0:01

Something strange is going on. Who

0:04

is killing Russian billionaires?

0:06

Another Russian oligarch has been found dead.

0:08

Reports suggests that he hanged himself, fell

0:11

out of a window, slashed his wrists,

0:13

was poisoned, murdered his whole family.

0:16

Last year, more than a dozen Russian oligarchs

0:19

died in the space of nine months.

0:22

Many of the deaths are suspicious with

0:24

links to the Kremlin. This

0:27

is sad Oligach, an investigation

0:29

into.

0:29

These recently dead Russian billionaires.

0:32

It's created by me Jake Hanrahan and

0:35

my colleague Sergey Slipchenkov. Sad

0:38

Oligarch is a H eleven production for

0:40

Kulsomidia and iHeart Radio. In

0:51

the space of a year, more than a dozen rich

0:54

Russian businessmen have died in either

0:56

brutal or mysterious circumstances.

1:00

Fell out of windows, some had heart

1:02

attacks, and a few even

1:04

killed their whole families before

1:06

committing suicide. The official

1:08

line from the Russian authorities is that most

1:11

of these deaths were accidents

1:13

or violent consequences of mental

1:15

illness, and maybe that's true.

1:18

But considering the majority of these dead

1:20

rich Russians are either outright

1:23

oligarchs or have other links to the

1:25

Kremlin. It's possible that something

1:27

much dark it is taking place. These

1:31

deaths have all occurred within the backdrop

1:33

of the Ukraine War, a

1:35

brutal invasion that has shown the whole

1:38

world that Russia's President Putin

1:40

is both ruthless and brazen.

1:44

Maybe the Kremlin has been tying up loose

1:46

ends or making examples of

1:48

those who go against them, as

1:50

several of these dead oligarchs

1:52

have for some war

1:55

can actually be bad for business. In

1:58

this project, Sad Oligarch, I'll

2:00

be investigating the numerous strange

2:03

deaths of these rich Russian businessmen.

2:06

I'll be doing this with my friend and

2:08

colleague, journalist Sergei

2:10

Slipchenko. We believe

2:12

that to understand how these businessmen died

2:15

is to understand more realistically how

2:18

the Kremlin truly operates. Now,

2:21

of course, we're not the only reporters to have

2:23

done this. We're relying on the work

2:25

of many other sources and people

2:27

who are helping us, some of

2:29

them can't be named. To

2:35

appreciate the relevance of these

2:37

deaths, I think it's best to first understand

2:40

the role of the oligarch within Russia.

2:43

Now side note, we do have oligarchy

2:46

in the West as well, we just

2:48

tend to refer to it by different terms,

2:50

such as lobbying. Anyway,

2:53

for this series, we'll be focusing on

2:55

Russia.

2:56

Now.

2:56

Admittedly, not all of the dead Russians

2:59

in this series are necessarily starred

3:01

up oligachs. They've often been

3:03

branded as such by Western media,

3:06

but it doesn't always apply. The

3:08

lines are blurry. We're using the term

3:11

loosely to help understand a

3:13

complicated situation. Ultimately,

3:15

though, all the dead businessmen were

3:18

wealthy via employment in Kremlin

3:20

linked business or otherwise

3:23

had connections to the Russian government,

3:25

oligach branding or not. But

3:28

what actually is an oligach?

3:32

An oligach put simply is a

3:34

wealthy businessman with deep

3:36

political power and connections to

3:39

government.

3:40

Whilst Russia has.

3:41

A specifically recent history of

3:43

oligachs since the fall of the Soviet

3:46

Union, the oligarch is by no

3:48

means a Russian concept only.

3:51

However, in Russia oligarchs are

3:53

often very useful for the government when

3:55

they're trying to dodge sanctions. This

3:58

is usually due to the complicated rupture

4:00

of their firms and shareholdings.

