Issue #04/59, February 25 - March 10, 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	"Mark Ames"

Don' Worry 'Bout It!

Maybe The Moscow Times is right. Maybe things aren't as bad as they say. Business is booming, their circulation is increasing, real estate is starting

"I was afraid that when you woke up just now, you'd regret having taken me home last night from the Duck. But I can see by the expression in your face that I was wrong. Oh, hug me!"

to look up, and the exodus of foreigners hasn't only halted, but it looks set to reverse! Yippee!

Sure, they probably didn't tell you that there's a serial murderer loose in central Moscow. But don't worry about it. It's no big deal, really. We barely noticed it ourselves, buried as the article was-all three paragraphs of it-in the bottom left corner of page one in last Thursday's Moskovsky Komsomolets. Since December, police estimate that he has killed "around" ten women between the ages of 20 and 25, all in the central and western regions of Moscow. The suspect works by offering to walk home his intended victim, then attacks them in the elevator, where he rapes and strangles them. He often steals their coats, documents and money. Most of his victims have not yet been identified. The suspect is said to be about 25 years old, 175cm tall, and, in spite of the fact that he's raped and murdered ten women in two months right in your very own neighborhood, our advice is... don't worry 'bout it!

Grrrls Will Be Grrrls

Women's day is coming up, during the timeframe of this issue, so there's no reason that we shouldn't celebrate the better sex. For, as we know, women aren't crudely phallologocentric; rather, their thought process is, like the female genitalia, many-layered, subtle, more than merely logical, exuding a certain juissance, as it were.

Police sketch of the man suspected of raping and murdering 10 women in central Moscow over the past two months.

"Sir, don't blame me for this. Doctors don't tear lips. People do."

Somehow, the phallologocentric males succeeded in capturing Zina and Sonya. But that's probably just because of the oppressive nature of this phallologocentric culture they live in. Can anyone say "Spice Power"?

A Day In The Life Of Womyn

Okay, so maybe that was a little rough. Forget about it. Let's close our eyes, pick a time and a place, and see what we come up with on the theme of womyn in crime. The place: Primorsky Krai. The time: one 24-hour period. Let's see what we come up with here. The source: Kriminalnaya Khronika.

In this period, Vladivostok police detained a 26-year-old womyn who managed to stab three men, ages 19, 20 and 23. Hell, they probably had it coming to them! The youngest died of his injuries shortly after the stabbings. Onto Ussuriisk, where two women were detained for robbing apartments. Among their

"Death Porn, Death Porn. My kingdom for a cameo in Death Porn!"

most recent, er hits, were a 70-year-old grandmother, whose head they smashed in, and whose apartment they cleaned of money, and another pensioner who nearly died from fright while they robbed her. Do I hear "more!"? Here we go! In the village of Pogranichny, police detained a 42-year-old woman after she severely beat an 85-year-old pensioner. He survived with broken ribs, a concussion and head wounds. All in a day's work, folks. So celebrate this March 8th! The better sex keeps getting better all the time.

They Came, They Saw, They Sawed Off

Let's start with the good news. The cops solved the mystery of the chopped-up cripple, half of whom was found on his stairwell on Kutuzovsky Prospekt, and the other half in his car.

Now the, er, news. According to Tuesday's Moskovsky Komsomolets, the victim was a kind of budding Jeffrey Lebowski Sr., someone who, in spite of his disabilities, went out and achieved anyway. He set up a small-time brokerage house selling bonds, and hired a 28-year-old Muscovite as his assistant. The assistant became privy to the budding entrepreneur's commercial secrets... such

"H'm, maybe if I'd shaven a stripe I'd still be alive today!"

as, where and how much money he kept. So he enlisted a friend of his to play the role of "partner in crime." They came over to the cripple's apartment one day in mid-January, strangled him, and took $3,000 from his safe. You'd think "bingo, that's it!"

But a few days later, they started worrying about the body. You know, might stink the place up, raise a few eyebrows. So they went back, dragged his body into the bathtub and, using a knife, cut him up into pieces. Just as they were leaving, wouldn'tcha knowit but who should show up? His social worker! Even here in Russia they have social workers. The killers, holding the body parts in bags and panicking, burst past the social worker and fled. They ditched one bag with the torso and arms in the stairwell, then stuffed the other bag with head and legs in the deceased's Zhiguli automobile, parked in the courtyard, before fleeing.

At the end of last week, one of the killers was caught, while the other reportedly gave himself a hot dose of heroin rather than surrender. Hey, fellas, get a grip, will ya?