PODCAST · HISTORY · TRUE CRIME
Stories Under the Microscope explores little-known and almost forgotten events from the past. Through historical criminal cases, notorious crimes and individual lives, I uncover the world behind the headlines. Every investigation draws on archival documents and newspapers of the time. Explore all the episodes here.
18:39
Lviv, 1907. Two young women become the subject of a newspaper sensation. The press reports a story of love, jealousy and a duel. More than a century later, the story returns to the headlines and finds its way into my tours. But when I start checking the…
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1:04:31
Lawyer and Ukrainian Catholic University lecturer Ivan Horodyskyy joins me to discuss Ukrainian lawyers in Galicia under Austria-Hungary and in interwar Poland. We explore their role in public life, in defending the rights of Ukrainians and in shaping a…
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46:18
The Black House is one of the landmarks of Lviv’s Rynok Square. Behind its dark façade lies much more than architectural history. Its residents included an Italian merchant and customs collector, a family of pharmacists, a doctor and mayor who left the city…
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21:23
Żółkiew, now Zhovkva, 1929. Nineteen-year-old trainee teacher Olga Redkówna falls in love with a young Felician nun, Sister Prudencja. The story culminates in three shots in a crowded church and one of interwar Galicia’s most unusual criminal cases. Drawing…
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23:39
I revisit the case of Paweł Strzelecki and the Wajda family, which shocked Lviv and sparked widespread debate in 1895. More than a century later, many aspects of the story feel surprisingly familiar.
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20:40
In 1932, a young man disappears from a village near Vilnius. I tell the unsettling story of an investigation that revealed his disappearance to be only the beginning of a much darker family secret.
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1:02:57
Lviv historian and archivist Ivan Svarnyk joins me to discuss his years as a Soviet-era dissident, the theft of documents from Lviv’s historical archive, researching family history and little-known episodes from the city’s past.
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55:15
Venice, September 1907. Shots fired in Palazzo Maurogonato lead the police to Maria Tarnowska, a woman from the Poltava Governorate. The investigation uncovers a web of fraud and suspicious deaths among her lovers. The press quickly casts her as a femme…
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30:55
Jan Filipowicz was a young man forced to change his religion at a time when faith could be a matter of life and death. Unable to find his place in his new world, he tried to return to his former faith. That decision set off a chain of events that devastated…
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26:45
The true story of a family tragedy and a murder in Lubycha Kameralna in 1922. The village has disappeared, but the surviving records preserve traces of its residents’ lives.
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20:07
A domestic dispute spirals out of control. The case raises questions about the right to self-defence and its limits, especially when the people involved see the danger very differently.
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50:18
In 1970, Yevhen Borysenko disappears from a country house outside Kyiv. The son of a senior Communist Party official, he had spent the previous evening at a party attended by the children of the Soviet elite. His new girlfriend, a laboratory assistant who…
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2:43:39
I explore the story of police agent provocateur Roman Baranovskyi and his role in the cases surrounding the killings of Yulian Holovinskyi, Tadeusz Hołówko and Emilian Czechowski, against the political turmoil of the early 1930s.
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29:36
I revisit the Goldenberg family case, once widely known in Lviv in the 1980s: a story of treasures and the KGB’s pursuit of them.
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20:03
An ordinary trip to the cinema changes the plans of a woman preparing to leave for America. A meeting with a younger man sets in motion a chain of events that ends in one of 1930s Lviv’s strangest tragedies.
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22:14
In 1932, an acquittal in a murder trial at the Sambir court causes a scandal. The verdict also sets off a new drama, exposing the darker side of life in a Carpathian village.
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27:53
In March 1933, a young woman’s body is discovered in a snow-covered forest outside Lviv. The investigation begins to uncover the secrets of a controversial local doctor.
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20:10
Lviv, 1861. The young but already popular novelist Walery Łoziński walks around the city with a bandaged head, cheerfully telling his friends a strange story. Within days he will be dead, and all of Lviv will be talking about it. What brought the…
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23:09
Another notorious criminal case from 1930s Lviv: the tragic events in barber Joel Ticker’s life nearly cost him his own. How did the story finally end?
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31:35
Stanisław Szczepanowski, a pioneer of Galicia’s oil industry, borrowed boldly and drilled wells that transformed the region. In 1899, however, his business ventures ended in a major scandal. Was this an ambitious vision ahead of its time, or financial fraud?…
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40:53
In the autumn of 1927, landowner Stefania Rylska dies mysteriously on her estate. Did she take her own life, or did someone ‘help’ her? A bitter fight over the inheritance eventually reveals the secret behind her death.
