Mendel Beilis -- Singaevsky's confession

This is the summary of the 16^th day of the Mendel Beilis trial, which occurred on 10 October, 1913 on the Julian calendar, 23 October, 1913 on the Gregorian calendar.

This day occupies pages 650 through 696 of Volume I of the transcript.

See the translation of the transcript for day 16.

 

Today we hear from Makhalin about “the ministerial head” of Rudzinsky.  Krasovsky seemed to think it had to do with his intelligence and that it was why Andrey was stabbed so many times.  Makhalin seems to think there were lots of ways of getting rid of Andrey’s body, such as burning it up, but Rudzinsky was the one who decided on planting it so that people would think the Jews murdered him.  So this was not a compliment, rather it relates to the ministerial foulups of a bureaucracy, including doing exactly what most risks ruin to a project.

Makhalin also heard first-hand when Pyotr Singaevsky confessed that he, Rudzinsky and Latyshev were involved in the murder, although Latyshev was no good at “wet work” and threw up. 

Toward the start of the day Zamyslovsky makes a remark which shows that all the witnesses were in the courtroom at the same time, until the judge released them with the agreement of the parties.  For example, a number of days ago the Prikhodko clan was released, and today they have to telephone to the police station there and get somebody to bring Aleksandra back to testify about the pillowcases.

Today’s significance is that Ekaterina and Ksenya Dyakon heard each other’s testimony.  Yesterday when questioned about what she told the investigator about her sister’s activities, Ksenya said “I didn’t answer for my sister, I answered for me.”

Today Zamyslovsky asks her if she heard what her sister testified to and she says yes.

So two witnesses to the same set of facts got to hear what the other said.  The one scheduled to testify later was now under pressure to change her testimony to coordinate with what the earlier witness said, depending on how badly the earlier witness was treated on the stand.  What’s more, the calling back of Aleksandra shows that witnesses were retained in the courtroom in case later testimony made it important to re-question them.  So they had the chance in the re-appearance to say what they thought the attorneys or judge wanted to hear. 

It all depended on how seriously they took their oath to tell the truth, and we know that some witnesses didn’t care about the oath. 

When you put this together with the power that investigators had to leave things out of depositions, it makes nonsense out of challenging in-court testimony compared to the depositions.  There’s also evidence of forged depositions or parts of depositions, which may create situations when the in-court testimony doesn’t match the deposition.

I want you to notice that the prosecution takes it upon themselves to criticize Makhalin for “betraying” Singaevsky the criminal.  In any other case, the prosecution would reward somebody who gave up somebody who committed a crime.  They were going to reward Vasily Cheberyak for giving Beilis up to the law, when it was Vasily’s wife who committed the crime. 

Not only that but Zamyslovsky was contemptuous of the non-crime for which Makhalin was jailed, at the very moment when Zamyslovsky was doing all he could to please the Tsar by convicting Beilis of ritual murder, a non-crime which had been removed from the statute books in 1906.  This is a situation I call “the right half of the brain is not talking to the left half of the brain.”  Words are coming out of people’s mouths without ever being analyzed through the logic center of the brain.  It’s worse than hypocrisy, it’s mindless verbalizing of a set of phrases that are supposed to mean something, but which the situation contradicts.

When Zamyslovsky pounds Makhalin about who the shmari were that Singaevsky referred to, it shows that the prosecution believed that Adele and Ekaterina both were in Vera’s house on March 12.  The only significance of those visits is that Vera had to cover things up if Andrey was murdered in the morning as the government theory states.  In her apartment.  In other words the prosecution tacitly accepts that Vera was involved in the murder, and over the next three days more evidence will come out that they don’t really believe the government theory they’re trying to defend, not even Vipper who came in without any of the backstory.

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

To "I could hear everything"

 

		Page
Witness	Notes	Transcript	Translation	Statement
Ksenya Afanasievna Dyakon	Vera’s friend, identified her pillow and the murderers	650	1461	14
Ekaterina Afanasievna Dyakon	More about the “papers with punctures”	655	1470	189
Gaevskaya	Vera’s friend/servant	656	1472	251
Chernyakova	Vera’s former friend Testifies about the sleepover	658	1475	303
Sergey Makhalin	Testifies to Singaevsky’s confession of murdering Andrey at Vera’s	666	1493	731
Evgeniya Voloshchenko	Lyuda’s little friend, Tells the true “chase” story	694	1548	1569
Sofia Voloshcheenko	Lyuda’s little friend Too young to tell the story	695	1551	1611
Timofey Ignatyuk-Maistrenko	Cab driver, father of Andrey’s friend Andrey Maistrenko	695	1552	1648

 

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