4:03

We'll go into this in detail in a

4:05

later episode, As you'll

4:07

see, many of the dead Russian

4:09

businessmen of the last twelve months

4:11

shares several characteristics with the

4:14

tried and tested Oligachs.

4:20

One of the first murders we're looking into

4:23

occurred just one month after the Russian

4:25

invasion of Ukraine. This

4:28

is what happened to Vasily Melnikov.

4:32

On March twenty third, twenty twenty

4:34

two, affluent Russian businessman

4:37

Vasily Melnikov, forty one,

4:39

was found dead alongside his family

4:42

in their upscale Moscow apartment

4:45

in the Nisney Novgorod area. The

4:47

family nanny discovered them. They'd

4:49

all been stabbed to death, Vasily,

4:52

his wife, and their two sons, aged

4:55

four and ten years old.

4:58

The killings were brutal and tragic.

5:03

Straight away, some European media

5:05

outlets speculated that it

5:07

could be a contract killing an

5:09

assassination. According to

5:11

the police in Moscow, though it

5:13

was a murder suicide. They state

5:16

that Vasily stabbed his own family

5:18

to death before killing himself,

5:20

also with a knife. Case

5:22

closed. There's

5:25

currently no verified indication as

5:27

to why this atrocity happened.

5:30

Outwardly, things seemed to be going well

5:32

for Vasily Melnikov, him and his

5:34

family had just returned from a luxury holiday

5:36

in the Maldives. Vasily's company,

5:39

Medstom, had just secured a lucrative

5:42

three point five million dollar

5:44

contract. However, despite

5:46

this success, and unnamed source

5:49

told Russian media that Vasily was

5:51

apparently suicidal and had

5:53

confided this to his wife.

5:56

There's no indication though, as to why he would

5:58

so callously take Kisshole

6:00

family with him.

6:05

Now.

6:06

On the face of it, this could just be a

6:08

case of a rich guy who

6:10

went berserk and killed his whole

6:12

family before committing suicide.

6:15

Maybe it really is an open and

6:17

shut case. It's possible. Sadly,

6:20

things like that do happen. However,

6:23

when me and Sergey started looking

6:25

into the Melnikov murder suicide,

6:27

we noticed a few unusual details.

6:30

What specifically caught our eye was

6:33

one of the knives used in the killings.

6:35

In one of the crime scene photos, the

6:37

murder weapon, a tactical style knife,

6:40

was seen resting on a kitchen unit with

6:43

blood on the end of the blade. Molded

6:45

into the handle was the insignia of

6:48

Russia's Special Rapid Response

6:50

Team. They used the acronym

6:52

SOBR, which was

6:55

also visible in the handle of the knife.

6:57

The SOBR or Sobber is

7:00

an elite force in Russia which

7:02

was originally formed to deal with domestic

7:04

anti terrorism situations

7:06

and high level organized crime.

7:09

They even fought against rebels in the

7:11

Chechen and Dagistani wars. The

7:14

knife at the crime scene appears to belong

7:16

to the SOB.

7:17

R Surgery explains

7:20

the knife was like part of the evidence. The Sober

7:22

knife. Sober is Russian

7:24

basically swat. It's like a special

7:27

forces unit in the police. They were disbanded

7:30

after like the early two thousands, but at that

7:32

time they were like the elite kind

7:34

of police, like counter terrorist

7:37

organization. I think I think the West

7:39

also has this where when you join like

7:41

one of these groups, you get like a knife

7:44

kind of like I guess they're like badge

7:46

of honor.

7:47

As Sergei mentioned, the SOB

7:50

was at one point dissolved. This

7:53

was in two thousand and two.

7:55

It was reclassified and given

7:57

a new name later though, in twenty

8:00

twelve and a volved version of

8:02

these units was rearranged more broadly

8:04

as special forces and

8:06

given the old name of the SOBR.

8:10

Whilst under different branches of control,

8:13

the new SOBR is in

8:15

many ways the same as the original.

