Original subtitles

[eerie music playing]

[birds chirping]

[birds chirping]

[Sandra] The coroner's report said

this was a murder suicide.

Vladimir Pokhilko killed his wife Elena

and his son Peter, and then cut his own throat.

and his son Peter, and then cut his own throat.

So, if we are to believe

that Vladimir was the person who killed his family,

then killed himself,

this is what it would have looked like.

The night of the homicide,

Elena and Peter went to bed.

And Vladimir snapped.

And Vladimir snapped.

He got a hammer.

He went into one room.

He used the hammer

to bludgeon Elena.

Drops the hammer.

And then he goes back out to the garage.

He gets another hammer, and he uses a different hammer

to bludgeon Peter in his head.

Then he goes and he gets a knife

and he goes back to the other room

and he takes a knife and he stabs his wife

and he takes a knife and he stabs his wife

11 times.

He takes that knife and goes into another room.

Then he stabs his son 11 times.

Then he goes into the bathroom,

he washes the knife.

He wipes down the bathroom so there's no fingerprints,

there's no blood evidence.

Then he goes and he wipes down the hammers?

And then just leaves them in these rooms.

Then he writes a note and says the Devil is in him,

it's part English, part Russian.

He creates this fire, he burns some paperwork.

Then he cuts his throat, but he doesn't cut his throat

in a manner that we would think.

Like this.

But he takes a knife out of his right hand

and he cuts his throat-- That was still awkward for me

to get my shoulder up like that.

And he cuts straight down, four inches,

And he cuts straight down, four inches,

that leaves a three-inch gap

that's bleeding profusely.

He falls onto the ground

and he's clutching the knife, and that's where we find him.

How do you cut yourself

and then when you go down,

the knife is still in your hand?

The coroner told us

that it was a cadaveric spasm

that when you kill yourself,

your body tenses.

But the report came back that there were

palm prints

on the knife but no fingerprints.

Here's the knife.

Here's part of my palm,

the upper part, the pads underneath my fingers.

And there's your fingers.

So how do you not leave fingerprints?

So, I thought that was odd.

That night, at the crime scene,

I'm looking at Vladimir,

I'm looking at Vladimir,

I'm looking at the weapons,

the blood spatter is weird.

The knife is weird.

Everything, the overkill,

the note, "Davil."

It just doesn't fit.

It is almost like somebody else did it.

And then they put it together

to make us feel like he did it.

And I wasn't the only person

who had some questions.

If it was just me, that was saying that,

then I could say,

"Okay, well, my imagination blew up."

"Okay, well, my imagination blew up."

But I'm not by myself.

Denson thought it was weird.

And he was the investigating officer.

[Denson] Normally, you find fingerprints on the murder weapons.

But we also weren't able to recover fingerprints on the hammer.

Which was striking me as odd as well.

And the wounds to Vladimir's neck

were also suspicious.

There was one major slash wound to his throat.

That slash wound went

That slash wound went

the majority of the way through his neck.

It was really deep.

I didn't really believe that it was self-inflicted.

There was also two hesitation wounds.

And frequently, you'll see those in suicides.

But, at the same time,

hesitation wounds also occur when

someone's holding a knife to your throat.

So, it didn't prove suicide.

I didn't buy that Vladimir had cut his throat.

So I had the city hire

the second forensic pathologist

to go back over it again

and wait for her to make her determination.

[Sandra] We were waiting to hear back

from the second autopsy

and during this time, we're still investigating

and looking up information on Elena and Vladimir.

Where did they come from? Who did they know?

What relationships they have.

[sirens wailing]

[Denson] When I was going around,

doing a lot of different interviews,

and according to people,

Vladimir Pokhilko was a very easy-going person.

I don't think I talked to any friends

who had ever heard him

even raise his voice about anything.

[Noam] Vladimir was not somebody

who was violently emotional

or had a violent temper.

[Grigoriy speaking]

There was nothing that would hint

that he was capable of this level of violence.

And, you know, not just violence,

but I mean, brutality.

[Grigoriy speaking]

[Jean] We were also looking for suspects or information

about other people possibly being involved

in the crime itself.

