Hi, park enthusiasts.I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra.And the case I'm going to tell you about today happened in one of the most picturesque places on earth.It's literally the landscape that inspired fairy tales like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty.
But sadly, this story is anything but a fairy tale. This case is the embodiment of a worst case scenario of stranger danger.It happened in June 2023, just last summer, and it quickly dominated international headlines.
The two victims of this crime were visiting Neuschwanstein Castle in southern Germany when they were solicited by a man they didn't know who promised to show them a private trail he said only he knew about.
The end result was a brutal attack so heartless and so violent that to this day the victims' families and the world press still can't comprehend it.
For those of you who don't know, Neuschwanstein Castle is a historic structure known for its medieval aesthetic, breathtaking beauty, and iconic Gothic stone towers scattered amongst a myriad of palatial rooms.
The King of Bavaria began the process of rebuilding and refurbishing the castle in the 1860s, but it took over a decade to complete and wasn't finished until the 1880s.
Today, you can go inside of the castle if you pay for a guided tour, but some visitors just prefer looking at it from the outside and marveling at its grandeur.
It's a popular spot to snap a quick photo, and trust me, the millions of people who visit it every year have done just that.
But in the summer of 2023, the cameras and law enforcement personnel that flooded this scenic area were far less interested in social media influencing and much more focused on solving a brutal murder. This is Park Predators.
Around 2.40 in the afternoon on Wednesday, June 14th, 2023, a young man from New York named Eric Abneri was visiting Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany when he and other tourists crowded around him on an overlook, noticed a commotion happening down in Palat Gorge beneath them.
Eric quickly grabbed his phone and started video recording, trying to capture the scene unfolding in front of him.
He watched as what looked like several rescue workers wearing bright yellow and orange uniforms squatted down over something lying along a steep slope.
The figures were just tiny little dots from where Eric was standing, but he could see enough detail to make out the gist of what was happening.
The rescue workers appeared to be strapping the body of a person, possibly a young woman, onto the end of a long rope, which was connected to the bottom of a rescue helicopter hovering in the sky above.
Eric panned his phone upward as the body was hoisted into the air and made its way up to the chopper.
It's hard to tell from watching the video, but there may have also been another person riding in tandem with the body, almost like escorting it as it made its journey from the forest floor to the helicopter.
Within a matter of seconds, the whole thing was over.Eric and everyone else who was standing around him was understandably perplexed by what they'd just witnessed.Clearly, someone had been rescued, but no one knew why or really what was going on.
Not long after the helicopter left the gorge, Erich saw members of German law enforcement fled the area and descend towards Marienbruck, which is an iron pedestrian bridge that sits 90 meters or around 300 feet in the air and overlooks the back of Neuschwanstein Castle.
The bridge is an extremely popular spot to snap a picture of the castle, and lots of tourists flock there.
The word Marienbruck in English means Mary's Bridge, and it stretches all the way across Palat Gorge, which is why it has such a nice view of the castle.Basically, no matter where you stand on this bridge, you're going to get a pretty sweet view.
Anyway, as Eric watched police swarm the area, he once again started filming on his smartphone, and a few minutes after units brushed past him, they emerged from the bridge area with a man whose wrists were shackled.
Eric captured about 10 seconds worth of video showing multiple police officers armed with guns and canines escorting the white man out, who appeared to be in his late 20s or early 30s.
The guy had a scratched bloody face and was wearing a tan baseball cap, blue jeans, dark shoes, and a dark blue t-shirt.He also had noticeable facial hair.
Shortly after getting the footage, Eric posted his two videos on social media via X, formerly known as Twitter, with a caption that said, quote, at Neuschweinstein, there was a rescue of multiple people from a helicopter and one was taken out in handcuffs, seemingly after they fell from a cliff and climbed over railings, end quote.
In subsequent posts, Eric tagged NBC News, ABC News, and several other American news platforms, trying to let them know that something wild had happened.
What he didn't know was that the video he'd taken involved something far more serious than what he assumed was just a suspected climbing accident.
