The Butcher, the Florist, and the Schoolgirl
February 09, 2009
Thank the heavens that the crime you are about to read about does not happen often! According to reports from various news agencies around the world, a 16-year-old St. Petersburg, Russia girl disappeared, at first without a trace, on January 19, 2009 while on her way to school. However, it did not take long for the girl's body parts to begin turning up in plastic bags at various St. Petersburg locations. The girl's head, when found, was also wrapped inside a plastic bag. The father of the girl to whom the body parts likely belonged, and as believed by the police, could not make a formal identification of the flesh and blood remnants that he had once known as his daughter. Police are continuing to withhold the name of the girl because she has not yet been officially identified, according to city prosecutor Sergei Kapitonov.
As the body parts turned up and the evidence was analyzed, in addition to much questioning of people who had known the missing girl, police investigators arrested two men on Saturday, January 31, 2009, twelve days after the girl disappeared, and held them in jail on suspicion of murder. Butcher Maxim Golovatsckhikh, who worked at a street market, and florist Yuri Mozhnov, both 19, had known their victim. Golovatsckhikh, according to police, is a former mental patient.
Following interviews with their two suspects, police announced that they had determined that the girl in question had voluntarily gone with Golovatsckhikh and Mozhnov to an apartment of an acquaintance on the day of her disappearance. An argument of as-yet undetermined significance began between the girl and the butcher. Whatever they had argued about, the two men decided to kill the nearly helpless girl—and did so by drowning her in the bathtub.
After purportedly killing the girl, Golovatsckhikh and Mozhnov allegedly butchered her by cutting her body into pieces. Afterward, police said, they cooked some of her internal organs with vegetables on a stove by baking them. After they were cooked to the killers' satisfaction, they ate them.
Why had they eaten the girl's body parts?
"The arrestees said they ate the girl's body parts because they were hungry," said Kapitonov. The prosecutor confirmed that the two men had told police that they had baked portions of her insides with vegetables. After finishing their gruesome feast, the butcher and the florist placed her remains inside plastic bags and disposed of them inside trash receptacles around the city.
Police said the girl had been in the 11th grade.
The investigation into this bizarre and gruesome case is continuing.
Photo Credit: iStock
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Ugh! Gary King!!! Last time I eat my dinner while checking up your website!!
I am a pacifist and I do not believe in capital punishment....but it seems as though there are more and more ugly and heinous crimes that push me closer and closer to changing my tune.
Posted by: SD Mittelsteadt | February 09, 2009 at 08:49 PM
Capitol punishment is the only answer sometimes becuase these people cannot be rehibilitated and keeping the in a prison would be a waste of space.
Posted by: cheyenne | February 10, 2009 at 11:19 AM
Do I sense that a discussion about capital punishment is on the horizon?
Posted by: Gary C. King | February 11, 2009 at 05:01 PM