Transcript
Speaker: Z or Zed? Well, I don't know much about Z, but Zed, there was a band. Chlorophilia was a banger back in the day, and who can forget renegade fighter apart from everyone who lives outside New Zealand or is under the age of 35. No, no, no,
Speaker: Z or Zed as in the letter at the end of the alphabet. Are we Zing or Zedding? Because it's quite important this week. Well, as New Zealanders, it's Zed all the way, but this is a German story, so technically we should be saying Zed.
Speaker: Which is close enough to Zed. Hmm, but crucially isn't. How about we go old school and pronounce it as Zether? Ooh, an interesting compromise and one that I like.
Speaker: But will we remember to do that consistently? of course not. in fact, I think we should endeavor to be as inconsistent as possible. Well then, there's a challenge. Be consistently inconsistent.
Speaker: Let's go!
Speaker: The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy, brought to you today by Josh Edison and Ian Denteth.
Speaker: Hello and welcome to the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy in Auckland, New Zealand. i am Josh Addison in Zhuhai, China. They are Dr M Denteth. um it's I was going to say it's really rainy here and you you might have to account for the fact that if you hear it in the background, that's what's going on. But now it's just stopped. So if you hear a sound, that the the sound conjuly quality suddenly dips.
Speaker: Blame the weather. I mean, I live in Auckland. You you blame the weather for everything, but but but but I extend that privilege to you, the listener. Well, Josh, I mean, you always take the weather with you. Yes, the with the the weather the weatherer with you.
Speaker: Ah, that's two New Zealand musical references in less than the span of about five minutes, so maybe we should move on quickly. Do we have any sort of administrations? Oh, actually, I do. i have a thing.
Speaker: you do, you do. you I do. You have been back in the game-producing business. I've been back in the game-producing business. So you'll recall a couple of episodes ago, Em came out with a game, ah a real, I want to say, flesh and blood, but that's probably not true unless you've been having it printed in ah in a particularly elaborate music. But a real life, a physical, tangible game.
Speaker: Which, I'll be honest, was one of the things that got me. I've seen ah had a couple of instances recently of friends of mine coming out with with clever creative things, and all of which may have prompted me to go, no i've I've been meaning to get around to making more more video games. I should do that. And so I did. And so I have.
Speaker: And so I've made a game. It's called Me and My Bullet. It's the Survivor's style of game where you're a one person with hordes and hordes of people running at you. It has what I think is kind of a unique mechanic, which is good. But if you want to play it, go to monkeyfluids.itch.io and have a look. You can download it for Windows. You cannot play it online in a browser, even though I tried to make it there because h it just doesn't just doesn't work. HTML5 hates me.
Speaker: Yes, I will say i did try to play it in a browser, given I'm a Mac user, and the experience was basically non-existent. No, it just can't handle it. And then this morning I made a little update, and then it threw a bug that only appeared on the website, didn't appear locally, and made no sense to me whatsoever. So I was like, okay, that's it. I'm cutting my losses.
Speaker: It's Windows or nothing. But anyway, so if you're running Windows and you would like to play my new game, go to monkeyfluids.itch.io and look for it. So that's my plug. do you have any plugs?
Speaker: I mean, I've got a lot of plugs, but none of which are relevant to this particular episode. Well, that's right. Well, then in that case, we'll get into the actual episode. Yeah, let's plug this story.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Now, fun fact about this story, I was going to use this as a what conspiracy, even though arguably it may not be an actual conspiracy theory story. Yes, we'll talk about that. When I read the story online, i was going, oh, this is the perfect fodder for me to use on Josh because there's a Romanian connection here, although, spoilers, there might not be.
Speaker: And i was going, I really hope Josh doesn't find out about this. And then lo and behold, after recording the last episode, Josh said, have you read that story about Otto Zed? And I was going, ah this is not going to work as a Wap the Conspiracy episode at all. So we're just covering it as a normal main episode instead.
Speaker: Yes, because it's a good it's an interesting story, a strange story and kind of a confusing one. Oh, yes. It has twists. It has turns. does. It has unresolved dilemmas.
Speaker: It does. It is a story that we first saw when it was published in The Guardian two almost three weeks ago now. um but it's it's a story from Germany and it's been reported on there. It goes back to 2020, so it will have been in the news there for several years now.
