Issue #12/67, June 17 - July 1, 1999  

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

IN THE WORLD OF (HUMAN) ANIMALS

Pretty soon Russian nature show hosts will be able to slash their travel budgets with total confidence--and not see the slightest drop in programming quality. After all, why film carnivores in a Sumatran jungle, when your own

"But I'm supposed to be black! Let me go, nothing's wrong with me!"

home city of Moscow has enough monsters to fill your show's time slot from now through the next century? Just a few weeks ago, the budgetary argument hit close to home in the offices of the popular show "In the World of Animals (V Mire Zhivotnikh)", when the program's chief accountant was assassinated in her Podmoskovniy apartment.

According to Moskovsky Komsomolets, accountant Marina Adamenko was relaxing at her home in the town of Reutov at 9 p.m. on the night of May 26 when a knock came at the door. As they always do, the victim opened the door. Standing there was the (as yet unknown) killer who immediately fired three pistol shots into the woman's chest. Then, as is the habit of professional assassins these days (note the new icon), the killer entered the apartment and fired a "control shot (kontroniy vuistrel)" into the victim's head. That was that, and there was nothing anybody could do about it. The apartment was subsequently burgled, but according to the newspaper, police believe this was done just to give the appearance of a robbery motive. Authorities subsequently came to the surprising conclusion that Adamenko's murder was connected in some mysterious way with her professional activities.

Adamenko was the accountant for the Association of Popular Scientific Programming, whose flagship shows include the World of Animals program and "Traveller's Club". Her colleagues at Ostankino have insisted since her killing that the association's finances were in order, and that the motive for the murder is best sought out outside the realm of her duties for state television. Given ORT's crystal clean, contract-murder free past, we're inclined to believe them. Incidentally, the investigation is continuing, and police have "every confidence" that the killer will soon be apprehended.

NICE, QUIET NEIGHBORS

No crime involved here, but this is nonetheless a nice little story about

"Boy would I love to lick my girlfriend's sweaty hood!"

modern Russian neighborliness. On Tuesday, June 8, workers who had been sent to repair the facade of a residential building in the suburban city of Shelkov made an interesting discovery as they repelled from the roof of the 5-story Khrushyevka. Lying on its side on the balcony of an apartment on corner of the building was a mummy--a human mummy, still in its clothes. The body was completely withered and dry, and the bones were clearly visible beneath the body's leathery skin. Cops were called. Shelkov forensic technicians established that the body, which belonged to the apartment's 58 year-old owner, a Mr. Brykin, had been decomposing for 4 years. Moskovsky Komsomolets called it a new record for neighborly indifference. The paper said that Brykin had last been seen in 1995, when he visited the insane asylum in the Severo-Posadsky region to seek treatment for depression. According to neighbors, he disappeared shortly afterward, although his smell, according to the discovering workers, remained.

HE SAVED THE LAST BULLET FOR HIMSELF

So read the headline in "Segodnya", which this past Tuesday reported a singular occurrence in Gorky Park over the weekend. Here's what happened: a 23 year-old Sergeant of yet another subdivision in the Moscow police alphabet soup--the Department of Unaffiliated Security (OVO)--was working with his partner guarding the offices of the Russian-Swiss joint venture "Galika". When a superior officer arrived to make sure the two were at the posts, he found the sergeant, Alexander Vasliyev, missing, and unearthed Vaslieyev's partner drunk upstairs in the building. He'd hardly had time to beat the junior officer when he heard a commotion outside; some people in the park were screaming that a man in a police uniform was waving a gun and firing in the air. The sober superior went downstairs to discover Vasiliyev in a clearly deranged condition, waving his service pistol and screaming at passersby. Spotting his superior, Vasilyev wasted no time in firing his gun in his direction. He ended up wounding two bystanders before turning the gun on himself, plugging a shot into his own temple. According to the paper, the cops remain at a loss to explain this bizarre scene; Vasiliyev apparently had a good service record, and seldom drank. The eXile mourns this loss of one of Moscow's finest.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

When Mom came home, her 8 year-old son had a story to tell her. He said one of his friends had confided in him that he sometimes took trips to the Kuntsevo region to visit a "vsrosliy dyadya (grownup uncle)" and have sex with him. And

"I know we've been here for twenty-six years, but I promised myself I wouldn't leave until I score!"

not only with him, but with other nice grownup men, and other boys his age. Tears, panic, a trembling phone call: within minutes Mom had sicked the Dorogomilovsky police precinct on the "grownup" in Kuntsevo. A full-scale scandal unfolded, as cops discovered a veritable treasure trove of man-boy pornography, on CD and on video, in the house of the 23 year-old identified by the boy's friend. At least four other boys, aged 8-14, had been recorded having sex with each other, and with the adult suspect. But that was just the beginning. According to the police, the culprit had posted still and moving porno shots of the boys on the internet, underneath an advertisement calling upon Western gentlemen to fly in to Moscow to meet the young actors, or purchase tapes or CDs. Records indicated sales to Italy, Spain and the U.S., and the suspect apparently admitted to having arranged meetings with Western visitors. The suspect apparently met boys at train and metro stations, bought them ice cream and the usual sweets, took them, significantly, to McDonald's, and then led them home to close the deal. Here also is an interesting detail: the first twenty minutes of the tapes the cops seized were disguised with political advertisements for Vladimir Zhirinovsky. The tapes, which were laid out with a classical music track, had a list price of 90 bucks apiece; the CDs went for $105. Cops found an accomplice, who quickly managed to get himself checked into a hospital for observation; he subsequently killed himself by jumping out the room's 7th-story window. Other culprits, including the foreign customers, remain at large. The investigation is, as they say, continuing.