- She was a successful, independent immigrant
Who loved her job.
- When a translator for top secret government cases
Mysteriously disappears...
- Maybe the russian mob did get to her
Or, you know, scared her so much that she just fled.
- We bring in the top nypd investigator...
- He's the guy I want coming looking
For me if I ever go missing.
- To join forces with the u.S. Attorney's office
And the fbi...
- That is not the normal team of homicide investigators
That shows up at most killings in this country.
- In order to infiltrate an insular community...
- The brighton beach area, coney island
Is where they kind of had their foothold.
- Where they'll face off against
A calculating predator.
- He was ice cold,
And that was kind of scary.
- If you do it once and you did it twice
And you did it three times, you probably did it
Four, five, six, and seven.
- Oh, my god. This is a trophy.
[tense bassy music]
♪ ♪
- Located on the southernmost tip of brooklyn,
Bordering coney island
Is the eastern european enclave brighton beach.
Streets here are lined with authentic russian
And ukrainian restaurants,
Making it feel like an old world city
And earning it the nickname little odessa.
It's here in October 2007 that the mystery
Of missing 47-year-old ukraine native
Irina malezhik begins.
[suspenseful music]
- Irina was like a mainstay on the boardwalk.
She was always walking from brighton beach
All the way to coney island.
Then she would visit the russian shops,
Where she was just hanging out at the beach.
- Olga fisher was one of irina's friends.
They used to go walking on the boardwalk together.
- She called irina to set up one of their
Almost daily walks on the boardwalk,
And irina didn't answer.
No return call.
Didn't see irina on the boardwalk.
[phone rings]
Over the course of the week or two,
She'd left a number of messages.
And at one point, there was a message saying
That the mailbox was full.
And then a day or two later, she called
And was able to leave a message.
So why isn't she calling me back?
♪ ♪
- Irina was my friend, and she lived
In a building that I manage.
[phone rings]
Olga called me and said,
"I have a feeling something is wrong."
Irina was not my close friend, but I was concerned.
The super told me that she was not
In the building for some time.
So I said, "ok, I'll call the police."
- On November 8, police from the 6-0 precinct
Head to irina's apartment for a welfare check.
- Alla, being the manager of the building, had a key.
And they went up to the apartment.
They opened up the door, and they went in.
- That's when I was shocked.
♪ ♪
There was no furniture. There was no couches.
And when we went into bedroom,
There was no bed.
- It was just a mattress on the floor.
It didn't have a bedpost or a box springs.
- She had a number of plants in the living room,
And the plants were so dry they were dying, basically.
♪ ♪
The computer screen was on the floor,
Books, some paperwork.
Everything was in such a disarray
That I felt like someone just stormed through.
That's how it looked.
- But the nypd sees things another way.
- The sergeant felt that the woman who lived here
Was very sloppy,
And he didn't see any blood.
He didn't see anything broken. The door was locked.
And it doesn't look like there was a struggle
Or a fight here.
- When alla shares with olga
What she saw in irina's apartment,
The response is unexpected.
- Olga said, "no, no, that's all normal.
That's how she lived."
- According to her friend,
Irina lived almost an ascetic
Or spartan existence.
♪ ♪
- They did make a missing persons report,
And the detectives checked all of the department databases,
You know, a person, unidentified body
Being found, a person that was hurt
In the hospital, a jane doe.
None of the descriptors fit her.
- They thought maybe she went back to russia.
People in these communities there,
It's not unheard of that they don't really tell anybody.
They just go home.
- There was nothing to indicate
That there was any foul play,
And they don't see anything that warrants
Further investigation.
- I tried calling the detective
Quite a few times.
It felt like the case is just put on a shelf.
It was like a heavy stone
On my shoulders and my heart.
♪ ♪
[somber music]
Irina was a very, I would say, private person.
She told me that she was married
Back in ukraine, in kyiv,
And she got divorced, and she came to america.