Speaker: But the story as it is presented involves three three people primarily. There is the the titular Otto Zed, according to German privacy laws. Apparently his his true surname can't be given. So the story just refers to him as Otto Zed. He is a doctor living in Germany. I'm not sure if he's German. The story doesn't exactly say, but it does mention he he has sort of moved around the world a bit.
Speaker: And his mother, I believe it says, is from Serbia. But he see he he is at least a German-based, if not a German doctor, the city of Munich specifically. It also involves a man called Professor Matthias Grohr, who is the head of the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the University of Munich, and another man called Stefan Weber, who is a plagiarism investigator.
Speaker: just to give you some idea of what what's the story is going to involve. Now, i want to put in a spoiler at the beginning here because i actually, reading through the original Guardian article, I found it quite confusing in places because the Guardian article starts with an interview with with Otto. It's a contemporaneous interview as well. It's a 2026 interview with Otto Z slash Z slash Zipper.
Speaker: And it it presents the series of events, which is, it doesn't, it's not sort of direct quotation the whole way, but it's all otto's Otto's version of events. And then here's the spoiler. It's going to turn out that a lot of his version of events is not true.
Speaker: But the article itself does kind of a lousy job of being explicit about this. I kept waiting for them to come back to some of the things that will be introduced at the start of the article, and they never really did. So there are a few things where, as we'll see when we go through it, it becomes a matter of, okay, did that not happen at all? Is it a complete fabrication? Or did it did happen, but aspects of it have become confused? So so just just I'm going to put that out there at the start. You may have to bear with us.
Speaker: at a few points. ah But the story itself, the the main story that we are concerned with starts in June of 2020, when Otto's mother, Doria, sadly passed away.
Speaker: she was She was quite old. He had been, I believe he is, I can't remember he was 66 now or if he was 66 at the time she died, but that gives you an idea of his age. So she was somewhat elderly. She'd been very unwell.
Speaker: She was his only living relative, and he had moved to Munich to care for her as his only patient, essentially, full time. Now, as a doctor, he could issue his own death certificate, or at least that's what the article says. i don't think I don't think in New Zealand, I don't think doctors are allowed to issue death certificates in situations like this, but he thought he could, and he did.
Speaker: um He reported her death to a funeral home and then strangely, after having reported his mother's death, police showed up as at his apartment, followed by a coroner from the Institute of Forensic Medicine from Munich, run out of Munich University.
Speaker: Otto was questioned a little bit, told he had to leave the apartment, so he he actually had to was was turfed out of his own apartment, had to get a hotel room. came back later on to find the door blocked with police tape.
Speaker: He actually went in, breaking the tape, and looked around a little bit, then went away, then came back again where some police officers were waiting outside who took him in and held him for several days for questioning.
Speaker: And so he, at this point, the way he tells it, he didn't really know know what was going on. And then from the questions they were asking him seemed to come to the realization that they they appeared to think there might have been something untoward with his mother's death and that he might have been responsible for it.
Speaker: Nevertheless, he was released, and upon his release, he wrote to, again, Professor Matthias Groh, the head of the Institute of Forensic Medicine, whose name would have been on the the report on his mother's death.
Speaker: To begin with, here he but he wanted to know the details. yeah you sort of it sounded like he wanted to talk, you know, one doctor to another. you tell me what's going on here? Never heard back from Professor Graw. He even suggested that the two of them collaborate and maybe write a paper on the circumstances of his mother's death, which that's an thing, isn't it? Which not an unusual thing at all. Not an unusual thing at all.
Speaker: Yes, yes. that's That's a little bit odd straight off the bat. But um he, as you can imagine, was was not in a well mental state by this stage, quite quite aside from the fact that, again, this was his his only living relative had died.
Speaker: And then the way he was being treated by police, he was he was not not well in himself at all. So he checked himself in to a psychiatric treatment centre. And after a a stay there for the good of his mental health, he got out and was able to go to through his mother's toxicological report, which he'd been supplied with by that time.
Speaker: And going through the report, he found what looked like some worrying details. He said the report showed the presence of a compound that you might see in someone who died of exposure,
Speaker: suggesting that that possibly she wasn't dead when they'd taken her away and that she had had died after they'd put her body on ice or something. that That seemed very odd. And then also there were traces of a substance that's contained apparently in the autumn crocus flower, but when it's been extracted, it's a poison called colchicine.