8:18

In twenty twenty two, SOBR

8:20

units took part in Russia's invasion

8:23

of Ukraine. It seems that the

8:25

idea was that they'd be put in place

8:27

to crush riots in Kiev once

8:30

the Russian military had taken the city.

8:32

The Kremlin believed this would happen quickly.

8:35

They were wrong. Ukrainian military

8:38

and armed volunteers defended the capitol

8:41

over a year later. The nearest Russian

8:43

position is around five hundred

8:45

kilometers away from Kiev.

8:48

During the initial attacks on Kiev

8:50

and February twenty twenty two, there

8:52

are reports the whole unit of the SOBR

8:55

was killed on the outskirts of the city.

9:00

The SOOBR a

9:02

knife of theirs is clearly not

9:04

your average homewhere item. Yet

9:07

this was the hand allegedly for

9:09

Vasily Melnikov when he killed

9:11

his whole family and then himself.

9:14

What they found out the scene was a sober knife.

9:18

Yeah.

9:18

Here it says they were multiple. I know it's but this

9:20

one was specifically photographed and it

9:22

caught my attention because like you could see the insignia

9:25

on it, whereas the other knives are just kind

9:27

of plain, and you

9:29

know, this could be a replica. It

9:31

could be something he was gifted, But

9:33

it's just interesting that he has this potentially

9:36

memorabilia, potentially an actual

9:39

knife from the group. From what I can tell,

9:41

he wasn't a part of anything. He wasn't a part of

9:43

like any police units, any

9:46

of these special forces. But I mean

9:48

technically that is the only way you get one like

9:50

a legitimate one, right, But again, who.

9:52

Knows where this knife is actually

9:54

from is important If it's genuine.

9:57

At the very least, it shows

9:59

a Vasily meli Kov had some connection

10:02

to someone who was once a member

10:04

of the soob Ah, even

10:07

if he just bought it from them as a

10:09

collectible or was gifted it. And if

10:11

it wasn't Vasili's knife, whose

10:13

was it. Over

10:33

the last decade of my career

10:35

as a journalist, I've covered

10:37

dozens of wards on the ground all

10:39

over the world, from the trenches

10:42

of East Ukraine to the barricades

10:44

of East Jerusalem. I've

10:46

never actually seen any fighters

10:48

put that much value into a combat

10:51

knife other than it being a useful

10:53

tool. I've seen people cut

10:55

rope with them or open it kind of food,

10:58

but otherwise it's hardly used as

11:00

a weapon on the front lines. If

11:02

anything, I've seen them passed around

11:04

a few times as a sort of collectible

11:07

or war trophy, but generally,

11:09

in my experience at least, it's

11:11

something.

11:12

Fighters will have at war.

11:13

But again, it's just more of

11:15

a tool than anything else. So

11:19

perhaps Vasily Melnikov fought

11:21

somewhere and picked this knife

11:23

up along the way and kept it as

11:26

a sort of souvenir. It's

11:28

possible, but neither Sergery or

11:30

myself could find any information

11:33

on Vasily Melnikov fighting

11:35

in any wars, not

11:37

one that the sobre units fought

11:39

in. No old photos on his social

11:42

media, no mention of previous

11:45

service, nothing. It's likely he

11:47

didn't fight. Still, though,

11:49

this sob Our knife was found

11:52

in his apartment and was used in the

11:54

murder of his family. Due

11:56

to its specific connection to the Russian

11:59

government and its numerous

12:01

and forces, we of course

12:03

want to find out where it's from.

12:07

So I reached out to several

12:09

different knife collectors and experts

12:12

to see if they could shed any light

12:15

on the knife. A few of them

12:17

who really know their stuff associated

12:20

with the conflict journalism collective

12:22

the irun Popular Front.

