaria,
the last crowned king of Bulgaria.
And I'm determined to find out who that was.
I start all my investigations by interviewing every witness I can find. And although this story has its roots in the 1940s,
I've tracked down two people who lived through it.
They're in their 80s now, but they're rather important leads in more ways than one.
Because they're actually members of the royal family. They're King Boris's children, his son and his daughter and they've
invited me and my producer EJ to visit them at their home. It's just outside
Sofia, Bulgaria's capital.
Good morning. Are you okay to take us to Vrana Palace?
Do you know, here it is on the map.
Vrana Palace.
Imagine jumping into a cab in London telling the driver to take you to Buckingham Palace,
only to have him turn around and ask you for the address.
Well, that's exactly what happens in Bulgaria.
King Simeon, his home?
No, I'm taking it now.
To be fair, the whole royal thing here is a bit confusing.
These days, Bulgaria's a republic.
It no longer has a monarchy.
That was all scrapped under the communists,
who arrived at the end of the war.
Except Bulgaria does still have a sort of king,
and that sort of king is Simeon. Simeon was forced into exile after the war,
but he never actually abdicated. So technically he is still king, if only in name. But actually,
if only in name. But actually, let's save some of the more complex constitutional details for later.
Because if it's confusing for a Bulgarian...
Do you see where it is?
So this is... it's like a big park.
I'm clearly getting nowhere here,
so I call for backup from the receptionist at our hotel.
So you'll drive it there?
He'll drive it there?
Yes.
Brilliant, thank you so much.
Thank you for your help.
No problem.
Half an hour later and...
Can't quite see the palace at the moment, but I think this is the park. It looks quite barren.
Let's just say this is not the Palace of Versailles.
It looks a bit like a scrap metal yard. In fact, it looks a bit like a dumping ground, in a way.
I hope this is the right place. At the moment it doesn't feel like it at all.
But despite appearances it is the right place.
Vrana Palace was where King Boris lived too. It was his country pad.
Yeah the next one, so I think we go up here. This is more like it.
It's a relief. I didn't fancy getting out where that dog was looking at us like that.
It's still very desolate and dilapidated though, isn't it?
It really is.
I think this is where we are.
Yes, I think so.
I think we're being dumped.
We're being dumped. In its heyday, Vrana must have been idyllic.
It's surrounded by mixed woodlands and long tree-lined avenues.
Some of the trees were planted by Boris himself, and by Ferdinand, Boris's father.
They weren't just weekend gardeners. they were both serious botanists.
I'll shut the gate
quickly.
So there are signposts here, it says in English as well as Bulgarian palace. So we're going to settle up here.
Vrana was really Boris's go-to place. He was a country boy at heart and he loved the great outdoors, to be in nature, peace and quiet. And he liked mounting butterflies. Yes, she said mounting butterflies.
She's Tessa Dunlop, a historian and an expert on both royal and Eastern European history.
You might find her a little blunt.
She certainly likes to tell it how it is.
He caught them and he mounted them and he spent hours working out which kind of butterfly there was.
I mean, he was a geek! Well, he certainly knew his insects back to front. Entomology was his great passion,
and his knowledge was second to none. He was well respected in the natural history world.
Boris was at his happiest, pottering around his grounds with his old floppy hat and butterfly nets.
He was a gentle soul, the kind of king who wouldn't hurt a fly.
Well, actually he probably would hurt a fly,
if it was a rare one and he wanted it for his scrapbook.
But you can see where I'm coming from.
He was inoffensive.
All that pomp and splendour, it just wasn't him.
He found himself really pretty unexceptional.
He got terribly anxious about standing up
in Parliament, especially early on. He said, little do they know that I have to go to the
loo five times before I confront them.
I think what she's trying to say is that King Boris was not at all what you might expect
in a king.
You know, he was not a man who was imbued with huge amounts of confidence, and I expect
part of that was his
physical appearance and his size. It helps if you're a big man.
Why does history always demand handsome heroes? I'm starting to feel rather sorry for Boris.
He was small to look at, eminently unremarkable. You wouldn't notice him in a room.
You wouldn't notice him in a room. Diminutive, aggressive, balding early on.
Watery grey eyes.
The long, protruding, Habsburg nose.
I mean, the only aphrodisiac attached to Boris
was the fact he was a monarch,
and that does some things for some women, doesn't it?
