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"Pichugin's file lacks all the main ingredients of standard procedure in criminal justice - the fact of the murder has not been established beyond doubt and there is no direct proof, only a debatable motive and circumstantial evidence. Does that seem normal to you?"
"Absolutely. Only recently I sent a case to Astrakhan Region. A man was convicted of a double murder on indirect evidence alone. This is normal practice. But it was the Moscow prosecutors who investigated all the main aspects, I only carried out the preliminary inquiries."
So we need not doubt the importance of the role played by the Moscow prosecutors in Aleksey Pichugin's case. All their evidence merely boils down to the fact that he might have wanted Gorin dead. This I have already shown by examining all his possible motives. Yet our investigation into Gorin's past shows, on the contrary, that he had plenty of friends and acquaintances with very good reasons to definitely want him dead.
And Gorin himself had powerful motives to disappear. He had gone missing before. It remains unclear who, and whose money, is looking after the missing couple's children and mother-in-law and their extensive household. It's openly suspected in Tambov that the Gorins are alive, and that their mysterious disappearance and the pool of blood were faked. How could that be? Surely the investigation proved they are dead?
I should rephrase that - the investigation really needed to prove that they are dead. Otherwise there would be nothing to charge Pichugin with. But it was done in such a way that the trial had to be held in camera. To avoid the disgrace. This is the most intriguing part of our inquiries.
Portrait of a the crime
*The Gorins' disappearance and presumed deaths are the main element in the case against Aleksey Pichugin. This is what he was given 20 years for, and it raises more questions than any other aspect. Judge for yourselves. The Gorins' bodies have not been found. Who actually carried out the killings remains unknown. But we do know who "commissioned" the crime - according to the Procuracy General, that was Pichugin. The only proof is a supposed motive, provided by two witnesses. And one of them is a man serving life for a series of rapes and murders.
With contract killings, it usually happens the other way round. The victims end up dead, and usually demonstrably so. Sometimes the hitmen are caught. But very rarely do we learn the motive. Think back to any of the high-profile killings of the 90s. Even in the ones that were officially solved, the underlying reasons remain murky. In any interview on the subject, senior security officials all say one thing - how hard it was to identify who took out the contract in vast majority of these murders. Finding proof was nigh on impossible.
In other words, the investigation into the Gorins' disappearance was carried out back-to-front. It takes remarkable skill for detectives to make several leaps of logic and start from the truth. If you cannot catch the hitmen, catch the man who hired them.
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