According to a news release from German police headquarters, the scene that had played out in front of Eric and all those other tourists visiting the gorge was part of an unfolding murder investigation.
You see, shortly before Eric pulled out his phone and started filming, other spectators visiting the castle who had similar vantage points as him had dialed the local police in the nearby village of Schwangau, Germany, to report that they thought two young women had either fallen or purposely been pushed down into the gorge.
Bavarian police officers and rescue crews from the nearby town of Fusen responded to the 2.40 p.m.call and determined that two females had in fact fallen into a ravine.
It's important to note that when police first arrived, they determined the scene they needed to investigate was slightly east of Murray and Brooke Bridge.On either side of the bridge, there are various overlooks and trails.
Some of them are paved, like the one Eric was filming on, but others are not.When police responded, mountain rescuers coordinated with a helicopter pilot to pinpoint where exactly the two young women were.
News outlets reported that when the crews got to the two women, they were lying near one another in the gorge and did not appear to be in good shape.
One of the victims had sustained serious injuries and was transported by helicopter to a hospital where she ultimately died.The other woman had not been hurt as badly and was conscious when rescue crews pulled her from the gorge.
According to reporting by ABC7's Stephanie Wade, the survivor had apparently hit a tree on her way down, and it was only because of that that she lived.
She was treated for her injuries at a different hospital than her friend, but was expected to recover.
The next day, June 15th, Chris Dewars reported for the Daily Mail that police had uncovered a ton of information in just the first few hours of the investigation.
Via media outlets, investigators revealed that the white man with facial hair that Eric had filmed being let out of the scene in handcuffs was, in fact, the prime suspect.
Initially, investigators didn't release their suspect's name to the public, but they did say that he and the two young women were all American tourists.
The victims were 21 and 22 years old, but authorities also chose not to release their names to the media right away either.
According to coverage by the Daily Mail, the suspect was 30 years old and believed to have purposely thrown both victims into the gorge while trying to sexually assault the 21-year-old.
After the attack, police said they believed the prime suspect had left the bridge area and tried to get away, but officers had gotten a tip from a nearby witness who seemingly felt something was off with him.
And it was that info from the tipster that gave investigators what they needed to catch up to him and take him into custody.The following day, he was put in front of a judge in Kempton District Court in Germany.
He was formally arrested for murder, attempted murder, and sexual assault. Stefano Esposito reported for the Chicago Sun-Times that the judge ordered the man to be held in jail pending a formal indictment, which apparently could take several months.
So until formal charges were leveled, he was only under suspicion of murder, attempted murder, and sexual assault.
Which for clarity, I kept seeing that last charge called sexual offense in the source material instead of sexual assault, but I think it's just a difference in terminology.
Anyway, investigators revealed that since the attack, they'd learned that on the afternoon of June 14th, the two women had been approached by the suspect who was hiking on a trail east of the bridge.
After chatting with the guy, they decided to go with him to a more off the grid trail that he said offered a nice view of the castle.
However, shortly after getting the victims away from the larger crowds of people, the perpetrator had started attacking one of them.
Horrified by the situation, the survivor tried to stop what was going on, but the man overpowered her, strangled her, and then pushed her down into the ravine.
After that, authorities believed the attacker turned back to the 21-year-old, began sexually assaulting or attempting to sexually assault her, then eventually pushed her down the slope too.
Her fall from almost 50 meters, roughly 165 feet, was what detectives believed killed her.
The Kempton Police Department became the lead agency over the investigation, and officers from that department returned to the crime scene the following day to try and recreate exactly what happened.But traversing the terrain was not easy.
The officers had to be assisted by trained experts from an organization called the Alpine Task Force, who could help them safely get up and down the slope the victims had been thrown down.
Basically, it was hard for the cops to even navigate their own crime scene, which just goes to show you how geography played a unique role in this case.But it wasn't just the treacherous landscape that made this investigation one of a kind.
If you remember, parts of this crime happened in front of a lot of people who were sightseeing near the castle, many of whom didn't even know what was going on until after the fact.
which meant law enforcement knew there would likely be a ton of pictures and videos that might've potentially captured images of the victims and perpetrator before and after the crime.
