Six months of almost round-the-clock work, a huge array of video and audio recordings, written traces and witness accounts are behind the expert report on the "Petrohan" case. Despite the complexity of the analysis, the four specialists in the team were completely unanimous and not a single disagreement arose between them. This was told to BNT by criminal psychologist Rosen Yordanov, who participated in preparing the report.
According to him, the expert report covered diverse information from a number of fields, including criminal and clinical psychology, personality psychology, psycholinguistics, psychiatry and theology. All the materials had to be carefully connected and compared in order to confirm or reject the various hypotheses.
„I don't want to add unnecessary drama, but I still represent a team. A team of four people, including me... I can say that I worked 24/7. Six months. I joked that when I was at the sea, I had set foot on the beach twice in three weeks. Just constantly, because this is a process. A huge amount of information passed through our eyes. A gigantic amount of information. Multidirectional information that had to be connected. Interrelationships had to be sought. Among other things, it is a complex matter from various fields of psychology. Starting with criminal psychology, clinical psychology, personality psychology, psycholinguistics. We are only talking about psychology. And what other things. Through theology, through psychiatry. Overall, psychology was a very, very complex expertise that took a lot of time“, Yordanov said.
He admitted that work on the case continued beyond normal working hours, and the information collected more than once forced him to get up at night to record new conclusions.
„Overall, psychology was a very, very, very complex expertise that took a lot of time, because when you enter this flow, literally before you go to bed, some insights would start to play like a tape, I get up, I write, I haven't slept, really.“
When asked how he managed to maintain his impartiality while working on such a difficult case, Yordanov pointed to his many years of experience in criminal psychology. He said that he started working in this field back in 1998 together with Nedelcho Stoychev and other colleagues.
„And all this that I claim, because people are amazed at why I am so confident or categorical, is because, unlike many other colleagues who also practice in the studio and with such imagination.“
The criminal psychologist explained that a person's behavior can be assessed by observing his natural environment and analyzing the traces he has left, without necessarily having a direct conversation with him.
„Sometimes observing behavior in his natural environment, seeing natural sources of results from his activity, is much more informative than talking to him. Because within the framework of the interview, this person may be trying to model socially desirable behavior. As Kalushev did, by the way.“
The experts had a lot of materials, including video and audio recordings made by the subjects themselves at times when they were in their natural environment and were not under external pressure. Written traces, public appearances and witness accounts were also analyzed.
„We had materials that were extremely reliable. Video recordings, audio recordings, recordings that they made themselves when they had no external pressure, when they were free. It's like constantly recording yourself in a house. Would you understand how a person lives? Of course you would understand, because there he is free, he is in his natural environment. And among everything else, an enormous number of other written traces, appearances, public... All of this had to be woven in and coordinated as information in order to confirm or reject certain hypotheses.“
Yordanov pointed out that the reactions after the presentation of the expertise were different. He received calls from people with different social and professional profiles, and among those affected by the conclusions there are also those who are not convinced of the conclusions made.
Nevertheless, the members of the expert team remained unanimous throughout the entire six-month period of work.
„Never, at any stage, since we held meetings over a certain period of time, was there any disagreement between us.“