Speaker 1: Something strange is going on. Who is killing Russian billionaires?
Speaker 2: Another Russian oligarch has been found dead.
Speaker 1: Reports suggests that he hanged himself, fell out of a window,
Speaker 1: slashed his wrists, was poisoned, murdered his whole family.
Speaker 2: Last year, more than a dozen Russian oligarchs died in
Speaker 2: the space of nine months. Many of the deaths are
Speaker 2: suspicious with links to the Kremlin. This is sad Oligach,
Speaker 2: an investigation into.
Speaker 1: These recently dead Russian billionaires.
Speaker 2: It's created by me Jake Hanrahan and my colleague Sergey Slipchenkov.
Speaker 2: Sad Oligarch is a H eleven production for Kulsomidia and
Speaker 2: iHeart Radio. In the space of a year, more than
Speaker 2: a dozen rich Russian businessmen have died in either brutal
Speaker 2: or mysterious circumstances. Fell out of windows, some had heart attacks,
Speaker 2: and a few even killed their whole families before committing suicide.
Speaker 2: The official line from the Russian authorities is that most
Speaker 2: of these deaths were accidents or violent consequences of mental illness,
Speaker 2: and maybe that's true. But considering the majority of these
Speaker 2: dead rich Russians are either outright oligarchs or have other
Speaker 2: links to the Kremlin. It's possible that something much dark
Speaker 2: it is taking place. These deaths have all occurred within
Speaker 2: the backdrop of the Ukraine War, a brutal invasion that
Speaker 2: has shown the whole world that Russia's President Putin is
Speaker 2: both ruthless and brazen. Maybe the Kremlin has been tying
Speaker 2: up loose ends or making examples of those who go
Speaker 2: against them, as several of these dead oligarchs have for
Speaker 2: some war can actually be bad for business. In this project,
Speaker 2: Sad Oligarch, I'll be investigating the numerous strange deaths of
Speaker 2: these rich Russian businessmen. I'll be doing this with my
Speaker 2: friend and colleague, journalist Sergei Slipchenko. We believe that to
Speaker 2: understand how these businessmen died is to understand more realistically
Speaker 2: how the Kremlin truly operates. Now, of course, we're not
Speaker 2: the only reporters to have done this. We're relying on
Speaker 2: the work of many other sources and people who are
Speaker 2: helping us, some of them can't be named. To appreciate
Speaker 2: the relevance of these deaths, I think it's best to
Speaker 2: first understand the role of the oligarch within Russia. Now
Speaker 2: side note, we do have oligarchy in the West as well,
Speaker 2: we just tend to refer to it by different terms,
Speaker 2: such as lobbying. Anyway, for this series, we'll be focusing
Speaker 2: on Russia.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Admittedly, not all of the dead Russians in this series
Speaker 2: are necessarily starred up oligachs. They've often been branded as
Speaker 2: such by Western media, but it doesn't always apply. The
Speaker 2: lines are blurry. We're using the term loosely to help
Speaker 2: understand a complicated situation. Ultimately, though, all the dead businessmen
Speaker 2: were wealthy via employment in Kremlin linked business or otherwise
Speaker 2: had connections to the Russian government, oligach branding or not.
Speaker 2: But what actually is an oligach? An oligach put simply
Speaker 2: is a wealthy businessman with deep political power and connections
Speaker 2: to government.
Speaker 1: Whilst Russia has.
Speaker 2: A specifically recent history of oligachs since the fall of
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union, the oligarch is by no means a
Speaker 2: Russian concept only. However, in Russia oligarchs are often very
Speaker 2: useful for the government when they're trying to dodge sanctions.
Speaker 2: This is usually due to the complicated rupture of their
Speaker 2: firms and shareholdings. We'll go into this in detail in
Speaker 2: a later episode, As you'll see, many of the dead
Speaker 2: Russian businessmen of the last twelve months shares several characteristics
Speaker 2: with the tried and tested Oligachs. One of the first
Speaker 2: murders we're looking into occurred just one month after the
Speaker 2: Russian invasion of Ukraine. This is what happened to Vasily Melnikov.
Speaker 2: On March twenty third, twenty twenty two, affluent Russian businessman
Speaker 2: Vasily Melnikov, forty one, was found dead alongside his family
Speaker 2: in their upscale Moscow apartment in the Nisney Novgorod area.
