Khachaturyan sisters: Did Russian siblings who murdered 'rapist' dad lie about abuse? Court orders fresh probe
A Russian court has ordered prosecutors to examine whether the sisters who stabbed their father to death lied about being sexually abused by the victim and killing him in self-defense. Investigators were told to look into whether Mikhail Khachaturyan, 57, actually subjected his daughters Krestina, Angelina, and Maria to years of physical and sexual abuse before he was stabbed to death in 2018. The court's ruling came after Mikhail's relatives accused the three murder suspects of fabricating stories of abuse in order to avoid jail. They claimed that the trio slaughtered their father in cold blood to inherit his money and property.
Prior to the fresh ruling, Krestina and Angelina's legal team has made extensive efforts to avoid a murder charge and possibly 20 years in jail claiming that they were aged 19 and 18 when their father was killed. Maria, on the other hand, has already been told she will not face the charge as she was rendered temporarily insane at the moment when her sisters attacked their sleeping father and will instead be sent to a psychiatric facility.
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Three sisters stab 'mafia boss' father to death after years of torture and sexual abuse
During the fatal attack, Mikhail, a known mafia boss, was stabbed through the heart with his own hunting knife and his head was bashed in with a hammer. His lifeless body was found near a lift inside the family's block of flats in Moscow, Russia, with several stab wounds. According to the trio, Mikhail had threatened them with a knife on the day of the attack in their residence in Moscow near the Altufievskoe highway.
According to reports, while one of the sisters grabbed the knife and stabbed him, the other two joined in on the fatal attack. Although the man tried to escape the apartment, he was attacked once again and killed near the elevator of the building. Krestina and Angelina have admitted taking part in the attack, while Maria said she was present but did not participate.
If investigators find evidence to support the fact that Mikhail had abused the girls then he could be posthumously prosecuted, lawyers said. "The court has granted the plaintiffs' request to return the case to the prosecutor's office until there is a final decision on a criminal case against Mikhail Khachaturyan,' said Alexey Lipster, a lawyer for the sisters.
While the sisters' legal team wanted them treated as victims, one of them even claiming that the case against them should be "dropped altogether" because the sisters used "necessary self-defense," Mikhail's family has argued that the pair were lying about abuse.
The suspects' aunt Naira Khachaturyan claimed the official investigation found no evidence of sexual violence against the teenagers. She said that two of them were virgins according to the medical tests conducted while the third had a boyfriend. "They knew they could live the way they wanted if they got rid of their father," she told a TV program. They further claimed that the suspects wanted to "delete him from their lives" and enjoy a "riotous lifestyle."
The victim's nephew Arsen Khachaturyan claimed that one of the sisters had inflicted wounds on the other two and later blamed their father for the violence. "Sexual violence, other violence, there was nothing of that," he said. "The girls decided to kill their father, they conspired a while ago."