[Scott] Vladimir came to the United States

to start another business.

And we found that his company had Russian employees

that were in the United States on different employment visas.

[Joe] In the 1990s,

people were coming from all over the world

to Silicon Valley.

But the Russians were a new phenomenon.

But the Russians were a new phenomenon.

They had this idea that people who moved to California

were gonna have a happier life.

They had this sense that they would be safe there.

[Dan] Moving from the Soviet Union,

even in its death throes, to the US,

is a huge culture shock to anybody.

[Noam] The excess of consumer goods,

food, cars, and the technology

would have been the complete opposite

of what life looked like in the Soviet Union.

of what life looked like in the Soviet Union.

Vladimir and his family probably had this hope

that they were gonna live happily ever after,

but the dream darkened pretty quickly.

[Scott] AnimaTek was having financial difficulty.

And if Vladimir's employees were laid off,

then they don't have a job,

then, you know, they could get deported.

[Denson] And in addition to people

that he was gonna have to send back to Russia,

he was laying off

the employees in the Russian office.

the employees in the Russian office.

Vladimir began getting

angry email messages from the employees.

And that was quite disturbing.

But we didn't find anything significant that we could say

positively we have an outstanding suspect here.

Nothing came of it.

And so, there was nothing there.

[Sandra] But then, two days into the investigation,

this case gets even more interesting

when we get a call from the FBI,

wanting to offer their services.

wanting to offer their services.

The FBI is at another level. Right?

Which opens your mind to,

"Why is the FBI getting involved in this

little old murder-suicide,

here in Palo Alto?"

You wanna talk about me being really suspicious now?

[Sandra] So we're working this case for two days,

we're collecting evidence.

And then we get a call from the FBI.

[Denson] I suspect that they had seen it

[Denson] I suspect that they had seen it

on the news, it was extensively covered.

[news anchor] Investigators walked into a shocking

and bloody crime scene.

[camera shutter clicks]

[camera shutter clicks]

The special agent, who was the Russian interpreter,

actually was the one who called me

and initially he offered, um,

"I can do any Russian interpretation for you."

And they sent the crime scene unit to assist, as well.

But the problem with that is it's backwards.

But the problem with that is it's backwards.

Most federal law enforcement, even if they knew of the case,

they will say, we can't get involved

until local law enforcement invites us into the case.

But in this case,

the FBI called us.

I got to be honest with you.

That's strange.

When I first heard that, my initial idea was,

"Wait a minute.

Somebody knows something more than we know."

Somebody knows something more than we know."

[Denson] I did take the suicide note.

I gave it to the FBI

and I asked them to do a handwriting analysis on it.

And they were able to determine

that the handwritten note was written by Vladimir.

[producer speaking]

Uh...

[Sandra] You know what I felt at the time?

That that note is [bleep]

It's like someone's telling Vladimir what to write,

and he's writing it down.

I'm thinking he was forced to do this.

At the same time, the FBI was now involved.

And new information is coming in.

Way more information that we're unaware of.

[Jean] In Palo Alto,

there was quite a Russian community

that were all involved with each other,

that all knew each other.

And many people

who were familiar with the Pokhilko family

were very suspicious.

were very suspicious.

They believed it was not possible

for Vladimir Pokhilko to kill his family

and kill himself.

There weren't enough reasons

that would make that something that made sense to anybody.

Rumors started circulating, and a lot of these people

started mentioning the Russian Mafia

being a part of these murders.

They felt that this was a Russian mob hit.

[Jean] My initial reaction was,

that's a little crazy, that's a little far-fetched.

But there was too much of that information

But there was too much of that information

coming up in the case,

so I kept my mind open.

[Sandra] And this whole idea

didn't just come from one person I talked to.

Russians being involved was coming out... everywhere.

[Jean] I recall one of my colleagues saying that

someone told him, "You guys just don't get it."

The Soviet flag was the hammer and the sickle.

The Soviet flag was the hammer and the sickle.

And the weapons

that was used on Vladimir and his family

was the hammer and a knife.

This is a message.

