A part-time taxi driver was caught out by police trying to pay £13,000 to have his ex-wife killed after officers staged a fake murder scene.
Alexander Krasavin, 54, was detained in Russia after his former spouse took part in a staged ‘murder’ organised by police to make it seem as if she had been killed as he had wished.
Police said that the ploy had worked, as Krasavin, after seeing pictures of the ‘dead woman’ and receiving an agreed text message of ‘You have a dentist’s appointment’, paid the balance of the agreed fee to the work mate he had hired as assassin.
At that moment, officers moved in stop his car detain him and put him in handcuffs.
A part-time taxi driver was caught out by police trying to pay £13,000 to have his ex-wife killed after officers staged a fake murder scene (pictured)
Police officers secretly took Nina from her home and transported her to a professional cinema make-up artist who made it appear as though she had actually been killed so that fake photographs could be taken
Krasavin’s ex-wife Nina, 46, had been taken to cinema make-up specialists so it appeared her throat had been cut.
She said later that she was shocked and stunned by his behaviour, and that although they were divorced she thought they had good relations raising their daughter, nine.
‘I can’t believe that all this is possible – I still had feelings for him, she said. ‘And I’m not afraid that I could be dead, but I am afraid that he planned all this…
‘He saw my photo looking dead – and he accepted it? He believed that I was killed and thought – thank God?
‘What about our daughter? How could he live with this load?’
Nina said later that she was shocked and stunned by her ex-husband’s behaviour, and that although they were divorced she thought they had good relations raising their daughter, nine
Pictured: Krasavin and Nina seen together back when they were married to one another
Krasavin worked as a bus technician, and a taxi-driver part time in St Petersburg.
Police say he had asked a colleague to kill his ex-wife, and the man initially thought it was a joke.
When Krasavin kept asking him, he went to the police, and a plan was hatched to fake the killing to entrap him.
The ex-husband took a £15,000 bank loan and paid his colleague £3,000 for ‘expenses’ preparing the murder, agreeing to pay another £10,000 when the murder was completed.
He kept another £2,000 for himself.
In recordings, Krasavin said he would work as a taxi driver on the day chosen for the killing – Monday this week – to provide an alibi.
Nina said police arrived unannounced at her home, taking her away by force to a make-up artist at a movie-making studio.
She could not believe what she was told.
‘I spent the whole day in the criminal investigation department with the thought that this was a joke,’ she said.
The operation was so secret that Nina was barred contact with her children, including two from her previous relationship, and they reported her missing to police – who began a search.
When making the arrest on Krasavin, police officers forced him to stop his car before being ‘knocked’ onto the ground and put in handcuffs
‘I just didn’t believe in the reality of what was happening,’ she said. ‘I still want to look at Alexander and ask if this is all true?’
She ‘blamed herself’ because their relationship broke up over strains with her older children from a previous marriage, she told Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.
They lived close to each other.
She denied his claims that there were problems spending time with their daughter after the split.
Earlier their ‘love at first sight’ relationship had been good, she said.
‘Love, we had it all,’ she said. ‘And he ruined both his life and my feelings.
Nina denied his claims that there were problems spending time with their daughter (pictured, with Krasavin) after the split
‘I feel sorry for him as a woman, that he did not have a long-term relationship. And I blame myself for that. I think it’s my fault, too, that he ordered the murder.
‘I don’t even have a grudge against him.
‘I have no idea what it will be like for him in prison. It hurts me a lot from the fact that he will be there. I cried when they showed me the video of him being detained.
‘I could not watch him being knocked down on the ground. The fact that he was lying on the ground already hurt me.’
She said he had not agreed when she went to court for a raise in alimony to support their daughter.
He had switched from being a bus driver to a technician on lower pay to reduce his payment, she said.