"ARO TOLBUKHIN IN THE MIND OF A KILLER" "We'II take that lift." "How do I obtain the rights to the footage?" "It's simple." "Just sign these two papers." "Here and here." "That gives you access and all rights to the footage." "According to the will, you inherit Lise's rights." "There's no problem." "I'm always moved when I come here." "It's like going down into catacombs." "AII these cans are like forgotten corpses, sleeping angels." "Waiting to come alive again with the light of a projector." "A Iot of these cans will soon be in the trash." "If you'd come a couple of years later, maybe you wouldn't have found what you are looking for." "This is all that's left of "In the belly of the whale" that I shot with Lise." "These must be the interviews with the prisoners awaiting execution." "Let's have a look." "This Super 8 footage from the Mission was given to us." "In Lise's film archives, we found an unfinished documentary on the death penalty." "There was an interview with Aro Tolbukhin, a Hungarian executed in Guatemala for burning 7 people alive." "We were struck by Tolbukhin's story." "We decided to complete the unfinished project." "We began with Lise and Keetman's footage and notes gathered in the early 80s." "The footage included interviews with people who knew him." "And also one with Tolbukhin while at the Pavon Prison." "A few weeks after that interview" "Tolbukhin was executed in May 1982." "I went out and walked to the shed where we kept the fuel." "I filled one of the cans and went to the clinic." "The first one to see me come in was Rodrigo." "Rodrigo was a Ketchi Indian boy." "He had a gangrened leg." "When Rodrigo saw me come in, he thought I was bringing water." "He told me he was thirsty." "I thought that was funny." "He was... the first one I doused." "At first he laughed." "Then he started crying because the fuel stung his eyes." "The others asked me what I was doing." "I quickly poured gasoline onto the others." "Then I went over to Martina, the oldest." "She was at the far end." "I got nervous because I heard the nuns arriving..." "So I just did it." "Hans Wyss has been arrested for burning 7 people alive." "Among them, women and children." "He set fire to the "Mission of the Divine Redeemer"" "near Coban." "Suffering from serious burns, he is now being treated here at the regional hospital in alta Verapaz." "His entry into prison is impending." "We now know that the name Hans Wyss concealed the identity of Aro ToIbukhin, a native of CégIed, Hungary." "Since 1 958, he worked as a merchant marine." "After 1 6 years, he came ashore here in Puerto Barrios." "Over on that hill, among those trees..." "That's where they found him." "Hans arrived just after the quake." "Many people were injured, without a home," "lost, and wandering around the countryside." "They came how they could, all asking for help." "We had huge problems trying to tend to them all." "They arrived in terrible shape." "We had neither sufficient manpower or facilities." "It was a disaster..." "Hans didn't get here by himself." "He had sores all over his body." "During the first month he had very high fever." "His condition was very serious." "We all thought he was going to die." "Saving him seemed impossible." "fortunately, one of the nuns working with us..." "She dedicated all her energy to caring for him." "She saved him!" "SeIma!" "SeIma!" "Is Carmen Curt in?" "Just a moment." "hello." "How are you?" "Fine." "I'm Lydia." "Nice to meet you." "We've come for the interview." "For years, I didn't want to talk about Hans." "He reminded me of the war..." "I "couIdn't" talk either." "I was afraid..." "I didn't know if I would return to guatemala." "The fact is... it was better to listen, watch and shut up." "Now, things have calmed down and I see it differently." "Now I can talk." "That's why I'm here." "Hans was a good man." "At least he seemed so to us." "You could tell he had suffered a lot." "And was still suffering." "He arrived very sick." "He tried hard to get well." "He learned Spanish and helped us." "We needed his help." "It was a terrible time." "People arrived daily in dreadful states." "He helped us a lot." "He always lended a hand, helped out." "In 1 978, the war got worse." "This was the beginning of an exodus of the natives." "We asked our congregation in Spain for some money." "Not much, but enough to renovate a shed to be used as a clinic." "We could then care for more people." "Sister Carmen took on responsibility for the project." "Hans..." "That's how he was known to us..." "He was constantly at her side, working, helping her." "Is that the same clinic he burned?" "Yes." "But you loved those people?" "Yes, but that's got nothing to do with it." "So why did you burn them?" "I already told you." "I did exactly what I wanted:" "kill those 7 sick people." "Why keep taking care of them?" "What for?" "Water..." "In the worst of the war, in the hardest times... he helped me to keep going." "To find courage, to face that situation." "We jeopardized ourselves by hiding