We all thought of new york as a center of the universe.
For her to come here to be all by herself,
To find a job, work hard, and buy an apartment,
She was successful, independent woman immigrant
Who reached her goals,
And she loved her job.
She didn't have too many friends
Because she was always working.
- But irina hadn't shown up to her beloved job in weeks.
- She worked as a professional translator
For the court system and for government agencies.
- She was in the world translating,
Having conversations
Between criminals that were used
To prosecute the criminal.
[siren wailing]
She was extremely private about her job.
I didn't even ask too much because the more you know,
The more dangerous it is.
[tense music]
We were speculating among ourselves
What could have happened.
So we checked our surveillance cameras
In the building.
- The footage shows irina leaving the building solo
At 1:40 p.M. On October 15,
25 days before police searched her apartment.
- She was wearing a suit, like pants and a jacket.
And she looked in the mirror. We had a mirror in the lobby.
And she was fixing her hair.
It's a small thing,
But to me, it was like she's caring
About the way she looks.
She's going to meet someone, a man perhaps.
We checked every day.
After that, she never came back.
♪ ♪
- Unbeknownst to her friends,
They aren't the only ones concerned.
The u.S. Attorney's office where irina worked
Was quietly looking into her disappearance.
♪ ♪
- In 2007, the u.S. Attorney's office
Were doing a case involving a group of russians
Who were involved with the russian mob
In committing fraud against the united states government.
- Irina's job, translate the intercepted
Russian mob communications.
- She was translating telephone conversations.
She could work at 11:00 at night,
12:00 at night.
♪ ♪
- I was a special agent
With the fbi's new york office.
After she had gone missing, because of what she did,
The fbi came in.
Generally, what we've seen in organized crime cases
Where there's a retaliatory killing,
It's somebody that's operating in that world.
It's an informant.
It's not somebody that works for the government.
But nothing's out of the realm of possibility
With these cases.
- And with such a complex case,
The u.S. Attorney's office calls in
An additional heavyweight.
- They decided to reach out to detective stradford,
An expert in cold case homicides.
- Detective stradford is the guy I want coming looking
For me if I ever go missing.
- When I first was contacted by the u.S. Attorney's office,
They didn't give an indication that something bad
Had happened to her, only that we think
It's involving a case that she's involved in.
But from sitting down with them,
I got a feeling that maybe the russian mob did get to her
Or, you know, scared her so much that she just fled.
That does happen.
We did a check with ins and with the state department
On outbound flights leaving the country,
And her name was not on any manifest.
♪ ♪
The main thought for us was, where is she?
♪ ♪
- Over the next few months,
The agents and detectives team up
To search for irina malezhik.
- We kind of just became our own little task force.
- I said, "let's figure out who irina malezhik is,
And let's subpoena everything about her life."
- We requested phone, financial, bank records,
And they came in dribs and drabs.
- The squad would sit down at the lunch table together,
And we'd talk about it.
We found this piece of evidence.
What do you think of that lead?
- Though they've been discreet,
Local papers catch wind of the investigation
And run with it.
- Here's this woman missing without a trace,
And because of that potential
For organized crime involvement,
They were all over it.
- With press coverage, tips pour in.
- Early summer 2008, the fbi received a call
From a local jail that an individual
Had information about the disappearance
Of irina malezhik.
- There are countless people behind bars who are attempting
To decrease the amount of time
They've been sentenced by bringing forward information.
- An fbi agent responded, interviewed him in the jail.
This person had close ties to one of the five families
Of la cosa nostra italian organized crime
In the new york metropolitan area.
If I told you what his interconnections were,
He would be able to be identified and possibly harmed
By members of organized crime.
And the fbi agent was essentially told
That as a favor for the russian mob,
Italian organized crime members
Murdered irina malezhik.
♪ ♪
- Coming up...
- How do we prove it without letting the underworld know
That we're looking into it?
- It had to be done covertly.
