The girl (pictured) disappeared six months ago. To confuse investigators and operatives, as well as to cover his tracks, the suspect came up with an incredible story about her disappearance. This helped the 37-year-old man practically manage to go unpunished. However, the employees still solved this complicated case.
“My wife went to Dubai and did not return”
A statement with this text was placed on the desk of Moscow police on January 10. The father of a 6-year-old girl, an exemplary family man and deputy head of the contract work department of the Moscow Metropolitan State Unitary Enterprise, Alexander Popov, looked excited. The 37-year-old man told employees in detail the details of his wife’s disappearance. According to him, 30-year-old Ksenia Popova disappeared on August 31.
“My wife began to pack her things and announced that she was heading to the airport to fly to Dubai for a vacation. <…> Upon arrival, I wrote on Instagram that I had arrived, saying that we would now communicate on this social network“, the husband wrote in a statement.
Alexander further told the police that his wife had been on vacation in a foreign country for quite a long time. And only in October she wrote that she and her friends were invited to go on a ship to Africa, and she agreed.
“All this time we communicated on Instagram. On December 14, my wife wrote to me that she was in a Covid center in the suburbs of Kimberley. <…> Since I had not communicated by phone with my wife for quite a long time, I contacted the South African consulate and asked to provide me with official information about her exact whereabouts. They advised me to file a police report“
Initially, the story told by Alexander Popov looked like the wife decided to leave her husband and 6-year-old daughter Yesenia, not often pleasing her family with communication. However, what was the surprise of the police and investigators when they began to understand the situation.
“I didn’t cross the border, I didn’t buy tickets to Dubai”
First, the employees found out that Ksenia Popova had not crossed the Russian border at all during the specified time – since August 31. That is, this meant that the girl had been in the country all this time. After interrogating Ksenia’s relatives and friends, it turned out that the style of communication that she had been conducting recently on Instagram was absolutely not typical of her. Then the investigators managed to establish that the girl’s cell phone was with her husband on the day of her disappearance.
Moreover, it turned out that it was on August 31, when, according to the husband, his wife flew to Dubai, Alexander Popov took his daughter to his bachelor friend. A 6-year-old girl lived with a man unknown to her for two days. The father himself spent these days at home, constantly taking large garbage bags out of his apartment in Tinao. This was confirmed by the neighbors of the deputy head of the Moscow Metro department.
“I don’t know anything”
When the investigators turned to Popov with all these questions, he just waved his eyebrows calmly – help me find my wife, I don’t know anything, just like you. When they decided to search the man’s car and apartment, it turned out that he had sold both of them long ago. Immediately after the disappearance of his wife. Moreover, the new owners of the apartment have already managed to make major repairs to it – there is no point in looking for traces after such a thing.
“Threw the body in parts into the river”
The day before, Alexander Popov nevertheless wrote a confession, stating that he killed his wife during a domestic quarrel. For several days in a row, he said, he dismembered the body and carried it in bags into the Desna River.
With a story about a trip to Dubai and an imitation of a girl’s life on Instagram, the man won six months – so he diverted the attention of Ksenia’s relatives and played the role of an abandoned and inconsolable husband. The body of Ksenia Popova has not yet been found.
“ВЧК ОГПУ”