Well, I wouldn't know, Tessa.
Anyway, back to Varana Palace.
These look as though they might be
the sort of more modern quarters where Simeon lives actually. Do you know what I mean? Oh there's
another garden dog. Let's go and find a doorbell somewhere. Goodness knows where
you find a doorbell on a palace. Maybe it's up here. I suppose when most of us think of a palace, we'd think of something we see in The Crown
or Downton Abbey.
Towering turrets, gothic windows, colonnades.
Well Vrana's a little more down at heel.
The architecture's charming, a sort of hotchpotch of styles, but it could do with a lick of
paint.
Simeon's doing it up, bit by bit, but he has to do that from his own pocket.
As he's only a sort of king, he can't really ask the Bulgarian taxpayers to foot the bill.
So while parts of it are lovely, the rest is, let's say, shabby chic.
Hello, hello.
Hello.
What a pleasure to meet you.
We're early, I know, but…
Yes, we took a nap, not bad.
But, she got not.
That's the king's aide, Jarvol, meeting us.
And he's precisely how you'd imagine a king's aide.
Sharp suited, charming and perfectly poised.
Even when the palace guard dog gets a little frisky.
I have a dog so…
Yes but she's too lovely.
Too lovely.
Good dog she is but sometimes not.
Chica, what have you done?
Chica is too lovely.
She's not your typical guard dog.
Meeting a monarch is a nerve-wracking experience.
Luckily, Yavo tells us we don't have to curtsy to Simeon,
but there are certain royal protocols which we need to stick to,
such as not touching the ornaments and royal bric-a-brac in the drawing room.
But there are so many fascinating bits and pieces it's really hard not to,
including a rather fine filigree box
which was a birthday gift to Simeon from a fellow king or something and which I very
nearly break.
Yes, I love that sort of thing that's really very good.
It's very difficult to… difficult but not impossible.
Please don't break the palace.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Anyway, that's lovely.
I'm sure he's ensured. A king's ensured?
His Majesty's drawing room is light and airy and is everything you'd imagine in a stately home.
The herringbone wooden floor is scattered with plush Persian rugs.
The walls are plastered with icons and oil portraits,
and the elegant chairs on which we're invited to sit are painted gold and bricaded in dusky pink
silks. And just like in most people's houses, the mantelpiece is crowded with photos.
This is someone I recognize. Of course, two years ago the Pope visited Bulgaria and he wants a private visit to the royal family.
Simeon's family is not exactly ordinary.
He's descended from the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha dynasty.
That basically means he's connected to pretty much every royal clan in Europe, including the Windsors.
King Charles is a kind of distant cousin.
In fact, back in the days before the war, King Boris even used to take his holidays
with the British Royals, shooting in Scotland.
There's a huge portrait of Boris hanging on the drawing room wall,
and looking at it, you get a strange sense of deja vu.
Yeah, they do all look like each other.
I mean, you can see quite a strong trace of our current British royal family,
I think, in Boris and that strong, some would say aristocratic,
others inbred profile that he has.
I won't name names, but take a look at him and then, well, yes,
peruse the current royal landscape.
Oh, who though?
Don't you think Prince William a little bit?
I mean, poor Prince William.
It's not his fault, as Harry said said he does have aggressive premature balding.
Well, it's true. There's definitely more William than Harry in Boris.
Anyway, moving swiftly on.
Yes, I think we probably should.
Because it's time to meet the King. How do you do? Lovely to meet you. Thank you so much for making the time. Not at all.
I'm Becky.
This is Emma Jane.
And we're delighted that we're able to talk to you and really appreciate it.
Thank you.
Thank you.
King Simeon wears a dark suit and tie.
He's got a thick, dark suit.
He's got a you, thank you.
King Simeon wears a dark suit and tie.
He's got a thin white moustache that's anchored by a chin strap beard.
And okay, yes, he's completely bald.
He's one of those people who seem taller than they really are.
He might be 86, but he still knows how to carry himself.
He's very charming.
He's also very much an old school sort of king.
I'm not the type of person who communicates easily and I like to keep my feelings to myself.
So if you're expecting him to get all confessional and Prince Harry on you,
you might be disappointed. But having said that, once you get to know him,
he's quite the tease.
Stop it now!
Not to ram it in!
No, please!
It's important to laugh where we can,
because I'm afraid this story is a dark one.
For a child to lose a parent is always desperately sad.
