This story, told in the voice of the investigator, is a fictionalized reconstruction of facts drawn from a real murder conviction handed down in 2021. The image is created based on the original concept of the illustrator Albena Limoni.
Women simply don’t expect it from a man like that.
Pavel was one of those people everyone called “decent”. Calm, polite, in the prime of his life. He spoke softly and intelligently. He had lived in America. He took care of his mother. During the period of his life when I knew him, he didn’t have steady work, but never gave the impression of being dangerous. He was the very embodiment of the familiar phrase “a good boy, always polite”—even in the testimony given by neighbors after the story ended in tragedy.
We had no prior reports. No beatings, no quarrels, no warning signs—nothing.
And then out of the blue — his wife’s body was found, brutally murdered with a large kitchen knife after a struggle and a chase around the apartment. It turned out she had told him she was leaving.
When my colleagues arrived on the scene, he was standing at the door, bags in his hands. When he saw them, he calmly set the bags down, raised his hands, and greeted them with: “I killed her.” No hysteria, no resistance… “a good boy, always polite.”
Then we began to unravel the story.
He had never hit her, and there was no evidence he had even raised his voice. But it became clear that he constantly tried to manipulate her with his fears, to make her feel guilty and responsible for him. He monitored her relentlessly, cut her off from her loved ones. A friend of the victim testified that for some time he had kept her occupied with recurring scenes of severe ailments, constantly repeating how sick he felt and that he was surely going to die—yet he categorically refused medical help. He reproached her whenever she went out. She had confided that she couldn’t take it anymore and had even begun to fear him. He would give her monstrous looks, and at night he would wake her to interrogate her about money.
When he realized she was going to leave, he killed her with particular cruelty. There were several stab wounds and blood everywhere: on the walls, on the railing, on her. She didn’t die immediately. While she was dying, he stood and watched. Then he washed himself, changed clothes, took the money, and left.
People often ask: what kind of men kill their wives?
The truth is, sometimes they are just like this—seemingly decent, respectable.
And always polite.