In the Brooklyn branch of the New York State Supreme Court, Maxim Gelman, an immigrant from Ukraine, pleaded guilty to four murders and other crimes, facing a sentence of 25 years to life in prison for each murder.
24-year-old drug addict Gelman was arrested on the morning of February 12 this year after he stabbed to death his 54-year-old stepfather Alexander Kuznetsov, his 20-year-old friend Elena Bulchenko and her 56-year-old mother Anna in a day.
At about 5 am on February 11, Maxim woke up his mother, 48-year-old Svetlana Gelman, and demanded the keys to her car, a gray 2004 ES 330 Lexus. Svetlana woke up her husband, but he refused to give the keys, and a quarrel began between the adopted son and stepfather. As a result, Maxim grabbed a kitchen knife, struck his stepfather several times in the chest, took the keys to the Lexus and left.
His mother called the police and an ambulance, but Alexander Kuznetsov had died by the time they arrived. The next bloodshed took place three blocks away, in a house on East 24th Street and Avenue Y, where Maxim Gelman's ex-girlfriend, 20-year-old Elena Bulchenko, and her 56-year-old mother, Anna, lived. To her misfortune, Elena's mother let Maxim into the apartment, and he killed her in the living room. Elena was at work, and Gelman waited for her for more than 6 hours. At about 4:15 pm, she entered the apartment, saw what happened there, ran out into the street, called 911 and waited for the police at the entrance. There she was overtaken by Maxim Gelman. Elena was also killed. Both women received more than ten stab wounds. Elena Bulchenko worked as a receptionist at the Bright Smiles Dental clinic on West 5th Street in Brooklyn.
While fleeing the crime scene, Maxim threw a Lexus and stole a Pontiac Bonneville, stabbing the 60-year-old driver three times in the chest. While driving this car, he fatally knocked down 62-year-old pedestrian Stephen Tannenbaum, and for the rest of the time before his arrest, he managed to injure a car service driver, the owner of another car and a subway passenger with a knife. The latest attack was no longer in Brooklyn, but in Manhattan, where Gelman was arrested at the Times Square station.
At a press conference the same day, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly admitted he had never seen anything like it.
Shortly after the arrest, Gelman told the police that he would come out of this case dry and that the maximum that threatened him was several years in a psychiatric hospital. "It's all right," he allegedly said. - I'll fight it off. I will end up in a lunatic asylum for several years and be released again. You'll see." In April, he officially pleaded not guilty, but the evidence collected in the case and the conclusion of a psychiatric examination leave no doubt about his sanity. Now Maxim has changed his position, and his lawyer Edward Friedman explained that Gelman was tired of sitting alone, and he wants to start serving his sentence in human prison conditions as soon as possible. However, Friedman's lawyer asked the judge to order another examination, hoping to prove that his client still needs treatment.
The meeting lasted twenty minutes. Unshaven and dressed in an orange prison uniform, Gelman smiled and turned around several times in the direction of Gerard Hoenig, Elena Bulchenko's boyfriend.
Prosecutor Kenneth Taub said that, given the evidence of the defendant's guilt, Gelman made a reasonable decision, and he definitely does not intend to "get in the way of someone who wants to plead guilty." In admonishing Gelman, Judge Vincent Del Judice said, "It's very likely and almost guaranteed that any sentence I hand down will mean you won't walk out of the penitentiary alive."
The judge scheduled sentencing for January 11, 2012, and a week after that, Maxim Gelman will be tried in Manhattan for injuring a subway passenger, 40-year-old Joseph Lozito. As he was being taken away, Maxim told the lawyer, “It's okay, Ed. Good luck".

"Russian Ripper" Maxim Gelman...

Igor GRADOV

Immigrant from Ukraine Maxim Gelman killed four people in New York.

That evening, Brooklyn's Sheepshead Bay was like a disturbed anthill. The streets were patrolled by police special forces in bulletproof vests, with machine guns and sheepdogs, patrol cars scurried about, in the sky a helicopter with a searchlight circled like a bird of prey with a burning eye.

All of them were looking for 23-year-old immigrant from Ukraine Maxim Gelman, who committed a series of brutal murders...