Speaker 2: The family nanny discovered them. They'd all been stabbed to death, Vasily,
Speaker 2: his wife, and their two sons, aged four and ten
Speaker 2: years old. The killings were brutal and tragic. Straight away,
Speaker 2: some European media outlets speculated that it could be a
Speaker 2: contract killing an assassination. According to the police in Moscow,
Speaker 2: though it was a murder suicide. They state that Vasily
Speaker 2: stabbed his own family to death before killing himself, also
Speaker 2: with a knife. Case closed. There's currently no verified indication
Speaker 2: as to why this atrocity happened. Outwardly, things seemed to
Speaker 2: be going well for Vasily Melnikov, him and his family
Speaker 2: had just returned from a luxury holiday in the Maldives.
Speaker 2: Vasily's company, Medstom, had just secured a lucrative three point
Speaker 2: five million dollar contract. However, despite this success, and unnamed
Speaker 2: source told Russian media that Vasily was apparently suicidal and
Speaker 2: had confided this to his wife. There's no indication though,
Speaker 2: as to why he would so callously take Kisshole family
Speaker 2: with him.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: On the face of it, this could just be a
Speaker 2: case of a rich guy who went berserk and killed
Speaker 2: his whole family before committing suicide. Maybe it really is
Speaker 2: an open and shut case. It's possible. Sadly, things like
Speaker 2: that do happen. However, when me and Sergey started looking
Speaker 2: into the Melnikov murder suicide, we noticed a few unusual details.
Speaker 2: What specifically caught our eye was one of the knives
Speaker 2: used in the killings. In one of the crime scene photos,
Speaker 2: the murder weapon, a tactical style knife, was seen resting
Speaker 2: on a kitchen unit with blood on the end of
Speaker 2: the blade. Molded into the handle was the insignia of
Speaker 2: Russia's Special Rapid Response Team. They used the acronym SOBR,
Speaker 2: which was also visible in the handle of the knife.
Speaker 2: The SOBR or Sobber is an elite force in Russia
Speaker 2: which was originally formed to deal with domestic anti terrorism
Speaker 2: situations and high level organized crime. They even fought against
Speaker 2: rebels in the Chechen and Dagistani wars. The knife at
Speaker 2: the crime scene appears to belong to the SOB.
Speaker 3: R Surgery explains the knife was like part of the evidence.
Speaker 3: The Sober knife. Sober is Russian basically swat. It's like
Speaker 3: a special forces unit in the police. They were disbanded
Speaker 3: after like the early two thousands, but at that time
Speaker 3: they were like the elite kind of police, like counter
Speaker 3: terrorist organization. I think I think the West also has
Speaker 3: this where when you join like one of these groups,
Speaker 3: you get like a knife kind of like I guess
Speaker 3: they're like badge of honor.
Speaker 2: As Sergei mentioned, the SOB was at one point dissolved.
Speaker 2: This was in two thousand and two. It was reclassified
Speaker 2: and given a new name later though, in twenty twelve
Speaker 2: and a volved version of these units was rearranged more
Speaker 2: broadly as special forces and given the old name of
Speaker 2: the SOBR. Whilst under different branches of control, the new
Speaker 2: SOBR is in many ways the same as the original.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty two, SOBR units took part in Russia's
Speaker 2: invasion of Ukraine. It seems that the idea was that
Speaker 2: they'd be put in place to crush riots in Kiev
Speaker 2: once the Russian military had taken the city. The Kremlin
Speaker 2: believed this would happen quickly. They were wrong. Ukrainian military
Speaker 2: and armed volunteers defended the capitol over a year later.
Speaker 2: The nearest Russian position is around five hundred kilometers away
Speaker 2: from Kiev. During the initial attacks on Kiev and February
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two, there are reports the whole unit of
Speaker 2: the SOBR was killed on the outskirts of the city.
Speaker 2: The SOOBR a knife of theirs is clearly not your
Speaker 2: average homewhere item. Yet this was the hand allegedly for
Speaker 2: Vasily Melnikov when he killed his whole family and then himself.
Speaker 3: What they found out the scene was a sober knife.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Here it says they were multiple. I know it's but
Speaker 3: this one was specifically photographed and it caught my attention
Speaker 3: because like you could see the insignia on it, whereas
Speaker 3: the other knives are just kind of plain, and you know,
Speaker 3: this could be a replica. It could be something he
Speaker 3: was gifted, But it's just interesting that he has this
Speaker 3: potentially memorabilia, potentially an actual knife from the group. From
Speaker 3: what I can tell, he wasn't a part of anything.
