Issue #21/102, Oct 26 - Nov 9, 2000   

low-yield murder	"control shot"	podyezd	really stupid criminal	children	cries for help ignored	murder-suicide
"investigation continuing"	carved up like a turkey	related to victim's job	cannibalism	riddled with bullets	old people	Hunger-related murder

WELL, WE KILLED SOMEBODY, AT LEAST!

Here’s a heartwarming story coming to you straight outta Khimki, the famous “suburb of Moscow” which is home to that ultimate symbol of Russian cultural advancement, the Ikea store. As it happens, Ikea isn’t the only business in Khimki-it’s not even the only large one. There is also, for instance, the Lavochkina Scientific-Industrial Union, a legendary aerospace institute. All kinds of people work at Lavochkina, including people who qualify as possibly worth killing, like scientists, engineers, and academics, and people who quaklify as almost definitely not worth killing, like maids, clerks, and archivists. 67 year-old Anna Ignatova was in the latter category. She was a creaky old woman whose whole life was destined to pass by like a fart in the wind, without anyone noticing or caring. A life of

“Halloween is no excuse for drunk driving... And whaddya think, should I have my highlights redone?”

quiet, squalid anonymity, mostly spent in an office full of metal shelves and moldy manila folders. She might have reached the end of this life without having ever attracted any notice, had not fate intervened to give her a speaking part in the play. Actually, it wasn’t a speaking part, but more like a falling part. Here’s what happened, according to Moskovsky Komsomolets. At 8 a.m. on Wednesday, October 18, an assassin walked into Ignatova’s podyezd and began walking up the stairs. As soon as he reached Ignatova’s apartment, he pulled out a TT pistol and shot her in the head. Ignatova, for her part, died. The killer proceeded to calmly walk down the stairs. On the way out, he rain into one Vilen Galaninsky, an engineer from the Lavochkina NPO. Galaninsky had a habit of walking his dog around eight o’clock every morning, and it was just too darned bad for him that the dog finished its business on time that day, because the killer, upon spotting him, decided not to leave a living witness. He shot the dog-walking engineer dead, and then fled.

Police arrived on the scene quickly and quickly determined that a mistake had been made. The killing was clearly a contract hit, yet the humble nature of Ignatova’s responsibilities at work excluded her from serious consideration as a deserving hit victim. The more likely explanation for what had happened, police concluded, was that the killer was near-sighted. Apparently a businesswoman of some stature lived in Ignatova’s podyezd. The only thing was, the businesswoman was about twenty years younger. Sloppy, sloppy. The investigation is continuing.

ALL INSIDE MY MOTHER

Puberty, as we all know, is a difficult time. Chemicals surge through our lean, flush bodies, filling us will all sorts of confusing urges. After a childhood of sheltered innocence we begin to feel an unclean hunger for the opposite sex. For us boys, the thought of little girls and their bodies drives us mad. The mystery of their sex, located down there, holds an irresistible attraction for us. The only difficult part is going outside and foraging for it on our own. As awkward and frightened as we are, it seems impossible to even conceive of some nice girl at school allowing us voluntarily to explore our terrible urges through the medium of her body. The thought is so daunting that, if we were meek enough and protected enough as children, we begin to think of alternatives. Yes, a young, fresh girl is what we’re after. But the female sex, that whole world down there... well, we might already have it at home. In Mom. Particularly if we have no brothers and sisters, and no father, the distance across the hallway at night begins to seem ever smaller and smaller...

“I used to be a Gerard Depardieu impersonator. Now I’m just dead!”

According to Moskovsky Komsomolets, a 17 year-old Russian boy who had fled to Moscow as a refugee from Grozny had had particular trouble with his sexual development-trouble that left him with an axe in his head. The boy had come to Moscow with his 47 year-old mother. In Grozny, where they had simply lived as a single mother and son, their lives had apparently been more or less normal, although the mother might have been a little overprotective of her son. But once they moved to Moscow, the nightmares began. Little shnookums began to visit Momat night and rape her over and over again. After a while they began to live like a couple, the boy oblivious and indulgent, the mother increasingly murderous. Finally, the mother at some point met a neighbor, a 44 year-old ex-policeman, and asked him to knock off her baby. The ex-cop agreed to the job-for $50, or the sum of the woman’s savings. The price is immaterial, you might say, as a man of honor might do the job just to rid the world of a brutal young rapist. But get this: the cop didn’t even know what Mom’s real motive was. He just wanted the fifty bucks. So he took an axe, went to the boy’s house, and split his head open.

When the police arrive, they noticed immediately that the mother was not all that concerned about the boy’s death. In fact, she seemed more concerned that some documents might have disappeared during the crime. The cops smelled a rat and quickly put in the screws. Mom coughed up the whole story, and two days after the murder, she was arrested. The assassin was charged the next day. At least her own son won’t get to her in prison!

A HAPPY STORY

“This is the thanks I get for being Ajay Goyal’s secret gay lover!”

And now, for a gruesome story about Russian police interrogative techniques that actually ends happily. Well, happily for someone, anyway. In a rare case of Russian justice reversing the aims of, well, Russian justice, a Moscow court last week released a 40 year-old woman accused of organizing the murder of her husband on the grounds that her confession had been beaten out of her. The evidence, provided by the prison hospital, was hard to refute: a broken foot, whip marks on her ass, a fractured arm, severe contusions around the ankles, and other various injuries. Begrudgingly recognizing that the conviction had not been honestly won, the court set her free; she cannot be indicted again.

The ironic thing is that the woman was probably guilty. The body of the woman’s husband was found on April 22, 1999, with 17 stab wounds in it. Police investigating the crime learned quickly that the couple quarreled frequently and loudly and were unable to divorce due to an inability to resolve a dispute over who would get both their 2-room apartment and their jointly-owned Mitsubishi Lancer. The woman apparently had a special connection with that Lancer. Police tracked down several men to whom the woman had offered $2000 to do the murder, but each of these men had rejected the offer. Whoever took the money and did the job disappeared without a trace. The failure to find the killer was another mitigating circumstance considered by the court, which saw fit to let the woman free to look for love again. Love. We all deserve it, don’t we?