So is it possible that the Mafia sent a message

not only to the family,

but maybe to the community, that this was a Russian hit?

From a Russian perspective,

and someone who's lived in Russia for a long time

and investigated the Russian Mafia,

this case has red flags all over it.

Moscow's biggest mafia bosses have begun to invade America.

To take power. To take profits.

When people say that Russia is a mafia state,

this is not an exaggeration.

What people don't realize is that before this murder,

in Silicon Valley,

Russian Mafia was already

well-ensconced in the United States.

They'd already been active for decades in the US.

They'd already been active for decades in the US.

In 1993,

the FBI showed me a map.

A map of the United States.

Each state where they had a problem

with the Russian Mafia was shaded in.

Thirty-eight states were shaded in.

And not just mafia in terms of gangs and gangsters.

And not just mafia in terms of gangs and gangsters.

But mafia in terms of the Kremlin,

businessmen, politicians, major gangsters.

And when we say major gangsters,

I'm talking about people

who're worth billions of dollars.

These are people who control industry,

drug trafficking, money laundering,

weapons trafficking, human trafficking

and every other thing you can think of.

They use mafia tactics and techniques

to get what they want.

[Jean] The Russian people that we were interviewing

regarding the Pokhilko case,

their belief was that

any time anybody is involved in business in Russia,

as Vladimir Pokhilko was,

that the Russian Mafia demands payments

to continue your business.

Some people refer to it as paying taxes

to the Russian Mafia.

The bottom line, everything is money and greed.

When they smell money, they become dangerous.

So one of the questions we have to address

is why would Vladimir be a target?

Let's talk about the history of Vladimir and Alexey.

Okay? Let's talk about that.

They decide to leave Russia.

And then started their business here.

How do we know that someone in Russia

was a little disturbed by that?

How do we know that perhaps organized crime

want to get involved in all the money

that they were gonna make in America?

In Russia, the concept of protection,

especially in the 1990s,

was central to doing any kind of business.

was central to doing any kind of business.

By 1998, Alexey was controlling Tetris.

In Tetris, you're dealing with a company

that's generating millions and millions of dollars.

And Alexey became involved with an oligarch

who's in a position to protect him.

'Cause your oligarch will take care of

gangster issues that came up,

political issues that came up,

and Alexey would be okay.

But at this point, Vladimir is out of Tetris.

Vladimir is not under that umbrella.

Vladimir's now off to the side in his own company.

It could be the mafia

wanted to take over Vladimir's company.

[Denson] I did interview

the AnimaTek company controller.

I was looking for anything that would be considered

possibly a extortion payment.

She said there was three checks per month

She said there was three checks per month

that would go out

in various denominations.

And there was one check that was frequently going out

into offshore accounts.

And she didn't know what those accounts were about.

It was weird to her,

and so, if it was weird to her, it was weird to me.

[Scott] She did not know if any Russian Mafia

was involved at AnimaTek,

but she was suspicious that Pokhilko's company

was involved with Russian organized crime

because of some recent conversations with Pokhilko.

She said Pokhilko mentioned some investors

She said Pokhilko mentioned some investors

but refused to talk about them in detail.

Who were these investors?

If they were gangsters,

then he's always under threat.

They don't know how the software industry works.

They don't know how a business in America works.

They don't understand the expenses of running

a business in the United States.

Which was very different

from the expense of running business in Russia.

They might have been getting itchy, saying,

"Where's our return? Where's our return?"

"Where's our return? Where's our return?"

Or changed their mind and said,

"We want our principal back."

Vladimir not being in a position to provide that,

could become a target.

[Grigoriy speaking]

[Joe] You think about someone like Vladimir Putin.

Two months before the family was killed in California,

Two months before the family was killed in California,

in 1998, Putin becomes the head of the KGB.

His closest connections are legitimate gangsters.

He's been tightly interconnected with gangsters

from St. Petersburg for the last 30 years.

His mentality is much more of an authoritarian

gangster mentality than anything else.

One thing that Putin did do, and does do to this day,

One thing that Putin did do, and does do to this day,

is he keeps track of people's money.

