This day occupies pages 531 through 586 of Volume I of the
transcript.
This continues Arnold Margolin’s testimony.
The only reason it does is because, while the defense
declines to question him, the prosecution ignores that they are giving the
defense an opportunity to follow up, and they proceed to open up lines of
inquiry that the defense didn’t have previously. Lines of questioning bad for the government theory.
One piece of information that went under everybody’s
radar. Margolin testifies to seeing a
picture of investigator Mashkevich, who worked the Yushchinsky case, with
Vygranov, the “fired detective” who went around in a student’s jacket. Why such a photo would be taken, or published
in a newspaper as Margolin says it was, is a real mystery because a government
official doesn’t ordinarily go around having his picture taken with somebody
who has been disgraced. Krasovsky will
give another clue to this relationship in a couple of days. For now, think back and realize what a
pervasive influence Vygranov has had on all the investigations. You will see more of this. So why did the government let him leave Kiev
the day before the trial began, and not read a deposition from him during the factual
witness phase of the trial?
Vipper cross-questions Krasovsky and hovers on the precipice of
depicting Krasovsky as unworthy of the trust placed in him. It would be all of a piece with Vipper’s
apparent ignorance of the case history, if he did not realize that Chaplinsky
called Krasovsky in specifically; he might assume it was Brandorf, who refused
to support the ritual murder accusation from the start. He might also be ignoring or underestimating
that the Black Hundreds, fervent supporters of the ritual murder case, endorsed
bringing Krasovsky in. Or he might
believe at this point that the Black Hundreds have abandoned Krasovsky for
declaring Beilis not guilty by looking at the real evidence, and proclaiming
the guilt of Cheberyak who was not a Jewess, despite her standing well or not
with the Black Hundreds.
Vipper continues his misstatements. It’s hard to assess why: attempts to mislead
witnesses into a trap – but he never springs the correct information on them;
attempts to confuse the jurors into supporting a murder conviction; loss of
interest as a conviction may be proving increasingly unlikely; exhaustion from
all the late nights. Today he questions
Krasovsky about words used by Margolin; he identifies Beilis’ arrest date as
March 3 instead of July 23; and he apparently believes that Krasovsky began
his investigation based on the ritual murder theory that the government
pretended it was keeping to itself for the first year of the case, so it could
pretend that the charge grew out of the evidence instead of from government
edicts. He asked Brazul a similar
question yesterday.
Zamyslovsky also has a prime moment in this part of the
testimony. He gets Krasovsky completely
on the run about the grimirovka.
If he actually said that the bearded Luka couldn’t be the man Yashchenko
saw, that would be drawing a conclusion and Boldyrev would tell him not to do
that.
Staking his career as he is on
pursuing false charges, Zamyslovsky also believes he operates in a legal system
that does not put people in jail unless and until there is evidence against
them. On the contrary, Russia could and
would run people into jail so as to conveniently lay hands on them to
interrogate them. Beilis was in jail in
May, according to Krasovsky’s testimony, for exactly this reason.
Zamyslovsky has Krasovsky talk about the forged evidence
found on Yurkovsky Hill and suggest that somebody in the police department
forged it. Mishchuk has been tried and
acquitted of this through the evidence of Kushnir, a petty thief who actually
had his hands on the evidence and put it into the ground. This is being blamed on Governor Girs
offering 500 rubles -- about half a year’s salary -- to the detective who gets
the information that puts the case to bed.
Of course either Zamyslovsky is being disingenuous and knows that the
government planted the evidence, or he is walking on the edge of a cliff, just
as Vipper did earlier in the day by suggesting that Krasovsky was incompetent. Then Zamyslovsky continues on, claiming that
Krasovsky was accused of paying people to commit perjury; either Zamyslovsky
doesn’t know or he is keeping to himself that various witnesses against Beilis
were paid in one way or another for false testimony.
By the end of this day it becomes clear
that Krasovsky, like Brazul-Brushkovsky, let Vygranov
lead him by the nose. Krasovsky
apparently believed whatever the Dyakonova sisters told him, and Ekaterina may be
the one who led him to believe that Andrey’s body lay three days in Vera’s
apartment. If he believed she left it in
the shed on the property that she had a lock on, that would be one thing, but
he has it lying in Vera’s own
bedroom. Dyakonova had been given up by
Ivanov at the end of 1911 as unreliable and stupid. Dyakonova was in touch with Vygranov throughout
1912 the same as Cheberyak seemed to be from the moment she left jail under Chaplinsky's protection in 1911.
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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Arnold Davidovich Margolin
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531
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1206
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1
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Nikolay Aleksandrovich Krasovsky
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Lead detective on investigation in 1911
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536
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1215
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137
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© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights
Reserved
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