Boy and girl friends

Bringing a spray can of paint to the wall, the young man sharply pressed the spray head. A tight scarlet stream laid down on the wall in a dense layer. In a couple of seconds everything was ready. The female name ELENA, composed of pink letters, adorned the brick facade as if it had always been there. The young man took a step back, admired what he had done, raised his hand again, drawing a large pink heart below, and writing his names on the side: “Max” and “Wes”.

Under these names, graffiti artists living in the New York area of ​​Brooklyn knew him. In the life of a 23-year-old graffiti lover, the name was Maxim Gelman, he lived nearby. Here, a hundred meters from the painted brick facade, lived the one whose name he tenderly wrote on the wall. The girl's name was Elena Bulchenko. At one time, she also came to the United States with her parents and settled in the same immigrant quarter.

True, it cannot be said that Maxim met with Lena regularly. After several dates, the girl began to avoid him, hang up the phone, barely hearing his voice. The 23-year-old young man guessed what frightened his beloved so much: the girl found out that Max was using all sorts of psychotropic muck, after which she became almost insane.

In addition, the girl was “enlightened” about him by mutual acquaintances - they said that Maxim does not work, cuts himself in “Counter-Strike” all day long, and in the evenings rushes around the city with the same loafers, painting the walls with all sorts of intricate patterns. All this was deeply alien to the young immigrant, strictly aimed at success in life. Yes, and Lena's mother, 56-year-old dentist Anna Bulchenko, was categorically against her daughter dating a young loafer and drug addict.

Maxim's parents, or rather his mother and stepfather Alexander Kuznetsov, were also concerned about the behavior of their offspring. The stepfather was especially persistent: the 54-year-old man regularly held preventive conversations with the guy, guiding him on the right path.

So today, on this warm February evening, returning home, Maxim was sure that his stepfather would again “rinse” his brains. But Gelman got used to this procedure, if only "daddy" would allow him to take his car. Max was looking forward to how he would drive up to Elena's house in a brand new Lexus and invite her for a ride. He was sure that all the girls in the world need three things: sex, speed and money. And he was ready to offer the first two of them to his beloved today.

The young man did not yet know that that same girl's heart, painted on the wall, would turn black from longing by morning - his mistress, like three other innocent people, would die at the hands of Maxim Gelman.

The bloody way of the maniac

By five o'clock in the morning, Maxim quarreled with his stepfather over the keys to the family car. The stepfather did not want to give in to his stepson, and he, unable to listen to objections, rushed to the kitchen for a knife. Alexander Kuznetsov did not fully believe that Max was capable of such a thing. But the stepson proved that he was capable, inflicting several blows to his stepfather in the chest. After that, he took the keys to the Lexus and left.

Driving a stolen Lexus through the streets of New York, he rolled out onto Ocean Avenue, where he hit 62-year-old Stephen Tannenbaum. The elderly man was taken to the hospital on time, but there he died from his injuries.

Arriving at the girl's house, Maxim left the car nearby and headed for the familiar door. 56-year-old Anna Bulchenko, seeing Max on the threshold, reluctantly let him into the hallway and led him into the living room. A few minutes of conversation was enough for the guest to understand that her mother would never allow Elena to meet with him. So she must die. Several blows with a knife - and one more "obstacle" was gone.

Now we had to wait for Elena, who had already left for work by this hour. Despite the fact that Max was not in a very adequate condition, he understood that on the way to work he would be stopped by the police.

So almost 6 hours Gelman sat in Bulchenko's apartment next to the corpse of the hostess.

At about 4 p.m. the key jingled in the lock. Elena entered the apartment and, seeing the corpse of her mother, ran out into the street. She did not know that there was a maniac in the house. Calling 911, the girl was left to wait for the police and rescuers at the entrance door. There she was overtaken by a former boyfriend. He gasped with rage. In a matter of seconds, Elena was killed. Both women received more than ten stab wounds.

