This is the moment a husband shows the police where he got rid of the body of his beauty-queen wife after he allegedly murdered her.
Alexander Popov, 37, who is reportedly the deputy head of the Moscow Metro Office, reportedly confessed to investigators that he had murdered his wife Ksenia Popova, 30, who was crowned Miss Kuzbass 2010.
Footage of his testimony was released by the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, which also released footage of him allegedly showing the police where he had disposed of his wife, on 4th February.
The suspect allegedly dismembered his wife’s body before throwing some parts in the River Desna and burying other parts.
Popov testified at the scene of the murder and told of how he buried the body of his murdered wife in the forest.
During interrogation, the man said that he brought the body to the forest, then went to the car, took a shovel, and started digging.
The authorities said: “Thanks to the competent tactics of the investigation and the collected evidence base, the accused confessed to the murder and gave detailed concluding testimony. The day before, during the investigation, the body of a woman was found in a forest belt on the territory of New Moscow.”
The authorities also dispatched divers to the location, but they were unable to locate any remains of the woman in the river.
The suspect has since reportedly changed his testimony and stated that he did not kill anyone, subsequently refusing to testify any further.
The couple reportedly has a six-year-old daughter together, whom the suspect sent to his wife’s family for them to take care of her, claiming that he did not have time to raise the child.
The suspect had managed to elude the authorities for months by allegedly posing as his wife online and answering messages from her friends and family.
But he eventually went to the authorities for reasons unknown on 11th January, and told the police that his wife was missing, claiming that she had gone to Dubai in August and ceased communication ever since.
Investigators discovered that she had not left the country at all and that her phone had been in her husband’s house for the last six months, since August 2021. They also noted that the suspect had been getting on well with his ex-wife, who has not been named, since the disappearance of his wife.
He had even gone so far as to post old photographs of his wife on holiday on her Instagram account to make it appear that she was on holiday at the time, when she was in fact already dead.
No motive other than jealousy has been put forward regarding the murder.
At the request of the investigators, the Shcherbinsky District Court of Moscow sent the murder suspect to a pre-trial detention centre, where he is authorised to remain until 25th March.
