The gruesome beheading of a judge and three others in Kharkiv may be linked to his work or simply a robbery gone bad, authorities said on Dec. 17.
These are two of
the versions police are considering in trying to solve the Dec. 16 crime that
is shocking the nation. Judge Volodymyr Trofimov, his wife Iryna,
their son Sergiy and his girlfriend Maryna Zoueva were all found dead, beheaded,
in the judge’s apartment. The corpse’s heads remained missing as of Dec. 17.
Interior Minister Vitaliy Zakharchenko said the judge’s son appeared to
have been decapitated while alive while the heads of the other victims were
severed after they had died.
The murders have also raised fears in the legal community. Last year
alone, a judge in Kyiv was murdered and a Rivne Oblast judge – the target of
threats – drowned under mysterious circumstances.
Kyiv judge Serhiy Zubkov, 42 was stabbed and shot in his house in March
2011. Days later, a father and a son – Dmytro and Serhiy Pavlychenko – were
detained. They were found guilty of murdering the judge, who had previously evicted
from the apartment where they lived in a property dispute. The father, Dmytro,
is serving a sentence of life in prison while the son, Serhiy, got 13 years in
prison. Both say they are innocent and a public campaign on their behalf is
pressing for a new investigation.
Also in 2011, Victor
Lopatsky, head of the district court in Rivne Oblast, drowned while on
vacation. The incident would not be suspicious if the judge had not been attacked
before. In 2005, he was kidnapped by three unknown people in masks, taken out
of town and beaten. In May 2006, he was shot at near his house. After this,
Lopatsky was guarded by special police unit officers. However, he sent the
guards away during his vacation and drowned shortly afterwards in August 2011.
Courthouses are not
safe places either.
Security was beefed up after a blast in Kyiv’s Darnytsky District Court injured
15 people eight years ago. The aim had been to stop a hearing on a robbery
case. Since then, police officers started to register all visitors coming into
the court building. Access to pretrial hearings has been limited also.
Yuriy Vasylenko,
a retired judge who served for 37 years, says he recalls two more recent murders
of judges. One involves a female judge killed in Kyiv approximately seven years
ago. Another one involves a female judge killed in Zaporizhya a year earlier.
“Several of my colleagues
in court have asked for the security guards or guns when they were ruling on
serious crimes like large-scale embezzlement or gruesome murders,” Vasylenko recalls.
If threatened or
afraid, a judge can ask police to have two officers accompany him. “They would follow
a person from home to work, stay at court at all times, and get him home. If
threatened, the judge can also ask the head of court for a permission to carry
weapons for self protection,” Vasylenko says.
Vasylenko has
not heard of Trofimov, but says the circumstances of the murders make it appear
to be revenge. “Or maybe he took a bribe for something and did not deliver what
he promised,” Vasylenko adds.
However, it looks like the judge was not hearing
any high profile or controversial cases. Yevhen Zakharov, head of the Kharkiv
Human Rights Group, said he has been searching for high profile cases involving
Trofimov that may have provoked a personal vendetta, but hasn’t found any.
Trofimov is said to live a modest life, unlike most of his colleges, and
reportedly did not even own a car. Kharkiv journalist Sergiy Bobok, who is
covering the case, says Trofimov’s son was an information-technology specialist
and worked from home. “It is unusual by Kharkiv standards,” Bobok said, adding
that most of judges find lucrative and prestigious positions for their
children.
Bobok says Trofimov’s neighbors did not even know he was a judge,
thinking he was with the local prosecutor’s office.
Another version is that the family was killed because
of a robbery gone bad. Police says some
of the judge’s coin collection was missing from home. Trofimov was collecting antiques – a family tradition that his father, also a judge who is now 90 years old has started long ago. However, the community of collectors of Ukraine does not seem
to know much about Trofimov.
“Many people are interested in coins. I do not want to
name anyone, as it is probably half of the parliament. Mostly they are
interested in gold ones, heavy Eastern coins,” says noted Ukrainian collector
Oleksandr Polishchuk.
Polishchuk has never heard of Trofimov, but admitted
the judge could have been killed because of the collection. “It is possible. The
circle of serious collectors is very tight in Ukraine,” he added.
Despite several gruesome killings of judges, experts say their
profession is not the most dangerous in Ukraine. “There are jobs in law
enforcement bodies more risky than the judge’s one, for example of police
detectives,” Zakharov said.
Ukrainian
courts are notoriously corrupt and enjoy very little trust from the public. Only 2.9 percent of
Ukrainians trust courts, according to the 2012 poll by Razumkov think tank. In
2010, 9.4 percent trusted courts.
Ukrainians often turn for justice to the European Court of Human Rights
and file 20 percent of the complaints that come before the court.
Kyiv Post staff journalists Svitlana Tuchynska and
Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at [email protected]
and [email protected]
