All language subtitles for The.Tetris.Murders.Pt.01.Falling.Pieces.1080p.WEB-DL.Rus.Eng_BenderBEST_track4_eng

[line ringing]

[line ringing]

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[reporter] Police arrived
mid-afternoon on a 911 call
gathering evidence.

[Sandra Brown]
I remember, clearly,
on this particular day

I was in my office
and this call came out.

I was in my office
and this call came out.

And we hear that there are
three bodies on-site,

so we just responded
out to the house.

When I arrived on scene,

the media has showed up,
they're already
snapping pictures.

And what we found
in that house is shocking.

[reporter] Police say,
Vladimir Pokhilko

used a hammer
and hunting knife

to kill his wife and son
as they slept,

then used the knife
to kill himself.

[Brown] It looks like
this is a murder-suicide.

[reporter] He was
a Russian immigrant
who teamed up in business

with the inventor
of the computer game Tetris.

[Brown] But later, we learned
there's more to discover
in this case.

This is way deeper
than we thought.

You understand this doesn't
make any sense, right?

It didn't smell right in 1998.

And I know now I was right.

[Brown] Can I have a minute?
Okay, okay.

[exhales]

My name is Sandra Brown,

I was a law enforcement
officer of 25 years
with the city of Palo Alto.

During that time period,
I worked all of the homicide
cases that we had.

I get questioned quite often,
"What is the one case
that stands out in your mind?"

And this case
constantly comes up.

It still bothers me
to this day.

It was in September of 1998,
late in the afternoon.

And so, I remember
getting together with our team

and we were just
getting our orders.

I was a crime
scene investigator.

We had Sergeant Chan,
who was in charge of crime
scene investigation.

Sergeant Wong was in charge
of detective's division.

So at that point,
everything is secured
and locked down.

And I assigned
Detective Mike Denson

And I assigned
Detective Mike Denson

and Jean Bready as the primary
and the backup.

[Brown] When we first
went into the house
it looks normal.

Nothing seemed
to be out of order,

it wasn't disheveled,
it wasn't tore up,

it wasn't disheveled,
it wasn't tore up,

there wasn't any signs
of struggle.

Usually you hear things
like clocks, maybe, or,

you know,
air conditioning going on
or something like that.

But it was just like quiet.

Dark.

And I just had
this weird feeling.

[Brown] We went
to the first bedroom,

in this first bedroom
there was an adult female.

She had head trauma,
lots of head trauma.

And she had physical injuries
to her back.

There was blood staining
on the bed, on the walls,
on the floor.

It was a pretty messy scene.

[Brown] The child
was in the master bedroom
on the bed over in the corner.

There's wounds
in the back of his skull,

and then he had also sustained
trauma to his back.

And there was
blood around him,
it was quite startling.

And then, when you look
away from the child
there's an adult male,

about maybe six
to 10 feet away

flat on the ground
with a knife
in his right hand.

What I remember specifically
about the male subject was

the severity of his throat
and how it was sliced.

The cut was so deep
and so severe

The cut was so deep
and so severe

that I would see
the back of his larnax

and his actual spinal cord
as well.

It was almost like
filleting a fish.

Again, there was blood
on the floors, the walls,
the windows, the bedding.

The scene
was extremely violent.

The gentleman who found
the three deceased victims
was Gennady Norichkin.

The gentleman who found
the three deceased victims
was Gennady Norichkin.

He was a family friend
he was still outside,

so I got to interview him
right at the scene and he
told us who they were.

[Bready] The deceased male
in the bedroom
was Vladimir Pokhilko.

The deceased female
Yelena was his wife.

And the deceased juvenile male
Peter was his son.

And the deceased juvenile male
Peter was his son.

He was 12 years old.

[Brown] Gennady told us
that the Pokhilko family
were from Russia.

We also learned that Vladimir
was a co-developer of Tetris.

Tetris was a very popular,
if not the most popular,
video game.

I grew up on Tetris.