Speaker: This is where I started to get confused because those two details, they never really came back to them in the paper. So it's never clear whether ah those two facts, the the the compound caused by exposure and the presence of culture scene, whether that's completely untrue and neither of those were there at all and he made them up afterwards, or if they were things that were true but he'd gotten the wrong idea misread it or something. i I'm not making this up right. That was kind of confusing. Yes. Now, the problem here is, of course, because of Germany's privacy laws, we can't go and look at any forensic reports with respect to Otto Zed's mother because we don't know the identity of Otto Zed's mother. Yes, I also found this a bit confusing in the kind of details the Guardian provides.
Speaker: We are told that according to Otto Zed, when he read the report, He noticed these these details of a compound only found in exposure victims and the poison that comes from the awesome crocus flower, which is going to be the thing that then motivates the rest of the story.
Speaker: But we're never actually told whether these things actually were in that report. And unlike us, we have absolutely no access whatsoever to the forensic reports that were produced by the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Munich. The reporters at the Guardian who know the identity of Otto Zed could have come back and said, yes, this is the case, or no, this isn't the case. So it is a bit of an open mystery.
Speaker: Were these things in the report? Maybe they were, and maybe that is what motivates the rest of the story, or this could be a post facto justification that Otto Zed came up with in order to then justify what happens next.
Speaker: Yes, because what happens next is that he looked into Professor Groh, who again he tried to get in touch with and was and had received no response, We also should point out there's an odyssey in the story in that, according to Otto Zed, when the forensic pathologist turns up at his apartment, which is not Matthias Grohr, it's an elegant woman that he feels doesn't act like a forensic investigator.
Speaker: So he's already suspicious, according to his story, the moment the police turn up and start questioning him. He thinks the person who is takes the body away is acting in a really odd fashion.
Speaker: Yes, and then straight away, the the implication seems to be that in one way or another, did did the Institute of Forensic Medicine actually kill his mother?
Speaker: Which again confused me because he was the one who declared her dead. And indeed, as we'll see, he he waited a good long while. he you know so that he he was he He sat with the body for a good while before he reported the death.
Speaker: So it did seem quite odd that he's he's now introducing the possibility that she wasn't, she was alive the entire time and only died after she was taken into the custody of the Institute of Forensic Medicine. But nevertheless, he's looking, he's he's got this idea of this poison cord culture scene. He's been looking into this Professor Groh. It seems like he's he's holding Professor Groh up as sort of the figure behind all of this. He's the head of the Institute.
Speaker: He's responsible for everything that's happened. And he finds out that Professor Grohe had written his, I believe, doctoral dissertation on the poison culture scene.
Speaker: Indeed. Now, again, they never quite circled back to this because it isn't clear what exactly happened. what Is it true that there was what appeared to be culture scene in the TOX report and Professor Groh had written his dissertation on culture scene and Otto took those two facts and put them together to come up with something sinister?
Speaker: or As it's going to turn out that a lot of this is made up, it is another scenario is that he's beginning to blame Dr. Grohe for everything that happened, finds out Dr. Grohe did a dissertation on culture scene, and then makes up this claim that there was culture scene in his mother's body to to to try and to try and frame him or something. Again, know it's still still quite quite unclear, but the fact is...
Speaker: It is definitely true that Professor Matthias Grohr wrote a dissertation on culture scene at his ah his his his alma mater, which was the University of Hamburg. Now, Otto, he's he's he's right into research mode. Again, it certainly sounds as though his mother was the focus of his entire life at this point, and without her, he's kind of He's thrown himself fully into his investigation of Professor Grohr.
Speaker: And in this investigation, he finds, trying to find out about Professor Grohr and culture scene, his his supposed pet topic, he finds a book on culture scene from 1982, which Grohr appears to have plagiarized his dissertation from. There are large sections of the book that match his dissertation very closely.
Speaker: Now, the book itself was apparently a record of 1981 symposium. on culture scene at a hospital in Romania. The symposium was quite remarkable for including guests from both the the East and the West, which in 1981 were smack in the middle of the Cold War. that was That was quite an unusual thing to have happened. And perhaps the reason why happened was because apparently the hosium the symposium itself had been hosted by none other than Elena Ceaucescu, wife of Nicolai. And there's your Romanian connection.