12:24

At Popular Front, we have a network

12:27

all over the world where people

12:29

with very niche esoteric

12:31

knowledge on war and conflict

12:33

come together, and so some

12:36

of our people happen to know a lot

12:38

about combat knives, both collectible

12:41

and practical. Speaking to

12:43

these people, it became clear that

12:45

the SOBR knife pictured in the

12:47

crime scene photos is

12:49

an NAR forty three knife,

12:51

a relatively inexpensive scout

12:54

knife first created in nineteen

12:56

forty three and issued to Russian

12:59

Special Forces. Either that or it's

13:01

a replica. Still, the design matches

13:03

exactly with the Russian

13:05

Special Forces scout knives.

13:08

Whilst the crime scene photo of the knife

13:10

is a bit out of focus, a specific

13:12

logo can be seen on the blade

13:15

of the knife. The logo looks like

13:17

the infinity symbol or the number

13:19

eight. It's the logo of Aiars

13:22

Latooste, a large Russian knife

13:24

manufacturer. They make decent knives

13:26

that are generally pretty accessible.

13:28

You can buy a brand new NR forty three

13:30

knife, for example, from Latoost

13:33

in Europe for around one hundred euros.

13:36

So the knife was manufactured by Aiar's

13:38

latoost However, there isn't a single

13:41

one of their NAR forty three

13:43

knife for sale anywhere that has

13:45

the SOB medallion molded

13:47

into the handle. The same way as

13:50

the Melnikov murder weapon. There

13:52

aren't currently any commercially

13:54

available NAR forty three knives

13:57

like that, so where did it come from?

14:01

We thought maybe theoretically, at

14:03

some point, a specific SOBR

14:06

unit could have commissioned a batch of spoke

14:09

knives from ai As Latouste

14:11

to award to some of its fighters.

14:14

It's quite possible. Now.

14:15

This company is obviously not going to

14:17

tell us the specific details

14:19

of another customer's purchases,

14:22

especially if it actually was so

14:24

OBR. But we wanted

14:26

to know if we could order the same bespoke

14:29

knife that would tell us something at least.

14:32

We reached out to Aiis Latoos

14:34

to see if this was possible, essentially

14:37

acting as a customer. They

14:39

said, quote, yes, such an

14:41

order with such an emblem can be completed

14:44

ends quote. Later they sent us a

14:47

mock up of what it would look like. Instead

14:49

of the knife with the SOB medallion

14:52

molded into the plastic of the handle,

14:54

they sent us a version that would have the SOBRE

14:57

insignia laser engraved

14:59

on to the hilt of the blade. Whilst

15:02

that's not the same knife as what Vasily

15:04

Melnikov apparently killed himself

15:07

and his whole family with it's pretty

15:09

close. My point being, it's

15:11

definitely possible that this knife

15:13

could have been produced by someone unrelated

15:16

to the SOBR, But

15:19

still, why did Vasily Melnikov

15:21

have it if it was just a random replica.

15:24

He was a multi millionaire and the

15:26

quality of the knife is largely

15:29

unremarkable. Is what our knife

15:31

collector associate had to say about

15:33

the blade.

15:34

It didn't really strike me as anything particularly

15:36

special, just

15:38

your typical combat type

15:40

knife that you'd see for sale anywhere

15:42

from some sort of a

15:45

gas station or junk shop all

15:47

the way through maybe an outdoors

15:51

tactical or a surplus

15:53

type shop. As far as construction goes, it's

15:55

not anything particularly high

15:57

end. It's definitely not custom,

16:00

just your typical machine

16:02

made, mass produced item.

16:05

So if the blade doesn't appear to be

16:07

particularly special superficially,

16:10

maybe it had some sentimental value

16:12

for Vasily Melnikov, or,

16:14

as others seem to believe, maybe

16:17

it wasn't his at all. Online

16:21

in Russia, there are various

16:24

theories and rumors going around

16:26

about Vasily Melnikov and

16:28

the slaughter of his family.