guerrillas." "We also helped those trying to reach the border." "We became a refuge for a lot of people." "They all came to the Mission." "Orphans were left with us." "Many children lived with us." "Sometimes they were left in the chapel." "Sometimes at the doorstep of the clinic." "What could we do?" "We had to keep them..." "What about that child?" "Kuti was a special case." "Kuti was actually born in the Mission." "His mother was very young." "She came here alone." "When she arrived she was about to give birth." "It was a dramatic situation." "We helped her." "I tended to her myself." "She survived the birth, but..." "She survived the birth, but was very weak." "She lost a Iot of blood and died a few days later." "We couldn't do anything." "The baby stayed with us at the Mission." ""Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name..."" "He named the baby Kuti." "In Ketchi dialect that means "saved from fire"." "That's how we baptized him." "He was a delicate child, often sick." "He slept in the dormitory with the other children." "But his crying was a problem." "He kept the others awake." "So Aro started taking him to his room to put him to sleep." "After a while, I also started going there to spend time with them when I finished work." "Good night, raul." "God bless you, Sister." "People started talking, saying that it wasn't right." "That I spent so much time with them, in his room with the child." "That wasn't looked upon well." "When I Iearned of those rumors" "I stopped doing it." "I wondered whether those rumors were founded or not." "In a way, it was true." "We had formed some kind of family." "We felt very close." "On one hand, I felt bad for being a nun." "On the other hand, I liked the feeling that I had for them." "I didn't know how to put a stop to it..." "So I prayed." "I prayed a lot." "I asked God to help me." "But I realized the situation was not in God's hands." "We were the ones to make the decision." "When Aro was learning Spanish, we read passages from the bible." "I remember this passage in St. Matthew." "About the exorcism of a child." "He read it so often that he knew it by heart." "He rarely talked about his feelings." "But when he did, he was frank." "He told me he understood very well, because he had lived through it." "He told me he had been possessed by a demon." "When we learned..." "We were very sorry to see her transferred to a new posting." "We accepted it as best we could." "She was beloved here in our community." "I think it was the first time I made a decision..." "I was a little selfish." "I took the decision to leave." "That situation wasn't good for me." "I never did tell him that it was my decision." "I don't think he ever knew." "It's my work." "My duty is to obey." "I'm a nun." "I'm obligated to go where they send me." "It hurts me more than you." "Don't think it's easy for me to leave." "So many people need me here, so many people I Iove." "But I have to do it." "I've always thought... that my vocation is to serve." "To serve as if I didn't exist." "Maybe that doesn't matter to you." "But I have vows to respect." "I can't." "Can you take this for me?" "Did you love him?" "Yes, I Ioved him." "I Ioved him a Iot." "I don't know how to explain it." "It's not the same love as I feel for my husband..." "But I Ioved him." "We were very close." "Now, with some distance..." "It was more like brotherly love." "Someone to feel close with, to always count on." "He also made me see religion in a more human way." "Closer to the people..." "He had much to do with me leaving the order." "We were surprised how people from the Mission talked about him." "The man we met in prison was cynical and coId-bIooded." "The contradiction was confusing." "But you know how stubborn Lise was." "She insisted until she found what she wanted." "Do you remember him?" "Yes I do." "When the Sister left... he went crazy." "He lost control." "He started drinking." "He roamed about doing nothing." "He disappeared for days..." "He couldn't bear being alone." "He went mad." "I was worried about him." "His behavior made us nervous." "But this wasn't reason enough to expel him from the community." "This had been his home." "Maybe we didn't do the right thing by keeping him here." "Maybe we didn't do the right thing, but where would he go?" "He was bad." "He was bad because..." "In the beginning, people loved him." "Then he acted badly when the Sister left." "They moved her away." "I think he had relations with the Sister." "Then he felt lonely..." "He burned himself all over." "The priest told me to call the police before the people lynched him." "When the police came, they found among his things some press clippings about various murders." "That's when they realized he was such an evil man." "Aro Tolbukhin is now held in Pavon Prison since recovering from his injuries." "He was taken into custody by the alta Verapaz court, where he confessed to new crimes." "He is held responsible for the deaths of 5 pregnant women." "AII murdered and burnt between 1 