According to indirect evidence: the court found Alena Popova guilty of killing a girlfriend on the beach in Tuapse in 2017

On December 12, the Tuapse District Court found Pyatigorsk resident Alyona Popova guilty of the murder of her friend Anastasia Muzhenya on a beach in Tuapse. Judge Sergei Kotkov sentenced the girl to eight years in prison - this is exactly the punishment requested by the state prosecution. Popova pleaded not guilty, her defense intends to appeal the verdict to a higher court.

According to lawyer Popova, all evidence of the prosecution only confirms the alibi of her client.

“The Tuapse District Court has not passed a single acquittal in the last ten years,” the lawyer said. “We will appeal the verdict.”

“Sufficient grounds”

Recall that a criminal case that received public outcry at the federal level was initiated by the Criminal Code of the city of Tuapse in 2017.

As follows from the materials of the case that RT got acquainted with, on the evening of August 28, Popova and Muzhenya drank alcohol in a hookah room in the company of new acquaintances - Dmitry Kozachenko and Elman Kurbanov. They met the guys on the beach of the village of Novomikhailovsky, Tuapse district - the girls lived on the shore in a tourist tent. Both Alyona and Nastya during the evening entered into intimacy with Kurbanov. After midnight, friends returned to the beach.

On the way, Popova and Muzhenya had a fight over Kurbanov. According to Popova’s testimony, Muzhenya said she didn’t want to sleep with her in the same tent and asked her to leave - she packed her things, leaving a note with an apology to her friend.

The cafe's CCTV cameras recorded her at half past three in the night - she walked back from the beach. On the embankment Popova caught a taxi in which three guys were already traveling - they drove her to the highway, from where she hitchhiked with transfers got to her mother's house in the suburbs of Pyatigorsk. Popova told her fellow travelers about a quarrel with her friend, specifying that they lived in a tent on the beach and Muzhenya was left there alone.

At 16:00 on August 29, one of the campers discovered the body of Mougins in a broken tent. The girl’s head was in blood, abrasions, bruises and strangulation marks were visible on her body.

The next day, operatives rushed home to Popova with a search and seized the breeches in which she arrived from Tuapse, as well as a sheet with brown spots on them. From the beginning of September 2017, Popova was in custody in a pre-trial detention center.

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“The reason for the detention was the availability of sufficient data to suspect the girl of committing a crime, including breeches with spots of brown substance found at her place of residence,” the Tuapse IC press service said. - The conclusion of the forensic examination established that the blood of the victim was found on the bridges. "These things and other items were discovered during the search, the basis for which was sufficient data indicating the possibility of finding at the place of residence of the accused items of relevance to the criminal case."

Nevertheless, the "sufficient data" of law enforcement officers eventually turned into only indirect evidence of Popova’s guilt.

So, brown spots on bridges, according to the case, are called two tiny spots the size of a match head, with a diameter of two to five millimeters. Popova, in her testimony, explained that she and her friend had things in common, and Muzhenya, who regularly wore these breeches, could get injured and stain them. Popova gave similar explanations regarding the soiled sheet, explaining that Popova lived at her house for a long time and slept in her bed. As the blood stains appeared on the things, the investigation and the court did not establish, although the defense requested a traceological examination.

One of the key evidence for murder cases - the time of death - neither the investigation nor the court were able to establish either.

According to investigators, during the conflict, Popova inflicted a dull head injury on an unknown subject, from which she died between 01:00 and 02:30 hours. However, not one of the examinations conducted has confirmed this fact. At the same time, during the judicial investigation, the defense proved that, according to the examinations and conclusions available in the case file, Muzhenya died no earlier than 09:30, when Popova was already at the entrance to Pyatigorsk.

The circumstances of the murder, according to the defense of Popova, have also not been established.

“Law enforcers did not find out exactly how Popova killed her friend,” said lawyer Olga Devyatova in an interview with RT.

The case was first sent to the court in January 2018. However, the protocols of examinations, interrogations, seizure of material evidence and other investigative actions were drawn up with many errors, which forced the court to return the case to the prosecutor's office for revision.