So the day after the attack, Kempton police asked anyone who was on the bridge or overlooking the gorge around the time of the crime to please get in touch with them.
The department even provided a media portal link where potential witnesses could upload pictures and videos from their devices so that detectives could comb through those submissions to gather further clues.
News outlets reported that after just a day or so of that portal being open, investigators got around a dozen submissions.You've probably gathered this by now, but the first 24 hours of this investigation moved really fast.
Police had a murder victim, one attempted murder victim, and a prime suspect.They needed to figure out as much about each of those people as possible in order to be able to piece together why this happened.
A spokesperson for the prosecutor's office in Bavaria told CNN that based on everything police had found thus far, it didn't appear as if the suspect and victims knew one another.
So essentially, this was sounding more and more like a case of stranger abduction and murder.
Now, even though police had not formally identified the two women involved, both of the victims' friends and families did decide to speak out within just days of the crime.
Gabe Hyatt wrote an article for the Washington Post that explained the 21-year-old victim who'd been killed was Eva Liu, a recent graduate of the University of Illinois who was from Naperville, Illinois.
And the survivor, 22-year-old Kelsey Chang, was from Normal, Illinois.She'd attended school with Eva before the two graduated and set off for this summer trip overseas together.
The women's school released a statement in the wake of the attack that confirmed Kelsey had earned a degree in computer engineering, and Eva's degree had been in computer science.
The university statement said in part, quote, our University of Illinois family is mourning the senseless death of Miss Liu and the attack on Miss Chang.
Both had just graduated in May and should have been able to celebrate such an important accomplishment without the fear of such a tragic outcome, end quote.
CBS News reported that just days after the attack, Kelsey was released from the hospital, and according to the Washington Post, she flew home to the US to be reunited with her family the following Tuesday, June 20th.
I imagine her family was extremely grateful for her safe return, but also overwhelmed by the fact that her travel companion had not made it home with her.Kelsey's dad told the Associated Press, quote, she's pretty damaged by the incident.
It's life-changing, end quote. From what I was able to gather about Eva, she was said to be a dedicated student who showed a lot of academic promise.
Her obituary stated that she was originally from China, but moved to Canada with her parents and twin sister when she was a child.
By 2015, her family relocated to the United States, and after graduating from college, she had plans to work as a software engineer at Microsoft.
One of the Liu family's neighbors told ABC7 News, quote, The community where Eva was from in Illinois was shocked by the loss.
According to Liz Nagy and Stephanie Wade's reporting for ABC7 News, the city council in Naperville held a moment of silence in Eva's honor during the June 20th meeting.
Around the same time, her father and sister flew back from Germany after meeting with officials overseas to figure out how to get Eva's remains home.On July 1st, two and a half weeks after her murder, Eva was laid to rest in Naperville.
By that point, the identity of the American man who had allegedly taken her life had begun circulating online, and boy was everyone eager to learn more about him.
The Daily Mail reported on June 19th, five days after the crime, that the prime suspect German authorities had in custody for Eva's murder was 30-year-old Troy Bolling.How exactly the publication learned this information is unknown.
Officials in Germany were strictly following the country's privacy laws, which prevented the police and courts from releasing his name.So however Troy's name got out, it must have been through unofficial channels, but nonetheless accurate.
According to an article by the New York Post, Troy had been traveling in Germany on a tourist visa.At the time of Eva's murder, he'd been staying in the town of Oberstdorf, which is about an hour away from Neuschwanstein Castle.
I found one source, an article from sportskeeda.com by Anushri Madapa that said, Troy was actually staying at the same hotel as Eva and Kelsey, but I don't think they'd run into each other there prior to the attack.
Like I said earlier, law enforcement felt pretty sure that the women had never met Troy before he allegedly attacked them on the trail in the gorge.
Anyway, before heading overseas, Troy lived with his older brother, Trevor, in a small house outside of Detroit, Michigan.The men's neighbors said they were rarely home and seemed to travel a lot for work.
And at least for Troy, this sometimes lasted weeks at a time. When they were there though, they kept to themselves.Troy in particular had little to no interaction with the people living on his street.
