Human Rights Center "Memorial"

Civic Assistance Committee, 127006, Russia, ul. Dolgorukovskaya, d. 33, str. 6

Tel: (095) 973-54-74

11 January 2005

A terrible crime was committed on 14 June 2004 in the evening in the Moscow Region town of Dolgoprudniy – 40-year-old Oksana Kavelkina and her 17-year-old son Dmitriy were brutally stabbed with kitchen knives in their apartment. Their neighbour on the same landing heard noise in the Kavelkins’ usually quiet apartment – they kept themselves to themselves. He listened for a long time, but sensing that something was wrong, he overcame his doubts and called the police at 21.38.

When they arrived, the police saw blood in the corridor and in the hall the bodies of the mother and son, riddled with stab wounds. Everything had been turned upside down in the three-roomed apartment – someone had obviously been looking for something. It was established later that nothing was missing from the apartment. The investigative group did not arrest anyone in the immediate aftermath. There were drops of blood in the lift, bloody spittle in the entrance to the block… The neighbours in the block racked their brains and described as best they could two men, approximately 25 years of age, who that evening had been hanging around the entrance and the landing where the murder victims lived.

The Borisov brothers, 25 and 30 years of age, lived in the same block. They had come from Tashkent to join their sister, Tatyana, and registered, as required, to live at her home.

The Borisovs worked on the rebuilding of Moscow’s first model print works on Pyatnitskaya St. They left for work at 08.00 every day and returned towards 22.00. This is what they did on 14, 15 and 16 June. Their team of 10 is ready to confirm the Borisovs’ alibi.

But this was not enough for the Dolgoprudniy criminal detectives and the investigators from the prosecutor’s office. They needed to solve the crime quickly!

When the Borisovs got home as usual from work at about 21.45 on 16 June, they were met in the entrance to their block by the, now former, authorized representative of the Dolgoprudniy Criminal Investigation Department, Grebenyov. He found the Borisovs’ Uzbek passports to be the main cause of suspicion. It is much easier to deal with Gastarbeiter, as usually they don’t have either relatives or lawyers. The brothers were arrested and taken to Dolgoprudniy Internal Affairs Department [police station], where they spent 24 hours behind bars without any arrest warrant.

The main witness was shop assistant Marina from the hardware store where the set of kitchen knives used to kill the Kavelkins and left at the scene of the crime had been bought that day. It seemed to the police officers that, according to Marina’s description, the Borisovs apparently looked like those customers.

Then the police and prosecutor’s office started to work on Marina in an outrageous fashion. Grebenyov showed Marina the passports of the arrested Borisovs. She could not say anything based on the passport photographs. Grebenyov put Marina in his Samara car, which had tinted windows, and the Borisovs were taken one by one out of the police station into the yard “for a cigarette in the fresh air”. What consideration for murderers! Marina told Grebenyov categorically, “No, that’s not them. They don’t look anything like them!” Grebenyov put pressure on Marina, “I’m telling you, it’s them! We have witnesses, they saw them in the entrance! The investigator from the prosecutor’s office will hold an official identity parade tomorrow, say that you recognize them! Has your husband been in court before? Well, think about it…”

It goes without saying, of course, that since the Borisovs live in that block, it would be difficult not to see them. The following day Marina signed statements that she identified Yevgeniy and Dmitriy Borisov as the customers who bought the knives from her at 14.30 on 14 June.

The shop is in Dolgoprudniy, the Borisovs were at work from 10.00 in the morning to 22.00 in the evening at Pyatnitskaya St. There are 10 witnesses! The time of the sale of the knives cannot be changed – the till roll has been taken and is documentary evidence in the case. But nothing is impossible for the detectives and investigators: “I’ve said he’ll do time…!”

The theory is put forward that the Borisovs rushed off from work for lunch, went to Dolgoprudniy, bought the knives and returned to work. The checkpoint machine clearly recorded the time that they left work, 20.00. The printing house has an access system based on entry cards, security and bars on the ground floor windows.

Forensic evidence has established the time of death of the Kavelkins – approximately 20.30. It takes at least an hour and a half to get to Dolgoprudniy from Dobryninskaya metro station on a weekend evening – in a minibus from Rechnoy Vokzal metro station through the traffic jams of people getting out of the city for the weekend.

How could the Borisovs have managed to go and get the knives during work time and then after work have managed to get home and commit murder in half an hour?

If the Borisovs did do it, why did they not run away, but continue to live as before, calmly going to work? Where are their clothes, which should be badly stained with the victims’ blood?

Not until 17 June, practically 24 hours after the actual arrest of the Borisovs, at 21.30 was the arrest formalized under Article 91 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code (suspicion of murder). Their apartment was searched and their clothes, shoes and a towel from the bathroom were taken away. In a month’s time forensics showed that there was no blood anywhere, while on one of the trainers there was an old trace of blood from a road accident that Yevgeniy Borisov had been involved in back in Tashkent. This stain had no connection to the victims’ blood.

But the investigative machine had been switched on! Before defence lawyers had been invited, “a sincere confession” had been dragged out of Dmitriy, psychologically the weaker of the two brothers, in the remand cells. The usual technique: “Take responsibility for everything and you’ll save your brother. If you don’t, you’re both done for and your relatives too.” Dictated to, first by a police operative and then by an investigator, Dmitriy wrote a confession, completely devoid of logic and motive.

Three months (!) after the arrest of the Borisovs, fingerprinting evidence “established” that the fingerprints of Yevgeniy’s right thumb and index finger had been left in the victims’ apartment. The evidence appeared straight after Yevgeniy had been taken from Volokolamsk remand prison to Dolgoprudniy and the head of the criminal investigation department had given him a mug of coffee in his office.

Asked in court why it had taken so long to do the fingerprints, the expert will prattle on that “there’s a lot of work and there’s only me to do it”. Anyone, even someone who isn’t well versed in criminal investigations, knows that in a double murder case everything is done as quickly as possible and takes precedence, all the other cases have to wait, but here there’s such a long delay …

It’s worth nothing that because of a congenital skin complaint Yevgeniy had had skin scrubbed from his fingers and palms in June. This is clearly visible in the fingerprints, taken the day after their arrest in the remand cells in the town of Lobni, but there are no traces of any exfoliation in the fingerprints supposedly left in the apartment! The investigator does not want to see any of this.

Instead he saw that one of the 15 cotton swabs with the blood of the victims, taken from the scene of the crime, “underwent putrefactive changes”, like the terry towel which the murderers used to mop up blood in the hall. He destroyed the swab and towel “by burning them in a metal container” just before sending Yevgeniy’s trainers for forensic examination. And the tiny brown spots on the sole of one of the trainers turned out to be Dmitriy Kavelkin’s blood…

The witness Marina, who moved home and work at the instigation of the investigator and detectives, was apparently tormented until November 2004 by the realization that she had slandered innocent men. She herself found defence lawyer Kirsanov, told him the truth and wrote a statement to the regional prosecutor’s office. But the body that is itself investigating the case and monitoring the legality of its investigation, which by the way has itself been subject to a check from the General Prosecutor’s office, cannot be bothered with the Borisovs.

The case of the Borisovs has been heard in the Moscow regional court since May 2005, three judges are dragging out the trial. It is objectively difficult to pass any verdict, but the state prosecutor is sure that the Borisovs will be found guilty. While the real murders will walk free.

Court address: 123816, Moscow, ul. Barrikadnaya, d. 8 “B”, (Barrikadnaya metro station)

The judge Larisa Ovchinnikova

The Borisov brothers’ defence lawyer is V. Kirsanov, tel. 267-52-78, 961-65-8