Speaker: Yes, and this was the point when I was reading the article, I went, this has to be a what the conspiracy. And it's a shame it can't be, because then I'd be doing this the entire time. Yeah.
Speaker: So presumably you've heard of the Ceausescus, but Nicolai Ceausescu, the former dictator of Romania, and his wife Elena. But give us give us a bit of background, you you former... rope were you Were you a resident of Romania? Was that your legal status? I don't know how these things were. No, I was i i was only ever there on a visa. So I write i was merely... this That doesn't count as resident. late You're a visitor. Right.
Speaker: But you resided, neverthelessly with whether or not you were an actual resident, you resided in Romania for a time. So give us the insights. I was a resident, but just not a resident. Yeah.
Speaker: Right, so Elena Ceausescu was born in 1919. She died on the 25th of December in 1989, which i will point out was not officially Christmas Day, as Christmas was not formally celebrated under communism in Romania. And you say died...
Speaker: She and her husband were executed via firing squad after... That is a way of dying, John. That certainly is a way of dying. It's hard to be executed and not die.
Speaker: And the execution Nikolai and Elena Ceausescu on Christmas Day is... very interesting story and we've talked about it we have a former episode of this podcast because i love myself a little bit of romanian political intrigue believe me following what's going on with the government in romania at the moment is actually fascinating, the way that the government wobbles and then ceases to exist and then wobbles a little bit more as it heads towards yet another technocratic term. Anyway, Elena, as the wife of Nicolae Ceausescu, was also the deputy prime minister of Romania. You can kind of guess who was the actual prime minister yeah that relationship.
Speaker: Even though Elena had very little formal education, She did obtain a degree in chemical engineering in 1957 and then a doctorate in 1967. And both of these degrees, I believe, came from the Polytechnic University of Bucharest.
Speaker: Now, there is anecdotal evidence, and it's fairly strong anecdotal evidence, that her thesis was written by another academic, so it was essentially plagiarized. Her thesis was titled, Stereospecific Polymerization of Isoprene on the Stabilization of Synthetic Rubbers on Copolymerization.
Speaker: Now, the reason why we suspect her thesis was written by someone else is that prior to Elena gaining her PhD, Romanian law required PhD defences to be public, and the law was changed just prior to her PhD being awarded, that this was no longer the case. The PhD defence could be undertaken in private.
Speaker: Now, post her PhD defence, there was meant to be a public presentation by Elena a few days later. But when people came to attend, they found that the time for the presentation had been changed. So initially, the presentation was, I think, on a Wednesday at 7.30 a.m. m When they turned up at the hall the presentation was going to be presented at, they found that the timing had been changed to 6 a.m.,
Speaker: and the presentation was already over and done with. Now this particular PhD that she wrote apparently is still considered a significant piece of work that is still cited to this day, so there are people who are actively working towards getting it credited to its actual authors.
Speaker: But nonetheless, whether she wrote it or not, and the evidence indicates that she did not, She did publish very widely post getting the PhD and ended up running the Institute for Chemistry.
Speaker: And the reason why she published widely appears to be that basically scientists were told that if they... were publishing a paper and she wanted her name on the paper, she would get her name attached to the paper whether or not she was involved in the writing or conceptualization of that particular paper. Now eventually she became chair of the National Council for Science and Technology and ended up controlling the direction of basically all scientific research in the country.
Speaker: And yet, from the anecdotal data we have by scientists who survived the regime, they were constantly amazed by how little she appeared to know.
Speaker: For example, as a chemist, she had no knowledge of what a chromatograph was, and she didn't even recognize the formula for sulfuric acid, which are things that first-year students in chemistry would have learned almost on the first day of lectures.
Speaker: Now, she had a lot of degrees because when traveling overseas, the Ceausescus would only visit countries that would give Elena honorary degrees. Apparently, visits to the UK and the US were particularly fraught because the UK and the US would allow minor universities or minor institutes to give her honorary degrees. And yet what she really wanted was membership of the Royal Society, in the UK and honorary degrees from universities in Washington DC in the United States. And the US and the UK would give her minor degrees, but they wouldn't let their most prestigious institutions actually engage in giving her an honorary title.
