In CCTV footage released by Bulgarian authorities, a group stands in the bitter cold for one last embrace.
It is 2.7 degrees Celsius outside the remote cabin in the Balkan Mountains on February 1. A fog sweeping across the area has only just started to clear.
Snow blankets the building, crunches beneath their feet. They hug. A camper van sits off to the right.
In just a few hours, the hut will be on fire. By the end of the week, every person in this footage will be dead.
The case — likened to something out of the TV series Twin Peaks --- has since made international headlines as investigators grapple with the mystery.
"This is a case without comparison in our country," Zahari Vaskov, the director of the national police general directorate, said.
The mountain lodge is located near Petrohan Pass in the Balkan Mountains, a region in western Bulgaria, a little over an hour away by car from the nation’s capital of Sofia.
At this time of year, temperatures regularly drop into the single digits or below freezing.
Authorities have released more footage from the same camera outside the lodge showing three people leaving the building at 4:20pm.
In the footage, the trio appears cheerful, standing with their hands in their pockets, at one point laughing together.
By that time of day, the snow has begun falling on and off again, and a large dog with the men can be seen leaping back and forth through the fresh flakes.
“It was an honour,” they tell each other, according to a translation by local media outlets.
The next clip, time-stamped 8:40pm, shows a different angle, this one featuring three people going back inside the lodge.
Police were called to the hut at 11:20am the next morning after witnesses reported it had burned down.
Nearby, they found three male bodies, four shell casings, two handguns, and a rifle. Police said they had been shot at close range.
The area was sealed off as the investigation began, but it would not be long before controversy stirred.
'Claims about paramilitaries, sects, human trafficking networks' dismissed
One day after the first three bodies were found, the mayor of Sofia took to social media.
Mayor Vassil Terziev knew the trio as “good men”, according to the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA).
“All of us who had any contact with them can say the same thing: good, modest people, who chose to fight an unequal and often brutal enemy,” he said.
“What exactly led to the tragedy — none of us knows. But what is happening now is filthy.”
The men were members of the National Agency for Control of Protected Areas, a non-governmental organisation, and had lived at the hut.
The group described itself as devoted to protecting nature.
Some accounts, however, have described its members as “forest rangers”, who for years patrolled the area near the Serbian border, assisting border police.
“I see what is being written today — claims about paramilitaries, sects, human trafficking networks, and conspiracies,” Mr Terziev wrote.
He added, according to the BTA, the men had helped border police combat migrant smuggling routes.
"Any information supporting all terrible accusations [against the men] must be presented with facts by the investigating authorities,” he said.
“Everything else is slander — especially when directed at people who can no longer say a word in their own defence.”
The Ministry of Environment and Water announced on that same day it had terminated a previous agreement with the group in 2025.
Police said the group members were involved in Tibetan Buddhism, adding that Buddhist books and banners were found inside the hut.
Police also cited a relative of one member who spoke of "exceptional psychological instability" within the group.
As the week continued, more Bulgarian officials called for the group’s activities to be investigated.
One of them, leader of political party There Is Such a People, Slavi Trifonov, labelled the deaths “mafia-style murders”.
“There is something here that the Bulgarian justice system and law enforcement authorities now need to determine exactly,” he said.
Three more bodies discovered near Mount Okolchitsa
On February 8, a resident heading out to check on their livestock in a remote area near Mount Okolchitsa noticed a camper van.
The area is in north-western Bulgaria, some 80 kilometres from the Petrohan Pass lodge.
The call to emergency services came at 9:29am.
Inside the camper were the other three people seen on the security footage — two men and a 15-year-old boy. All three had been shot dead.
National police chief Zahari Vaskov said the gunshots appeared to have been fired inside the van, and investigators were looking into “all possible hypotheses”.
The two men, along with the three found at the lodge, were members of the National Agency for Control of Protected Areas (NAKZT).
The boy was the son of a friend of the group, police said.
NAKZT presents itself as a mountain rangers' operation which also hosts holiday camps for youngsters.
Two years ago, it was accused in a criminal complaint of alleged "sexual abuse of children".
The group was discovered possessing a "paramilitary" apparatus, the interim head of Bulgaria's State Agency for National Security, Denyo Denev, said.
Bulgaria's acting prosecutor general, Borislav Sarafov, told a news conference NAKZT was believed to engage in activities not "in conformity with God's will, or the interests of society, the country and of children".
In both the mountain lodge deaths and the camper van deaths, Deputy prosecutor Natalia Nikolova said officials were investigating a particular theory.
"We can conclude, for both investigations, that one of the main versions that we are working on is murder-suicide and suicide," she said.
'There are things that cannot be made public at this stage'
Investigations are ongoing.
Since the second trio of bodies was discovered inside the camper van, more public officials have called for the case to be solved as fast as possible.
Hairi Sadakov, floor leader of the Alliance for Rights and Freedoms political party, described the case as shocking.
“We are calling on the responsible institutions to provide swift answers to the public,” he said.
On February 11, the Bulgarian parliament held a hearing with the outgoing Environment and Water minister, along with members of the Interior Ministry, National Protection, and Child Protection.
Part of the hearing was held behind closed doors, according to the Bulgarian News Agency.
Mr Vaskov told parliament a probe had been ordered into the firearm permits issued to members of the group.
Deputy Minister of Interior Toni Todorov told media before the hearing that authorities were continuing to work on the case.
“There is investigative secrecy, and there are things that cannot be made public at this stage,” he said.
“This is an extremely difficult case to investigate, because there are many possible versions.
“Each of them has to be examined very thoroughly in order to reach a result that satisfies everyone and reveals the objective truth of the case.”
ABC/AFP/Reuters
