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low-yield murder |
"skull-brain trauma" |
podyezd |
really stupid criminal |
children |
Russian Sports Connection |
murder-suicide |
cries for help ignored |
"investigation continuing" |
carved up like a turkey |
related to victim's job |
cannibalism |
riddled with bullets |
old people |
A Case of Nerves
It takes a lot for a suicide to get into Death Porn, but Mikhail Voznyuk, a security guard at MosFilm, managed this week with a quality effort. It's not so much how he did it, but the self-congratulatory fashion in which detectives in the Western okrug responded to it. According to the crypto-fascist police rag Petrovka-38 (which already scores points for making a suicide one of its lead stories in a city with dozens of unsolved murders), Voznyuk walked into an office party at Mosfilm last week dressed in a flak jacket and carrying a full complement of hand grenades, a knife, an ammunition belt, and a hand-made bomb. Patyers unmoved by his appearance invited him to sit down and have a drink.
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| "Well, at least I can still scratch my butt!" |
Voznyuk complied, toasted everyone present, then began wildly firing in the air with a gas pistol. Once he'd had everybody fully freaked out, he pulled out his real, loaded gun and shot himself in the head, ending the party. The cop-narrative in Petrovka-38 which described the rest of the story gives a classic insight into Russian law-enforcement psychology: "Operatives who arrived quickly on the scene determined that Voznyuk had in recent times displayed symptoms of disquietude...His pistol is now being checked by ballistics experts for possible connections to other crimes." Thank God for that. Now if they could only solve that Listyev thing...
You're Under Arrest, Let's Drink, Then I'll Kill You
Here's a heartening tale of law enforcement and justice that should please anyone who rides the Moscow Metro. This is an old case, but the trial only ended two weeks ago. It's a story with all the classic elements of modern Russian crime: an innocent bystander, a brutal, senseless murder, a suspect with bloody hands, an indifferent police force, and a resounding verdict of not guilty. Here it is in a nutshell:
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| "Hey, you know what? I think I'd really like to teabag this guy. Does that make me different?" |
on September 19, 1996, a 27 year-old named Konstantin Korovkin was returning home from his job as a worker at the "Bolshevik" textile factory when he was stopped by a patrolman at the Svetnoi Boulevard Metro stop. The patrolman gave him the usual spiel; he was checking for "adherence to the passport regime." As was later explained in court, the patrolman, Pavel Vyashyiev, had stopped Korovkin after becoming convinced on sight that young Korovkin was a "member of the Solntsevo mafia gang." Korovkin showed his passport, but Vyashiyev decided to detain him in the Metro's tiny holding cell. From here, Vyashiyev borrowed from the Reuters textbook of logical rhetoric, testifying that Korovkin then struck him on the head, after which Vyashiyev lost consciousness. When he awoke, Vyashiyev said, the suspect for some reason was still in the cell, loading Vyashiyev's own pistol and waving it wildly-until such time as the two settled down and agreed to have a drink. Then, while the two were sharing this merry moment together, a second officer, one Vasily Dikhtyruk, arrived to relieve Vyashishev from his post. "You've come to relieve me?" Vyasishev asked. "Yes," the former replied. "Then you're armed?" "Yes," the new cop replied, at which point Vyasishev took Dikhtyruk's pistol after a struggle and shot Korovkin twice in the chest, leaving him fatally wounded.
It later came out, in testimony from any number of police officers, that Vyasishev had been receiving treatment for schizophrenia for years. For which he was eventually vindicated on psychiatric grounds. In fact, Vyasishev had already written a letter of resignation three times, and returned to service each time. Which was fortunate for Dikhtyruk, who was due to receive his pension just months later. The fact that Korovkin had been shot with his gun didn't bother the police chiefs; he was given his pension a short time later. Meanwhile, a civil case against the police force brought by Korovkin's mother has just been thrown out; she received no compensation for the death.
The likely explanation for what happened, according to various news reports, is that both cops were frustrated in an attempt to shake down Korovkin for money, kept him around for a while, gave him a drink, threatened to press charges against him as a potential member of the Solntsevo gang. Then they got a little out of hand and shot him. Who knows. In any case, the moral of the story is; don't ride the Metro if you're tall, have short hair, and don't have money. Your mother won't get a return on her investment.
Love Letter to Brezhnev
You know what a love letter is? It's a bullet, right to your fucking head! You get a love letter from me, man, and you're fucked! That's what Frank said in Blue Velvet, and that's what he'd be saying two weeks ago on Kutuzovsky Prospekt, dom 26, Brezhnev's old house, where a young geek named Valery Mushon was capped in his Mercedes 180.
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| "No, officer,
I didn't fall asleep at the wheel.
Some jerk came up and put all these bullets in my head!" |
Mushon got his love letter just after he parked his car outside the "L'Oreal" salon, which was owned by his wife. This is a pretty ordinary story with the usual ingredients: Mercedes, Kalashnikov weapons fire, nightfall on a busy street, unsolved crime with no leads, etc., etc, but there was one subtle touch...even attentive crime fanatics like eXile editor Matt Taibbi, who lives in the building across the street, were able to sleep through the incident, since the perpetrators were kind enough to use silencers. And New Yorkers still haven't learned to keep their noisy car alarms under wraps. Who said Moscow isn't a livable city? Well, livable for most, anyway...
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