Speaker: and honorary title Now, when we talk about Elena Ceausescu, we do have to point out that she is sometimes presented as the real brains, or at least the malevolent intent behind Nikolai's regime.
Speaker: And all evidence points to her being a particularly nasty piece of work from everything that A, I've read, and B, I've been told by people in Romania. But you always have to remember that many women who are in or attached to political figures are often presented as being a dominating figure over a weaker man, a narrative that goes all the way back to politics in Republican Rome.
Speaker: So even if we accept that Elena was a particularly nasty piece of work, we shouldn't really think of her as being the brains and the brawn of the Ceausescu regime. There's plenty of blame to go on Nikolai well. Yes, I don't know a hell of a lot about them. I know Nikolai, he was a really good public speaker, wasn't he? He'd often, he'd give these big speeches from balconies. And I've been told, although I've never gone and looked for myself, but I've been told you can find his last speech. There was video of his final speech on YouTube.
Speaker: which is when this revolution was fomenting. And he went out to to speak to the people and get them back on side and realized fairly quickly that he did not have the people on his side. And apparently you can see in real time, this guy trying to you know speak to the people and you you can see in his face, the realization that, oh shit, I've lost them and I'm not getting them back. I'm in real trouble.
Speaker: But yeah. And the one thing I've heard and in a couple of places and it was mentioned in this article, I've heard it elsewhere, this idea that Elena believed that she was, quote, born a great chemist. She thought she had chemistry in her blood, which doesn't sound healthy.
Speaker: Although it is actually true. It's technically true. It's actually lost chemistry in your blood. Technically true. What about chemistry in my blood? so So yes, an interesting side digression, seeing the name Elena Ceausescu show up in this story. but um Especially given most of what we told is true, but also irrelevant.
Speaker: So if if we return to the story of Otto Zed and this book that he had found on culture scene, detailing the symposium held by Elena Ceausescu, this is where that third man I mentioned, Stefan Weber, this is where he comes in. He is a specialist in investigating claims of plagiarism, and apparently he's he's quite a big name in the field, or at least a big name in in Europe in the field of of plagiarism investigation there. Apparently more than one politician has been brought down by an investigation he's done that has shown that they had plagiarized either an academic work or or another another book that they had written in the past.
Speaker: He sounds like ah quite quite an obsessive individual, which seems to be the theme for this story, given that Otto is becoming increasingly obsessed with Matthias Grohr. he's Apparently, you know once he once he gets a story, once he finds a possible case of plagiarism, he's quite dogged and and very, very thorough in his investigations of it.
Speaker: sounds they They give the impression that he's a bit of a dick in person. He has a blog where he's apparently a very very right-wing, anti-woke sort of guy, but nevertheless very dogged in the pursuit of plagiarism.
Speaker: And so he he was the man that Otto came to with this book and and the accusation that the this this eminent professor, the the head of a medical institute, had plagiarized his dissertation. that's That's exactly the sort of thing that Mr. Weber would look into, and look into it he did. Now, Otto had told him about the book and apparently had supplied sort of scans of the book that he had found online, but he wasn't able to actually give i give him a physical copy of this book. And that's given given that he's a very thorough investigator. Scanned copies aren't good enough for him.
Speaker: He wanted to have an actual copy of this book in his hands. And eventually was able to find one on eBay. Now, he was a little bit wary about this. The book is is what he referred to as grey literature. It's sort of an academic work that was nevertheless not sort of officially published and peer-reviewed in the normal way.
Speaker: So it's not included. You can't you can't look it up and in the sorts of digital research platforms where you would normally be able to find academic works. um So normally it's it's it's not it's not his first choice of research material, but it was all he had to go on.
Speaker: And once he had a physical copy of this book, he was able to go through it in detail and go through Professor Groh's dissertation in detail. And sure enough, he found there were large sections of Groh's dissertation that were basically identical to information from this book.
Speaker: So it's now 2022. um And that's when Stefan Weber files this report claiming that Grohr had plagiarized his dissertation, which was, as you'd expect, a big deal. the big German newspaper, Der Spiegel, broke the story on the 1st of July 2022, and it made quite a splash. There were calls for Grohr to resign, as you might expect.
