R.P. Barr

Ruslana’s murder—the case is not yet over

When 20-year-old supermodel Ruslana Korshunova died in the middle of Water Street in Manhatten, the police ignored the improbability of the facts and rushed to a verdict of suicide.

 Among many others, her mother did not believe that her daughter took her own life.  She sought to have the case re-opened.  To do that she needed to raise money.  Someone she met or knew offered to set up a web site: http://www.ruslanamemorialfund.org/  It is a beautiful site, but apparently that is the only memorial funded by contributions.  The site’s operator has become unavailable to Valentina Korshunova and has provided no accounting for the donations raised.

 The question is whether the site operator is simply a thief, trying to enrich himself on someone else’s tragedy, or is he part of a larger conspiracy to prevent Ms. Korshunova from seeking justice.

 I have corresponded with several people who read my blog and have an interest in the case.  Some of that email correspondence was hacked.   I would write something to one person and the next day a stranger would ask me a question about what I had discussed.

 There are other indicators that someone with resources is trying to obstruct the pursuit of this crime, but I will withhold them for now.  It is enough to say that nothing is finished until it is justly finished.

A woman's right to life

With Hillary Clinton and now Sarah Palin in the national spotlight, this could be dubbed “The Year of the Woman.”  The glass ceiling in American politics is broken.

 As a longtime supporter of equal rights for just about everybody, I would be celebrating events, if not personalities, except that I still have the murder of Ruslana Korshunova in my craw.  I might add the names of Laci Peterson, Jessie Davis and Lori Hacking to the list.  The first right is to life.  One's name on the office door and even equal pay are further down the list.  We righteously condemn those in the Islamic world who murder their wives, daughters and sisters for bringing shame on the family by falling in love with an unapproved suitor, or for admitting to being raped, but in this country men are led to believe in sexual entitlement, and while murder of a pregnant or inconvenient female is not officially approved, it is culturally reinforced.

 Since my space is limited, I’ll let cable tv deal with the sordid details of blue collar crime.  I want to point out a troubling trend which is most recently illustrated in news from the Middle East.

 Suzanne Tamim was a 30-year-old Lebanese pop singer who fled a bad marriage and her native country to live in Egypt.  She was quickly picked up by a married Egyptian billionaire.  We may imagine that a woman who has achieved fame and wealth on her own talent would not be very long content to be a rich man’s closeted mistress.  After 3 years,she broke off the relationship.  Then, according to the charges, Hisham Talaat Moustafa, who also sits in Egypt's upper legislative house, the Shura Council,  hired a former policeman to murder Tamim.  The telephone transcripts, from recordings saved by the killer, reveal that he pursued Tamim to London, missed her there, and finally caught up to her in her Dubai apartment.

 The singer was stabbed repeatedly and her throat was slashed.  The job--12 minutes from entry to exit--paid $2 million, according to Dubai police.  Dubai, you see, was the flaw in the plan.  That go-go economy is currently sensitive to criticism that anything goes.  Then, during their crackdown on nude sunbathers, a high-profile murder dropped onto their plates.

 Ordinary Egyptians, according to the BBC, were less shocked by the murder than by the fact that a politically connected billionaire would actually be arrested.  Apparently the Egyptian authorities received a lot of pressure from Dubai—and it didn’t hurt that the evidence was so conclusive.  Bear in mind that there is a long way between arrest and conviction, and all that damning evidence could be misplaced before the trial.

I bring you back to Korshunova, who may have been killed on behalf of a Russian oligarch—or someone who wished to profit from her services to an oligarch.  Her suspicious death was ruled suicide before the body was cold.  It’s probably not fair to say that Dubai police are superior to those in New York, but the temptation is there. 

That rich men use and dispose of women—sometimes brutally—in countries with histories of corruption is no surprise.  That such crimes can occur in New York City should be.

 As politicians focus more on potential terrorism than on domestic crime, as law enforcement budgets fall victim to economic downturns, and the gap between rich and non-rich continues to grow, look for more beautiful young corpses to go without justice.  Abroad and in the United States.