979 and 1 981 ." "It was a sensational case" "It caught the public's eye." "There wasn't much enthusiasm to defend ToIbukhin." "I saw it as a professional challenge." "I was younger then." "I defended anyone for the experience and the challenge of declaring them innocent." "ToIbukhin, in his confession before the court said:" ""I have killed 1 7 other women."" "And he added this detail:" "The women were pregnant." "And all these 1 7 women, were killed in the Iast 1 2 years, while he travelled the world as a merchant marine." "He says he burned them." "But when two of the women's bodies were exhumed, plastics bags were found on their heads." "And traces of gamezan in their hair." "Gamezan was used by the military during the war to make people confess." "The women had no signs of burns." "The women had died from other causes." "The Hungarian consulate in Mexico told us that they had records of an Aro ToIbukhin." "We identified him in Guatemala as Aro Tolbukhin." "But this information didn't match what Tolbukhin told us about himself and his family." "He wasn't telling the truth." "Not even about his own identity." "Why did you choose pregnant women?" "They say you didn't kill those women." "Who knows better than I do?" "Why did you burn them?" "Did you have a reason?" "He maintained at all times that he'd not only killed 7 people at the Mission, but also 1 7 other victims." "Our defense had no effect." "He always kept to his same confession." "Why didn't you allow your lawyer to defend you on the grounds of mental incapacity?" "Because I'm not insane." "Do you think your sentence is fair?" "What do you want to know?" "If I deserve to be killed?" "I don't think he killed those 1 7 women." "There are too many contradictions." "Judging by the personality that he showed us, he suffered from serious delusions." "I think he invented all of that." "According to Dr. Barrios," "Sister Carmen reminded you of your sister, your sister SeIma." "He often repeated this word." "I thought it meant something like "thank you"" "or "please"..." "I didn't know until he told me that SeIma was his sister's name." "She was his twin sister who died." "They had been very close." "When we talked to the prison psychiatrist," "Lise showed even more interest in him." "She decided to ask for a second interview." "Aro agreed, but on one condition:" "that there would be no camera." "I stayed outside." "Lise went in alone with a small tape recorder." "She taped the interview with ToIbukhin." "Why didn't you ever use it?" "The reason is simple." "It all felt like fantasy to us." "It didn't match the criteria of objectivity which we tried to respect above all other things." "Aro Tolbukhin was born in 1940, in Cégled, a small town near Budapest." "Along with his twin sister, he grew up in a wealthy rural family of Bulgarian origins." "His father was a promising young doctor." "He fell in love with Sophia Gaal." "They married a few years later." "This happy period was interrupted by the birth of the twins." "After our birth, mother was left disabled." "She couldn't do anything." "She was always in bed." "Our father was so strict that he wouldn't let us see her." "Not us, nor the rest of the family, who never visited again." "Our father went a little out of his head." "You know what I mean?" "He took care of her, fed her." "We were raised by a nanny." "She came to breast feed us and then stayed on." "She taught us to pray." "The children were almost identical, apart from their voices." "She had a beautiful voice." "She started to play the piano at a very young age." "But Aro's voice wasn't clear." "He began to sing and play the piano much later." "He had been born with one finger missing." "Didn't your mother take care of you?" "She was always in her room." "My father kept it locked." "Didn't you ever see her?" "well, in photos, yes." "We sent her notes." "She answered in letters that father read to us." "Sometimes we heard her playing the piano." "In her room, almost always the same song." "THE EMPTY DRESS" "Their games were usually based on their mother." "They got used to her absence." "Their father's behavior seemed normal to them." "Now the wish." "That Mama gets better." "Our father made us believe that she was alive in the house." "That day we realized she wasn't there." "No one made them believe that she was there." "could their father made them believe that?" "He kept her memory alive." "He dedicated himself to work." "The children were confused." "They couldn't understand that their mother died giving them birth." "They were very young..." "I tried to explain things to them as they didn't know" "what birth and death were." "Near the house, there was a forest." "There was a big, dried out tree." "I showed to them the pretty branches that sprung out from the dried trunk." "I told them her mother had once been like this beautiful tree." "She had carried them in her belly... until she got sick" "and died like the tree." "I told them they were full of life like the pretty new branches of the