Story By: Ginger Mahotchina, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News
This beautiful 27-year-old single mum mysteriously disappeared while trying to sell her Audi Q5 for much-needed cash and cops are treating it as a murder investigation after finding blood in her car.
According to local media, Ksenia Katorgina left her home in the city of Verkhnyaya Pyshma in the central-western Russian region of Sverdlovsk Oblast on 10th October in the hope of selling her Audi SUV.
Her best friend, Olga Ksenia, said the reason that the young woman had gone alone to meet the buyer was because the caller had been female and had said she was pregnant, claiming to be temporarily unwell and unable to travel.
Eager to sell the car, and wanting to help the young woman, Olga said her friend then decided to drive there herself. She said: “Ksyusha (her nickname) always treats everyone with compassion, and so she went. She was lured. She could do nothing else, she is so kind and sympathetic, goodness knows where and to whom. My dearest wish is that I can still get to meet her and tell her to be more careful.”
She was not heard from again, and worried friends and family have organised a search of woodlands in the area where she is believed to have last been according to her mobile phone data in the hope of finding her. The search includes sniffer dogs as well as volunteers.
Reports said that the mother had been trying to sell her Audi Q5 for 780,000 RUB (9,650 GBP) since July
with no luck, and out of desperation she dropped the price to 500,000 RUB (6,185 GBP), much lower than the market value – which was when the woman contacted her.
Police confirmed they have since found the car that she was trying to sell at a second-hand car dealers in Chelyabinsk and the original documents including Xenia’s passport were still in the vehicle when they seized it. They say that forensic analysis of the car found that a large amount of blood had been spilled on the seats, and that it had been washed away but was still detectable by their equipment.
Speaking to Russian media, one of the dealers, who was not named, said he had been offered the car by two men who he described as “gypsies” who wanted just 500,000 RUB for the vehicle.
He said they had proved that they had the right to sell it by showing the passport of the young woman and that they were with a young woman that appeared to be the woman on the passport, making him believe she had given it to them to sell.
As soon as he had seen the reports on the news however, he contacted the police.
The single mum was trying to sell the vehicle for much needed cash to pay for her mortgage on a new place – currently still under construction – after moving in with her grandmother for a while to cut down on costs.
Meanwhile, her worried nine-year-old daughter is currently staying with her grandmother as the search continues.
Her former mother-in-law Lyudmila Vishnyakova said: “She bought the car with her own money. But when she also ended up with a mortgage, it was too much, so she wanted to sell it to partially pay off the mortgage. She was desperate for them to have a house of their own so she could have her daughter with her instead of constantly relying on her grandparents.”
She added: “We can neither sleep nor eat from worry. We keep asking ourselves, who can be so evil as to keep her from us? I mean, we don’t want to believe in anything bad happening to her, but we are so worried, and we are begging people to help us find her.”
Netizen ‘Marina Anisimova’ commented: “Why do women go alone to make such deals?”
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