However, the supervisor successfully challenged this decision in a higher court and the case again went to the Tuapse district court for consideration in a new composition. After that, the judicial investigation was already held behind closed doors at the request of the relatives of the murdered woman, who complained that the media regularly leaked materials defaming the honor of their dead child.

At the same time, the case of Alena Popova was discussed on the air of federal television channels. All key witnesses, relatives of both girls, lawyers and experts participated in the programs.

In one of the telecasts even a confession was heard in the murder of Mougins. 21-year-old Vladimir Cherkasov, who immediately after the murder more than a year went to Uruguay, said that he was the one who killed the girl. It turned out that Cherkasov was the third passenger in a taxi in which Popova left.

It is noteworthy that the investigation did not seem to be looking for Cherkasov, although Popova in her first testimony noted that there were three young people in the taxi. During the investigation, only two other passengers were questioned.

“Law enforcers first questioned Cherkasov only after the broadcast and released, considering his recognition as a draw in the framework of the television show,” a law enforcement source told RT.

Sole suspect

It is worth noting that, according to the case file, the investigation did not answer not only the key question about the time of Mougins death, but also to a number of others that play an important role in the process of proving Popova's guilt.

So, for example, despite the fight against the killer, which is indicated by strangulation marks and broken nails, Popova’s DNA was not found on the body of the murdered woman, and on the body of Popova herself there were no injuries at the time of detention. On the nails seized from Popova and manicure accessories, there was no Muzhen’s biomaterial either.

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DNA examinations were carried out only on the things of the defendant. Moreover, according to the case file, almost all the things in the tent were flooded with “brown color”, but their experts did not study.

The recordings of the cameras that Popova hit were seized only from 00:00 to 03:00 hours. None of the examinations was able to narrow the estimated time period in which Moughenie died to this period. At the same time, the investigator seized the recordings not on the media - they were recorded on CD-ROMs. Moreover, it was not established that Muzhenya and Popova really appear on the records - no identifications were made.

In addition, there is not a single fingerprint in the case file.

“There were no objects that could have been subjected to forensic investigation for the presence of handprints,” they assure the SK Tuapse.

Also, no investigative examinations were conducted, for example, on the movements of the tent, which was broken at the time the corpse was discovered.

The billing of subscribers of mobile operators who were on the night of the murder on the beach was not requested by the investigation.

According to the indictment, the investigation did not check anyone else's alibi except Popova. So, for example, the movements of Kurbanov, Kozachenko and their acquaintance, whom they met after the girls left the hookah, were not reliably established. Two faces were not identified — a young man and a girl — who were sitting at a fire 20 meters from the tent at the time Popova left the beach.

The testimony of fellow travelers Popova in a taxi and a man who discovered a corpse were also not checked. The question of whether the killer could get to the beach and the tent by water was not studied by the investigation.

It is noteworthy that Filipp Shevrikuko, the senior investigator of the UK Tuapse Investigation Commission, having closed the case after the preliminary investigation, did not open it again, although the investigation continued. As a result, as RT’s defense of Popova explained to RT, “Chevriruko’s forgetfulness makes all the investigative actions carried out by him after October 22, legally illegal.”

Traces of a criminal

As a source close to the judicial investigation told RT, the court established, among other things, that Muzhen’s phone was connected to the Internet during the night and until 9 a.m., and at 10:09 an incoming call arrived and the conversation lasted more than a minute. The defense believes that Mougins herself could use her phone at this time.

In addition, in court, according to the interlocutor, the act on the use of a service-search dog was investigated and the dog handler questioned. The dog took the track from the scarf to the parking lot. The dog handler explained to the court that the dog had taken the track of the alleged offender. At the same time, Popova left the beach in the opposite direction.

“During the debate in court, the state prosecutor noted that only indirect evidence really confirms Popova’s guilt,” the source notes.

In the Tuapse Investigative Committee, almost all RT questions regarding the details of the investigation could not be answered.

In turn, the mother of the deceased Larisa Muzhenya believes that Popopoy’s guilt has been proved: “Everything ended as it should have ended. From the very beginning I was sure that Alena killed my daughter. I support the state prosecution and agree with the conclusions made by him. I am sufficiently acquainted with the case materials and do not see any contradictions in it. I have nothing more to add, ”she told RT.