DEAREST MOM


    It was the day after Christmas And all through the kvartira Not a creature was stirring Not even baba Katya, who had been beaten to death by her son. That pretty much sums up the untimely death of the 90-year-old granny Katya.
     Katya had lived through a whole mess of history. But, not even the Nazi occupation she witnessed could prepare her for the brutality of her older son and his lover when they occupied her flat.
     Her son always felt like she loved his younger brother more. And he may have been right. The younger brother was a reasonably well- adjusted member of society.
    Not much is known about him, but at least he lived on his own. Not so with the older son. According to Moskovsky Komsomolets, he was a complete alcoholic intent on making his mother's remaining years a living hell. He and his lover moved into her apartment by Metro Begovaya against her will. There, he lived in sin, drinking and fighting with both women.
     During some drinking binges, he would practice "physical therapy" on his helpless mother. That meant beating the helpless old woman senseless. The poor woman was so miserable, that she prayed for a quick death. Her son finally came through and answered her prayers.
     It happened the day after Orthodox Christmas. Apparently, in an effort to get rid of a raging hangover, her son drank himself silly. He then beat her to death and called an ambulance service to confess his crime.
    They picked up the bruised body of the dead granny and went about their business. An autopsy revealed that she had a broken rib and had been choked to death. But, apparently they never thought to notify the cops about the crime. A couple hours later, the son called again to confess the same murder, after forgetting that he had already called once. By that time, the body already lay in the morgue.
    The cops only caught up with the son three days later, and he was still drunk. He seemed awfully distraught about the death of his mother. Even the news that he inherited half of her apartment didn't cheer him much. But, perhaps the law will treat him leniently.
After all, now he is an orphan.



GRANNY TROUBLE


They say withdrawal is a terrible thing. You can't think, all you feel is a burning desire to get a fix, even the things you hold most dear lose their value. But remember, kids, killing your babushka will not make the process any easier.
    One 21-year-old junkie found that out the hard way. According to Moskovsky Komsomolets, he came from a very respectable family. His father works at the FSB and his brother turned out so normal you might even call him bland. Furthermore, as the youngest, his babushka always showered him with love. He was clearly her favorite. The only possible cause of angst is that his mother left his father in his early childhood. Still, the family seemed rock solid.
    But, in spite of all that stability - or maybe because of it - this young man turned early on to a life of drugs. It all started with occasional experimenting, but soon progressed to the point where he was a full-blown junkie. He started living on the street and reportedly was taking up to a gram and a half of junk a day.
    His family was worried about him and tried to get him into detox, but nothing seemed to help. Every time, he would just start up again. That is when they decided to put him on a more radical treatment plan.
    They locked him in his 87-year-old babushka's apartment, where she could take care of him throughout the difficult period of withdrawal. They thought having a loved one near by might ease the pain.
    But, they didn't make it a week living together. The grandson choked her to death using an electrical cord. Her other grandson found the wrin- kled corpse that same day, when he arrived with a bag of groceries.
     Meanwhile, the murderer escaped from his captivity and ran to Belorussky Voksal. He tried to take his own life by throwing himself under the wheels of a train. Unfortunately, he was so distraught that he forgot to make sure that the train was moving first.
    The militsia arrested him on the spot. It remains a mystery why he was so upset - was it the symptoms of withdrawal or the fact that he killed his babushka?



GOOD NEIGHBOUR


    Capping off a bad week for pen- sioners is an unlikely affair. Relatives killing relatives happens all the time. Even if the victims are octogenarians, it fits an established Death Porn pattern.
    The following crime is also arguably a well- worn topic. Neighbor killing neighbor generally doesn't even warrant a mention on these pages. But sometimes even a cliched killing style can tweak us enough to reexamine what seemed to be a tired genre.
    The strange story of dedushka Sasha is just such a case. Just after the New Year began, the 83-year-old pensioner called up his neighbor to try and mooch a glass of vodka off him. The 60-year-old neighbor, not wanting to disrespect his elder, agreed right away.
     The two started drinking and, as so often happens, started fighting. When push came to shove, ded Sasha proved that he still had that little something extra. He emerged victorious from the fight, after stabbing his neighbor to death.
     That evening, the dead man's wife began to worry. She knew that he had gone to the old man's apartment for a drink, but hadn't hear anything from him since then. But, no one answered every time she rang ded Sasha's doorbell.
    So she waited. After two days, her suspicions couldn't contain them- selves any longer. She stood on a chair and looked into a window above ded Sasha's door. There, she saw him pacing back and forth, looking rather distraught.
    The militsia came and broke the door down. Sure enough, the body of her dead husband lay in ded Sasha's kitchen. Ded Sasha wasn't in full control of his mental faculties.
     Apparently, he doesn't know whether they still will make pension payments on time in Siberia.