Speaker: Some lawyers apparently were calling for all reports that had been issued while Grohr was the head of the Institute to be re-examined, and that was apparently a hell of a lot. It was a, you know, lots of Lots of cases would have been called into question. Although this is one of the classic cases. If you find that someone has committed plagiarism, you're often finding the tip of the iceberg. yes People who plagiarise don't tend to do it once.
Speaker: Now, the University of Munich said, look, sorry, we we can't support you. We have to appear impartial in this manner. So he wasn't given any sort of support or legal support from the university.
Speaker: um And eventually his alma mater, the University of Hamburg, opened an inquest into his dissertation. So Groh apparently was on holiday when the the first story was published, so he didn't find out initially. or And when he did find out, he was abroad and didn't have access to his all his work and computers and what have you, so he couldn't couldn't do a lot about it immediately.
Speaker: And so he was not having a great time. And then, while this investigation was all still going on, Otto, who had been speaking to the press about this, gave an interview, i think it was with the... the um Deerbilt, Dustbilt, whichever one it is, another Nittlinn paper, where he claimed that Graw had stolen a gold tooth from Otto's mother during the autopsy. And given that Otto's mother was apparently a Holocaust survivor, the actual the stealing of gold teeth from Holocaust survivors, that has some particularly nasty resonance. Yeah, that has resonances of Nazism.
Speaker: Yes. And nevertheless, it seems that the publication of this story of Otto showing up in the paper saying saying Matthias Grau stole a gold tooth from my dead mother is the first time that Matthias Grau became aware of the existence of Otto Zed, the man who seemed to be bent on destroying his life. And at this point, things started started to make a little more sense to him.
Speaker: he He now, at first he was like, what's what what's this going on? well All of a sudden my life's been thrown into disarray. And then he he then he's able to see, okay, it looks like this one guy really has it in for me. Now, at this particular point, the article does point out to Grohl that according to Otto Zed, Otto Zed had gotten contact with him after the autopsy report was released, offering to co-write a report or investigation into what really caused his mother's death. And Grohl's response was, I do not recall getting such a letter. I may have got such a letter, but I do not recall getting that correspondence. Or it may have been sent to his office. And and never passed on. Read by someone. ever yes so
Speaker: Yeah, this was the first time he became aware of Otto Z's existence. But then, then the story takes another turn. Because eventually Hamburg University concludes their inquest into these these allegations of dissertation. And their conclusion... is that Matthias Krohr is innocent of plagiarism because it is not his dissertation that is wrong. It's that the book, this book from 1982, in fact a fake.
Speaker: Indeed. So as per going going by the the Guardian article, the the bits of evidence they cite is that the book stated that the, sorry, rather the report on the book stated that the publisher's address listed on the copywriter page did not correspond to any real location in the former German Democratic Republic. Apparently there was a particular technical term had been translated badly, which you would not expect from ah an academic work.
Speaker: And then third, the text cited a source from 1983, given in the book was supposedly published in 1982 and concerned the symposium from that would not have been possible.
Speaker: All of which do call into question the plagiarist detective's work, but we'll get into that. Well, yes, we will, because this this obviously is is a big knock on Stefan Weber, who, as we say, was was incredibly thorough and meticulous in his investigations and and very outspoken from the sounds of things. So having this this is essentially saying, yeah, you you got it wrong, mate. I'm sorry, but you're the one on the wrong here, and that that would not stand for him.
Speaker: So he he's doubled down and, well, doubled down is perhaps not the right word, but he he doubled his efforts um and decided yeah know to really investigate absolutely every aspect of this book he can find and promised that if it if it turns out that he was wrong and he incorrectly accused a person of plagiarism, he would renounce plagiarism hunting forever.
Speaker: a Long story short, he did find out that the book was fake. He did not renounce plagiarism hunting, but that's okay. So initially he he asked Otto for... mean, you say that's okay. really It's not really okay, but it's it's his um it's his prerogative.
Speaker: So yeah he started getting suspicious when he asked Otto for more details about where he had found this book. And Otto apparently just avoided the questions and and would just rail about how the obviously the University of Hamburg is just covering up their the covering for their their former student by putting on a sham investigation. So Weber was starting to get suspicious at this point. He really started looking into the book, and he turned up some evidence that could only be described as damning. First of all, the person who supposedly translated this book into English did not appear to exist, or at least could not be found in any phone records from the time.