16:31

Many believe he was killed on behalf of

16:33

the Russian government. In

16:36

fact, so many Russian oligarchs have died

16:38

in the last year that it's become

16:41

somewhat of a running joke.

16:43

Vasily was just another one.

16:46

Even pro Russian telegram channels

16:48

linked to Russian units fighting in Ukraine

16:51

joke about the likelihood of being bumped

16:54

off by their own government. For

16:56

example, the operator of

16:58

the Russian propaganda tell channel

17:01

gray Zone, with more than four hundred

17:03

thousand members, wrote recently

17:05

saying, quote, once I

17:07

was having a cup of tea with a comrade from

17:09

the General Staff of the Armed Forces

17:12

of Russia, talking about the various

17:14

risks and consequences of

17:16

saying certain things in this channel

17:18

on telegram, I jokingly said

17:21

that one day I might fall out of

17:23

a window, to which my comrade

17:25

replied, bro, if the generals

17:27

want to eliminate you by throwing you from a window,

17:30

they'll most likely throw you from.

17:32

The first floor. End

17:34

quote.

17:35

As we'll find out later in this series,

17:38

falling out of the window is something

17:41

many Russian oligarchs have recently

17:43

had in common. Plenty

17:45

of people online in Russia

17:48

have found the whole situation suspicious.

17:51

Now I don't speak Russian, but Sergey

17:54

does. He found numerous comments

17:56

relating to the Vasili Melnikov murders.

17:58

There's a lot of speculator. You know, a lot of

18:01

them say like, oh, look at them cleaning cleaning

18:03

out, you know, referring to like whoever's

18:05

higher up kind of maybe cutting closing

18:07

loose ends or getting rid of like people

18:10

who might know some like have dirt on them. You

18:12

know, it's all over the place.

18:13

You know.

18:14

Mostly you see this on Contactya,

18:17

like their VK, like Facebook

18:19

kind of counterpart you see

18:21

this on the actual articles because you know, you

18:23

can post anonymously, so a lot of

18:25

people will say like, oh, smell suspicious,

18:28

or like, oh.

18:29

Is this do you really want us to believe?

18:30

This doesn't go like

18:32

anywhere from that, but you know, it's it's interesting

18:34

to see that a lot of people are voicing

18:37

the fact that, like this sounds like bullshit.

18:39

It's almost seems like they're used to it.

18:40

They're kind of like, oh, there goes another one.

18:42

It's nothing new to them.

18:44

That said, Rumors and theories

18:47

on the internet, just rumors

18:49

and theories on the internet. We don't

18:51

know if they hold any white often

18:54

they don't. What

18:56

we do know, though, is that the police in

18:58

Russia say that we're silly Melnikov killed

19:01

his whole family, a brutal

19:03

act beyond most people's imagination.

19:06

This crime is so awful that

19:09

it even has its own terminology.

19:11

It's often referred to as familicide

19:14

and the perpetrators as family

19:17

annihilators. To

19:37

get a better understanding of this

19:39

horror, I spoke to Professor Elizabeth

19:42

Yadley. She's a professor of

19:44

criminology at Birmingham University

19:46

in the UK. She's studied

19:49

family annihilation at length and

19:51

has authored several papers on it.

19:53

When this individual hills their family

19:55

and so that is often their wife or female partner

19:58

and their biological children, and in

20:01

some cases they then kill themselves

20:03

as well and in other cases they know.

20:05

So it is the wiping out essentially

20:07

of the entire nuclear family units

20:10

in one particular event.

20:11

Right, And you've done a lot of research on this.

20:13

Obviously it's a case by case basis.

20:16

But is there any kind of idea

20:19

that's shared by people as to why

20:21

people do this? Because it's extremely

20:24

violent. It's just unbelievable

20:26

to anyone that's saying that

20:28

someone would kill their or own family. Is

20:30

there any kind of consensus on why this might happen?