Having dealt with his beloved and her mother, Gelman jumped into the car and pulled aimlessly. At one of the intersections, a dark green Pontiac blocked the Lexus. Behind the wheel sat 60-year-old Arthur DiCrescento. Maxim jumped out of his car, ran up to the Pontiac and stabbed Arthur three times in the chest. The bloody driver dropped his head on the steering wheel. Maxim opened the door, dragged the body onto the sidewalk, sat in the driver's seat and drove off.

As it turned out later, the police found four knives in the abandoned Lexus - the maniac was thoroughly prepared for the "case".

By 8 pm in search of Gelman were thrown into police special forces and patrols of local areas. Portraits of Maxim appeared on TV news and on posters pasted on the streets. At about 9:30 p.m., the stolen car was found, the engine was running, but the interior was empty.

Meanwhile, a crazed killer tried to take over a limousine belonging to a service company. In the struggle for the right to drive, he stabbed 55-year-old driver Fitz Fullerton with a knife in the shoulder and neck. But the car was never stolen.

But they managed to take possession of the Nissan, which was driven by 25-year-old Sheldon Pottinger. In a fight with Pottinger, Gelman cut his hand, pushed him out of the car and drove away.

Having reached the metro station, the killer abandoned the car and went down to the subway.

The Ripper spent the night underground. In the morning, entering the carriage, he saw in the hands of a passenger a newspaper with a message about his atrocities and rushed at him. He managed to slash the face and arm of 40-year-old passenger Joseph Lozito with a knife, after which he tried to open the car door leading to the driver - the killer wanted to get into the cab and declare the passengers hostages. Luckily, he was arrested at that moment.

When the killer was brought to the police station and asked why he did all this, he replied: “Why? Because I said so".

Many believe that the “Russian Ripper” Maxim Gelman (although what does Russia have to do with it?) Killed people under the impression of his favorite computer game.

On February 18, 2011, the killer was charged. It can be assumed that Maxim Gelman will end up in prison until the end of his days - since 2007, the death penalty in the state of New York was replaced with a life sentence.

Gelman arrived in Brooklyn in 1994; his mother Svetlana also arrived in the USA with him. Maxim's father had settled in the country two years earlier; however, having received the status of an American citizen, he preferred to return to his historical homeland. In 2005, Maxim and Svetlana also received official American citizenship. For some time the young man studied at a local school (named after Abraham Lincoln); in his spare time, he enjoyed skateboarding and painting graffiti. On the basis of the last hobby, Maxim fell into the police more than once; however, damage to public property was by no means the most serious of Gelman's offenses - for example, on January 26, 2011, a dose of crack was seized from Maxim. Later, police representatives said that Gelman was a drug addict and - which, however, has not been definitely proven - he himself was a drug dealer.

It is difficult to say now what role drugs played in what happened on February 11-12, 2011; according to the official version, unhappy love played the main role in Maxim's actions. The guy began a series of murders on the morning of February 11th; his first victim was his stepfather, who inadvertently refused to give Gelman the car keys. For his obstinacy, Alexander Kuznetsov received 11 stab wounds.

Having obtained the coveted car, Maxim went to a certain Elena Bulchenko, his old lover. Met his mother Elena, Anna; Maxim dealt with her, after which he decided to wait for his "beloved". The girl came home after 6 hours; Gelman attacked her almost immediately. Bulchenko tried to escape from her ardent boyfriend, but Maxim was faster; later, more than a dozen stab wounds were counted on Elena's body.

Once again sitting in his stepfather's car, Gelman went to travel around Brooklyn. Of course, Maxim did not pay any attention to speed limits; for a long time he managed to avoid obviously emergency situations, but in the end Gelman's Lexus slowed down a certain Arthur Dicreshento in a Pontiac. The 60-year-old driver was lucky - he escaped "only" with severe wounds. Maxim, meanwhile, took possession of the Pontiac and continued his crazy race. Having knocked down a 60-year-old pedestrian, Gelman again decided to change the car; after leaving the Pontiac, he tried to take a taxi from a passing Fitz Fullerton - he, however, put up a worthy resistance. Maxim did not remain without a car for long - almost immediately he took possession of the transport of a certain Sheldon Pottinger.

