A former judge from Mykolaiv ordered the murder of his stepmother to get her inheritance

A former judge of the Mykolaiv Central District Court is suspected of ordering the murder of his stepmother to claim her inheritance. He is currently in hiding in Crimea to evade justice.

According to the State Bureau of Investigations, SBI agents have completed a special pre-trial investigation into his case.

The crime took place in July 2014. At that time, the body of the widow of the former head of the Zavodskyi District Court in Mykolaiv was found in the Southern Bug River. Law enforcement officials determined that three former inmates and two sons of the late court chairman may have been involved in the murder.

<picture></picture>Photo: State Bureau of Investigation

One of them was serving as a judge on the Mykolaiv Central District Court at the time and, according to the investigation, was the mastermind behind the crime.

According to the prosecutor’s office, in 2014, a dispute arose between the court president’s wife and his two sons from a previous marriage—one of whom was a judge—over the distribution of an inheritance consisting of several properties and vehicles.

<picture></picture>Photo: State Bureau of Investigations

According to investigators, the defendant decided to take the woman’s life in order to gain ownership of the property to which she was entitled. To carry out his plan, he recruited three individuals with prior criminal records, offering them $6,500 to kill his stepmother.

On July 30, 2014, one of the accomplices, disguised in a police uniform, forced the victim into a car under the pretext of arresting her on suspicion of fraud. The woman was taken outside the city to a property in the village of Radsad, Mykolaiv District, where she was first tortured and then strangled.

After the murder, the accomplices took the woman’s personal belongings and attempted to cover up the crime—they disposed of the victim’s body in a river.

In 2015, the man was notified that he was a suspect. After that, he fled to the temporarily occupied Crimea, where he has been hiding from Ukrainian justice.

In April 2018, the High Council of Justice dismissed him from his position due to his absence from work. The former judge is now wanted internationally.

He is charged with premeditated murder for financial gain, committed by a group of individuals acting in concert and on someone’s orders, as well as robbery. If found guilty, the former judge could face life imprisonment. 

Ірина Глухова