Author: Martin Atanasov
Bulgaria is not America. There are no mass shootings here every week, no serial killers. That's why the whole country shuddered when on February 2, 2026, three bodies were found in front of the burned-out "Petrohan" hut, and a week later - three more bodies in a camper near Okolchitsa Peak. A sex murder? Suicide? Sect? Mafia?
Nobody knew. But everyone had an opinion. Which reflects the fears in which we do not want to look around.
Ten days later, the picture remains unclear. We have versions, suggestions, videos with unclear context and an ocean of speculation. But we have no answers. "Petrokhan" is not just a criminal case. It is a mirror in which we clearly see what is not working in our state and society. And no, I am not talking about whether they will convincingly reveal who pulled the trigger. I am talking about something much more terrible: the crisis of trust that has gripped us is starting to cost us much more than six lives.
Self-destructing institutions
Let's be honest: distrust in institutions is not from yesterday or today. It is not because of the "Petrokhan" case. But it was precisely he who made it particularly visible. Painfully visible.
The first week after the tragedy was silence. The Ministry of Interior is silent. The Prosecutor's Office is silent. The acting Prosecutor General made a remark that caused a scandal - and disappeared. The media exploded, society was deeply alarmed, conspiracies flourished. And the institutions were silent. Or rather: they spoke, but said nothing.
The acting Prosecutor General Borislav Sarafov - a man whose term has expired and who continues to hold his position in violation of the law - came out and said that the case was more striking than "Twin Peaks". Attractive. Mysterious. Media. But definitely not out of place. Because what have we learned? Nothing. Except that the Prosecutor General sounds as if he is announcing a new series.
The head of the National Security Agency Denyo Denev came out with hints about "pedophilia", "paramilitary structures" and "deviations from generally accepted religious views". The problem is that there is no evidence. And when an institution whose job it is to discover evidence does not present any, but only hints at it - it undermines itself.
Then something even more absurd became clear: the prosecutor's office had been investigating the "Petrohan" hut and the rangers' association for nearly a year. The investigation began in February 2025 after a report of an assault on a minor boy. And what happens - in December 2025, a month before the murders, the case was closed. Why? Because the parents refused to cooperate.
A month later - six bodies. Let's repeat: The prosecutor's office knows about the reports. It investigates for nearly a year. It closes. A month later - the tragedy. And no one asks: "Shouldn't something have been done?". Instead, the donors of the association are being punished, who have no way of knowing what was going on inside or what kind of people its founders were.
But let's get back to the question. Trust in institutions does not disappear because of conspiracies. It disappears because of the institutions themselves. When the prosecutor general sounds like a tabloid headline, when the investigation is "terminated" without a valid reason, when officials talk more about what could have been than about what they know, when at the briefing, a week after the tragedy, the investigators say "we are working on versions" and play videos that raise more questions than answers - these are the results.
People are not stupid. They see. And when they see that the institutions either cannot or do not want to tell the truth - they simply stop believing them. Forever. And they redirect themselves to "alternative truths" and "alternative sources of information". Which is the universal formula for undermining a society.
Information anarchism
When there is no reliable source of truth, everyone becomes an expert. Ten days after "Petrokhan" the internet is currently flooded with theories. Tons of theories: timber mafia, pedophile network, Tibetan sect, political contract killing, ritual suicide, Balkan version of Jonestown, DS agents, migrant channels, drug trafficking - everything that can be invented has been spun as a theory.
The politicians, of course, did not miss the chance. PP-DB demanded that the National Agency for the Protection of the National Security of the Republic of Bulgaria declassify the data on the non-governmental organization. Slavi Trifonov accused the media of double standards. "Vazrazhdane" had its own theories. Everyone took a piece of the tragedy and repackaged it into political capital.
And social media became a courtroom without a judge. Everyone with a smartphone became a criminal psychologist, a cult expert, a ballistics specialist, a prophet of our time. People who had never set foot in Petrohan were explaining exactly what happened there. People who didn't know any of the victims were handing out final verdicts.
And here's the problem: everyone had a theory about what happened, but we all had only a fragment of the information. The remaining vast ambiguity was filled mostly by our personal fears. This is not a debate, but a gossip regime disguised as "search for the truth". The information vacuum created by the institutions was filled with imagination. And imagination, when it has no limiter and is guided by the lowest human emotions, does not lead to anything good.
Because when we have no support and a measure of truth, when we do not trust the authorities that should tell us "this is true, this is not", anarchy of interpretations follows. Everyone becomes true for themselves. And society splits into tribes, each with a different version of reality. Infinitely convenient for those who are the root causes of our getting to this point.
The big question: What comes next?
"Petrokhan" is a stress test for statehood. And by all accounts, it seems that "Weak 2" is a lot. Because what we saw is not an isolated incident. This is a system in collapse, in which institutions have lost legitimacy, society has been left without orientation, and the line between fact and speculation has disappeared.
And tomorrow this could happen again. Not with a mountain hut, but with a bank, for example. Do we remember Corpbank? Tomorrow it could be a natural disaster, a terrorist act, a pandemic, electoral fraud - there are many examples. How will we react if we do not trust the institutions that are supposed to coordinate us?
If we do not trust the institutions, every crisis will throw us into informational and social chaos. Because distrust in institutions is the biggest crisis of statehood that we can have. Bigger than corruption and bigger than poverty. Because when people do not believe in anything officially, they believe in everything unofficially. And this is a recipe for a disaster of colossal scope.
Let's look very carefully at the "Petrokhan" case. In it we see institutions that don't work. A society that doesn't trust. Media that fuels chaos. And ourselves - divided, confused and angry. Again. Like a script for a new TV series.
The question is: Do we have the courage to look around? Or will we close our eyes and wait for the next tragedy to repeat the same thing until we don't even trust ourselves?