Was he keeping that close an eye back in 1998?

[Sandra] And then I found out there's another guy that died

years before Vladimir,

and here's the strange part about it.

This case sounds familiar to ours,

and it's all tied to Russian Mafia and Tetris.

and it's all tied to Russian Mafia and Tetris.

[Dan] Tetris is one of the most popular

and most successful games in video game history.

And in the early 1990s,

there was another high-profile death

that's connected to the Tetris story.

Robert Maxwell was a media mogul in the UK.

He was the '80s UK version of Rupert Murdoch.

[upbeat music playing]

And he was the father of Ghislaine Maxwell,

who was attached to Jeffrey Epstein.

In 1991,

Robert Maxwell was out on his yacht,

sailing around the Mediterranean,

the yacht named after his now-infamous daughter.

And he just disappeared one evening.

[Sandra] He was found dead, floating in the water, naked.

There were three autopsies done,

and the medical examiners could not agree

on how his death occurred.

There have been a lot of theories

about what happened to Robert Maxwell.

And one of them was maybe he had been murdered.

Because the Russians were still sore at him

for something Tetris-related.

In the 1980s,

Robert Maxwell was making cartridges of Tetris

and selling them

and selling them

with his company Mirrorsoft.

[Dan] Somebody saw the Tetris cartridges

and said, "Hey, did you guys sign off on this?"

And the Russians said, "I didn't sign-off on this.

We didn't license this.

We haven't gotten any money for this."

The Russians find out

and they're pissed off about it.

I mean, who wouldn't be?

Robert Maxwell was literally stealing money.

That could be millions of dollars that he's getting.

And the Russians get mad at Maxwell and cut him off.

And then, years later, he died.

And then, years later, he died.

Tetris is the common denominator

between that strange case

and our case in 1998.

It's a strange relationship with Tetris.

Which leaves me with, you know, more questions.

[Joe] It's just another red flag, right?

This stuff doesn't happen

under the coincidences category.

And you always have to look

under the surface at this point.

There's this quote that came out of a book by John O'Neill.

It said, in 1941,

It said, in 1941,

KGB defector Walter Krivitsky said,

"Any fool can commit a murder.

But it takes a true artist

to stage a natural death or suicide."

We heard about this in Russia all the time.

So, how do you make a murder look like an accident?

How do you make a murder look like a suicide?

How do you make a murder look like a suicide?

And the Russian Mafia studied that.

We always wanted to look for that smoking gun.

That somebody came in here and killed these people.

There was nothing.

There was no suspects, fingerprints,

everything came back to the family.

All the blood came back to them.

[Joe] In the 1990s, there were Russian hitmen

moving into the United States all the time.

If Vladimir thought

he and his family could leave Russia

and go to the United States and be safe,

and go to the United States and be safe,

because now they're far away,

it only took one phone call

from bad guy in Moscow to bad guy in Palo Alto

to say, "Kill them."

[Sandra] If this was a hit,

these people killed his wife and child in front of him

as a punishment.

And then killed him.

And then to have the FBI get in.

Again, I'm gonna keep repeating that.

You add the FBI in with the Russian Mafia.

Millions of dollars come out of Silicon Valley.

Millions of dollars come out of Silicon Valley.

I'm telling you, it doesn't smell right.

Something's going on. Something's going on.

[soft instrumental music]

[Denson] I was still working on this angle

of was there a Russian Mafia involvement.

And having worked homicides frequently,

the suspect will show up at a funeral.

the suspect will show up at a funeral.

So I asked Detective Bready to go to the funeral

and to take photographs.

We're often curious about who is gonna show up,

and we often show those photos to other people

involved in the investigation,

maybe witnesses, people close to the family,

to see if there's anything that stands out.

We have interviewed

many of the family and friends and coworkers,

so we were able to easily recognize them.

But several gentlemen that had shown up,

these figures didn't match everyone else.

They were big guys.

They were all wearing these long trench coats.

That in itself was odd.

The friends and family who were at the funeral

didn't know them, couldn't identify them.

If there was a Russian Mafia connection,

it could've been them.

