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'Tis the Season!

There's nothing like a little holiday cheer to cause a spike in drunken violence across this wonderful land! During the two-week national bender surrounding New Year's, something about the combination of kitchen knives dulled from chopping Olivier ingredients, quality time spent with family, and Estrada concerts dominating the Russian airwaves leads to the most deathpornalicious killings of the year. Even Moskovsky Komsomolets' kinder, gentler editorial line can't bring itself to ignore the overwhelming amount of juicy material this holiday season has delivered.

The last few weeks have seen an impressive amount of double murders reported on in MK, like this classic neighbor slaying in the podmoskovie town Korolev. This one begins with a couple bottles of rotgut around the kitchen table. A middle-aged husband and wife were entertaining a woman from the same podyezd with the best zakuski they could offer when something set off an argument. MK unfortunately keeps us in the dark as to the actual issue in dispute, but we're guessing it had something to do with a loan of 500 rubles or accusations of infidelity.

In any event, the fight escalated and the guest took the initiative, cooling things down with the dull, greasy blade they'd been using to carve up the kilbasa. She expertly dispatched husband and wife and left them on the kitchen floor awaiting discovery. In fact, she even made it easy on the militsia by leaving the front door wide open. When the bodies were discovered on the very same night, it didn't take the cops long to piece things together. They found the perp in her apartment, still drunk and with several bloody items of clothing. The only thing lacking were bloody footprints leading up to her door.

Another recent double murder went down in the podmoskovie village of Zaprudnya, where a pair of ex-cons was found at 8 Karl Marx St. with knife wounds to the neck and abdomen. Neighbors found the bodies after their apartment became uncharacteristically quiet in the middle of the evening.

Later that night, the militsia rounded up a Mr. Korzhakov, who locals had seen drinking with the two corpses earlier in the day. When they arrested him, Korzhakov was too drunk to remember the cause of the incident, but MK informs us that an investigation is underway.

Baby Boom

Of course, not all holiday crimes involve multiple victims. Take the story of Mr. Kotelnikov, who was asked to babysit for his five-month old grandson while the parents went out to a holiday party. Not wanting to be left out of the fun, Kotelnikov broke into the parents' liquor cabinet at their Yugo-Zapadnaya apartment and got in a festive mood himself.

Unfortunately, little Misha wouldn't let him drink in peace. It didn't help that men of Kotelnikov's generation don't have any experience changing diapers, and even a spoonful of vodka didn't get the shit-covered kid to shut his trap. Ultimately, Kotelnikov hit upon a surefire way of getting Misha to stop crying – he tossed him off the fourth-story apartment's balcony.

A passerby noticed the infant splattered on the sidewalk and called skoraya. They established that the baby had injuries consistent with being dropped out a window and investigators quickly narrowed the search down to the apartments directly above the kid's remains. Quick thinking, guys! By the time they pieced the crime together, Kotelnikov realized that throwing Misha off the balcony was a short-term solution and, according to MK, went into hiding. However, he was apparently too drunk to pick a good hiding place, because he was still wasted when the militsia picked him up for murdering his grandson.