-[mimics Tetris sound effects]
-It was a lot of fun.

Trying to get those blocks
clear across.

If you look at this game
versus a game like
Mario I or something

you'll notice
it's just do dynamic,
nothing's ever the same.

It's like the shifting sands
of the Sahara or something.

Uh, it's gonna constantly
give you new information

Uh, it's gonna constantly
give you new information

and you have to constantly
make decisions based on
that information.

And it's a beautiful thing
to just try to solve it
as good as you can.

Even if you
can't solve it perfectly.

Whereas a lot of other games
they're solvable.

When I'm playing a lot, like,
I see it in my sleep.

Which is a really sad
thing to say. [laughing]

[Dan Ackerman]
It's pretty addictive.

In Vladimir's research center
everybody who had a computer
had a copy of Tetris.

Tetris exploded because
it became the video game

for people who did not play
video games.

for people who did not play
video games.

It was so abstract compared
to games with spaceships
and things with zombies.

That you could say,
"I'm really playing
a puzzle game.

I'm not playing a video game."

And that makes it
more socially acceptable,
it really made it a crossover.

This game is addictive because

when you get a score in Tetris
you just wanna
beat that score.

It's like the gambler's
addiction almost.

[chuckles] Uh,
but not in so bad a way.

It some ways
it's a very healthy way

'cause it's a great way
to train your brain to think

in different
geometric patterns.

It works on a very
visuospatial level.

It really affects the way
that you think about

the shapes coming in,
what they're doing, and how
you put things into place.

We call it
the Tetris effect now,

We call it
the Tetris effect now,

but people have talked
about that effect
for hundreds of years.

It's our natural desire
for order.

And our natural desire
to understand how shapes work.

[Bready] At the end
of the 1980s

when I was playing
Tetris late at night,
for hours on end,

I could've never imagined
that the game
that I was playing

would have anything
to do with a murder

would have anything
to do with a murder

that I investigated
many years later.

[Noam Levey] This was one
of the first big murder cases
that I covered.

When you cover a crime

if you don't know
all the circumstances
around the actual crime

you begin trying to figure out
as much as you can about
who the people are.

[reporter] Neighbors say
the boy's father
is computer engineer.

Vladimir Pokhilko was involved
in a company called AnimaTek.

Vladimir Pokhilko was involved
in a company called AnimaTek.

The company
was a computer graphics,

computer design type company
based in San Francisco.

[Levey] Before he got
interested in working
with computers

Vladimir had studied
psychology in Moscow.

[Grigoriy Shapirshteyn
speaking English]

[Kathy Hunter] I met Yelena
at a big yoga conference
at Moscow University.

She was beloved
and she was good at her work.

And she made me feel at home.

[reporter] She was the highly
respected founder
of Stanfys,

the Stanford Yoga Studio.

The shops internet website
attracted many people

who say the family
seemed very happy.

[Levey] Peter, the son,

who went to the junior high
in Palo Alto

was this star student
he was a dancer, an artist,

was this star student
he was a dancer, an artist,

and a math, and science wiz.

[reporter] Phil Done
says he was the boy's teacher.

Definitely gifted.
And I do not say that lightly.
Brilliant child.

[Bready] The people
in the neighborhood

said that they were friendly,
hardworking people.

But neighbors told us
that the Pokhilkos were
a pretty private people.

But neighbors told us
that the Pokhilkos were
a pretty private people.

And the more we learned
about Vladimir and his family

the deeper this,
sort of, mystery got.

When we found out
that this guy might have been
the creator of Tetris,

I can't make my eyebrow lift,
but I'm telling you
I'm thinking, "Ohh, okay."

I had a funny feeling
about this one, this is not
a normal case.

Life in the '80s in America
was morning in America
to quote President Reagan.

We said we would once again
be respected throughout
the world and we are.

[Levey] We lived
under the shadow
of competition with Russia.

We watched the documentaries
about what nuclear war
would be like

We watched the documentaries
about what nuclear war
would be like

and I remember
being terrified as a kid.