20:33

Yeah, I think For me, the two key

20:35

words are control and possession.

20:38

When I look at cases of family annihilation,

20:41

the family members who are murdered,

20:44

very often they're not seen as

20:46

living, breathing human beings with their own hopes

20:49

and dreams and freedoms and choices. They're

20:51

seen as objects that are possessed

20:53

by the perpetrator.

20:56

They are things that the perpetrator owns,

20:58

and therefore the perpetrator can do, you

21:00

know, what he wants with them. And

21:03

these cases are really interesting because

21:05

a lot of the coverage of the cases will

21:08

present these as cases where

21:10

somebody's snapped, somebody's lost it, They've

21:13

gone overnight from you know, a

21:15

loving, caring father figure to

21:17

a homicidal maniac, and that

21:20

just doesn't happen. Snapping isn't actually

21:22

a thing. And when you look in detail

21:24

at these cases, when you find out

21:27

the details about these families and their lives,

21:29

what you often come across is quite significant

21:32

histories of domestic abuse, of

21:34

coercive and controlling behavior, a

21:37

very kind of domineering head of the household

21:39

type figures. So it does make

21:41

sense when you look at it in that broader

21:44

context. And I don't think I've

21:46

come across a single case where somebody has just you

21:48

know, snapped and lost it in an instant

21:50

that doesn't tend to happen.

21:52

Do you think that it's a case

21:54

of someone over the years or

21:57

over a certain amount of time of fermenting

21:59

these ideas, isn't getting more

22:01

angry, or do you think this is something that someone potentially

22:04

kind of always had in them.

22:05

I think it's something that they've always had in them,

22:08

because the way that they think about their

22:10

family, the way they think about other people, that

22:12

is an element of their personality that's

22:15

very much part and parcel of them. To be

22:17

controlling is normal for them. To be possessive,

22:20

is normal for them. To be abusive, it's

22:22

normal for them. So this

22:24

is the key thing about all of the family annihilations

22:27

that I've covered, Like it's more

22:29

about continuity than it is about change.

22:32

And very often these individuals

22:34

are quite good at maintaining

22:37

like a facade of normality and

22:39

respectability. And this is vania which

22:41

most people don't really get to see behind.

22:44

So it is really shocking when this kind

22:47

of thing happens. But very often you

22:49

speak to people who are kind of known

22:51

intimately to those involved in a crime,

22:53

like this, and they're like, yeah, yeah, he

22:55

was an awful person. You know, he was just very

22:57

good at claiming that he wasn't.

22:59

This case that I'm looking at with this guy

23:01

in Russia, this Melnikov guy. The thing

23:03

with him is though he just come off

23:06

of a very luxurious

23:08

holiday with his two children and his

23:10

wife in the Maldives. He just

23:12

made a deal on a three point five million

23:15

dollar business contract,

23:18

and he had a really nice flat in an

23:20

upmarket part of Moscow.

23:24

On the outside, like everything was going

23:26

good for him. Now, allegedly he

23:29

told his wife he was depressed, but the source

23:31

for that is kind of like anonymous person that

23:33

told a Russian government

23:35

media channel, so it's not exactly reliable.

23:38

But he seemed to have everything going

23:40

for him. Yet he apparently,

23:43

according to the Russian police, killed

23:45

his whole family using a

23:47

series of different knives.

23:49

Also then killed himself.

23:51

He seemed to kind of have everything going for him.

23:55

Do you see that kind of stuff happen as well? All the people

23:57

do this, even if you know everything

23:59

find Angela is okay, and you know, I

24:01

mean, who knows what is going through someone's head?

24:03

But I don't know. This guy didn't seem to be losing

24:05

things. It was quite the opposite.