Speaker 3: He wasn't a part of like any police units, any
Speaker 3: of these special forces. But I mean technically that is
Speaker 3: the only way you get one like a legitimate one, right,
Speaker 3: But again, who.
Speaker 2: Knows where this knife is actually from is important If
Speaker 2: it's genuine. At the very least, it shows a Vasily
Speaker 2: meli Kov had some connection to someone who was once
Speaker 2: a member of the soob Ah, even if he just
Speaker 2: bought it from them as a collectible or was gifted it.
Speaker 2: And if it wasn't Vasili's knife, whose was it. Over
Speaker 2: the last decade of my career as a journalist, I've
Speaker 2: covered dozens of wards on the ground all over the world,
Speaker 2: from the trenches of East Ukraine to the barricades of
Speaker 2: East Jerusalem. I've never actually seen any fighters put that
Speaker 2: much value into a combat knife other than it being
Speaker 2: a useful tool. I've seen people cut rope with them
Speaker 2: or open it kind of food, but otherwise it's hardly
Speaker 2: used as a weapon on the front lines. If anything,
Speaker 2: I've seen them passed around a few times as a
Speaker 2: sort of collectible or war trophy, but generally, in my
Speaker 2: experience at least, it's something.
Speaker 1: Fighters will have at war.
Speaker 2: But again, it's just more of a tool than anything else.
Speaker 2: So perhaps Vasily Melnikov fought somewhere and picked this knife
Speaker 2: up along the way and kept it as a sort
Speaker 2: of souvenir. It's possible, but neither Sergery or myself could
Speaker 2: find any information on Vasily Melnikov fighting in any wars,
Speaker 2: not one that the sobre units fought in. No old
Speaker 2: photos on his social media, no mention of previous service, nothing.
Speaker 2: It's likely he didn't fight. Still, though, this sob Our
Speaker 2: knife was found in his apartment and was used in
Speaker 2: the murder of his family. Due to its specific connection
Speaker 2: to the Russian government and its numerous and forces, we
Speaker 2: of course want to find out where it's from. So
Speaker 2: I reached out to several different knife collectors and experts
Speaker 2: to see if they could shed any light on the knife.
Speaker 2: A few of them who really know their stuff associated
Speaker 2: with the conflict journalism collective the irun Popular Front. At
Speaker 2: Popular Front, we have a network all over the world
Speaker 2: where people with very niche esoteric knowledge on war and
Speaker 2: conflict come together, and so some of our people happen
Speaker 2: to know a lot about combat knives, both collectible and practical.
Speaker 2: Speaking to these people, it became clear that the SOBR
Speaker 2: knife pictured in the crime scene photos is an NAR
Speaker 2: forty three knife, a relatively inexpensive scout knife first created
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty three and issued to Russian Special Forces.
Speaker 2: Either that or it's a replica. Still, the design matches
Speaker 2: exactly with the Russian Special Forces scout knives. Whilst the
Speaker 2: crime scene photo of the knife is a bit out
Speaker 2: of focus, a specific logo can be seen on the
Speaker 2: blade of the knife. The logo looks like the infinity
Speaker 2: symbol or the number eight. It's the logo of Aiars Latooste,
Speaker 2: a large Russian knife manufacturer. They make decent knives that
Speaker 2: are generally pretty accessible. You can buy a brand new
Speaker 2: NR forty three knife, for example, from Latoost in Europe
Speaker 2: for around one hundred euros. So the knife was manufactured
Speaker 2: by Aiar's latoost However, there isn't a single one of
Speaker 2: their NAR forty three knife for sale anywhere that has
Speaker 2: the SOB medallion molded into the handle. The same way
Speaker 2: as the Melnikov murder weapon. There aren't currently any commercially
Speaker 2: available NAR forty three knives like that, so where did
Speaker 2: it come from? We thought maybe theoretically, at some point,
Speaker 2: a specific SOBR unit could have commissioned a batch of
Speaker 2: spoke knives from ai As Latouste to award to some
Speaker 2: of its fighters.
Speaker 1: It's quite possible. Now.
Speaker 2: This company is obviously not going to tell us the
Speaker 2: specific details of another customer's purchases, especially if it actually
Speaker 2: was so OBR. But we wanted to know if we
Speaker 2: could order the same bespoke knife that would tell us
Speaker 2: something at least. We reached out to Aiis Latoos to
Speaker 2: see if this was possible, essentially acting as a customer.