But there was also
this feeling that we
were winning.

That the US
was going to triumph.

And as the US was reveling
in its consumerism
and consumption

the Soviet Union
was on its last legs
and it was crumbling.

And yet from that comes

this big, colorful,
poppy game that we're
still playing today.

this big, colorful,
poppy game that we're
still playing today.

In the Soviet Union
of the '80s

Vladimir Pokhilko worked
at the Moscow Medical Center

where we was a psychologist.

[Ackerman] Vladimir knew a guy
named Alexey Pajitnov,
they were friends.

[Ackerman] Vladimir knew a guy
named Alexey Pajitnov,
they were friends.

Alexey Pajitnov was a Russian
computer scientist
and programmer

at the Soviet Academy
of Sciences here in Moscow.

When Alexey was younger
he had been obsessed
with pentominoes.

These five segmented shapes.

It's like a Tetris shape
with five pieces
instead of four.

And you'd get, like, a square
or rectangle to put them in

and you had to piece
all the pieces in there
and get them to fit.

So Alexey said, "What if I try
to recreate this effect,

So Alexey said, "What if I try
to recreate this effect,

but on this computer
I'm working on?"

And the first thing
he figured out

was that doing
the five segments,

the pentominoes,
that was too much.

So he cut it down to four
and at four you get tetra.

When he eventually
put the entire thing together

he said,
"I'm gonna call it Tetris."

Vladimir was one of
the first people
who got to see Tetris

and also understood
that there was something
more to it

than just a little
hobby project Alexey was doing
on the side at night.

As a clinical researcher

he recognized
the addictive nature of it.

He said, "This is something
I can actually study

and I can see the effect
it has on people."

That it operated on, kind of,
a deeper layer of the brain.

Similar to a narcotic.

And he saw a way
to play the game head-to-head.

And he saw a way
to play the game head-to-head.

He and Alexey
worked on a version of it

where you could
have two people
playing at once

and it was competitive.

[Shapirshteyn
speaking English]

[Ackerman] When you
make something like Tetris

how do you
share it with people?

How do you get other people
to see it?

Today, I'd AirDrop it to you,
I'd email it to you,

I'd give you a link
to download it.

But they didn't
have any of that back then.

They had to make
physical copies of it on disks

and take the copy
and give it to someone else,

who could then make a copy
and give it to someone else.

So other offices
outside of that initial
computing center

started to get copies
of Tetris.

But the way Tetris
would get out west

But the way Tetris
would get out west

is not actually directly
form the Soviet Union,

like a lot of other things
behind the Iron Curtain
it had to find a weak spot.

That weak spot
was actually Hungary.

In Hungary they had
a little more access
to western equipment.

They started making a version
that would work on more
popular computers.

And once you have a version
of Tetris that works on Apple
and IBM compatible machines

well, then it's just gonna
spread all over the place.

Back in the '80s
no one in the Soviet Union
had any real property rights

or intellectual
property rights.

And if something existed
that could be exploited

the government owned it,
just by default.

[Joe Serio] And that happened
all the time.

Government officials using
organized crime groups,
or the police, or the KGB

to strongarm the owner
to giving up his rights.

We'll threaten you,
we'll scare you,

we'll kill somebody
close to you,

we'll kill somebody
close to you,

so it'd be best for you
to turn your property
over to us.

The government took things
that they thought
were really cool,

that Russians made,
and try to sell them
around the world.

Tetris was potentially
pretty good and they
realized that.

So they took Tetris
and attempted to license it

to other countries,
other regions.

The big players in the space
were Nintendo and Atari.

And the big fight becomes,
who's gonna have the rights
to sell Tetris?

And the big fight becomes,
who's gonna have the rights
to sell Tetris?

Henk Rogers was a software guy
he was from the Netherlands.

And he had had
some good success

in introducing
role playing games
into the Japanese market.

He was looking for other ideas

and when he saw Tetris
he said,

"This is something
that could really be
a worldwide phenomenon."