But we never knew who they were.

As we're sitting around,

discussing this Russian Mafia hit,

that we're getting from the community,

the second autopsy reports come in.

When I saw that, I was so shocked.

I was like, "What?"

[Noam] County came out with this very extensive

200-page report expounding this theory

that it was a murder-suicide,

and that Vladimir had done this and that was that.

[Denson] And pretty much that ruined the case.

[Denson] And pretty much that ruined the case.

Even if you walked in and told me

"I killed that whole family,"

there's no way I'm gonna be able to convict you of it

because you got two pathologists saying,

"Nope, he killed himself."

I call it BS. I'm like, this is not working for me.

And then I recall being told

we're done on the evidence collection.

And I just remember going, "What do you mean we're done?"

[Denson] I had a lot of officers mad at me

[Denson] I had a lot of officers mad at me

when I made my final conclusions

that it was a double homicide suicide.

We weren't 100% sure that this guy killed his family.

Why did it end so quickly?

Why did we close that case

with all this other stuff involved?

That is the problem I've had for more than 20 years.

And I cannot get that out of my mind.

-[Sandra] 273. -[producer] 273.

[Sandra] So this would be the US Department of Justice.

[Sandra] So this would be the US Department of Justice.

At the header. At the top?

-Okay. -[producer] Yeah.

Uh, want me to read the whole thing?

Yeah.

Okay. "Gentlemen,

the attached federal grand jury subpoena duces tecum

is issued in furtherance

of a federal criminal investigation

being conducted under the supervision

of this office.

Notification of the subpoena and your compliance therewith

or disclosure..."

[reading]

[continues reading]

That's strange.

Okay. Okay.

[producer] Go to the next page, real quick.

You guys, I've never seen this before.

[Jean] This is basically a subpoena form

[Jean] This is basically a subpoena form

from the US district court

of the Northern District of California.

And this is two days after the homicide.

Wait.

I don't remember anything about this.

[Sandra] It's not the Palo Alto court.

It's not the county court.

It's not the state court.

It is the United States District Court.

So you have a homicide suicide two days ago.

Already we have a subpoena for all records?

We didn't even get a subpoena for all records by then.

[Scott] It was pursuant to a criminal investigation.

And I'm assuming,

because the name of Vladimir Pokhilko's in there,

because the name of Vladimir Pokhilko's in there,

is that it was related to our case.

And again, it's just a guess

'cause I don't have any independent recollection

of this particular subpoena.

[Denson] The FBI was working on this with us

and the agent I was working with

never said anything about it.

A connection to any crime that they were investigating.

[Sandra] It went all the way up

to the United States Department of Justice

and the United States district court.

This little case, which was significant for us,

This little case, which was significant for us,

bedroom community, a family man

loses it and kills his family.

Yet two days later, the FBI,

the United States Department of Justice is involved.

And you want me to believe that this case is over?

That nothing happened?

No. I'm not buying it.

It's bigger than we think it is.

[Sandra] That subpoena from the US Department of Justice

shocked me.

That's important.

There's something more involved in this

that we were not privy to.

That nobody told us about.

And so I feel a little, kind of pissed off about it.

I want to know what that was all about.

I was the supervisor

of the Soviet Counterintelligence Squad

before I retired.

I was on that squad, called Squad 14,

for about 21 years.

And we investigated the KGB at that time.

It was our job on the squad

to identify KGB officers.

to identify KGB officers.

They were trying to acquire our intelligence.

We looked at them as the enemy.

And they were.

Yeah. No, I don't mind.

It appears that there was

might have been an existing case, right?

An existing case that the FBI

An existing case that the FBI

and the US Attorney's office was investigating.

And I don't have a theory for you on what it's about.

To get a subpoena the same day the case was opened?

That is unusual.

So what that tells me is,

the FBI was already investigating Vladimir.

After this murder-suicide,

they showed up because they were already looking

at this man.

They were already looking at his company.

They were already looking at his company.

[Rick] The case, in and of itself, is interesting.

This guy comes over here, forms a company.

Makes some money, right?

