The Kyiv Court of Appeals has upheld the verdict in the case of the murder of two girls in Podil. The man who was found guilty will spend the rest of his life behind bars. His accomplice received 13 years in prison. At the time of the crime, the man was 34 years old, the woman was 19.
This was reported on Saturday, April 18, by the Prosecutor General's Office.
This crime occurred in January 2020. The owner of the apartment, which she rented to a couple for a few days, came to clean and discovered the bodies of two girls, ages 19 and 16. They had been bound with tape and hidden in a closet on the balcony. The cause of death was multiple stab wounds, the prosecutor's office said.
Investigators established that the apartment was rented for the New Year celebration. They arrived in Kyiv without money and first lived in a tent in a forest park. On the eve of the murder, they attacked a passerby in the Svyatoshynskyi district, took his phone and handed it over to a pawnshop. It was with this money that they rented the apartment.
They did not work anywhere and had no permanent residence, lived in Lutsk and Lviv, and also visited other cities, where they rented housing and invited people they robbed there.
Law enforcement officers found out that on the day of the crime, the man met the girls near a supermarket and invited them to visit. According to the investigation, they planned to rob the girls.
The testimonies of the accused repeatedly changed and contradicted each other. The woman initially claimed that she killed the girls out of jealousy, and that her husband was not in the apartment. Later, she stated that this was a fabricated version and, according to her, she was persuaded to take the blame by her roommate, the Prosecutor General's Office noted.
“In court, she already said that she did not see the moment of the murder, that she was allegedly in the kitchen, and later helped clean up the blood and hide the bodies. The man did not admit his guilt. He insisted that the conflict arose between the women, and the fatal injuries were allegedly inflicted by his accomplice, “protecting” him. These versions were refuted in court,” the report says.
Investigators determined that it was the man who inflicted dozens of stab wounds on the victims — 17 to one girl and 28 to another. The woman's actions were classified as complicity; she was in the apartment during the crime, helped cover up the blood, hid the girls' bodies on the balcony, and pawned the victims' inexpensive jewelry.
After the verdict, the man filed an appeal, demanding a new trial. The appeals court rejected these arguments. The verdict remained unchanged: life imprisonment for the murderer and 13 years in prison for his accomplice.