Nintendo was working
on a top secret project

that would become
the Game Boy.

Henk Rogers
went to the Nintendo people
and he said,

"Listen, I know you guys
are working on this handheld
game console

"Listen, I know you guys
are working on this handheld
game console

and I know you wanna
put a game in the box
that when you buy it."

Well, he said,
"You know what?
I think it should be Tetris.

And I'm gonna get you
the handheld rights to Tetris
to make all this happen."

Henk, in true
secret agent style,

gets to Moscow,
makes some contacts,

he actually gets a meeting
with the Soviet Licensing
Organization

that controls
the rights to Tetris.

And the Russian go,
this is a guy
we can work with.

And that really took Tetris
from what it was
to the next level.

And that really took Tetris
from what it was
to the next level.

So Tetris was basically
spreading all over the world

although Alexey and Vladimir
they didn't really know
any of this was going on.

[presenter] They said
it wasn't humanly possible.

But now, you can have
all the power and excitement
of Nintendo

right in the palm
of your hand!

Introducing Game Boy.

It's portable, it's in stereo,
and its games
are interchangeable.

Plus, Game Boy comes with
the outrageous
new game Tetris.

That really broke Tetris
into the mainstream.

It was big
in video game circles

then it was big
in every circle.

Hillary Clinton was flying
around in Air Force One

playing, you know,
Tetris on a Game Boy.

It just became part
of the cultural conversation

in a way that almost
no other game has before
or since.

in a way that almost
no other game has before
or since.

[Levey] But Alexey
and Vladimir were trapped
behind the Iron Curtain.

They would have gotten

nothing from inventing
one of the world's most
successful computer games.

If they had done it here
in the United States

they would have, literally,
been billionaires.

[Hunter] I met Vladimir
and Yelena in 1989
in the Soviet Union.

[Hunter] I met Vladimir
and Yelena in 1989
in the Soviet Union.

My husband, Ron, and I
were invited to their home.

It was an apartment
in the very center of Moscow.

Vladimir and Yelena
were good hosts.

They had pickled
a lot of vegetables.

And Vladimir made some kind
of wine or liqueur

and he offered it to us,
they were very generous.

Peter was lively
and he was the center
of my attention.

Peter was lively
and he was the center
of my attention.

I remember Vladimir
holding this squiggly,
young boy a lot.

He was a hands-on dad.

It was just
a nice, comfortable,

family atmosphere.

Tetris never came up.

But Vladimir had an idea
about combining

psychology and technology

and wanted to, um,
know if that would fly
in America.

and wanted to, um,
know if that would fly
in America.

They were not happy
with the Soviet system

and had a lot
of entrepreneurial energy,

and wanted
to put it to good use here.

After that, I didn't
hear much from Yelena.

I just assumed
that that family went on
and was...

living the life
that they really wanted to
here in America.

living the life
that they really wanted to
here in America.

It's just devastating
what happened
to all three of them.

[reporter] Investigators
scour the home

on 400 block of Ferne Street
looking for clues.

[Brown] We had stab wounds
on both Yelena and Peter.

And then, the neck wound
on Vladimir and the knife
in his hand.

So, initially we actually
thought, "Oh, this is
a murder-suicide."

You're thinking, "Okay,
that's what happened,
that's what it looks like."

But when you start
to look a little closer,
you look at the evidence,

it just doesn't
seem to add up.

[reporter] Police say,
Vladimir Pokhilko

used a hammer
and hunting knife

to kill his wife and son
as they slept,

then used the knife
to kill himself.

Murder-suicides
happen all the time,

all sorts
of different theories why.

In this case,
from talking with
Vladimir Pokhilko's coworkers

we found that he was under
a lot of stress.

[Denson] Throughout
the last few months

[Denson] Throughout
the last few months

Vladimir had begun
to have financial troubles
with his company AnimaTek.

And Vladimir and Yelena
had been having arguments
about the yoga studio.