Speaker: He took the book to an antiquarian who found that the book's cloth bookmark was, quote, unusual for the time. um And eventually he was able to identify the font that had been used in the publishing of the book as one that was not released until 2008 and found that one of the photographs of an autumn crocus flower included in the book was traced to a Wikimedia Commons photo from 2005. So he had fairly clear evidence. This just suggests that this was a time-travelling symposium in Bucharest. Wow. I mean, what's what's odd about that? Well, exactly. So so yeah, it was definitely looking like this book was in no way legit.
Speaker: Now, meanwhile, Otto was not one to to leave things lying down. He had started civil cases against Matthias Grohr, accusing him of um copyright infringement.
Speaker: So between that and between these gold tooth claims, Grohr realized that Otto was trying to ruin him. He went to the police and complained about Otto and asked them to investigate Otto and and his claims.
Speaker: So the police raided Otto's home. They found apparently mountains and mountains of documents about Professor Graw and about culture scene. And among the stuff that they found was correspondence with ghostwriter in Pakistan and a printer in Serbia, supposedly the people who he had communicated or corresponded with to get this fake book made.
Speaker: And this is so this is this is kind of interesting from a conspiracy angle, because this is a case where you've got several people working together towards a common goal, not everybody actually knows what the goal is. this case, the thinking of academic text. Yes, but it seems like only one person, Otto himself, knew the real end goal, which is to accuse Matthias Grohr of plagiarism and ruin his career.
Speaker: So because only one person actually knew the goal, does it count as a conspiracy? And that is a question which Martin Orr and I looked at in secrecy and conspiracy. And I would say, according to Marty, he would say, yes, this is a case of a conspiracy. It's an interesting case of a conspiracy because you have a conspirator at the top and then a bunch of patsies beneath them that don't really know what they're doing, but they are working for can spirit it They're involved in a secret a secretive plot.
Speaker: I'm less inclined to say this is conspiratorial because I think only one person actually knows about the conspiracy here. And thus it seems more like a plot than an actual conspiracy of people working together. But that being said, you do have to wonder what the Patsy's thought they were doing in this situation. why did What did the ghostwriter in Pakistan think this text was going to be used for? And what did the printer in Serbia think when they were told you need to make this look like an old book from the nineteen the nineteen eighty s So, yeah, it's a fascinating case here of something which is, if not an outright conspiracy, very conspiracy adjacent. Yes.
Speaker: So nevertheless, the end result of all of this is that in March of 2024, Otto was charged with document forgery, copyright infringement and multiple counts of defamation and fraud.
Speaker: One thing the article doesn't mention, but which found when I did a quick little search for news on him, was that he'd already been charged with, you recall, that back when the police... He breaks into his own apartment. Yeah, he went back into his own apartment breaking a police seal at the time. That, of course, is against the law. He'd been charged with that already.
Speaker: So he was he was accused or charged with these crimes. He's found guilty. He was tried in 2025 and sentenced to two and a half years in prison. Apparently he had been offered a suspended sentence if he confessed, but at the time he refused. He insisted he was he was innocent and Matthias Grohl was a fraud and and and he was responsible for everything bad that had happened. But In July of this year, apparently he finally relented, he confessed, he agreed to pay 210,000 euros in damages to Grohe and received a suspended sentence, which is pretty much where the story ends.
Speaker: But we do have to ask, and this is what I was having trouble with to begin with, how much of Otto's initial story was actually true? His mother definitely did die, but apart from that, I mean, the best we got at at one point... once Once everything starts to unravel, the Guardian and article says, quote, though he had lied about practically everything else, Otto was in fact a doctor, albeit one with a checkered clinical history.
Speaker: So that's why I think, ah so are we are we supposed to take pretty much his entire story as all lies or what? I mean, what we do know is that he had practiced in the US and in Switzerland and in Germany and the UK.