Speaker 2: They said, quote, yes, such an order with such an
Speaker 2: emblem can be completed ends quote. Later they sent us
Speaker 2: a mock up of what it would look like. Instead
Speaker 2: of the knife with the SOB medallion molded into the
Speaker 2: plastic of the handle, they sent us a version that
Speaker 2: would have the SOBRE insignia laser engraved on to the
Speaker 2: hilt of the blade. Whilst that's not the same knife
Speaker 2: as what Vasily Melnikov apparently killed himself and his whole
Speaker 2: family with it's pretty close. My point being, it's definitely
Speaker 2: possible that this knife could have been produced by someone
Speaker 2: unrelated to the SOBR, But still, why did Vasily Melnikov
Speaker 2: have it if it was just a random replica. He
Speaker 2: was a multi millionaire and the quality of the knife
Speaker 2: is largely unremarkable. Is what our knife collector associate had
Speaker 2: to say about the blade.
Speaker 4: It didn't really strike me as anything particularly special, just
Speaker 4: your typical combat type knife that you'd see for sale
Speaker 4: anywhere from some sort of a gas station or junk
Speaker 4: shop all the way through maybe an outdoors tactical or
Speaker 4: a surplus type shop. As far as construction goes, it's
Speaker 4: not anything particularly high end. It's definitely not custom, just
Speaker 4: your typical machine made, mass produced item.
Speaker 2: So if the blade doesn't appear to be particularly special superficially,
Speaker 2: maybe it had some sentimental value for Vasily Melnikov, or,
Speaker 2: as others seem to believe, maybe it wasn't his at all.
Speaker 2: Online in Russia, there are various theories and rumors going
Speaker 2: around about Vasily Melnikov and the slaughter of his family.
Speaker 2: Many believe he was killed on behalf of the Russian government.
Speaker 2: In fact, so many Russian oligarchs have died in the
Speaker 2: last year that it's become somewhat of a running joke.
Speaker 1: Vasily was just another one.
Speaker 2: Even pro Russian telegram channels linked to Russian units fighting
Speaker 2: in Ukraine joke about the likelihood of being bumped off
Speaker 2: by their own government. For example, the operator of the
Speaker 2: Russian propaganda tell channel gray Zone, with more than four
Speaker 2: hundred thousand members, wrote recently saying, quote, once I was
Speaker 2: having a cup of tea with a comrade from the
Speaker 2: General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia, talking about
Speaker 2: the various risks and consequences of saying certain things in
Speaker 2: this channel on telegram, I jokingly said that one day
Speaker 2: I might fall out of a window, to which my
Speaker 2: comrade replied, bro, if the generals want to eliminate you
Speaker 2: by throwing you from a window, they'll most likely throw
Speaker 2: you from.
Speaker 1: The first floor. End quote.
Speaker 2: As we'll find out later in this series, falling out
Speaker 2: of the window is something many Russian oligarchs have recently
Speaker 2: had in common. Plenty of people online in Russia have
Speaker 2: found the whole situation suspicious. Now I don't speak Russian,
Speaker 2: but Sergey does. He found numerous comments relating to the
Speaker 2: Vasili Melnikov murders.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of speculator. You know, a lot of
Speaker 3: them say like, oh, look at them cleaning cleaning out,
Speaker 3: you know, referring to like whoever's higher up kind of
Speaker 3: maybe cutting closing loose ends or getting rid of like
Speaker 3: people who might know some like have dirt on them.
Speaker 3: You know, it's all over the place.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: Mostly you see this on Contactya, like their VK, like
Speaker 3: Facebook kind of counterpart you see this on the actual
Speaker 3: articles because you know, you can post anonymously, so a
Speaker 3: lot of people will say like, oh, smell suspicious, or like, oh.
Speaker 1: Is this do you really want us to believe?
Speaker 3: This doesn't go like anywhere from that, but you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's interesting to see that a lot of people
Speaker 3: are voicing the fact that, like this sounds like bullshit.
Speaker 1: It's almost seems like they're used to it.
Speaker 3: They're kind of like, oh, there goes another one. It's
Speaker 3: nothing new to them.