And Simian was just six years old when his father died so mysteriously.
A mystery which still haunts him.
To this day, still, we cannot really either blame anybody or point our fingers at anybody.
And yet we have this, I would say, ghastly suspicion that something was wrong. Now, remember that military plane which Boris had taken to his secret meeting? Simeon got
taken to see it after it landed back in Bulgaria.
We went to the airport to greet my father when he came back from this meeting. We were
fascinated. My mother drove us to the airport to see this huge plane that had landed there.
Little did Simeon know that his father had just flown home to meet his death.
It all seemed like harmless fun to a little boy.
Poor King Boris had a very difficult relationship with his father. Ferdinand was fiery and Boris was frightened of him. Boris had lost his mother as a very young boy and
that meant he lost her gentle protection too. He felt he never quite measured up to his
father's exacting expectations. Ferdinand was certainly a force
to be reckoned with.
Boris was determined not to make the same mistakes with his own children, so he was
a hands-on dad. Whenever he got a day off, he'd head to the hills with the family.
Oh, on the hike it was always fun because he would teach us all sorts of things on botany
or on nature or on wildlife and so forth.
So to us this was a great treat I would say.
Now I'm not just here to speak to Simeon, because behind every great king is a bossy
big sister.
Simeon, how do I get in touch with you?
In half an hour, I should be able to call you.
Tell me.
Her Royal Highness Maria Luisa is four years senior to Simeone.
She's a plain speaking kind of princess.
That was a lot of BS, excuse me.
If Simeone's wary about speaking his mind,
Maria Louisa gives it to you straight,
no matter who you are.
Just before the war,
King Boris invited British King Edward VIII to the palace.
He's the king who abdicated
so he could marry American divorcee, Wallace Simpson.
Boris proudly presented his little daughter to Edward, but Maria Luisa refused
to perform.
I was, I think, four or what, and I got bored and I said, now I have to go and play. And
King Edward answered, so do I.
In her black trousers and trainers, Her Royal Highness is more casual than her brother,
but still stylish. She broke her leg last year year so she's walking with a stick. It's a
glittery burgundy red one and it matches her polar-neck sweater. Occasionally she
flashes her cane a look of contempt. You can see she hates being dependent. She's
as sharp as a tack. Basically the kind of 90 year old we all hoped to be.
Maria Luisa was exceptionally close to her father King Boris. In the next room there's a
tear-jerkingly beautiful black-and-white photo of them together. She's wearing a string of pearls
and she's drawing or coloring something while Boris looks on dotingly. In
the photo she's about eight, maybe nine years old. She's concentrating hard but her free
arm is sloped around her father's neck, just keeping him with her. She was ten when he
died.
He was always there for us and it was always a treat when he came and told us stories and he would take us sometimes
for a little walk in the forest and tell us stories about gnomes that lived under mushrooms
and came out at night and you know wonderful children's stories that we cherished enormously.
When Maria Luisa and Simeon talk about King Boris, they both often look away or stare at the floor for a second or two while they compose themselves.
It's very difficult to empty one's soul. A very loving father who had time for his children, definitely. For us he was just loving Papa.
And there wasn't even a proper goodbye. He disappeared so suddenly.
And the Monday morning he came into the room where Simeon and I were playing and he just
said I'm going to Sofia for work, you know, kissed us and said I'll see you tonight.
And we never saw him again.
They were such a close-knit family, but someone out there clearly didn't care for King Boris at all.
Once on his deathbed, the King didn't just slip peacefully away.
As we know, his so-called cardiac arrest spanned six long days and nights.
He fought to stay alive that summer. He really battled against
his failing heart.
Crushing chest pain as if there's a metal band around your chest. Feelings of sweatiness
and nausea. The feeling of impending doom.
That's Dr Stuart Hamilton, more from him later.
But he's bang on the money with the prediction of doom.
Simeon's seen the medical reports from his father's doctors.
He was feeling sick.
Then his liver eventually didn't function.
And there was also pneumonia.
And he lasted for so long.
From Monday to Saturday he lost his conscience.
The King wasn't short of doctors in that sick room.
The palace was crawling with them but it was 1943.
What did they have to offer Paul Boris except a bit of oxygen and sedation?
Well here's one thing they didn't offer him, the comfort of his wife.
The Queen was on holiday in the mountains with the royal children.
She wasn't even told her husband was ill until it was pretty much over.