[Levey] Yelena had become
a very well-known
yoga instructor

in Russia
before the family
had left.

And when she came
to the States with her husband

she has been forced
to start all over again.

[Denson] Vladimir
had financed her yoga studio

and the yoga studio
was not doing great yet.

And Vladimir began
to tell Yelena, "You need
to up your business."

And Vladimir began
to tell Yelena, "You need
to up your business."

[Levey] There was
a lot of love between
Vladimir and Peter,

but there was hostility,
there was resentment,
between Vladimir and Yelena.

[Bready] Their bodies
were in different bedrooms.

And their friend,
Gennady, explained

that Yelena had usually
slept in her own bedroom.

[Wong] I also learned that
Vladimir often participated
in sleep deprivation.

[Wong] I also learned that
Vladimir often participated
in sleep deprivation.

In Russia, one of the things
Vladimir was involved
in researching over the years

was sleep deprivation studies.

He was also the subject
of some of these studies

and it was not
affecting him well.

He had gotten himself down
to being able to sleep about
two hours per night.

And he was really
going off the deep end.

One night,
he had begun seeing rats
all over the room.

Some of his friends thought
that he was doing

some sleep deprivation here
prior to the homicide.

some sleep deprivation here
prior to the homicide.

[Denson] They thought
he wasn't sleeping
hardly at all.

[Wong] If Vladimir had
this sleep deprivation

and all the stressors
that were going on,

he maybe snapped and murdered
his wife and child and then
committed suicide.

And then, we discovered
the backstory and how Yelena
and Vladimir came to America.

And then, we discovered
the backstory and how Yelena
and Vladimir came to America.

Then we found all kinds
of interesting information.

[Levey] In the 1980s
the Soviet Union
was collapsing,

the infrastructure
was collapsing,

the institutions
were collapsing,

people were left
to their own devices
to figure out how to survive.

[crowd chanting]

[Levey] When the Berlin Wall
fell in 1989

all of a sudden
it seemed like the Cold War
was over.

And we got these glimpses
of how

the world might be better.

In part by seeing
Russian scientists

and Eastern European
entrepreneurs coming
to the west.

[Ackerman] Henk Rogers
the video game developer

is still friends
with Alexey Pajitnov

and Alexey is still friends
with Vladimir.

And Henk Rogers says, "Listen,
I'm out there selling
Tetris games.

I know you're not
making a lot of money
from this.

But why don't I help you
move to the US.

You should just come here,
land of opportunity.

Maybe we'll do
some stuff together,
it's gonna be great."

Alexey moves
to the US first in '91,

Alexey moves
to the US first in '91,

Vladimir comes later
and they make a go of it
with Henk as a partner,

trying to do something
with this software technology
company called AnimaTek.

They were gonna join
the gold rush that was
going on in Silicon Valley.

Like every other
Silicon Valley startup
at the time

Alexey and Vladimir
wanna make a great piece
of software technology

that's gonna sell
a million copies.

[host] If you're ready to push
your creativity

[host] If you're ready to push
your creativity

and imagination to the limit,

El-Fish from Maxis Software
is for you, it's...

[Ackerman] The one project
they actually managed to get
published was called El-Fish.

It actually took properties
from different kinds of fish
and mixed them together,

it was some kind
of genetic modeling built into
almost a fancy screensaver.

[host] Once you start playing
El-Fish chances are you
won't want to stop.

Like few software
offerings today, El-Fish
delivers all it promises.

[Ackerman] El-Fish
had some good cult success.

But it set the follow-up
on the success of Tetris,
how do you top that?

By the time the mid-90s
roll around Soviet Union,
pretty much gone.

But the Tetris
licensing rights

and who actually owns
the IP behind it,
still kinda confusing.

People who were insiders
in the Soviet Union

People who were insiders
in the Soviet Union

were double dealing
and selling themselves
part of the government

to become oligarchs.

And, of course,
the Tetris rights
get lost in that as well.

There's no paperwork
for any of this.