Speaker 2: That said, Rumors and theories on the internet, just rumors
Speaker 2: and theories on the internet. We don't know if they
Speaker 2: hold any white often they don't. What we do know, though,
Speaker 2: is that the police in Russia say that we're silly
Speaker 2: Melnikov killed his whole family, a brutal act beyond most
Speaker 2: people's imagination. This crime is so awful that it even
Speaker 2: has its own terminology. It's often referred to as familicide
Speaker 2: and the perpetrators as family annihilators. To get a better
Speaker 2: understanding of this horror, I spoke to Professor Elizabeth Yadley.
Speaker 2: She's a professor of criminology at Birmingham University in the UK.
Speaker 2: She's studied family annihilation at length and has authored several
Speaker 2: papers on it.
Speaker 5: When this individual hills their family and so that is
Speaker 5: often their wife or female partner and their biological children,
Speaker 5: and in some cases they then kill themselves as well
Speaker 5: and in other cases they know. So it is the
Speaker 5: wiping out essentially of the entire nuclear family units in
Speaker 5: one particular event.
Speaker 2: Right, And you've done a lot of research on this.
Speaker 2: Obviously it's a case by case basis. But is there
Speaker 2: any kind of idea that's shared by people as to
Speaker 2: why people do this? Because it's extremely violent. It's just
Speaker 2: unbelievable to anyone that's saying that someone would kill their
Speaker 2: or own family. Is there any kind of consensus on
Speaker 2: why this might happen?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think For me, the two key words are
Speaker 5: control and possession. When I look at cases of family annihilation,
Speaker 5: the family members who are murdered, very often they're not
Speaker 5: seen as living, breathing human beings with their own hopes
Speaker 5: and dreams and freedoms and choices. They're seen as objects
Speaker 5: that are possessed by the perpetrator. They are things that
Speaker 5: the perpetrator owns, and therefore the perpetrator can do, you know,
Speaker 5: what he wants with them. And these cases are really
Speaker 5: interesting because a lot of the coverage of the cases
Speaker 5: will present these as cases where somebody's snapped, somebody's lost it,
Speaker 5: They've gone overnight from you know, a loving, caring father
Speaker 5: figure to a homicidal maniac, and that just doesn't happen.
Speaker 5: Snapping isn't actually a thing. And when you look in
Speaker 5: detail at these cases, when you find out the details
Speaker 5: about these families and their lives, what you often come
Speaker 5: across is quite significant histories of domestic abuse, of coercive
Speaker 5: and controlling behavior, a very kind of domineering head of
Speaker 5: the household type figures. So it does make sense when
Speaker 5: you look at it in that broader context. And I
Speaker 5: don't think I've come across a single case where somebody
Speaker 5: has just you know, snapped and lost it in an
Speaker 5: instant that doesn't tend to happen.
Speaker 2: Do you think that it's a case of someone over
Speaker 2: the years or over a certain amount of time of
Speaker 2: fermenting these ideas, isn't getting more angry, or do you
Speaker 2: think this is something that someone potentially kind of always
Speaker 2: had in them.
Speaker 5: I think it's something that they've always had in them,
Speaker 5: because the way that they think about their family, the
Speaker 5: way they think about other people, that is an element
Speaker 5: of their personality that's very much part and parcel of them.
Speaker 5: To be controlling is normal for them. To be possessive,
Speaker 5: is normal for them. To be abusive, it's normal for them.
Speaker 5: So this is the key thing about all of the
Speaker 5: family annihilations that I've covered, Like it's more about continuity
Speaker 5: than it is about change. And very often these individuals
Speaker 5: are quite good at maintaining like a facade of normality
Speaker 5: and respectability. And this is vania which most people don't
Speaker 5: really get to see behind. So it is really shocking
Speaker 5: when this kind of thing happens. But very often you
Speaker 5: speak to people who are kind of known intimately to
Speaker 5: those involved in a crime, like this, and they're like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: he was an awful person. You know, he was just
Speaker 5: very good at claiming that he wasn't.
Speaker 2: This case that I'm looking at with this guy in Russia,
Speaker 2: this Melnikov guy. The thing with him is though he
Speaker 2: just come off of a very luxurious holiday with his
Speaker 2: two children and his wife in the Maldives. He just
Speaker 2: made a deal on a three point five million dollar
Speaker 2: business contract, and he had a really nice flat in
Speaker 2: an upmarket part of Moscow. On the outside, like everything
Speaker 2: was going good for him. Now, allegedly he told his
Speaker 2: wife he was depressed, but the source for that is
Speaker 2: kind of like anonymous person that told a Russian government
Speaker 2: media channel, so it's not exactly reliable. But he seemed
Speaker 2: to have everything going for him. Yet he apparently, according
Speaker 2: to the Russian police, killed his whole family using a
Speaker 2: series of different knives.
