Issue #06/61, March 25 - April 7, 1999  

low-yield murder	"skull-brain trauma"	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	homosexual

Chikatilo-be

Kids these days. It used to be that they'd dream of growing up to become a Yuri Gagarin, a Zoya What's-her-name-skaya, or even a Leonid Brezhnev. Not anymore. Nowadays, it's all about being a serial murderer.

This month's issue of Kriminalnaya Khronika takes us to the small Latvian town of Glubena, located 180 east of the capital Riga, where a feller by the name of Alexander Koryakov decided that he wanted to challenge the great serial murderer's feats, and then some. According to Gulbensky regional chief of police Gunar Betlers, Koryakov, who is only nineteen years old, had completed two years of law studies before suddenly throwing it all away, Tolstoy-like, to pursue his new goal. "He tells us that he wanted to surpass

"Ta-da! Surprised to see me? I'm the corpse you've been seeking for the last eleven months. Thanks for digging me up! So, how do I look? Don't lie, I want you to be totally, brutally honest."

Chikatilo's record and become famous for it," Betlers told reporters.

Just over a month ago, Koryakov started casing a local kindergarten. He bought a knife and a hatchet, and for a week straight he studied the school's daytime routine. Then he struck, killing a certain Vika, aged five, Nastya, aged six, and Olya, aged seven. He was caught within an hour after the first murder spree, thanks to witnesses. Proving once again that Chikatilo, like all masters, made it look a lot easier than it really was.

It Made Perfect Cents

In a famous memo leaked to the press some time ago, former World Bank chief and now Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Treasury Lawrence Summers was quoted as advocating moving toxic and polluting industry from rich nations to poor nations, since individuals in rich nations contributed more to the world economy, and therefore, as economic units, were more valuable to the Global Village than poor people.

Well, it takes a while for hot knowledge like that to trickle down, but if the example of a pair of tenth graders from Novosibirsk is any indication, Larry's Logic is reaching even the farthest corners of the earth.

Here's what happened. The two fifteen year old entrepreneurs decided to get rich-and not by some stupid lemonade stand. They knew that the Bondarenko family had money, so they decided to clean their flat. They bought a pistol and a silencer, went over the Bondarenko house while the parents were out, and iced their two sons, aged eight and thirteen. They dragged their bodies out onto the balcony, cleaned up the blood, then tore the apartment apart, looking for the loot. Guess what they came away with? A whopping 50 rubles! That is, 25 rubles, or just over one dollar, per life.

If that doesn't inspire hope in Russia's future generation, the first unspoiled by all that rotten communist brainwashing, then maybe this will: both boys came from upstanding families. One's father is the chairman of a local school department, and the other's is a naval officer. Both boys face 10 years in the prison colony.

Union Carbide officials, when contacted, would only say that they are "excited" about the prospect of opening up a poison gas plant in a residential district in Novosibirsk "where a life is worth a mere dollar." Gary Peach, when contacted, said he was glad and that they got what they deserved.

Let's Make A Deal

This is one of those straight-forward ugly murder tales, infused with all the gory comedy of Fargo, that makes for good death porn filler. It appears in Monday's Moskovsky Komsomolets, and concerns a 38-year-old Georgian named Otari Arakhamiya.

In 1995, Arakhamiya traded his two room apartment on Ulitsa Gazoprovod in

"Of course I'm okay! Never been better! I just hope that my husband's fists are all right. The last time he did this, he nicked himself."

exchange for another family's studio apartment plus ten thousand dollars. After that, the family, which remains unnamed, became tight pals with Arakhamiya, inviting him over to his old apartment for drinking and company. For some reason, the new owners never changed the front door locks, and never stopped to wonder if their new bestest buddy Arakhamiya might have kept a key for himself.