Now that seems deeply odd and not just to me.
My mother was, she was convinced he was done in by somebody.
And here's another thing that makes me suspicious.
Once the king was bed bound,
no one was allowed to leave the palace.
They were literally locked in.
For the first few days,
even Boris's government was kept in the dark.
Whatever happened in that sick room Whatever happened in that sick room stayed in that sick room.
Finally the doctors who came and all that kept everything very, I would say, confidential or secret.
And that was also one of the reasons that people thought there was foul play.
was foul play.
In the final stage of his illness, King Boris developed a high fever.
When the doctors couldn't control his temperature,
he began convulsing.
And on the 28th of August, it was all over.
The King's casket was carried to its final resting place by train drivers.
His enthusiasm for engines and locomotives was legendary.
The railway workers even made him an honorary member
of their guild.
He was a skilled engineer.
He once joked that if ever things went badly for him
and he lost his throne, he'd just head off to America
and get a job as a mechanic.
He, I remember once took us along a railroad
because he was very fond of trains.
He was desperate to pass on his passion to his children.
So he took little Simeon into a tunnel.
A train appeared suddenly and roared past them in the dark.
The conductor reported in the next station
that there were some lunatics who had been walking
in the track just when the train came by and so forth.
And of course it was great fun afterwards
when they realized that it was my father
who had induced us to take this walk.
Maria Luisa remembers other times
when her father's enthusiasm almost got the better of him.
We would go horseback riding,
and not too far from here was a railroad crossing.
And we would stop because the barriers were down,
the trains were coming.
And since my father loved driving trains,
we would stand with our horses there
and the train would pass.
And if the machinists recognized my father,
of course he would blow the whistle.
And that was catastrophic for the horses and for us.
Historian Tessa Dunlop.
You know, the hours he spent pulling the levers of locomotive,
so much so that the engine drivers of the Orient Express
were told, watch out for Boris.
Because he literally will steal into your engine
and drive off with it.
That was the level of his obsession.
Boris was a royal who had the common touch.
He fitted in everywhere. Think of the late Queen Elizabeth II, the second longest reigning monarch in history.
Yet somehow most Brits thought of her as their own granny. Think of Princess Diana, who instinctively knew how to charm a crowd.
Unlike his father Ferdinand, Boris was popular. And whatever you think about train balls, being a committed railway enthusiast is hardly a motive for murder.
And this is where some red flags are popping up for me.
Because I feel like I'm getting a somewhat filtered version of the truth here.
So far we've only really heard from Boris' children.
And I mean, is anyone objective about their own parents?
Affectionate stories about Boris are threaded through Bulgarian folklore.
There are countless tales of the king picking up hitchhikers in his car, incognito.
He'd drive them around for miles, chatting away.
Simeon told me about one time when Boris pulled his
bet you can't guess who I am prank
on a hapless young soldier.
My father thought it was hilarious, which it really was.
Would he roar with laughter?
Well, yes, and I suppose the soldier almost fainted, no?
Because, but you see, then he says,
it's the king, it's the king.
And some of the legends sound like they're straight out of a fairy tale.
Like when King Boris was caught in a rainstorm
when he was out butterfly hunting in the mountains.
Apparently, he'd often pitch up at a villager's door
in the hope of a hot bowl of broth and some shelter. Once home,
he'd always thank the villager for their hospitality by sending on parcels and gifts.
Do we believe that? Do we actually believe that? I don't think so.
Well Tessa, from what I've read, at least some of these accounts really are true.
There's evidence to back them all up. But like Tessa, the skeptical journalist in me is starting to smell a rat, because my
research shows me that we're getting a very sanitized version of history here.
This is not Disney.
It's a real-life story rooted in war, and war's always a dirty business.
And if I dig around a bit in Boris' past,
it's not hard to unearth a less polished reality.
Without wishing to denigrate Bulgaria in any way.
I get the feeling she's about to denigrate Bulgaria in some way.
It was a nation of peasants.
Told you.
I mean, we love our peasants now. It's quite derogatory to be a peasant, isn't it?
But back then, less so.
I was kind of weirdly lonely for Boris. He was known as the lonely king, actually.
Because who'd you hang out with if your new country
doesn't have any proper posh landowners?
There was not much between Boris and the peasants.
So when we say, oh, Boris really got on with the peasants,
I'm like, yeah, who else did he have to play with, really?