Little is known about Gelman's further adventures that day. Pottinger's car was found in Queens; Maxim himself appeared only the next morning - in the subway. One of the passengers became his next victim; the woman provoked Gelman's anger by reading an article about his previous adventures. Transferring to another train, Maxim wounded another passenger, after which he tried to get through to the driver. Gelman introduced himself as a police officer; this, however, did not help him. There were real policemen in the cab at that moment - the security of the metro was seriously strengthened due to what Maxim had done the day before. The killer was apprehended and taken to the police station; during the search, six knives were confiscated from him - Gelman had two at the time of his arrest, four more lay in the car he had seized from his stepfather.

Maxim's defender has already stated that his ward is absolutely sane and fully aware of his prospects. Gelman himself claims that he was the victim of some carefully planned provocation and is not to blame for the terrible events of Friday and Saturday.

In the United States, a sentence was passed on a native of Ukraine, graffiti artist Maxim Gelman, who a year ago staged a massacre in New York. Then his stepfather, an ex-girlfriend with her mother and a passerby were killed by the emigrant's knife.

The court sentenced the 24-year-old killer, nicknamed the "Brooklyn Butcher" and "Mad Max", to 200 years in prison, writes The New York Daily News. The accusation consisted of 13 counts.

In sentencing, the judge called Maxim Gelman "a violent criminal and a sociopath." The court found the migrant guilty of the murders back in November 2011.

As follows from the case file, the first victim of Maxim Gelman was his adoptive father, 54-year-old Alexander Kuznetsov. The man stood up for the mother of his stepson, who began to beat her. The young man did not like that the woman refused to lend him her Lexus car.

Having stabbed a relative with a kitchen knife, Gelman stole the treasured Lexus and went to the house of his ex-girlfriend Elena Bulchenko. There Gelman stabbed to death her 56-year-old mother Anna Bulchenko, and then waited nine hours for the return of his 20-year-old lover. When Elena herself appeared in the house, the offender inflicted 11 stab wounds on her, from which she died. Then the killer got behind the wheel again. Moving at high speed, he drove into another car and attacked its driver, who received several stab wounds. Doctors managed to save the victim.

After the accident, "Mad Max" got into the car of the wounded man and continued driving around the city, during which he hit 62-year-old pedestrian Stephen Tanenbaum. The victim died in the hospital.

Then Gelman attacked the taxi driver and another driver, but both wounded managed to survive, reports NBC New York.

The next day, February 12, the attacker appeared in Manhattan, where he attacked two passengers on the subway, stabbing them. One of the victims was 41-year-old martial arts trainer Joseph Losito.

By that time, the search for the "Brooklyn Butcher" was actively conducted in New York. Thanks to the published photographs of the suspect, the passengers of the subway identified Maxim before the attack and reported this to the police. When Gelman took out a knife and began to act, the police were already in the subway car. First, the injured Joseph Losito knocked down the “Mad Max” with a kick, and then the police came to the rescue and tied him up. It happened at the Times Square station.

We add that the case of attacks in the subway was singled out as a separate proceeding, since these crimes were committed in another area. For them, Maxim Gelman will be judged separately. According to the episode with the attempted murder of Joseph Losito, he faces 25 years in prison.

According to police, Gelman was a drug addict and was detained about a dozen times - mostly for graffiti and drugs.

Maniac is proud of gangster Russian roots

During interrogations, the detainee for the murders gave contradictory testimonies and it was not possible to establish the exact motives for his actions. When Maxim was asked why he killed four people, he replied: "Because I decided so."

Immediately after his arrest, Maxim told his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend Gerard Honig in court that he had fallen in love with a heroin addict and called him a "fucking faggot," writes The New York Post. In response to this cynical remark, the young man wished Gelman to burn in hell. The enraged defendant began to threaten Honig with murder right in court, and then he was temporarily moved to a punishment cell. When the perpetrator calmed down and the meeting continued, he continued to insult the victims as before. Helman called the murdered Elena a "whore", and also stated that his stepfather allegedly harassed his mother, for whom he stood up.

This cynicism and complete disregard for society and the court was demonstrated by the offender at the reading of the verdict. "Your Honor! You can **** my Russian ****!" - Maxim Gelman swore dirtyly at the judge.