Folks in the neighborhood said they only ever saw him or his brother when it was time for one of them to walk their cat.One of these neighbors told the Daily Mail, quote, I'm shocked what he's been accused of.
I'm scared he may have done stuff here and no one has figured it out yet, end quote.
Now, again, all this information was not coming from law enforcement sources in Germany, but the more time passed and the more journalists began investigating and finding out about Troy's background, the more questions they had regarding who he was and why he'd been near Neuschwanstein Castle in June, 2023.
All the source material I found that talks in detail about Troy stated he was known as a meek, unassuming guy, maybe a bit odd, who often played Dungeons and Dragons in his local library.
He liked emo genre music and had been an active member of his high school's marching band when he was a teen. The Daily Mail's piece explained that he'd been charged with embezzlement in 2016, but those charges were later dropped.
As far as I could find, that seemed to be the only negative thing on his record, or really any evidence that he had a criminal record at all.
Stephanie Pagonis wrote a lengthy article for the New York Post that featured an interview with one of Troy's former high school girlfriends who dated him for about three years from 2007 to 2010.
And according to that woman, she was super surprised to hear what Troy was accused of doing.She told the publication, quote, I just can't think of a time where he was mean or rude or hurtful.It's mind blowing.
It's just mind boggling to me because he was never violent, end quote. But as we all know, you never really know anyone.And that's especially true in situations where someone is in a relationship or friendship entirely online.
Turns out, according to Ryan General's reporting for Yahoo Finance, which quoted some coverage by the News Herald, during his travels, Troy had been communicating frequently with a woman in Thailand that he developed an online friendship with after they both met playing an internet-based game.
This woman's name was, and I'm not 100% confident on this pronunciation, so feel free to write in and correct me, but it's Chanita Kumpua.
After Eva's murder and Troy's identity was published by multiple news outlets, Chanita realized that the last time she'd heard from Troy was on the afternoon of June 14th, the day of the crime.
In fact, Troy had sent her a couple of selfies while he'd been hiking around Neuschwanstein Castle around 1.53 p.m.Central European time.So literally less than an hour before Eva and Kelsey were believed to have been attacked.
Now in those photos, Troy is wearing a tan colored baseball cap and a dark blue t-shirt, the same exact attire that he was wearing when German police officers took him into custody.
Erica McLean and Jackie Martin reported for the Mercury News that in another message, right after Troy got to the castle area, he sent Chanita a picture of where he'd parked his car and wrote about how a trail that he'd found nearby was roughly 100 meters up and covered in tree branches and roots.
He later sent another photo he took standing behind two strangers squatted on the ground.
The people were taking pictures of the castle, and Troy's message to Shanitza said, quote, and now I get to sit here and look at these two try to get the perfect Insta, end quote.
According to what Shanita told news outlets, she and Troy had been messaging pretty consistently all morning on the 14th.In one of those messages, he expressed that he'd had some strange dreams the night before.
He wrote, quote, I had a dream that I was sleeping in the room and wanted to open the window to get a breeze, but it was too loud outside.And for most of it, I was watching my body and not in my body, if that makes sense, end quote.
After sending some more messages explaining that he was headed out to go sightsee, Troy signed off from his chat with Shanita and reportedly didn't write her again until he sent her those pictures of him hiking in the woods near the castle.
But to me, the fact that Troy was messaging Shanita so close to the time that he allegedly attacked Eva and Kelsey is both strange and super interesting.
That piece I mentioned earlier by the Mercury News reported that Troy had expressed to Shanita, who is Asian, that he preferred Asian women over other ethnicities.
When you combine that with the fact that we know both Eva and Kelsey were Asian, you can see why Troy stating Asian women were essentially his quote unquote type is kind of interesting and might explain why he allegedly targeted them.
In mid-February of 2024, so just earlier this year, Troy's trial took place in Germany.He'd been formally charged with sexual assault with fatal consequences, murder, and the attempted murder of Kelsey.
