“They made a monster out of him”: a sentence was passed on the “murder of Miss Kuzbass”

“Ceiling punishment”: the court appointed the accused 12 years of strict regime

“An ordinary dozen instead of a damn one” – such a verdict ended in the Shcherbinsky court of the capital the trial (so far of the first instance) in the case that the public knows as “the murder of Miss Kuzbass”. The prosecutor asked for 13 years of strict regime, the court appointed 12.

The defendant’s lawyer objects to considering this case resonant, but be that as it may, it received publicity. Beauty, blood – and at the same time very rare details of the plot.

The Popovs and their daughter recently arrived in Moscow from Kuzbass. But not “for ordinary earnings.” Alexander, now 36, became the head of the leading district of Novokuznetsk at the young age of 27. Then he met student Ksenia Sapozhkova, who in 2010 won the Kuzbass beauty contest. Against the background of a beautiful wife, a full and balding early Alexander looked “not very”. In addition, his career did not work out. However, in Moscow, he received an official position in the metro.

And so, in December last year, Popov reported the disappearance of his wife to the police – who, according to him, flew to Dubai on vacation at the end of August, wrote letters from there, and then took it and disappeared.

The results of the investigation, however, were shocking: as it turned out, on the eve of the planned joint trip, Alexander in a quarrel killed his wife with several stabs, dismembered and buried him, and then wrote emails on her behalf for weeks, allegedly from the UAE. Of course, the electronic age has made such games a lot easier.

It was precisely a quarrel, not jealousy: it was not the beautiful Xenia who led a double life, but Alexander himself. As it turned out, he restored relations with his first wife, moved her to Moscow, provided her with a one-room apartment, and her second child was born, for Alexander – the third.

The process was not difficult, although some of the meetings turned out to be very emotionally colored – when the mother of the murdered woman spoke and showed terrible children’s drawings of her granddaughter, who is being treated by psychologists and will not be able to go to school this year. The debates of the parties were very short: the accusatory speech – two and a half minutes, the defensive one – 16 and a half.

Popov’s lawyer Nikolay Zoloduev considers the verdict absolutely unfair.

“He is overly harsh,” the defender remarked to the MK correspondent. – Yes, according to part 1 of article 105, “murder without aggravating circumstances”, it is allowed up to 15 years. But it’s a ceiling! How often, in your memory, in the first part are sentences given by the courts in the form of 12 and 13 years? Similar recent cases – 9 and a half years, and this is in the absence of remorse, when a person does not admit guilt! And here the surrender, active contribution to the disclosure of the crime, there are no aggravating circumstances. And, in the absence of aggravating and a bunch of mitigating ones, we get almost ceiling punishment. Perhaps partly due to the fact that for some reason an ordinary case was given the status of a resonant one.

The defense plans to appeal the verdict. A civil lawsuit demanding a million rubles in favor of the mother of the deceased and two million in favor of a young daughter, according to the lawyer, will not be challenged. The defender drew attention to the fact that Popov behaved in court with dignity. He asked to see in Alexander Popov not a cold-blooded killer, but a deeply repentant and suffering person.

“Calmly, without hysteria, he understands that the punishment is inevitable, he just wants it to be legal, taking into account the real degree of public danger,” Zoloduev said. “And they made a monster out of him.