Note that in a recent interview, which was taken from Gelman in prison, he confessed to the murder of six more people committed earlier. Although these episodes do not appear in the criminal case, the police check the information received.

According to Gelman, he crushed his first two victims in a car in Brooklyn when he was 18 years old. He killed two more people when he was involved in the drug trade (one of them in the Bronx for not taking him seriously during the transaction). The defendant did not disclose the details of the murder of two more people, the Izvestia newspaper writes.

Also in an interview, Gelman said that he comes from a family of Russian gangsters. According to the defendant, he was brought to the United States from the Russian Federation as a seven-year-old boy. Meanwhile, it was previously reported that he emigrated in 1994 from Ukraine.

Arriving in the United States, Gelman, he claims, became involved in the cocaine trade and earned hundreds of thousands of dollars.

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A Brooklyn court on Monday appointed Maxim Gelman, who is charged with four murders and grievous bodily harm to four other New Yorkers, as well as armed assault and robbery, a free lawyer.
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Read more in this section

• 02.18 Valentine's Day in Harlem has become a nightmare for a tourist from France
• 02.10 Armed attack on police station in New York
• 02.06 A New Yorker killed his wife for insurance, and 17 years later, his son. The second wife helped to expose him when she found out that her husband had insured her life.
• 08.14 A court in New York sentenced a citizen of Ukraine to 20 years in prison for the sexual exploitation of a child
• 08.08

Maxim Gelman, accused of four murders, appointed a free lawyer in the US

Flowers and photos near the house of Elena and Anna Bulchenko

A Brooklyn court on Monday appointed Maxim Gelman, who is charged with four murders and grievous bodily harm to four other New Yorkers, as well as armed assault and robbery, a free lawyer. Lawyer Edward Friedman declined to comment immediately after the court session, at which the accused was not present, telling reporters that he had not even seen his client yet. Gelman remains in custody.

Meanwhile, the New York tabloids have already dubbed the 23-year-old native of Ukraine a "Brooklyn maniac." Over the weekend, police in New York hunted Gelman for 28 hours after he first killed his stepfather Alexander Kuznetsov, stabbing him 11 times, and then Yelena Bulchenko, with whom he was reportedly possessed and who had previously rejected his persistent attention, and her mother Anna Bulchenko. After these murders, Gelman stole two cars, stabbing the drivers. On the first stolen car, he hit a pedestrian to death. Gelman's adventures in the subway ended, where he stabbed a passenger and tried to break into the driver's cab, posing as a policeman. Gelman did not know that there were just two police officers in the cab who participated in his search and had previously received reports that the offender had been seen on the subway. They then detained Gelman.

Meanwhile, it turns out that Gelman had repeatedly come to the attention of the police - both for illegal graffiti and damage to city property, and for drug use. Since 2003, Gelman has been arrested ten times; the last time - on January 26 of this year, when the drug "crack" was confiscated from him. The police believe that Gelman himself was a drug addict and may have been involved in the distribution of drugs in Brooklyn. This is also said by friends of Elena Bulchenko, who warned the girl that she would stay away from Gelman.

Maxim Gelman at the time of his arrest. Photo from news.africanseer.com

"An ordinary teenager with oddities"

On Monday, Elena's friends continued to bring flowers to the doorstep of the small two-story house where she lived with her mother in the Italian-Jewish-Russian neighborhood of Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, just a few blocks from the condominium where Maxim lived with his mother and stepfather.

According to journalist Alexander Sirotin, this is an area dominated by middle-class residents. Sirotin lives in the same house with the Gelman-Kuznetsov family; their cars are in the garage next to each other. The journalist was not closely acquainted with Maxim - “because of the difference in age”, but remembers him “from the age of 14”, and maintained friendly relations with his parents.

“He gave the impression of an ordinary teenager, with his oddities, which are typical for all young people,” Sirotin told the Voice of America Russian Service correspondent. “Maybe in some ways he was a little aggressive - but, again, like all teenagers, especially boys.”

Sirotin, like other residents of the house, remembered the episode that occurred when Gelman was 17-18 years old.

