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Alexei says they were determined to convict a fellow cop: “This was 1998, in the middle
of an anticorruption campaign in Russia. I'm sure this seemed like an ideal case. They
could convict, and everyone involved would get promoted. I was told later that the missing
girl's uncle was in the federal correctional service—a colonel. He ordered everyone to pay
close attention to this case. So very high-ranking officials from the region got involved.
The uncle ordered that they wrap this case up in ten days.”
I ask what happened next.
“I was held for several days. They kept saying, 'This is your friend. He is telling us
everything. And you are lying. They tried to get me to confess. I refused. And they began
torturing me. They beat me up. They attached metal things to my ears and electrocuted me.
They kept increasing the intensity. I couldn't take it. So I confessed. I said, 'Yes, give me
the papers, I'll sign them. I raped and killed this girl.'”
But Alexei tried to roll that back.
“After I confessed, two other people came in—some top officials—and started asking
me for more details about what I did. I told them, 'I didn't kill anybody.' I thought maybe
they
could help me. The deputy prosecutor was there. I thought maybe he would help. But I
finally realized there was nobody to complain to. I was brought back to the room and hand-
cuffed. Then they started torturing me again. The electricity. They threatened to attach the
things to my testicles. I thought I would die, honestly. And they would just tell everyone
I had suffered a heart attack in prison. I don't know how I did it—I thought my handcuffs
had me attached to the chair—but I just jumped as hard as I could. There was a window
two meters away. I crashed through the glass.”
Alexei fell three stories, landing on top of a motorcycle in an internal courtyard of the
police station. “I felt my body just draped over the bike, with glass everywhere.”
His spine was shattered.
“An ambulance came and drove me to a hospital. But nobody treated me for days. I
think doctors were told not to approach me because I was a maniac. Five days after I got
there, the guards suddenly left my room. They took me in and operated on my spine. I was
told that the charges were all dropped. The missing girl had been found.”
Lyudmila came to the hospital and saw her son for the first time. She did not know yet
that he would never walk again, that she would become his full-time nurse.
For fifteen years mother and son have been largely shunned in the community. It is as
if they were responsible for causing some dust-up with the authorities that people prefer to
ignore—as if mentioning it, or asking questions, or being in any way associated with this
mother and son, might somehow get them into trouble.
“To this day,” Alexei says, “not a single person has apologized to me.”
Nearly a dozen investigations were opened into the case, but all were quickly closed.
Finally a local group called the Committee Against Torture took up Alexei's case and
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