Speaker 1: Also then killed himself.
Speaker 2: He seemed to kind of have everything going for him.
Speaker 2: Do you see that kind of stuff happen as well?
Speaker 2: All the people do this, even if you know everything
Speaker 2: find Angela is okay, and you know, I mean, who
Speaker 2: knows what is going through someone's head?
Speaker 1: But I don't know. This guy didn't seem to be
Speaker 1: losing things. It was quite the opposite.
Speaker 5: No, that doesn't really ring truth for me. If he's
Speaker 5: if he's seeing a particular level of success and like
Speaker 5: you said, he's got this this big multi million contract
Speaker 5: in the offering, and if he's you know, quite well
Speaker 5: healed and things are going well, that's not the time
Speaker 5: when this sort of thing tends to happen. Then you've
Speaker 5: got situations where you know, large amounts of money are involved.
Speaker 5: It's normally when there's the threat of losing that money, right,
Speaker 5: and that's like a real thing. And the murders are
Speaker 5: essentially away of sort of regaining control essentially, because for
Speaker 5: a lot of these guys, the family is is a
Speaker 5: way of kind of displaying success, their indicator to the
Speaker 5: world that they've made it. You know that they're economically successful,
Speaker 5: they've got money, and if you think of you know
Speaker 5: that the vast expense that comes from having a family
Speaker 5: at the family home and and very often some expensive
Speaker 5: leisure purshoots and hobbies and that kind of thing, and
Speaker 5: these grand holidays in the Moldies. That's basically announcing to
Speaker 5: the rest of the world, I've made it, and look,
Speaker 5: my family are helping me.
Speaker 1: Perform my success to the rest of the world.
Speaker 5: When there's the threat of that money kind of going away,
Speaker 5: the family doesn't serve a function anymore, because for these guys,
Speaker 5: the family is a way of performing success. There isn't
Speaker 5: any real sort of genuine emotion or kind of attachment
Speaker 5: to the people in the family. They're simply props. And
Speaker 5: when the fuel essentially runs out, the money runs out,
Speaker 5: it's like, oh, well, you know that they're not serving
Speaker 5: their purpose anymore. I'm kind of finished with them, and
Speaker 5: I'm done with this and I'm going to take it
Speaker 5: all down in the final kind of act of control.
Speaker 2: Some of his neighbors were saying that he'd recently hired
Speaker 2: a bodyguard to kind of take his kids to school,
Speaker 2: which I mean, I don't know, but that doesn't scream
Speaker 2: to me a guy that is, you know, quite happily
Speaker 2: ready to just kill his family if you want to
Speaker 2: protect his kids.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, it really doesn't resonate with me in terms
Speaker 5: of that kind family annihilator, because they will do this,
Speaker 5: they will carry out these murders and then their own
Speaker 5: lives before everything goes horribly wrong. Yeah, it doesn't really
Speaker 5: stack up for me.
Speaker 1: What is also interesting to me.
Speaker 2: So in this research that we're doing, we have found
Speaker 2: people that are, you know, in some ways connected in
Speaker 2: the way that they're Russian millionaires and billionaires, and they
Speaker 2: have some connections to the state. I mean, they don't
Speaker 2: know each other. I'm sure they knew of each other,
Speaker 2: some of them, but in some way they're connected. And
Speaker 2: there's over a dozen of these so called oligarchs that
Speaker 2: are dead and two, at least two, maybe we think
Speaker 2: three did this family annihilation.
Speaker 5: It is an incredibly rare phenomenon. Having a clustering of
Speaker 5: them like this is relatively unusual, especially within similar circles,
Speaker 5: within the same nation, within a particular time period. It
Speaker 5: would seem quite anomalist to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and at least two of them, So the two
Speaker 2: that we know for certain annihilated the whole families. There's
Speaker 2: two children that survived that you know, they were older,
Speaker 2: they weren't in the house. Both of them have said
Speaker 2: that there's just no way, like there is no way
Speaker 2: that they did this. But again, I mean, I guess
Speaker 2: we have heard that before. Do you think that's like
Speaker 2: a I don't know, do you do you think that's
Speaker 2: worth listening to. I mean, these are members of this
Speaker 2: guy's family, like literally there are other children, but I
Speaker 2: guess their children would say that, I don't know, what
Speaker 2: do you think?