 Where do the glass-ceiling-breakers stand on murder?   

Ruslana Korshunova—The Motive for murder

Yesterday, Pravda published an article that said Ruslana Korshunova was suing her business manager for $500,000 at the time of her death. The article did not name the business manager, but I would not be surprised if it was one of the three men who were named as being her boyfriends. 

Half a million dollars is a powerful reason for murder, but the true amount involved may be much higher. If Korshunova is suing her manager for theft, then she also fired him. That means that the millions he might have stolen from her in the future is also lost. Moreover, it is doubtful that Korshunova was his only client. If she were allowed to break away and to sue him for his embezzlement, then his other clients might follow suit. 

Since the manager is not named, he could be an American, but more likely he is Russian or from another Former Soviet Union (FSU) state. 

I know a lady who lived in an FSU state. She hired a contractor to do some work in her apartment. The contractor took her money and never returned. She tracked him down and he laughed at her. She went to the police and they said that they couldn’t help, but knew someone who could and gave her the name of a local mob boss. She told the crime boss her story and paid him a fee. Two very large men visited the contractor and persuaded him to complete his work. I am told that such extra-legal arrangements are not unusual. (Not only in FSU countries, but anywhere that law enforcement and the courts are weak.) 

Now, if Korshunova’s business manager was not directly connected to a criminal organization, he could certainly have hired someone, and wouldn’t have had to cross the Atlantic Ocean to do it. If the New York City Police refuse to properly investigate Korshunova’s death, then the FBI should investigate her accusations of embezzlement, fraud and conspiracy against the business manager. Surely his crimes—if the accusations are true—involved violations of federal law. Also, if the police did not perform a proper investigation, isn’t that a violation of Korshunova’s civil rights? The Kazakhstan Ambassador should be demanding a full accounting. 

Meanwhile, look at the latest pictures from the New York Daily News. Suicidal people usually clean up their affairs before taking their lives. Korshunova’s apartment looks like she just went out to the store. I also doubt that she left her balcony and climbed around on the skeleton of the construction next door in her bare feet. But, if she did, she would only have deducted 16 feet from what the police originally said was a 50 foot horizontal jump from the balcony. The world record for a standing long jump is about one-fifth that distance. 

Finally, if the police are so sure of their conclusions, why do they keep changing their stories? And, where are the autopsy results? Are all of the injuries consistent with a fall?

Justice for a Pretty Girl

When I stumbled onto the story about the death of Ruslana Korshunova, I did not intend to write more than a single piece.  I had so little information.  However, the official explanation flew in the face of that little bit.  I smelled a cover-up or a conspiracy or both.  Then, readers who had other parts of the puzzle or provokotive questions came along, and so here we are writing about this murder again.  (The last piece was rather lame, and I hope this is better.)  The regular media seems more interested in emotion than sorting the facts, so I am taking up that duty.

 

First, what do we know? 

 

Korshunova returns from Paris.  By all accounts she was in good spirits.  She spends Friday evening with her “ex” boyfriend Artem Perchenok.  He dropped her at her apartment at 4:45 Saturday morning.  This sounds like a late night, but she had recently returned from Paris and her body would not have had time to adjust to the time zone change.  Perchenok claims that Korshunova was going to spend her 21^st birthday with him and then they were going to go to Atlantic City.

 

Mark Kaminsky is reported to be her new boyfriend and she talked to him on the telephone about noon that Saturday.  Kaminisky claims that Korshunova was going to see him on her birthday and they were planning to go camping together in Pennsylvania.

 

The model had at least one more phone conversation.  This one was to a married “ex” boyfriend in Moscow, the married Vladimir Vorobeyv.  According to Vorobeyv, Korshunova said that she was bored, but that friends were coming by.

 

Possible scenarios:

 

(1)  Her mother says that Ruslana did not commit suicide, but must have “slipped.”  Let’s say that she went out on her balcony, and—in preparation for her company--climbed up on the railing to tear down the covering put up by the construction site next door.  If she slipped, she would have fallen directly in front of the building.