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31:58
It is 1921 in a small town near Lviv. A young war veteran walks into a police station and calmly says, ‘I have just shot someone.’ The victim is Osyp Krushelnytskyi, a well-known lawyer and womaniser. Behind the confession lie wartime trauma, the prominent…
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1:51:00
In 1978, Aldo Moro, president of Italy’s ruling Christian Democratic party, is kidnapped in broad daylight in Rome. His bodyguards are killed at the scene. The state’s apparent helplessness in the face of a small group of young extremists raises questions…
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31:58
A brutal murder takes place in a Lviv monastery in 1925. The investigation exposes the darker side of life behind its walls, along with the tragic story of a lonely killer.
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43:58
In 1926, education superintendent Stanisław Sobiński is murdered in Lviv. The attack is planned so carefully that the police suspect almost everyone except the actual perpetrators.
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43:26
In 1888, an elderly Catholic priest is attacked in Kukeziv, near Lviv, in an attempted murder and robbery. What initially looks like an ordinary criminal case becomes a public sensation when a mother and son from the respected Strzelecki family stand trial…
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21:38
In 1923, a woman’s mutilated body is found in a rye field outside Lviv. The investigation leads to the village of Matsoshyn, where ordinary fences conceal dark family secrets.
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46:24
The murder of Lviv doctor Yaroslav Telishevskyi initially sparked a wave of theories and rumours. As the case unfolded, it became a psychological drama in which the distinction between victim and perpetrator grew increasingly blurred.
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38:41
The notorious murder of Lviv actress Antonina Ogińska in 1910 exposes a private world of betrayal and blackmail. The case also offers a glimpse of the city’s wealthy young social set.
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26:50
One February morning in 1934, parts of a woman’s body are discovered across Lviv. The clues lead to a cigarette kiosk. What happened there?
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59:58
A secret agent is killed in a political assassination in Lviv in 1925. The investigation leads into other major cases of the period, including the Warsaw Citadel bombing and an attempt on the life of Polish president Stanisław Wojciechowski.
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38:01
In 1626, tragedy strikes the Lahodovskyi family, an old Ruthenian noble lineage, in Lviv. I explore what happened and the historical world in which this family drama unfolded.
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26:37
After another violent argument, a woman kills her abusive husband. The investigation uncovers unexpected details of her life and casts doubt on what first seemed an obvious explanation.
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1:35:56
In 1911, a twelve-year-old boy is brutally murdered in Kyiv. Suspicion falls on a Jewish brickworks employee, and an investigation begins that shakes the Russian Empire. The case is soon turned into a political trial fuelled by antisemitic blood-libel…
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36:37
In January 1924, a young man from a wealthy family is found dead in Lviv’s Lychakiv Cemetery. The police quickly identify a culprit, but was the case really that straightforward? Some threads of the mystery were never fully unravelled.
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22:57
Palm Sunday, 1924. Róża Lempertowa, a prosperous shopkeeper disliked by her neighbours, is brutally killed in her own shop. She lived alone in a poor district, refused to sell on credit and had a reputation for being miserly and cold. The police consider…
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1:09:11
I investigate the mysterious murder of Soviet writer and journalist Yaroslav Halan, whose death became a pretext for widespread repression in Lviv. I explore his biography and the political climate of Galicia at the time. Rather than simply repeating the…
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53:42
The story of an adventurer at the centre of France’s biggest corruption scandal of the late nineteenth century. I examine how the Panama Canal venture came to resemble a financial pyramid, drawing a comparison with the much later MMM scheme. Investigative…
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1:02:58
Maurice Benyovszky became a legend in his own lifetime. I follow his daring escape from Russian captivity in Kamchatka, his journeys across Asia and his proclamation as king in Madagascar, with a detour to America along the way.
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1:14:03
Many people know that Stepan Bandera was killed by a Soviet agent. Far fewer know the disturbing life story of his assassin, Bohdan Stashynsky. I trace his recruitment, his betrayal of the people around him and his eventual betrayal of the KGB itself. How…
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55:00
In late December 1931, a seventeen-year-old girl is brutally murdered in Briukhovychi, outside Lviv. Suspicion falls on Rita Gorgonowa, her father’s partner. There are plenty of reasons for suspicion, but little conclusive evidence. Gorgonowa’s trial divides…
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