Professor Gets Just 12 Years After Caught with Dismembered Arms of His Student-Lover
A professor who has admitted murdering his lover before dismembering her has been sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Oleg Sokolov, 64, was a history professor at Russia’s St. Petersburg State University, when he was found in November 2019 trying to dispose of the severed arms of his former 24-year-old girlfriend Anastasia Yeshchenko, according to the New York Post.
#NSTworld A court in Saint Petersburg on Friday sentenced a Russian historian and Napoleon enthusiast to 12-and-a-half-years in jail for murdering and dismembering his young student lover last year.https://t.co/AcHpRfXfQf#OlegSokolov #AnastasiaYeshchenko
— New Straits Times (@NST_Online) December 26, 2020
“He shot her, then tried to strangle her, but she continued showing signs of life so he shot her again,” Judge Yulia Maksimenko said according to the Post.
Sokolov shot Yeshchenko four times with a rifle before cutting up her body with a knife and saw.
He was then accused of partying with friends.
“His friends visited him, they all drank cognac,” the court was told.
When the party ended, he continued his work on Yeshchenko’s body. The woman’s severed head was later found in his apartment.
During the trial, the judge said that when Sokolov tried to dispose of Yeshchenko’s arms, his scheme went awry. The arms did not sink, leading Sokolov to enter the water. He could not get out of the river due to the cold and that is why he was caught, according to Reuters.
Sokolov did not deny the crime and asked the court to throw the book at him. He said he was driven to “a state of complete insanity” after Yeshchenko made remarks about his children from another relationship.
“I understand that I committed an horrific thing and deserve the strictest penalty possible,” he said in a written confession reported by the UK Daily Mail.
He said his academic career was “crossed out in a few seconds” by his crime.
“I don’t care what is said about me. It doesn’t matter,” he wrote. “I killed her and myself too. I do not exist. My cherished memory of Anastasia is the most important thing for me now.”
“We were supposed to get married and were planning the wedding,” he added. “In over five years [dating] I had not raised my hand to her. Even scandals between us were rare.”
(12 yrs sounds short!) Napoleon scholar Oleg Sokolov sentenced to 12 years’ jail for dismembering Russian student https://t.co/FxcbpjArJJ
— Glenda McIntyre (@GlendaM47545442) December 26, 2020
The maximum penalty for the crime was 15 years.
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