The murder charge alone meant that Troy would face a maximum sentence of life in prison.According to multiple news outlets, at the start of the proceedings, Troy and his defense attorney pulled a move that surprised a lot of people.
He confessed to all the crimes he was accused of. It's important to note, though, that in Germany, defendants don't make formal guilty or not guilty pleas to criminal charges.
It's not like how it is in the United States, where if you confess to a crime in open court and admit that you did it, you can cut a better deal for yourself.
Basically, it's up to the court to decide your fate, regardless of whether you confess or not.
The Daily Mail, Associated Press, CBS News, and Agence France-Presse reported that Troy, who'd never met Kelsey and Eva prior to June 14th, intentionally lured both victims from a trail.Once he got them alone, he attacked Eva first.
When Kelsey intervened, he tossed her down the ravine and continued his assault on Eva before strangling her with a belt and throwing her down the slope as well.
In court, prosecutors described the manner in which Troy committed the crime as being inhuman.It wasn't until some other hikers happened upon the crime in progress that he was interrupted and then ditched Eva down the slope in order to flee.
In court, his lawyer, a guy named Philip Mueller, said, quote, he was aware that the victim could die without help, yet he still left her behind, end quote.
The Daily Mail and other news publications reported that a letter from Kelsey was read aloud in court and described in detail the horrific nature of what Troy had done to her and her friend.
She said that initially, when they bumped into Troy, all three of them had kind of lost their balance on a slope together.
And it was right after this incident, where they all nearly avoided falling, that Troy proposed Kelsey and Eva follow him to a nearby vista.
As they walked in a line, Kelsey said she was at the front, but suddenly she heard her friend scream out from behind her to call 911.When Kelsey looked back, she said she saw Troy on top of Eva strangling her with his hands.
Kelsey said she immediately tried to jump in and defend her friend, but Troy was too strong and he ultimately wrapped a hand around her neck and shoved her head first down into the ravine.
At some point, Kelsey realized she was injured, but not critically.She was able to get on her cell phone and call for help.She was roughly 165 feet down in the ravine.
When her friend's body was eventually tossed down too and landed close to where she was, Kelsey said the only thing she could do was hide, wait, and tell emergency responders where they were.
She described Eva's state after Troy was done with her as being, quote, still alive, but breathing was weak.Her pants were missing and her t-shirt was pushed up, end quote.
After Troy's arrest, investigators worked the case and examined the contents of his cell phone and laptop.
On both devices, they found images of child sexual abuse material and content that depicted violent pornography, which eventually resulted in prosecutors tacking on an extra charge for possession of such material.
According to what Troy's lawyer told the court, his client had not planned the attack.But I have a really hard time believing that.I mean, we can presume Troy targeted Eva and Kelsey either because they fit his type or for some other reason.
And to me, it feels like he came prepared to carry out whatever violent impulses he was grappling with.
He might not have stalked Kelsey and Eva days in advance, but it seems to me like he definitely did go out of his way to interact with them on the specific day of the assaults. In mid-March, German authorities handed down a verdict, life in prison.
In Germany, a life sentence actually just means an indefinite length of time.Laws in that country permit early release, which in the United States we know as parole.And they do this after a defendant has served 15 years in prison.
But that's only if the individual is deemed not to be a threat to society.
In Troy's case, Kelsey emphasized in her letter to the court how much this experience had affected her life, and she begged the German legal system to do whatever it could to make sure he could never do this to anyone else.
Paul Farrell reported for the Daily Mail that the judge presiding over the case ruled that because of the egregious nature of the case, Troy would not be eligible for the automatic 15-year parole option.
What I think we should all remember from listening to this story is that there are two young women who endured this horrific act of violence.Eva Liu had her entire life ahead of her, and it was ripped away in an instant.
Kelsey Chang, despite never speaking publicly about the ordeal, will likely never be the same after losing her friend and barely surviving this traumatic event. I hope that one day she can find closure.I hope that Eva's family finds closure.
And I hope that we all see this case as a reminder to never trust a stranger, even if they promise you a nice view of a fairytale landscape. Park Predators is an Audio Chuck original show.So what do you think, Chuck?Do you approve?
