Detective Tales from the Soviet Union

Third Case

It happened in '91, which was a hard time. Levels of apathy and general unprofessionalism in Russia were off the charts back then, which played a role in this case. No one was sure about tomorrow and future of their country. It all began with a call from a very bad address for a very shitty reason. Apartment complex where it all happened can be seen on a photo I add to this post. For as long as I can remember this particular place was always considered bad and dangeros. But not because it had ghosts or some shit like that, of course. Reason was much simpler - it was a former dorm, that in those times was filled with people from the very bottom of society. Robberies, knifings and murders happened there regularly. Even I had a chance to see local, so to say, customs personally when I was a kid. I was riding my bycilcle nearby when a human head flew out of some window and landed around 30 meters away from me (according to rumors some drug addicts had an argument). But anyway, I am just telling this so that you would better understand what kind of atmosphere that place had and why I didn't go inside to make some photos for you (yes, I pissed myself).

Getting back on the topic, in one of the flats on the second floor a family was murdered. Said family consisted of a single mother, her 7 y.o. daughter and, as was found out later, a year old infant. They were extremely poor, and, according to the old lady living in the next apartment, (poor thing was nearly driven to a heart attack when she discovered the bodies) mother held no job, drank non-stop and often brought some suspicious men home. Daughter was practically homeless and never went to any sort of kindergarten or school. How did infant manage to survive in such a family is unclear (according to grandpa, you should divide anything those old Soviet grannies say by two if you want to get closer to the truth, but it all looked shitty non the less).

The door was slightly ajar, which allowed for bodies to by found. As for the bodies, at the first glance, it looked like a typical case of domestic violence. With some excessive force, though. Around 30 knife-wounds on each body. Wounds were a least 2 days old (criminology expert's theory was that those wounds were inflicted on the already dead bodies). Mother was killed in the kitchen. Signs of struggle were all around, furniture was overnurned, fridge handle torn off some dishes broken. A bottle of uncharacteristically expensive vodka and some rotting delicacies were picturesquely lying on the cheap, dilapidated table. Daughter, it looked, was killed in her sleep, because she was found in her bad in an embryo pose. No signs of resistance. As for the infant, no trace of him was found, except for a baby fence in his sister's room.

Infant's very existence was only corraborated by that same old lady (and later other neighbours) - no diapers, no baby food, no stroller, no birth sertificate, nothing (which is, considering the social status of that family, could be possible). But even the surface search of the apartment revealed a lot of interesting things. Not only the freezer was choke-full of expensive food and alcohol, there was also a very large sum of money hidden in the ice-box. Literally a few packs of money hidden inside the cheap wrappings (which was a normal way to hide money and valuables from possible robbers those days). But what were they doing here in the apartment of these piss-poor people? That raised some questions, because connection between those valuables and deaths was obvious.

Further questionings of the neighbours and local alcoholics in the yard clarified three important things. First of all, murdered woman was popular here, if you know what I mean, and her door was usually open. Second, according to a score of wintesses, a strange man started to visit her in the last week. He clearly wasn't local, and even though descriptions slightly varied from witness to witness, they painted a certain picture: uncertain age, completely bald head, always in a same brown three-piece suit, patent leather shoes and a bow tie. In short, he looked like he was loaded with some dough. No one could provide investigators with any distinctive details of his physical apperance or face. Such people rarely, if ever, visited this place (and it is a whole separate question as to why didn't anyone try to rob or just beat him up, cause that kind of people was not too popular in that house, to say the absolute bloody least). Many people saw him entering the apartment complex and victim's flat, but no one saw him leave. Another thing was suspect's interesting and unusual manner of speech. According to people who talked to him, it was florid, artsy, old-fashioned and extremely polite. Sadly, no one could quite recall what that man asked them about (though all witnesses could recall that he had some questions), which wasn't completely unusual in such places, since inhabitants were usually drunk or on something. He was seen at least three times in the last week, though by the time Militsiya arrived he wasn't seen there for three days straight. And, finally, the third important piece of info, - the moment this man started to come to this apartment comples, victim stopped to "recieve visitors" and her flat, for the first time in years, fell silent. No shouts, no loud noises, no baby cries.

So yes, infant's existence was finally corraborated by the accounts of most witnesses, but no one remembered dead woman ever being pregnant. Bodies then were brought to a coroner (when they were loading them into the car, it looked as if every bone in those bodies was broken, basically behaved like a couple of rag dolls), further search of the apartment didn't provide investigators with any additional details (no signs of forced entry, no traces of blood except for those of the victims). The bottle of vodka and glasses on the table were, of course, checked for fingerprints, but only prints that belonged to the victim were found. Doorknobs in her flat gave such a wild range of different "fingers", that experts exhausted themselves to no end just by comparing every set with what they had in their data-bases. In any case, almost all fingerprints belonged to local low-lifes who haven't seen her for at least two weeks. Now, coroner's report was much more fucking interesting. Indeed, injuries on the bodies were inflicted when victims were already dead for around a day at that point. But this is not the interesting thing. Autopsy showed that every bone in their bodies, except for the skull and cervical vertebrae, became extremely brittle and were, basically heavily damaged by fuck knows what. They certainly weren't broken by the blunt trauma, since there were no traces of such damage on the bodies themselves, not to mention that it would be a very tiring process, breaking every tiny bone in human body (also bodies would look like a couple of torn bloody bags after that).

