MOSCOW, November 28 (Itar-Tass) — The Russian Investigation Committee has brought final accusations against the parents of a 8-month-old Anya Shkaptsova that staged her kidnapping to conceal the murder.
The criminal case over the girl went missing in Bryansk was highly publicized. The police and volunteers have been participating in the search for her for more than two weeks.
The detectives found that the father of the girl Alexander Kulagin was heavily drunk on February 22–23, stirred up one more scandal, and when the girl woke up and began crying in the perambulator, he hit her with the fist on the head and on the body and threw on the sofa twice with the force, spokesman for the Russian Investigation Committee Vladimir Markin told Itar-Tass on Wednesday. After the beating Kulagin and Anya’s mother Svetlana Shkaptsova decided not to give the aid to the girl and left her dying on the blanket in the bathroom.
On February 26, the little girl died. The defendants brought her body on the balcony and Kulagin took it away and burnt it down on the orders from his common law wife on March 4.
“To hush up the traces of the crime, the parents have developed a plan to stage the kidnapping of the girl. On March 4–11, the parents walked with the empty perambulator no less than two times, bought the children’s toys at the shop, imitated the sounds, which the little girl allegedly voiced, when the relatives and acquaintances were calling up their mobile phone,” Markin said.
On March 11, Shkaptsova went out from the home with a perambulator, which was tightly covered from the rain. She put an overcoat and other clothes of the daughter wrapped in the blanket in the perambulator. Then she bought a children’s toy, mentioning to the seller that the toy is intended for her daughter. Then she entered the shop, leaving the perambulator in the street, Kulagin, who secretly came from Moscow, put on a wig and the women’s clothes, took the perambulator away and abandoned it in the entrance of the residential house nearby. He burnt down the wig, women’s and child clothes and came back to Moscow on March 12.
The mother of the girl stated about her kidnapping, after that the parents repeatedly gave the false information about the details of the kidnapping of the girl at the interrogations.
“Kulagin faced final charges in the murder of the little girl, Shkaptsova was accused of abetting to this murder. Meanwhile, they are charged with the deliberately false information about the crime with producing the false guilty evidence,” Markin said.
The defendants deny their involvement in the murder and confessed only in the false testimony. For about three weeks after the report about the missing girl the detectives have been investigating all possible versions of her disappearance. Meanwhile, the behaviour of the parents of the girl, who behaved suspiciously calmly, gave reasons to the detectives to assume that they could have staged the kidnapping,” Vladimir Markin said.
Svetlana Shkaptsova was the first to give the true testimony, Kulagin detained then also did not deny his involvement in the crime and confessed in it that he confirmed in the check at the crime scene.
The investigation will be completed soon.