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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 |
Tax Collection Blues, Part I
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Message to the IMF: you've got this whole budget deficit thing all wrong. The reason the Russian government isn't pulling in the revenue it needs is that it keeps killing its citizens prematurely. Case in point: according to the monthly newspaper Kriminalnaya Khronika, a 16-year-old boy was killed in Volgograd last month by a streetcar ticket collector when he tried to escape payment of a 10-ruble fine for fare-dodging. In an effort to step up transportation revenue collection, the city had recently beefed up its ranks of kontrolyeri [ticket-collectors]; by the end of the summer, they frequently travelled in pairs, rather than alone, making it more difficult for welchers to escape. In the incident in question, two kontrolyeri had come across a group of schoolkids who didn't have tickets, and when the boys tried to escape, the badge-carryers knocked one of them down, causing him to hit his head against the stairs. He died shortly afterward of a massive hemhorrage. The two kontrolyeri then did the right thing: they both tried to flee. One succeeded, but the other was caught by the angry mob in the tram and turned over to the police. At the time of writing, Volgograd courts have not yet decided what charges to file. For the IMF's sake, let's hope the police managed to lift those 10 rubles out of the victim's pocket and send it on to the state budget where it belongs.
Seek and Ye Shall Find
Don't let anyone tell you this whole crisis thing is all bad for Russia. On the contrary, there's an awful lot of good that can come out of a thing like mass hunger and desperation. Just ask the good folks out in the Moscow suburb of Losinny Ostrov, who might still be looking for a pair of missing schoolgirls had hard times not forced half of Russia out onto the streets in search for food. According to Moskovsky Komsomolets, a group of hungry citizens was hunting for mushrooms in a remote woody area near the Ivanovskogo cemetery in the Khimki region when they came upon the bodies of the two girls,
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| "Train travel may be cheaper, but it sure is a bumpy ride!" |
The two bodies were almost completely unclothed, with the hands of one bound with scotch tape and the other bound with a necktie. Forensic examination showed both had been raped and then killed two days before the bodies were discovered. Police quickly identified the victims as matching the descriptions of two schoolgirls who had been reported missing from a Losinny Ostrov school the week before. No word yet on whether this is the work of another serial killer. One thing's for sure: murderers are going to have to start working a lot harder to dispose of bodies in the post-crisis era, or at least find places where no one's going to go looking for mushrooms, berries, or edible bark and shoots.
Tax Collection Blues, Part II
Message to the IMF: you've got this whole budget deficit thing all wrong. The problem isn't that Russians aren't paying their taxes. The problem is that businessmen are killing the tax collectors. Yes, that's right; according to Kriminalnaya Khronika, police in the town of Usolo-Sibirsk have arrested a local fruit and vegetable dealer for the murder of Sergei Vedernikov, a major in the local tax police. Vedernikov had been killed in 1996 in the usual contract fashion, shot through the neck on his way out of his podyezd. Police had no leads on the crime until one of the hired killers was arrested in connection with another case and gave up two accomplices who had helped with the hit. That confession led to the revelation that Vedernikov's murder had been ordered by a 33-year-old woman who had been threatened with arrest by the tax chief, who refused to take a bribe. Armed with this information, police quickly tied the woman, whose name has not been released, to an earlier murder of yet another tax official, inspector Gennady Yegorov, shot dead in 1995. The cops also found out that that the local Lady MacBeth had ordered the shooting of a 44-year-old woman who sold ice cream in the area and had refused to cede her place on the street to the murderess's employees. That woman survived, forcing the three men to return their fee of 30 million old rubles, which is what they'd been paid for both tax inspector hits. Early interviews with the suspect indicate that she was fundamentally opposed to what she called a "severe" tax burden on her small business.
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