U.S News

NEW YORK – Irina Malezhik was success an naming as a Russian-language polyglot at a accumulation duty in 2004 when she asked an clear but fateful question: Could anyone substance a displace to Brooklyn?

The man who obligated by chance, polity say, was a stranger titled Dmitriy Yakovlev. He says she after began tutoring him in arts and that he loaned her money.

Three eld later, the Ukrainian-born Malezhik walked out of her housing building and was never seen again.

The leaving is bicentric to a disturbing indistinguishability thieving case that went to effort early this period in federal suite in Brooklyn. With the effort incoming its third week, a commission has heard most a surgically dismembered body, a day cover useless with the embody parts and an extravagant shopping spree by Yakovlev and his spouse that began only 48 hours after Malezhik vanished.

Yakovlev, a 43-year-old Russian immigrant, has pleaded not blameable to conspiracy, bank fraud, using taken assign game and added charges involving Malezhik and digit added victims.

As part of the conspiracy, prosecutors allege Yakovlev murdered Malezhik, 47, and Viktor Alekseyev, a neighbor of Yakovlev in a seaside, gated community in Brooklyn. They feature he also stole the indistinguishability of added acquaintance, a retired New York Police Department employee who disappeared in 2003 without a trace.

Yakovlev's wife, Julia, avoided effort by pleading blameable terminal period to indistinguishability thieving and assign bill fraud. She faces at small digit eld in situation at sentencing in May.

Following Yakovlev's collar in 2009, federal agents claim he admitted making machine withdrawals and purchases with the absent victims' assign cards. But he "stated that in the past he had been given permission by others to use their assign game in lieu of cash defrayal for loans (he) had daylong to them," suite writing say.

He claimed Malezhik unpaid him $20,000, Alekseyev $30,000.

Defense professional Michael Gold also told jurors in opening statements the government can't feature how the digit were killed or prove he did it.

"There is sure no forensic grounds Mr. Yakovlev in some way, attendance or manner or modify contributed to (Malezhik's) disappearance," Gold said.

Alekseyev was terminal seen in 2005 on the eve of a designed activate to Moscow. About three weeks later, his embody parts were institute in impressible substance bags — inexplicably, with a vampire cover — in a arboreous area of New Jersey.

Prosecutors hit shown the commission crime environs photos of the bags and mask, entered as grounds migration writing locution Yakovlev erst worked as a surgeon. A forensic specialist testified how the victim's limbs were distant without selection through bone. Whoever did it, the attestator said, "had embody knowledge."

Acting on a counsel in 2009, FBI agents using cadaver dogs dug up the basement of Yakovlev's home in see of the translator's remains. Agents "found a plunk of long, brown-colored material which appeared to them to be conformable with what was famous of the length and color of the material of (the victim)," suite writing say, but no embody parts overturned up.

The blooper of a failed see in a occult death ran counter to Malezhik's ultimate life.

Born in Kiev, she effected in borough individual eld before she disappeared. She lived lonely in a tidy, one-bedroom housing in metropolis Beach — a longtime Eastern dweller enclave bordering Coney Island that's sometimes called "Little Odessa" — with a view of the ocean and "a lot of orchids," a nearby friend, Olga Fisher, testified.

Malezhik spent most days employed as a polyglot in land and federal courts and for accumulation firms. In the mornings, she would verify daylong walks with Fisher on the boardwalk nearby their homes.

Her travel relation was "very intelligent, rattling highbrowed and a rattling hard worker, a good friend," Fisher said.

That's ground it was strange in the start of 2007 when Fisher stopped hearing from Malezhik. She mitt a progress of sound messages and got no reply.

Fisher eventually reportable Malezhik absent and went to her housing to meet the police. The mailbox was full, the housing was unoccupied.

An initial investigation overturned up a section camera video showing Malezhik leaving her building for the terminal instance on Oct. 15, 2007. That day, polity say, the Yakolevs began depositing checks drawn on Malezhik's bank statement by forging her signature.

The mass day, Julia Yakovlev purchased digit composer Muller watches for $16,200 using the victim's Social Security bill as identification, prosecutors say. The pair was after captured by a camera at a Century 21 division store in Westbury, N.Y. using the victim's assign card.

After his arrest, Yakovlev appeared unfazed by the allegations, according to suite papers. He told the FBI he had been trained as a student and served in the Russian Army before coming to the United States in the 1990s. He described himself as self-employed and an owner of rental properties.

After meeting Malezhik, she had tutored him in arts — not at either of their homes, but "on the beach and places like that," he said. He claimed he loaned her money so she could buy furniture, and the terminal instance he saw her was when she gave him her assign game as defrayal as they sat in his Lexus SUV.

"He stated he did not encounter (her) leaving concerning, and advisable that she returned to Russia," according to an FBI report.

The inform adds that when told he would hit to appear in suite that afternoon, "he spoken interference that the suite attendance would interact with a regular motorcycle lesson."

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