“He brought his friends to the gym, which belongs to our complex, and set up a hairdresser's there,” recalled Gelman's neighbor. - He started to cut them, and then, when they left, it was impossible to enter the hall, because there was hair everywhere on the carpet. When they were reprimanded, Maxim said that there was no inscription in the hall forbidding cutting hair. “If there was such an announcement, I would not have done it,” he said at the time. After that, the family was fined, if I'm not mistaken, $500."

“Another time, Maxim brought too many friends to our outdoor pool who were noisy,” Sirotin continued. - We rarely do that. But when they made a remark to him, he immediately left and took his friends away.

According to a neighbor, all this was “normal teenage behavior,” and no one attached much importance to these episodes.

“Therefore, our whole house is in shock from what happened,” said Sirotin. - Everyone who knows this family could not imagine that this could happen. Now they say that the young man is just crazy.”

Sirotin believes Maxim was like most immigrant children in Brooklyn—"he was bilingual and bicultural, if I may say so—he had friends in both Russian and American environments." Many teenagers in families from the former Soviet Union make friends among fellow immigrants, but prefer to communicate with each other in English, adopting youth slang and fashion from their American peers.

Family from Brooklyn

People who encountered Maxim Gelman at a later age talk about his aggressive behavior. So, the owner of the Brooklyn nightclub Blue Velvet Lounge, Yana Levina, told the New York Times that once she even had to put Gelman out of the establishment.

According to Sirotin, he did not know about the recent arrests of Maxim Gelman, or about his addiction to drugs, "because the family is rather secretive."

“When we went with his parents to the ocean, to the beaches,” the neighbor said, “they never talked about the family. We discussed the cost of housing, talked about the increase in food prices, about politics, about what is happening in Russia, Ukraine or America. At first, to be honest, I didn’t even know that Alexander Kuznetsov was not Maxim’s own father. As it turned out later, his own father was killed in Ukraine.”

According to media reports, Maxim Gelman immigrated to the United States with his mother Svetlana in 1994. Two years earlier, his father had moved to Brooklyn as a refugee. Later, Maxim's father, having received American citizenship, returned to his homeland, while his wife and son remained in New York. In 2005, Maxim and Svetlana Gelman also received US citizenship.

Alexander Sirotin says Maxim's mother and stepfather were "nice people".

“Kuznetsov was about 55 years old,” recalls a neighbor. - He was rather large, and it’s even strange to me that Maxim managed to deal with him so easily.

Judging by the conversation, he was a man with a higher education and, as I suppose, in “that life” he occupied some good place. And in America, he was the driver of the "ambulette" - a minibus that transports the sick and the elderly. All the time that I knew him, he worked in this "Russian" company - I suspect that he was bad with English. But Maxim's mother, Svetlana, speaks good English, and as far as I know, she earned good money.

Sirotin says that Maxim's upbringing was apparently done by his mother.

Maxim Gelman. Photo from nytimes.com

Unable to explain...

“When someone paid attention to the fact that Maxim was not behaving very well and complained about this to his stepfather Alexander Kuznetsov, he always said,“ This is not for me, this is for Svetlana, ”the neighbor said. - Apparently, he either himself retired from raising Maxim, or his wife let him know that this was her business. I think Maxim was traumatized by the loss of his father."

According to Sirotin, Svetlana Gelman, who had been absent for the past two days, returned home on Monday. On the morning of the same day, the police removed the cordon around the house.

“We offered Svetlana help - if she needed to buy something, and so on,” the neighbor said. But she thanked and refused to help. She is very tenacious."

Maxim Gelman appeared in court on Sunday evening. According to press reports, in the courtroom the accused behaved "impudently and defiantly," and when the police escorted him to the car, Gelman swore obscenely at the gathered crowd of hostile citizens. He also shouted out that everything that happened to him was a "setup". According to the New York Times, during interrogation, Gelman called himself a "sacrificial lamb."

According to Alexander Sirotin, these words of Gelman indicate that he committed crimes while under the influence of drugs.

“Apparently, he is completely unaware and does not remember what he did,” the journalist said. "But that's just my speculation."

The police continue to investigate and has not yet called the motives of Gelman's behavior. NYPD Chief Raymond Kelly called his crimes "monstrous" and "inexplicable."