(2)  The police and medical examinner call the death an apparent suicide.  Depressed and suicidal people try to wrap up their affairs.  According to Vorobeyv, in another conversation two days before she died, she said, “if I’m not here anymore one day, the world will talk about me.”  That sounds ominous, but depression does not equal suicide and she was making plans on the day she died.

           

ABC news spoke to a psychiatrist who suggested that she spent time sitting on her balcony over the past several weeks contemplating a jump.  But, with all of the construction next door and the fabric covering, I don’t believe she spent much time sitting out there.

 

            Pill bottles with Russian lablels were found in her apartment.  One article described Russian and Eastern European models as hard working, lonely girls who drink too much vodka and then use cocaine to keep themselves awake.  Another article said that the Eastern European models who reach the top, like Korshunova, are very businesslike and aware of what they put into their bodies.  They avoid booze and drugs because that affects the bottom line.   Meanwhile, Russian medicine practiced differently from in the U.S. and one would expect her to go to doctors she understood for whatever illnesses might arise.

 

            There is also the matter of the dive to the middle of the street.  Perhaps she looked down and saw that a simple jump would cause her to land on the construction awning over the sidewalk, so she dove over it.  Do you find that plausible?

 

(3)  One of the articles said that Korshunova needed money.  She was not well paid, and sent a lot of money home to her family.  Vladislav Novgorodstev in Moscow was her “life coach.” (Shouldn’t the first job of a life coach be to keep his clients alive?)  He revealed that she was asking for ten thousand rubles ($426) just 10 days before she died.  She also hinted that she was “being taken advantage of,” or “being fleeced.”

 

Another article said that Korshunova was likely earning a six-figure income, as much as $7,000 for a photo shoot.  Either way, if she was being shaken down by Russian criminals, as other models are said to be victimized—and Russian hockey players in the NHL—then they would not have liked that she told Novgorodstev and her mother that she was planning to get out of the business. Suppose she told one of the men she spoke to in her final 24 hours that she had decided to quit the business and that one was linked to the people who were extorting money from her.

 

Other articles describe how models, especially from Eastern Europe, tend to group in the same buildings.  It would be interesting to know what colleagues or acquaintences were living in her building, because if she was murdered, the killer had to gain access to the building without telling the doorman where he was going.  Of course, doormen can be distracted, too.

 

Korshunova answered the door because she knew who was there.  If this were a jealous boyfriend, or someone else with a personal dispute, there would have been a struggle, possibly screams, and throwing her more than fifty feet  (15.25 meters).  People like professional killers, however, are accustomed to such violence, and might very quickly subdue a 100 pound girl with a blow that would also keep her quiet.  They would then rush her to the balcony, pull down the fabric covering and throw her to the middle of the street as an example to all the other models they are robbing.  The whole thing probably took less than two minutes from the knock on the door to their exit.

 

The reader who advised me of the doorman at 130 Water Street, also mentioned security video cameras.  Professional would know how to use hats or hoodies to hide their faces-or perhaps to avoid the cameras altogether by taking the stairs or catching the elevator in the basement.

 

Finally, we have the question of why the NYPD seems to have closed the case.  ABC news hints that the autopsy is not finished.  If that is true, then the investigation is not finished.  Otherwise, I suggest that the case has been closed for one of three reasons.  First and least likely is that the killers have influenced the police to go away.  Although NYPD has had their problems with corruption, high profile cases like this involve too many people for payoffs or threats to have an effect.  Second, the government is involved in a high level investigation of organized crime in modeling and sports and they don’t want this investigation to derail their larger probe.  The third possibility is that someone involved was working for the government and an investigation might blow that person’s cover.  Since I doubt that Korshunova was a government informant, that leaves the man who killed her—or the one who told the mob that she was defying them. There may be another "accidental" death before this episode is over.

 

What do you think?