24:07

No, that doesn't really ring truth

24:09

for me. If he's if he's seeing

24:12

a particular level of success and like

24:15

you said, he's got this this big multi

24:17

million contract in the offering, and

24:19

if he's you know, quite well healed

24:21

and things are going well, that's not the time

24:24

when this sort of thing tends to happen. Then

24:26

you've got situations where you

24:28

know, large amounts of money are involved. It's

24:30

normally when there's the threat of losing

24:33

that money, right, and that's like a real

24:35

thing. And the murders

24:37

are essentially away of sort of regaining

24:39

control essentially, because for a lot

24:42

of these guys, the family

24:44

is is a way of kind of displaying

24:46

success, their indicator

24:49

to the world that they've made it. You know

24:51

that they're economically successful, they've got

24:53

money, and if you think of

24:55

you know that the vast expense that comes from having

24:58

a family at the family home and

25:00

and very often some expensive

25:02

leisure purshoots and hobbies and that kind of thing,

25:04

and these grand holidays in the Moldies. That's

25:07

basically announcing to the rest of the world, I've

25:09

made it, and look, my family are helping me.

25:11

Perform my success to the rest

25:13

of the world.

25:13

When there's the threat of that money kind of going away,

25:16

the family doesn't serve a function anymore,

25:18

because for these guys, the family is a way of performing

25:21

success. There isn't any real sort

25:23

of genuine emotion or

25:25

kind of attachment to the people in the family.

25:27

They're simply props. And when the

25:29

fuel essentially runs out, the money runs

25:31

out, it's like, oh, well, you know

25:33

that they're not serving their purpose

25:35

anymore. I'm kind of finished with them, and I'm

25:38

done with this and I'm going to take it all down in

25:40

the final kind of act of control.

25:42

Some of his neighbors were saying that he'd recently

25:44

hired a bodyguard to kind of take

25:46

his kids to school, which I

25:48

mean, I don't know, but that doesn't scream to me a

25:51

guy that is, you know, quite happily ready to

25:53

just kill his family if you want to protect his kids.

25:55

Yeah, yeah, it really doesn't resonate

25:58

with me in terms of that kind family

26:00

annihilator, because they

26:03

will do this, they will carry out these murders and

26:05

then their own lives before everything

26:07

goes horribly wrong. Yeah, it

26:10

doesn't really stack up for me.

26:11

What is also interesting to me.

26:13

So in this research that we're doing, we

26:15

have found people that

26:17

are, you know, in some ways connected in the way

26:19

that they're Russian millionaires and billionaires,

26:22

and they have some connections to the state. I mean, they don't

26:24

know each other. I'm sure they knew of each other, some of them,

26:26

but in some way they're connected. And

26:28

there's over a dozen of these so called oligarchs

26:31

that are dead and two, at

26:33

least two, maybe we think three did

26:36

this family annihilation.

26:38

It is an incredibly rare phenomenon. Having a

26:40

clustering of them like this is

26:42

relatively unusual, especially

26:44

within similar circles, within

26:47

the same nation, within a

26:49

particular time period. It would

26:51

seem quite anomalist to me.

26:54

Yeah, and at least two of them, So

26:56

the two that we know for certain annihilated

26:58

the whole families. There's two children

27:00

that survived that you know, they were older, they weren't in the house.

27:03

Both of them have said that there's just no way,

27:05

like there is no way that they did this. But

27:08

again, I mean, I guess we have heard

27:10

that before. Do you think that's

27:12

like a I don't know, do you do you think that's

27:14

worth listening to. I mean, these are members of this guy's

27:16

family, like literally there are other children, but

27:18

I guess their children would say that, I don't know, what

27:20

do you think?

27:21

Well, the very fact that biological

27:24

children of the alleged perpetrator

27:26

have survived tells me that this is very different

27:28

from any family annihilation I've come across

27:31

before, because when the perpetrator takes their family

27:33

out, they take everybody out. They

27:35

make sure that those children are home for the weekend or

27:38

that they're all together as a family. They don't

27:40

leave anybody behind. All

27:42

the members of that particular nutliar family unit,

27:44

the perpetrator takes them all out, they

27:47

won't leave somebody behind. It's

27:49

yeah, that's quite odd.