Speaker: Apparently in the UK, he had been an investigated for writing, quote, bizarre prescriptions. And after that, he went back to Munich to focus on caring for his mother. The description they give of his treatment of his mother seemed unconventional and fairly obsessive. He he documented absolutely everything about her. Including her weight. He was tracking her weight quite quite extensively. And also tracking how much movement she engaged in. Yes. So even though she was old and tired, he would make her go for very, very long walks that would exhaust her because he felt that was part of the treatment he had to engage um So after he died, he apparently waited the longest allowable time, 36 hours, I think, before informing the funeral home. And so between that and his self-issued death certificate, the funeral home was suspicious and they were the ones who told the police to investigate, hence the officers and the coroner showing up at his apartment.
Speaker: ah Now, again, from the Guardian article, they say, when the coroner arrived otto's erratic behavior and desire to share his copious records of his mother's health made her suspicious too extremely odd behaviour of the sun questionable medical treatment extremely poor condition of carere she noted in her report noting indications of an unnatural death she ordered autopsy The examiner's prevailing theory was that Otto had accidentally killed his mother with an overdose of insulin, then covered up his mistake by administering a glucose injection to stabilize her vitals. So it turned out that the police didn't open a manslaughter investigation into Otto, but it dropped after the autopsy, which showed that there were no signs of an unnatural death. And it should be pointed out that Grohl did not perform this autopsy. his His name was on it because he was the head of the Institute, but he wasn't actually involved in it at all.
Speaker: So it does seem like pretty much everything Otto had said about in the affair was was was either a lie or sort of a twisting of events. And then the one thing um that has also come out is his claim that his mother was a Holocaust survivor has also been questioned.
Speaker: um An investigation by the German newspaper Die Zeit was unable to find her name in any of the records held by organizations that document Holocaust survivors. So so even that aspect of it has been questioned. Apparently his project now, he's gone back to Serbia and he's wanting to document his mother's, he's wanted to research and document his mother's entire life to show that she was indeed a survivor of the Holocaust. So who who knows what that will turn up?
Speaker: I'm sure. I'm sure he'll bridge he'll be producing a book that proves her lineage any time. I'm sure he'll be producing a book, yes. And so that is the strange and interesting story of Otto Zed, curious tale indeed. Or Zed or Zephyr.
Speaker: So, yes, that that would have made that would have made a good What the Conspiracy story if we both hadn't seen the same story at the same time. But what can you do? It would have been great if we'd both done a oh, I'm going to do a What the Conspiracy next week.
Speaker: And actually, what if we'd both gone, we'll do ah we'll do a double What the Conspiracy. And then whoever it was sick and would have been completely screwed. Yeah, yeah. yeah yeah Yes, so interesting little tale and kind of conspiratorial, but whether or not it's conspiratorial is an interesting aspect in itself.
Speaker: So that brings us to the end of this episode. We will, of course, record a bonus episode for our patrons, um and it's it's election season. its Midterms are coming up in the States. We just had an election in Brazil, and it's the general election in New Zealand in a couple of weeks as well. Have you cast a special vote?
Speaker: have you Have you voted yet? I have indeed. Special votes for overseas voters opened up in the middle of last week. So a bunch of us New Zealanders in Guangzhou went off to vote at the New Zealand Consulate on Friday, and we had a great time casting our special votes. Very good. Yes, actual election day here is a week and a half, so that's when I'll be walking down to cast mine. But nevertheless, there are, as you would expect, various electoral conspiracy theories floating around, and we're going to talk about some of them in our bonus episode this week.
Speaker: So if you'd like to to listen to that or any other... It's not just New Zealand stuff. No, not just New Zealand stuff. There's lot of stuff. There's a lot of international stuff to talk about as well. And if you want to hear about that, go to patreon.com and look for the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy and sign yourself up.
Speaker: And if you don't want to listen to that, i don't blame you, quite frankly. and I find election stuff... tedious at times, except for when it's not, and we'll see. But for now, I think it's time to call this episode to a close, which I'll do in the traditional method of saying goodbye. Goodbye,
Speaker: Mother Ness.
Speaker: The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy features Josh Addison and Associate Professor M.R. Extentis. Our producers are a mysterious cabal of conspirators known as Tom, Philip, and another who is so mysterious that they remain anonymous.
Speaker: You can contact us electronically via podcastconspiracy at gmail.com or join our Patreon and get access to our Discord server. Or don't, I'm not your mum.
Speaker: And remember, a bird in the hand will probably pick you in the face. Leave birds alone.
