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- Strangled for the sake of a record player: murder of Muscovite woman solved 48 years later
Strangled for the sake of a record player: murder of Muscovite woman solved 48 years later
The murder of a Muscovite woman committed in 1976 in an apartment on Ferganskaya Street remained unsolved for almost half a century. Then the criminal strangled 62-year-old Zoya Kuzmina, stealing a Fidelity music player, valuables and 150 rubles (at that time the monthly salary of an employee) from the apartment. They prefer not to talk about how operatives of the GUUR of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia and investigators of the Investigative Committee of the Investigation Committee identified the alleged murderer after 48 years, limiting themselves to the wording "fingerprints matched". Exclusive details of the long-standing case - in the material "Izvestia".
Announcement in the newspaper
In November 1976, the family Kuzminyh published in an advertising supplement to the newspaper ad for sale for 500 rubles imported record player "Fidelity" and light-colored furniture set. The ad was answered by a man who soon came to the house 15 building 1 on Ferganskaya Street to look at the furniture and evaluate the sound-playing equipment brought from England. From the case materials it follows that the potential buyer was called an avid music lover, but said that he had no money with him. The man said that he was working on a rotational basis in the North and was expecting a money transfer from his wife tomorrow.
The next day Zoya Kuzmina was on the phone with her relative when the doorbell rang. As Kuzmina's interlocutor later recalled, she said: "This strange man who wants to buy a record player but has no money has come again." At that moment the movers were in the apartment, taking out a furniture set that had already been sold to another buyer for 150 rubles. Forty minutes later, the relative called Zoya Kuzmina again, but the phone was no longer answered. The alarmed woman appealed to the police, whose officers found the body with signs of strangulation.
"He beat the owner - 62-year-old home front worker, strangled her and fled. Hardware, a leather suitcase, crystal dishes and other property were stolen from the dwelling. It was not possible to identify and detain the intruder on hot trails," - said the official representative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia Irina Volk about the long-standing tragedy. Also, 150 rubles, proceeds from the sale of furniture, disappeared from the apartment.
Hovered at the scene of the murder
Despite the fact that the movers described the suspect in great detail and his sketch was drawn up, it was not possible to apprehend the criminal on hot tracks.
Meanwhile, criminalists faithfully performed their work - at the scene of the murder the criminal left fingerprints, which were recorded in the police card index. The USSR collapsed, the militia changed its name to the police, and the dactyloscopic card was waiting for its time. Recently at the next check it was unexpectedly found out that with prints of the killer from Ferganskaya coincided dactocard of the native of Donetsk region, now living in Omsk Alexander Kirikov, born in 1948.
"Dactyloscopic examination carried out by experts of the ECC of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia confirmed that the fingerprints of hands seized at the scene of the crime coincide with the fingerprints of the hands of this man", - said in the official message of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia.
During the investigative measures Kirikov admitted that he strangled Kuzmina. A polygraph test also confirmed it. The suspect did not deny guilt and wrote a heartfelt confession. In the near future the case will be submitted to the court. According to the words of the very relative, with whom Kuzmina spoke on the phone, recorded in the case materials, "the murder broke our whole life - soon Zoya's son died and in general everything collapsed."
"The investigative authorities are investigating a criminal case on the grounds of a crime under Article 102 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. The defendant is charged and a measure of restraint in the form of a signature on non-departure and proper behavior is chosen", - said the official representative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia Irina Volk.
Dark past, bright present
As Izvestia learned, in 1980 Kirikov was in the field of vision of law enforcers - he was detained under Article 93.1 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR ("Embezzlement of state or public property on a particularly large scale"). Soviet justice provided for a punishment for this crime from eight to 15 years in a colony with confiscation of property (with or without exile) or the death penalty.
But then Kirikov managed to escape punishment for murder - the system of fingerprinting in those days often failed.
Suspect Alexander Kirikov
Today Kirikov is 76 years old, he leads a secluded life in Omsk with his wife, he has adult daughters in Moscow, one of them has achieved success in modeling and acting. There are grandchildren as well. He is a respected pensioner, and on his public social media page he posts photos from pilgrimage trips and black-and-white cards from the Soviet period. He also reports that he graduated from Makeyevka Construction Technical School in 1968.
According to the law, Kirikov can be released from criminal punishment due to the expiration of statutes of limitations.
- For especially serious offenses, which includes aggravated murder, this period is 15 years," lawyer Dmitry Subbotin explained to Izvestia. - However, according to paragraph 4 of Article 78 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, the issue of applying the statute of limitations to a person who committed a crime punishable by death or life imprisonment is decided by the court.