And kills his wife and himself.

And he's a Russian.

But homicide itself would not bring the FBI into it.

Had to be some other angle.

There had to be some link, some nexus there

that would cause the FBI

to get involved in a case like that.

[producer speaking]

Yeah. I mean, that's always possible, sure.

[Sandra] So, you know,

when you're working in law enforcement,

part of your job is to be nosy.

Really, really, really nosy.

I want to know who the witness

is that was attached to that subpoena.

Because this particular person was interviewed

Because this particular person was interviewed

by the FBI.

I discovered that this witness

was a business associate and person who considered

themselves to be a friend of Vladimir.

So after looking through the police report,

to find out who the person was

that was attached to the subpoena,

I found them. Their contact information was still valid.

I gave them a call.

[man speaking in artificially distorted voice]

They were very considerate about their own safety.

I felt their concern, and it was real.

It wasn't fake.

So I am not going to mention their name.

But when speaking with them, I got to be honest with you.

It was amazing what I heard.

[man speaking in artificially distorted voice]

[man speaking in artificially distorted voice]

[Sandra] We started to talk about the case.

And they told me some information that

I was not privy to.

[man speaking]

This person said that the FBI came to them, okay?

This person also said that the FBI showed them a case

that was an FBI case.

Not a Palo Alto case.

They said that the information they saw on this report

was different from what we had.

[man speaking]

[man speaking]

So the FBI, outside of our investigation,

was interviewing these people.

Hmm. Interesting. Very interesting.

[man speaking]

[Sandra] The FBI did not believe that this was

a murder-suicide.

That is key, and I was shocked when I heard that.

I don't believe it was a murder-suicide.

I don't believe it was a murder-suicide.

And so, it was very important

to me to hear that because, again,

I feel like, "Wow!

I was on the right track 24 years ago."

[man speaking]

This person also felt

this was a Russian Mafia or mob hit.

When I heard this person say that,

I tell you, things were going off in my mind.

[man speaking]

[Sandra] We know now that

the FBI had their own case file,

the FBI had their own case file,

so we submitted a Freedom of Information Act to the FBI.

We call it FOIA.

There are certain documents that we should have access to,

but we got nothing out of that.

They refused to give us information.

Well...

This FOIA request

reveals that it's a denial

and the indication is that

the FBI has no records responsive to your request.

Therefore, it's closed.

You got to take it at face value.

I would think that, um,

might be some indication if it was classified,

they'd indicate that.

This is as far as you can go with it, that's for sure.

This is as far as you can go with it, that's for sure.

I mean, it's been denied.

Yeah. Yeah. I can't answer that, yeah.

So they took four pages to explain that

we don't have anything to give you

but this is what's, stands out to me that's really important.

"The FBI can neither confirm nor deny

the existence of those records."

Okay. What does that tell me?

Basically, what they're saying is, "We have some stuff,

Basically, what they're saying is, "We have some stuff,

we know we have it,

you're asking for it,

you don't know if we have it,

and we're not telling you we have it,

but if we did, you can't have it anyway."

We know that the FBI worked with us on this case.

We know they got involved.

If this was a joint case,

I don't understand why we can't have what they have.

I find that to be very frustrating and very suspect

on their part.

It's like every other kaleidoscope

It's like every other kaleidoscope

that I've dealt with in Russia.

You have a kaleidoscope,

you have pieces of the puzzle, little chips of glass.

You give that one turn,

and all of a sudden, the picture looks different.

All of a sudden, there are new facts.

All of a sudden,

there's deeper, more nefarious

connections on the surface than when you first started.

[camera shutter clicks]

And that's exactly what this case sounds like.

[Sandra] This case is becoming so suspicious to me,

[Sandra] This case is becoming so suspicious to me,

with the involvement of the FBI

and the Department of Justice.

I want to go back and I want to go to Palo Alto

and I want to go look at the initial evidence

and I want to take my time and go through it to make sure

what I saw is what I saw, then, over 20 years ago.

I want to prove that Vladimir did not kill his wife

and his son and then himself.

And, I think the evidence we collected

can help me to prove that.