This day occupies pages 587 through 649 of Volume I, part 1,
of the transcript.
I’m going to take things out of order and point out that
Grigorevich-Barsky makes an important observation in the last seconds of the
session. Neither Ekaterina nor her sister Ksenya has said anything that brought
up Beilis’ name. The prosecution has not
attempted to connect anything they said to Beilis. None of their testimony is relevant to the
charges against Beilis. It all points
directly at Vera Cheberyak as involved in the murder, through the “papers with
punctures” used only in her apartment for a game of “Post
Office” involving her gang, and the bit of pillowcase that turned up in the
pocket of Andrey’s jacket -- something no murderer would do deliberately. Nobody even claimed this was planted evidence
and then said that Beilis planted it. No
visiting association has been established which would allow him to bring a gag
to her and even if he had, he would have had to destroy it.
The government theory can’t get along without the gag,
because it is part of Pranaitis’ specifications for a ritual murder, and he is
the main scriptural expert for the government.
They have no other candidate for the gag – not Andrey’s shirt, the blood
on which proves he was wearing it during the attack, and no rags found on the
Zaitsev factory grounds. Both Ekaterina
and Ksenya know about Vera having a fancy pillowcase with a proshva on
it, and the judge asks a question which shows that he knows that the bloody rag
found in the pocket of Andrey’s jacket was part of a fancy pillowcase with a proshva
on it. The prosecution has established
no visiting relationship that would allow Beilis to bring Vera a rag to use to
gag Andrey and then get it back to destroy.
All the testimony today and tomorrow points at Vera as the murderer, not
Beilis.
The defense took their chances putting ditsy Ekaterina on
the stand, but it paid off because it not only threatened the government
theory, it rattled Vera. See her
statements later in the day where she mixes up material facts about the
case. Nobody else who has testified since
day 8 has rattled Vera. Unreliable as
Ekaterina’s testimony is, she knew something that Vera was afraid she would
say.
The prosecution is fascinated by her. When she tells about a dream of Andrey’s body
in a carpet, they take it seriously to all appearances. But her timing for this dream is all
wrong. She testifies that she only heard
about the carpet in association with Andrey’s body from Adele Ravich in August,
1911, but she claims a) that she had the dream when it was “already cold”; b)
that this was before Vera sold the carpet, which happened before the eviction;
c) that Vera told her not to tell
Polishchuk about it or he would never leave her alone, and that relates to
summer 1911; d) that she had the dream
before Adele told her the story. We are
left with winter 1910/1911 as the timing for the dream, when Polishchuk had not
come into contact with Vera, as far as we know.
But as I said, the prosecution seems to take this evidence seriously.
Ekaterina proves that Krasovsky’s masquerade of Luka
Prikhodko was a total screw-up. The
police had her identify men in some photos, and the three murderers were among
them. Rudzinsky and Singaevsky did not
have beards in the photos. Boldyrev asks
her, did any of them have a beard at that time?
Elizaveta says no. The beardless
man seen by Yashchenko could have been either Singaevsky or Rudzinsky, both of
whom had dark hair. Krasovsky had his
hands on Rudzinsky in July 1911 but never brought Yashchenko in to try and
identify him.
Two parts of Krasovsky’s testimony on this date demonstrate
the kind of chaos surrounding the case.
First, Krasovsky was not at all responsible for Beilis’ arrest, but the
prosecution tries to make him responsible for a search conducted on 23
July. This search was performed by the
security division at Kulyabko’s orders, in the same way as the arrest happened
on Kulyabko’s orders, which came directly from Chaplinsky. Krasovsky was there, put himself at
Kulyabko’s disposition, and was basically told to stand aside.
The other part shows that Vera was released on 5 August,
1911, but didn’t go home. We don’t know
what time of day she was released or where she went, but the police laid hands
on her again the very next day. This
time, Chaplinsky intervened. He not only
ordered her to be released, he forbade anybody to arrest her again. Vera complained about this at trial, calling
it an illegal arrest. It was
particularly harassing for her because precisely on the 6th of August, her
landlord evicted her, despite Zhenya’s illness.
She finally got out for good on August 7, went to the hospital, took
Zhenya out, and took him to her new apartment where he died 24 hours later.
There is a statement in the investigator’s record which is a
misquote of Brazul or a misquote of Margolin or a misquote of Krasovsky, saying
what Brazul and Margolin have already denied and what Krasovsky doesn’t
remember telling the investigator. The
misquote has the earmarks of Vygranov feeding misquotes of Shakhovsky’s
deposition to Petrov. It is not outside
the realm of possibility that Vygranov had at least this part of this deposition
faked and forged Krasovsky’s signature the same as on the Shakhovskys’
depositions.
Judge: Fyodor Boldyrev
Prosecution:
Criminal
Prosecutor, Oscar Vipper
Civil
Prosecutor Georgy Zamyslovsky
Private
Civil Prosecutor Aleksey Shmakov
Defense:
Oscar
Gruzenberg
Nikolay Karabchevsky
Dmitry Grigorevich-Barsky
Alexandr Zarudny
Vasily Maklakov
Page
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Witness
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Notes
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Transcript
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Translation
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Statement
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Nikolay Aleksandrovich Krasovsky
|
Detective who ran 1911 official investigation
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587
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1319
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1
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Ekaterina Afanasievna Dyakon
|
Vera’s friend
Pins pillowcase gag rag on Vera as owner, identifies
murderers from photos
|
606
|
1357
|
600
|
Ksenya Afanasievna Dyakon
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Ekaterina’s sister
Pins pillowcase gag rag on Vera as owner, identified
murderers from photos
|
638
|
1433
|
2351
|
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights
Reserved
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