tree." "One day I took them to the cemetery..." "I told them their mother's body was under the tombstone." "But, she..." "She had gone to Heaven to be with God." "Our Nanny said we would all go there." "Sometimes God calls some before others." "The best ones go first." "She also said..." "although our mother may be buried in that tree, she had been so good that she was surely in Heaven." "We continued to take her food and write her letters." "The food rotted." "No one answered the letters." "But we felt good there." "We were warm and content." "One day, something changed" "We both noticed it and later shared it." "We felt so good, we tought it was the Heaven that Nanny had told us about." "We didn't see our mother but it was the best thing that ever happened to us." "We continued for years, in secret." "They were together and alone for a Iong time." "Their father was away a Iot with his work." "The children grew up." "When she turned 1 4, she entered the conservatory." "But Aro went to the local school." "Now, only on some weekends, they were able to be together." "Selma adapted easily." "But Aro suffered from this separation." "When summer arrived, once again, we were" "the three of us together." "Selma continued with her music classes." "The communists had placed new families in the house." "He played the piano and often accompanied us in our ceremonies." "He loved playing one song." "A song he learned when he was a boy." "He asked me to Iearn it." "I knew it wouId make him happy." "So I Iearned it." "How does the song go?" "It's been a Iong time..." "I don't think I remember it." "It was a children's song." "I don't know." "It's been a while." "The melody went something like..." "I saw what was happening." "I wrote to Mr. ToIbukhin." "I asked him to come home." "Mr. ToIbukhin decided that his daughter must marry soon." "He held a party to introduce her socially." "We didn't know yet that she was pregnant." "We spent the whole day moving furniture." "It was the first time we celebrated our birthday... with others in the house." "My sister gave me a periscope and I gave her... a flower she pinned to her dress." "She looked like a bride." "She had so many burns." "She was so badly injured." "She had to be taken to hospital." "And she lost the baby." "please, heal SeIma." ""Dear Mother, sometimes I hear your voice in the house." "Everyone says it's my imagination." "But I'm sure that you are with me." "I know so." "I dont't want to make you sad, but..." "I feel I am dying." "So I write to you." "I feel like I am going to see our baby that we never knew." "I will see him soon." "Tell Aro that we will wait for him there." "Tell him not to hurry," "Tell him to enjoy life, it's so beautiful." "Let him not forget my eyes..." "My mouth." "My hands on the piano, on his face..." "It's all his." "Whether I am alive or not." "Aro, I love you so much. "" "He looked strangely happy." "He didn't go to the funeral." "But he thought only of her." "He locked himself away in selma's room." "He sang and played the piano." "His voice became very beautiful." "When did she realize Aro had left?" "I didn't see him for days." "I started looking for him." "in the house..." "In his room..." "I couldn't find him." "I asked around the village." "I checked with those who knew him." "But nobody had seen him." "He disappeared with the Revolution." "In 1956, the Russians invaded the country..." "I never saw him again." "I remember..." "Once he was very sick." "He took my hand." "He looked at me as if he was begging for something..." "He called me "SeIma"." "I didn't understand." "But now, that I know more about his life..." "I realize that he never saw who I really was." "Something like that..." "It's been a Iong time." "I can't remember all of it." "Do you understand the Iyrics?" "No, I simply learned it by heart." "I think it's a childrens song." "A lullaby..." "My sister and I used to sing a song." "We had two versions." "One we sang to our mother." "About the countryside and flowers." "The other I made up with my sister." "We only sang it when we were alone." "It went something like:" ""My slut mother fucked a bishop... in Heaven, they ate a piano and two children..."" "It rhymed in Hungarian." "It was funny." "Why tell me about your childhood?" "To entertain you." "When he was told of his impending execution, he accepted it with resignation." "Like sort of a relief." "From confessing to all the crimes." "The real ones, as well as those" "I think were products of his fantasy." "He was taken to the firing squad at dawn." "Among those present:" "his defense lawyer, the judge who sentenced him, a priest... although he didn't ask for one... and a firing squad of 10 soldiers." "Only half of them fired real bullets." "The others shot blanks." "That way, no one knew who fired the fatal shot." "I was present at the firing of the rifles." "He collapsed onto the ground." "The squad leader approached him." "With a pistol... as was the custom of this kind of execution..." "He fired the "coup de grace"."