Boris's bloodline was undeniably blue,
but it wasn't so
undeniably Bulgarian. Let me explain with a whistle-stop tour of the country's
history. Established in the seventh century, Bulgaria is one of the oldest
countries in Europe, but at the end of the 14th century it fell into the hands
of the Turks of the Ottoman Empire. And that's where it
stayed until 1878, until Russia went to war with Turkey and liberated Bulgaria again. Delighted with
their newfound independence, the Bulgarians set about reinstating the monarchy. The problem was,
it had been so long since they'd had a king they couldn't trace back the bloodline.
They hadn't got a clue who their real royals were.
The solution? Simple. Import a new royal family.
Where's the obvious place to import a royal from. Germany, it's got an abundance of slightly pointless little dukes
and princes of the manor born without quite enough to do. So ideally you want someone
who's been gifted to you with international approval.
Their first attempt at importing a royal was German Prince Alexander Battenberg, but he
proved so unpopular that they were soon back to the drawing board.
The next bit sounds surreal,
but I promise you it's true.
The Bulgarians went shopping for a king.
Three royal headhunters
trailed around all the royal courts of Europe,
but to no avail.
They just couldn't find a suitable or willing candidate.
Downcast, they decided to cheer themselves up with a trip to the opera in Vienna. And
sitting right under their noses in the royal box was the perfect man for the job. They intercepted him at intermission. Shh.
It's intermission.
Anyway, he was a suave German prince
by the name of Ferdinand.
He had a way with the ladies and with the men, actually.
He lived for pleasure.
Yes, he did swing both ways, I think, or bisexual.
And of course, if you're a king,
you can really do what the hell you like.
He is a grand senior to the point of decadence.
He loved fine clothes, he loved fine wine.
He liked jewels, he wore many jewels on his fingers.
He was not the most, quote, comfortable of husbands.
No, I shouldn't think he was,
if he was boning the local,
no, I mean, I can't say that on the radio, of course.
He was known as Foxy Ferdinand, and not in a good way.
His cousin, the British Queen Victoria, hated him.
She described him as eccentric, effeminate, and totally unfit.
Other relatives wrote him off as weird and ridiculous.
But he got the job anyway.
There weren't really any other applicants.
Bulgaria's love affair with Foxy didn't last long.
He got a reputation for being sly and untrustworthy and crucially during the First World War he joined
the wrong side, the losing side. His alliance with Germany cost the lives of 100,000 Bulgarian soldiers.
And in the peace treaty that ended the war, Bulgaria was severely punished.
The country lost huge swathes of territory, including the strategically important Thrace, a region bordering Greece and the Aegean Sea, and Macedonia, which was given to Yugoslavia.
Do remember the names Thrace and Macedonia,
as they're going to be quite important
a little further on in our story.
Ferdinand had cost his country dearly.
He was forced to abdicate and was exiled,
and his throne, still warm, was handed to his son,
24-year-old Boris. Was Boris's murder a simple case of payback for the sins of the father?
Ferdinand might have made some bad choices, but they weren't Boris's choices.
In fact, the two could not have been more different.
While Ferdinand loved a good row, King Boris hated conflict of any kind, especially war. He jokingly nicknamed himself the Mender of Broken Dishes.
That's perhaps a tiny bit lost in translation, but you get the sense.
Boris was a diplomat, the kind of king who picked up the pieces and glued them back together,
not the kind of king who threw tantrums and smashed things. And he never aspired to be on
the throne. But unfortunately, that's precisely where he found himself as the world went to war
again in 1939. And it was in the darkest part of the middle of that war, that Boris died a brutal and baffling death.
Why murder a peace lover?
It was war time.
His daughter, Maria Louisa.
There were many, many people who would have been happy
to get rid of him.
As I suspected, the King had several known enemies,
but as far as the identity of his assassin goes,
the clues are few and far between.
Boris' son Simeon has tried to crack this case himself in the past, but his sleuthing
has proved fruitless.
It's amazing.
I mean, so many years, so many archives, investigations, questions or what have you, and there still hasn't been any proof.
And I must say, I mean as a son, it's disturbing.
And there's no nice way to put this. Time's running out for Simeon and Maria Luisa to find
answers to the question that haunts them. Never forget it.
Still, you know, you go to a funeral and it all comes back.
Not that one looks for revenge or anything like it, but simply to know.