Everyone said, "Oh,
I'm the boss here.

Okay. I'm signing a paper
declaring myself the owner."

But, eventually, Henk Rogers
comes in and helps
Alexey Pajitnov

assert his rights
to the Tetris IP.

And says, "I'm gonna
start a company,

me and Alexey, and we're gonna
partner with the oligarch,"

forming what would eventually
become the Tetris Company.

They basically globalized
the entire Tetris industry
under one roof.

And Vladimir
wasn't part of that,

he didn't have any real claim
to anything.

Now, that may
sound controversial

but no matter what anyone else
did after the fact,

Alexey sat down
and did that original version
completely on his own.

Alexey sat down
and did that original version
completely on his own.

He deserves to be
the sole inventor.

Once Henk and Alexey
started working on Tetris
really full-time

AnimaTek really became
Vladimir's company

and he was the one
who was intimately
involved day-to-day.

We interviewed Alexey Pajitnov

and Henk Rogers
throughout the course
of this investigation.

Alexey told me that he
and Vladimir had talked
a week before the crime.

So they were calling
each other quite frequently.

And Vladimir was not keeping

secrets from them
about what was going on
with AnimaTek,

that the company
was going to go bankrupt.

[Wong] His company
was having difficulty
with financing.

And there were employees
that were in Russia
that were being laid off.

There are employees
that were in the United States

that would potentially
be laid off.

[Brown] I've worked some cases
where you're like,

"That's the only way
that could have happened."

But this one left me
with pause, like,
"Really? Hmm."

The first evidence
that came forward
was the bodies.

Uh, we've had to deal with,
um, getting a medical examiner
down there.

Uh, we've had to deal with,
um, getting a medical examiner
down there.

They took the bodies
to the coroner's office

and then our crime scene unit
began processing that scene.

[Chan] There was actually
two hammers,

one in each different bedroom.

I was thinking to myself
at the time,

"What's the reasoning behind
the two different hammers?"

[Bready] Why would Vladimir
use two different hammers?

[Bready] Why would Vladimir
use two different hammers?

If he is killing these two
who are in his own household.

[Brown] That right there
threw me for a loop.

Two hammers
doesn't make sense to me
something was funny about it.

[Denson] We also found
the butcher knife

which was in Vladimir's hand
and had cut his throat.

My confusion about that is,
first of all,

I thought if you're gonna
cut your throat at some point

I thought if you're gonna
cut your throat at some point

you're gonna shock yourself,
"Ohh, this really hurts,"
you're gonna drop the knife.

Why was the knife
still in Vladimir's hand?

The blood splatter
that I noticed

was on the sliding glass door
behind him.

So he's on his stomach,
knife in his hand.

When like, "How does one
cut their own throat
lying on their stomach?"

Right? Because the blood
on the wall was so low.

[Chan] In the bathroom,
inside the sink,

the water was run down,

you could see
that the blood was draining
towards the drain.

But it wasn't all over
the sink area.

It just looked like
it had been washed down.

There were no fingerprints,
where we would normally
find fingerprints,

There were no fingerprints,
where we would normally
find fingerprints,

on the facet handles.

We find fingerprints
everywhere.

I find fingerprints
on my glasses.

I don't ever recall
putting my thumbprints

on my glasses,
but they're there.

Why aren't we finding
fingerprints in a bathroom

of a home where a child lives,
and a mom, and a dad?

It was like
my Spidey-Sense
just jumped up.

I'm suspicious now.

[Bready] After a deeper search
of the crime scene it starts
to look even more strange.

[Bready] After a deeper search
of the crime scene it starts
to look even more strange.

[Brown] We go into his office,

we see a handwritten
suicide note sitting
on the desk.

[Wong] I remember
going in there and reading it
for the first time myself.

"I've been eaten alive."
And then signed "Vladimir."

And then, underneath it,

another section that said,
"Just remember
that I am exist."

And it was signed,
"The Davil." Spelt D-A-V-I-L.

I mean, it shocked me.