Speaker 5: Well, the very fact that biological children of the alleged
Speaker 5: perpetrator have survived tells me that this is very different
Speaker 5: from any family annihilation I've come across before, because when
Speaker 5: the perpetrator takes their family out, they take everybody out.
Speaker 5: They make sure that those children are home for the
Speaker 5: weekend or that they're all together as a family. They
Speaker 5: don't leave anybody behind. All the members of that particular
Speaker 5: nutliar family unit, the perpetrator takes them all out, they
Speaker 5: won't leave somebody behind. It's yeah, that's quite odd.
Speaker 2: Have you seen cases before where they've committed family side
Speaker 2: or whatever you call it. They've killed their whole family,
Speaker 2: And you've seen situations where they've made sure, like they've
Speaker 2: made sure that everyone was there, They've called someone in,
Speaker 2: they made sure it's a family weekend or a dinner
Speaker 2: or something like that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and several of these cases that we came across
Speaker 5: happened on the family holiday, the one time when they're
Speaker 5: all together, you know, without any sort of outside influence.
Speaker 5: That there might be in a different country, but no,
Speaker 5: there's a very deliberate attempt to make sure that nobody
Speaker 5: can get away essentially, and that everybody's contained within the
Speaker 5: same space. So yeah, to have people surviving who are
Speaker 5: part of that nuclear family unit is really quite strange
Speaker 5: to me. I mean, it might be that we've discovered
Speaker 5: a whole new type of family annihilator here, right, you know,
Speaker 5: but this doesn't fit with anything I've ever seen before.
Speaker 5: To be honest, I think if you were to develop
Speaker 5: a checklist for you know, characteristics associated with family annihilation,
Speaker 5: like this would not be off that checklist.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: That's all not to say that Vasilly Melnikov didn't do it,
Speaker 2: but it clearly doesn't quite fit the pattern of behavior
Speaker 2: of other family annihilators, not according to Professor Yadley, someone
Speaker 2: who knows a lot about this. Something else that seems
Speaker 2: a bit off, as I mentioned, is the claim that
Speaker 2: Vasily Melnikov hired a bodyguard for his kids, at least
Speaker 2: according to his neighbors. Why if he was planning to
Speaker 2: kill his family would he hire someone to protect them.
Speaker 2: The neighbors said that seen the bodyguard taking the children
Speaker 2: to school, The children who would sadly be murdered later on.
Speaker 2: There are also rumors, again from the neighbors, the Vasily
Speaker 2: had a murky past, possibly involved with criminal networks in
Speaker 2: other cities. Still, these are just rumors. What isn't rumor, though,
Speaker 2: is Vasily Melnikov's autopsy report. According to that, Vasily had
Speaker 2: a stab wound in his foot. So, if we take
Speaker 2: the official story as true, Vasily stabbed his family to
Speaker 2: death with at least two different knives and then stabbed
Speaker 2: himself in the foot before killing himself outright. Maybe or
Speaker 2: maybe the stab to the foot was a defense wound,
Speaker 2: and maybe, as some people speculate, the two different knives
Speaker 2: were held by two different people. Maybe Vasily had upset
Speaker 2: some people. Maybe those people killed Vasily Melnikov and his
Speaker 2: family as a punishment and a warning to other oligarchs
Speaker 2: who don't play ball.
Speaker 1: We don't know. It's just a theory.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately in this series you won't get definitive answers. Real
Speaker 2: life doesn't always get tied up in a bow, especially
Speaker 2: not when looking into the deaths of the Russian elite.
Speaker 2: We don't exactly know what happened to Vasily Melnikov or
Speaker 2: many of the other oligarchs will cover. What we do
Speaker 2: know is that a suspicious pattern emerges the closer you
Speaker 2: look into the deaths of these rich Russi businessmen. Sad
Speaker 2: Oligach is a H eleven production for Cool Zone Media
Speaker 2: and iHeartRadio. Hosted, produced, researched and edited by me Jake
Speaker 2: Hanrahan and Sergei Slipchenko. Co produced by Sophie Lichtman. Music
Speaker 2: by Sam Black, artwork by Adam Doyle, soundmix by Splicing Block.
Speaker 2: Goes to Jakehanrahan dot com for more information.