And I want to know too.
So I'm going to pick up this case where Simeon left off.
Time to recap and to fill you in
on one of Boris's dirty little secrets.
Remember, it's war time and in war,
difficult choices have to be made.
We know Boris hated bloodshed.
So at the start of the war, Bulgaria opted for neutrality.
But Bulgaria has an unfortunate geographical position.
Romania on its northern border had joined sides with Hitler.
That meant, very quickly, there were German troops breathing right down Bulgaria's neck.
Meanwhile, on Bulgaria's southern border, the Italian army invaded Greece.
They needed backup, and Hitler was itching to help.
Little Bulgaria was sandwiched between hostile players.
She found herself backed into a corner.
And when you're backed into a corner, you have to pick a side.
And in 1941, King Boris did pick a side.
We know that Boris was a political survivor until he died,
but he was and he had survived for a very long time.
Now, what do you do if you're a survivor?
You work out which way the wind's blowing
and you travel with it.
So let's go back to that top secret bunker once again.
The one where Boris is about to walk into the most important meeting of his life.
It's now August 1943.
In the stifling bunker, Boris has been trying to get his head straight,
but he's played all his cards and he knows it.
This man is eminently reasonable relative to what's going on around him, get his head straight, but he's played all his cards and he knows it.
This man is eminently reasonable relative to what's going on around him and he's also
got a very good political brain. For Bulgaria, they need to survive. That's the game.
But the game's up. Boris is out of time. It's time to meet...
Adolf Hitler.
Yes, Boris, the so-called Mender of Broken Dishes, is an ally of the most evil man in history.
He has been for 18 months.
And this military hideaway?
It's the Wolf's Lair, the secret Nazi headquarters
in what is now Poland.
And just like Germany, King Boris III of Bulgaria
has declared war on Britain and America.
Now, so far, in the time they've been allies with Germany,
Bulgaria's involvement has
been pretty passive. While thousands of men across Europe are losing their lives on the
battlefields, not a single Bulgarian soldier has been involved in active combat. And as
yet, not a single Bulgarian Jew has been deported. But now, Hitler wants that to change. He wants to up the ante.
He's demanding Boris' troops must help the Germans on the front line.
And he's determined to send each one of Bulgaria's 50,000 Jews to the gas chambers.
This is not what King Boris signed up for.
And this is why he's here.
He's about to disobey Hitler's orders, to tell him he won't do as Hitler commands.
You don't need to know much about history to know what happens to people who anger Hitler.
Less than two weeks after leaving the Wolf Slayer, King Boris will
be dead. Given the hand he was served, Boris did bloody well to squeeze almost
half a century out of this planet. So was it Hitler who personally ordered his
murder? He had a motive, he had the opportunity, but I gave my word that I would tell this story objectively,
and that means telling you all the facts I know, even those which don't quite fit the narrative.
And there's something here that doesn't quite square with me, because things weren't shaping
up well for Hitler by the summer of 1943. With heavy losses on the Eastern Front and Italy on the verge of surrender,
Hitler needed all the friends he could get.
Would he really kill one of his only allies
or did his need for revenge overcome his reason?
80 years on from Boris's death,
I'm determined to get to the truth.
Who would want to cover up after so many years?
Coming up this season in The Butterfly King.
Everybody started suspecting everybody else.
Russian special services, Stalin's special services killed King Boris.
I mean it would make sense to be the Germans, right?
Because it would be safer for the Germans if he was out of the picture.
It could have been the Bulgarians.
An inside job.
Yeah.
It was a typical Balkan death.
What do you mean by a typical Balkan death? I mean in the Balkans there were more political murders than in the rest of Europe for this period.
This does not have the hallmarks of British or American intelligence,
but these sort of things have happened in the past.
It's a long list of suspects.
There's just one other tricky problem I need to share with you.
For Simeon and Maria Luisa, King Boris was just dear sweet papa. But others,
well they saw him very differently.
I really don't care how he died. For me, he's a criminal.
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-Nanck Manel and Toby Matamong.
Sound design and engineering by Toby Matamong and Daniel Lloyd Evans.
Artwork by Vanessa Lilac.
The managing producer is Amika 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 Kilgarriff, Georgia Hardstark and Danielle Kramer,
with Consulting Producer Kyle Ryan. The Butterfly King is inspired by the book Hitler and the King by John Hall Spencer.