That was very eerie.

[Brown] I remember
Scotty reading the note.

Now, Scotty and I
have different
thought processes.

Scotty felt like
Vladimir wrote it
because the devil was in him.

Right? He felt like,
Vladimir was, like,

so distraught
over his decisions

that the devil
"made him do it."

I don't feel that way.

I don't feel that way.

It's almost like
someone wanted...

the people who found them
to think that the devil
was talking through him.

[Bready] There was evidence
that somebody had gone
into the backyard

and burned some items
in a barbecue,

which was very strange.

which was very strange.

There's a letter
to a guy named Alexey,
that's a Russian person.

Um, it's talking about stocks
and fluctuation of prices.

Then, there's some
airline tickets, uh, some
information about travel.

Why would you burn
that information?

And what is it important
to destroy that?

What's the purpose of it?

It was weird.

The blood spatter is weird.

The knife is weird.

The knife is weird.

We have
the two hammers.

We have the note.

Everything was so perfectly
perfect that it was weird.

This investigation
was like playing Tetris.

Anybody that's played Tetris
knows that you're
on a time limit,

and you're stressed trying
to get all the pieces to fit.

And when the next level
comes down, it's gonna
be a piece

that you have to quickly
think about where it's gonna
go and how it fits in.

Different things
were coming along
that didn't quite fit.

I had never come across
a scene like that before,

so it brought
a lot of questions.

[Brown] We're still
investigating this case

while we're waiting
for the autopsy.

And then, we finally
get the autopsy report back

from the medical examiner.

And that just leads us into
another part of this puzzle
that doesn't make sense.

[Chan] When we got
the autopsy reports

it was determined
that both the son and wife

were killed by two
significant blows to the head
with a hammer.

And then, each of them
were stabbed 11 times.

And then, each of them
were stabbed 11 times.

They both sustained
for a total of 13 injuries.

The bludgeoning
and the stabbing
of the wife and the child

seems so specific.

Why the same number?

It is purposeful,
it has to be.

The death of the child
and the mother was,
to me, overkill.

The death of the child
and the mother was,
to me, overkill.

I just felt like,
"Why would you bludgeon them
and stab them?"

[Bready] And the fact
that there were two different
hammers involved

definitely raised a red flag
in my mind.

Does it suggest
that there was somebody
else in the house?

Possibly one or two
different people that each
had a hammer

and committed the crimes
that occurred against his wife
and his young son.

I wanted answers for that.

I wanted answers for that.

[Chan] So that,
and what was written
on the note,

added to the uneasy feeling
that everyone had.

[Denson] The medical examiner
determined that Vladimir
Pokhilko was a suicide.

[Brown] And when I finally
got this report
and looked at it,

the wounds, we're like,
"There's no way."

There's no way
you can cut yourself that way.

[Wong] Could he sustain
that amount of pain

[Wong] Could he sustain
that amount of pain

to self-inflict
a wound to that nature?
That was my question.

But it was official ruled
a homicide-suicide.

So, you know,
this is what cops do,

we work a major case
and then afterwards
we sometimes go get a drink.

You know, the shifts over,
we're sitting around.

I'm like, "You guys, you think
this guy killed himself?

He killed his family,
he killed himself?"

I really start thinking,
"Am I conspiracy theorist

I really start thinking,
"Am I conspiracy theorist

that I created
this whole thing
in my mind?"

I knew that myself,
and other members
of the department,

felt that it might
have been a homicide.

My theory was that, there was
other people involved

and this was made to look
like a murder-suicide.

We're all walking around,
people in the community,

believing that this man

took his son
and his wife's life,

took his son
and his wife's life,

in such a violent manner,
and then killed himself.

For what? Because we don't
have enough money?

I don't think
this father killed his son,

whom I believe
he loved very deeply.

I don't think
this man killed his wife.

I've seen cases
where that's happened,
but this is over the top.

I think there's more
to the story.

I think there's more
to the story.

And I know now...

there's more to the story.