27:51

Have you seen cases before where

27:54

they've committed family side or

27:56

whatever you call it. They've killed their whole family, And

28:00

you've seen situations where they've made sure, like they've made

28:02

sure that everyone was there, They've called someone in, they

28:04

made sure it's a family weekend or a dinner or something

28:06

like that.

28:07

Yeah, and several of these cases

28:09

that we came across happened on the family

28:12

holiday, the one time when they're all

28:14

together, you know, without any sort

28:16

of outside influence. That there might be in a different

28:18

country, but no, there's

28:20

a very deliberate attempt to make sure

28:23

that nobody can get away essentially,

28:25

and that everybody's contained within the same

28:28

space. So yeah,

28:30

to have people surviving who

28:33

are part of that nuclear family unit is

28:35

really quite strange to me. I mean,

28:37

it might be that we've discovered a whole new type

28:40

of family annihilator here, right, you know, but

28:43

this doesn't fit with anything I've ever seen

28:45

before. To be honest, I think if you were

28:47

to develop a checklist for you

28:49

know, characteristics associated with family

28:51

annihilation, like this would

28:54

not be off that checklist.

28:56

Now.

28:56

That's all not to say that Vasilly Melnikov

28:59

didn't do it, but it clearly doesn't

29:01

quite fit the pattern of behavior of

29:04

other family annihilators, not

29:06

according to Professor Yadley, someone

29:08

who knows a lot about this. Something

29:11

else that seems a bit off, as I

29:13

mentioned, is the claim that Vasily

29:16

Melnikov hired a bodyguard for his

29:18

kids, at least according to his

29:20

neighbors. Why if he was

29:22

planning to kill his family would

29:25

he hire someone to protect them.

29:27

The neighbors said that seen the bodyguard taking

29:29

the children to school, The children

29:31

who would sadly be murdered later

29:34

on. There are also rumors,

29:36

again from the neighbors, the Vasily

29:38

had a murky past, possibly

29:41

involved with criminal networks in

29:43

other cities. Still, these

29:45

are just rumors. What isn't

29:47

rumor, though, is Vasily Melnikov's

29:50

autopsy report. According

29:52

to that, Vasily had a stab wound

29:54

in his foot. So,

29:57

if we take the official story as

29:59

true, Vasily stabbed his

30:01

family to death with at least two

30:04

different knives and then stabbed

30:06

himself in the foot before killing

30:08

himself outright. Maybe

30:11

or maybe the stab to the foot was a defense

30:14

wound, and maybe, as some people speculate,

30:17

the two different knives were held

30:19

by two different people. Maybe

30:22

Vasily had upset some people. Maybe

30:24

those people killed Vasily Melnikov and

30:26

his family as a punishment and

30:28

a warning to other oligarchs who don't

30:31

play ball.

30:32

We don't know. It's just a theory.

30:35

Unfortunately in this series you

30:38

won't get definitive answers. Real

30:40

life doesn't always get tied up in a bow,

30:43

especially not when looking into the deaths

30:45

of the Russian elite.

30:47

We don't exactly know what happened to Vasily

30:49

Melnikov or many of the other

30:51

oligarchs will cover. What we do

30:54

know is that a suspicious pattern emerges

30:56

the closer you look into the deaths

30:58

of these rich Russi businessmen.

31:13

Sad Oligach is a H eleven production

31:15

for Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio.

31:18

Hosted, produced, researched

31:21

and edited by me Jake

31:23

Hanrahan and Sergei Slipchenko.

31:26

Co produced by Sophie Lichtman.

31:29

Music by Sam Black, artwork

31:32

by Adam Doyle, soundmix

31:34

by Splicing Block. Goes to Jakehanrahan

31:37

dot com for more information.