During last year's May holidays, at a time when Arakhamiya found himself deep in a financial hole, the father and wife of the family left for a holiday in Switzerland, leaving behind their nine-year old son Nikita and his grandmother. On May 7th, Arakhamiya entered his old flat unannounced. Using a dumb-bell, he beat the grandmother in the head right before her grandson's eyes, killing her. Then Arakhamiya turned to little Nikita and mercilessly smashed his head in. He then searched the apartment and came away with seven g's. Upon leaving, he locked the door behind him.

The bodies were discovered two days later, on Victory Day, by Nikita's parents. Arakhamiya, who still denies guilt (idiot, you don't lock the door behind you if you're the only one with the key! Duh!), was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison, eighteen of those twenty-five in hard labor. Just recently, his final court appeal was rejected by Russia's Supreme Court.

Daddy Deadest

Who says that Russia is a pedophile's paradise? Not us. For one thing, the Hungry Duck is closed. For another thing, some nasty daddy-ped just got his frickin' head blown off for taking things a little too far with his lil' 'un.

According to a spokesman from the Vykhino OVD, the offending father was a director of a produce firm that specialized in eggs. Meaning, the guy was loaded. He had a daughter who lived in Saratov with his ex-wife, whom he divorced 12 years ago.

Last July, he was taking his eighteen-year-old daughter out to the dacha for the usual summer romp. On the way, he asked his daughter to introduce him to some of her friends. When none of them turned out to be the egg-trader's "type," he decided to rape his daughter. And rape her and rape her and rape her. He'd fly into Saratov and rape her once or twice a day. And pay her for it. Because her mother only earned 500 rubles a month, the daughter came to

"No, I'm not upset that they put me in Death Porn. In fact, I enjoy its dark, absurdist spirit and irreverent humor."

rely on that money.

In January, her father turned the heat up and forced her to move to Moscow with him. They lived together like wife and husband, until two Fridays ago, when he forced her to perform oral sex on him. That was the last straw. Two nights later, his daughter grabbed his IZh-27 hunting shotgun, stuck it up to his snoring face, and blew his head off. She was arrested at the scene of the crime.

Contract Murder Market Soars!

Every day for the past few weeks, Russia's stock market has been breaking new post-August devaluation highs. If that's not an auspicious sign, then perhaps this is: contract murders are also breaking new highs--and vascular systems--according to the past week's pages of Moskovsky Komsomolets.

On March 12th, a man walked into the Nezhinskoye billiards club on Ulitsa Odnoimennaya, greeted a 32-year-old director of a ceramics tile trading firm named Dmitriev, kissed him hello, had a few drinks, chewed the fat, then popped him three times before calmly walking away and dishing the pistol. No one--neither the barmen, waitresses, billiards supervisors or customers--could remember what the killer looked like.

At 11:30pm on the same day, on Ulitsa Chicherina, a thirty-eight year old Mr. Krupko parked his Skoda, walked into his podyezd (where else?), where he was shot by two hit men point-blank with TT pistols. Krupko, who worked in real estate--one of the most dangerous businesses in Russia--reportedly crawled out into the street, crying "Help!" before taking a ride in The Great Skoda In The Sky, leaving behind a wife and two kids.

The next day, Saturday, March 13th, at 10:45 p.m., a Mr. Pakhanov parked his Audi-100 on Ulitsa Lobanova, headed towards his podyezd, where, via a single bullet to the chest, he was transported to the Great Audi-100 In The Sky, there to forever race Krupko in Eternal Western-Standard Automobile Heaven. Pakhanov was the director of the "Krossn-Market", and his murder is thought to be connected to his business activities.

Lastly, another "don't get too friendly with your neighbor, especially if he's Georgian" morality tale. On March 17th, at 7:30pm, a Georgian macaroni trader named Mr. Dvalishvili and his neighbor and friend, a 50 year old female artist-designer, headed up to their podyezd at Ulitsa Plantovskaya Dom 4, pressed the code, entered, then stepped into the elevator. That's when things went bad. Someone inside opened fire, dropping the Georgian for good, and leaving the innocent artist badly wounded. Sort of an "artist imitating death" thing, we guess.

As MK notes at the end of the article, "Finding the contract killers will be problematic." Indeed.