Damage dealt to the bones reminded local Militsiya expert of the effects of highly concentrated hydrofluoric acid, but there were two big problems with this theory. First, hydrofluoric acid of such concentration would have left extreme fucking chemical burns (considering that all of mother's and daughter's bones were heavily damaged, they had to take a bath in that acid to achieve such effect), but there were no surface traces of that. Second, this acid leaves such a chemical bouquet in human body, that tests would surely have identified it, but the only irregular thing about their bones was a critical lack of calcium and that was that.

At the same time the tests were conducted, a call came from one of the witnesses, interrogated earlier. He saw the suspect, entering boiler-house near that apartment complex. Not wasting any time, my grandfather got two operatives and moved out. Door to that boiler-house teritory was indeed open (whether it was lockpicked by the suspect or just left unclosed by the sloppy workers was never found out, but according to all regulations that door must have been locked). On the photos you can see that very boiler-house. Kindly forgive me for not trying to get inside. There is an actual lock hanging there now and trying to climb over the concrete walls with barbed wire is not my idea of fun.

So, grandpa went there and met two middle-aged women working inside (by the way, there supposed to be 5 or 6 personnel working at all times, according to regulations, this is probably the reason why something blew up inside when I was a kid). They were noticably twitchy and were not acting normal, as if afraid. When questioned about the suspect, they nervously laughed and denied any knowledge about him. "The way they tried to bullshit me was pretty cartoonish" - accoding to my grandpa.

But at that point my gramps didn't give much of a fuck about them, just left one of his operatives there to watch the main entrance and those two. The other one of his subordinates he took with him to more effectively conduct the search of the area. By the way, building was pretty fucked up. It, as you can see from the photos, is very old and multi-tiered. So everywhere there was moisture, rust and only one out of every ten light bulbs was working, so they had to get the flashlights. In the far corner of that building, one that probably no one visited for years, baby's loose jacket was found, hanging between the interweaving pipes. Grandpa and his subordinate started to frantically search everywhere in the area, they literally looked under every single pipe in that building, but found nothing. Even the criminology expert who arrived later had no luck with fingerprints or any prints what so ever. Baby's jaket had no traces of blood on it, or any other traces at all. It looked so clean as if it was just recently washed. Two women were called later for questioning, one of them kept stating that she saw or knew nothing and the other disappeared after the very first interrogation. As her melancholic drunkard of a husband said later, she just left home without even packing any of her belongings. Despite all the numerous questions Militsiya asked her husband and collegue, despite checking all possible conections, nothing gave any result. For all intents and purposes those women were completely normal. Even their fingerprints were taken and compared to those found in victim's flat, but this naturally ended with failure. At that point the case came to a grinding halt and it seemed that there was nowhere left to dig.

Suddenly, a month later, another call came from the same apartment complex, from the same old lady who found the bodies. According to her, faint sounds of crying were coming from now sealed apartment where murders took place. Operative-investigatory group answered the call. My gramps told me that he almost physically felt surrealism of the situation. Sealed door of the dead apartment had no signs of forced entry, and gramps indeed heard a faint sound of baby crying inside. It took them half an hour to get inside the apartment, and indeed an infant was found there. Only he had no eyes. I mean there was no blood or anything. Just no eyes. As was later found out, they were surgically removed from his sockets. A thin layer of pink skin was covering places were eyes should have been with tiny scars marking them, as if after plastic surgery. No injuries or pathologies beyond that were found. If you are curious about his fate he was first brought to children hospital, then to an orphanage for infants. I don't know what happened to him later, but I suggest he had a very unhappy life, though I am curious if anything else strange happened to him.

So it goes, gentlemen. I am tired as fuck typig all of this (translator's note: imagine what it's like typing AND translating it, bitch), but I will add my grandpa's theory and a couple of my own thoughts non the less. His theory was that infant was basically bought from his alcoholic mother by that guy in a three-piece suit. But something went wrong with the deal and lead to him killing the mother and the daughter as a witness. Method of murder itself was much less clear. Let's suppose knife wounds were either a way to lead the investigation on the wrong path (though murderer seemed too clever to think that they would fool the experts, considering that he clearly knew how not to leave any traces of his presence) or mask a way that bone-damaging substance entered the body. Though injuries on both bodies seemed very random. Some parts of bodies were covered with injuries, while others were left untouched. And again, experts had no idea what kind of poison could have such an effect without leaving any traces. Next thing, who would leave such a huge sum of money to a corpse? There really was a fuckload of money there and only some poor woman who drank away her brains could think that no one would find them. But fact is a fact, money was there. How to tie it in with those two women from the boiler-house I have no fucking idea. By the way, the one that left never came back, my grandpa often returned to this case and checked for any new information about her possible whereabouts. I guess, someone managed to scare them really good. But there is no way to know now, really. And fuck if I know what that baby jacket was doing there.

Next. The infant. Where did the victim get him? Was he stolen? Left on her doorstep? Scars from such things as eye-removal don't heal in a mere month, as you might know. Was it some other baby, but how and why? Also, those who saw the child before all this happened, stated that he had a birthmark on the right side of his forehead. Baby with no eyes had exact same birthmark. I guess, getting inside the sealed apartment wasn't much of a challenge, since the killer might have had the keys. But even without all that, I think there are many mysterious things about this story.

That's it. You might fling some shit at me, because this case didn't have much in terms of paranormal, but believe me, next case has it in spades.

© 1996 Archive66