- Special agent jimmy lee never showed up.
Get a phone call from his wife.
Jimmy's in the hospital.
- If this were in russia,
Then that might be a way of sending a message.
♪ ♪
[tense bassy music]
[foreboding string music]
- In August 2008,
10 months after 47-year-old ukrainian immigrant
Irina malezhik vanished into thin air,
A tip comes in from a jailhouse informant.
♪ ♪
- Special agent jimmy lee of the fbi
Was essentially told that italian organized crime
Were doing a favor for the russians
By getting rid of irina malezhik,
A translator for the fbi.
[tense music]
But how do we prove it
Without letting the underworld know
That we're looking into it?
- Agent ruscio was part
Of the italian organized crime task force.
So he and jimmy followed up on that lead.
- My specialty was infiltration
Of organized crime.
So we send cooperating witnesses
To try to begin conversation about irina's disappearance
With potential suspects.
These are the people who are associates
Of italian organized crime members,
Wearing body wires, just saying,
"I heard somebody's been asking questions
"about this translator.
You guys know anything about her?"
You want to try to do things as covertly as you can
When you're dealing with the mafia.
We spent nine months of time working around the clock,
But none of the potential suspects
Had ever heard of the name irina malezhik.
It was dead end after dead end.
- With a woman still missing, the agents press on,
Until the spring of 2009.
♪ ♪
- We were headed to wire somebody up,
A cooperating witness.
Special agent jimmy lee never showed up.
I'm trying to reach him.
He didn't answer his phone,
And jimmy always answered his phone.
I just kept calling.
And finally, I get a phone call from his wife
That they're in an ambulance.
[siren wailing]
And he had had a heart attack.
- Thankfully, agent jimmy lee survives.
But after nine months, during which not
One of the tips panned out,
Agent ruscio comes to a disappointing conclusion
About his jailhouse informant's story.
- The whole thing was just a made-up ruse.
He had access to computers,
And he researched some of the media reports
That irina was missing,
And he came up with a story.
He simply wanted to get out of state custody
And get into federal custody.
It's a nicer jail, and he would probably
Be treated better.
To be honest, the one disagreement
I ever had with the united states attorney's office
Was that this individual was not charged
With perjury or a federal crime
For sending us on a wild goose chase.
♪ ♪
After that, everything kind of changed.
I just felt like, let's try another route.
- We had exhausted the organized crime lead.
We didn't see anything that related to her work.
- So that's when we focused on irina's finances.
And we found a check deposited
Two days after irina went missing.
- It was irina malezhik's signature,
And then it was endorsed over to dmitriy yakovlev.
♪ ♪
- Yakovlev last name is very common for russian.
- Now we need to try and find out
Who that specific dmitriy yakovlev is.
- Nobody knew who he is.
And as far as I knew, she had no man in her life.
♪ ♪
- As agent ruscio researches and sifts
Through the numerous dmitriy yakovlevs,
Agent razzagone digs in on irina's credit cards.
- Following her disappearance, in the two weeks after,
There was over $22,000 in retail transactions.
And there were a few of her credit cards
That we learned had gotten authorization
To make large purchases.
Whoever had called in was able to provide all of the requests
And information from the bank to verify
That it was, in fact, irina.
It was a female voice on the phone.
This was after irina was last seen
And had been reported missing.
So there was this, is she taking
Out money to try and leave?
Or is it somebody accessing her account?
♪ ♪
- Now in the spring of 2009,
Investigators head to the stores
Where the credit cards were used in October 2007,
Just two weeks after irina's disappearance.
It's a long shot they'll still have
Surveillance footage 18 months later,
But at century 21, they hit the jackpot.
- They still had the video,
And we just went minute by minute
Until we hit the time where we knew
The credit card was presented.
We see a family.
The man was balding with glasses.
The woman had blonde hair and definitely was not irina.
♪ ♪
- Investigators now have the images
Of the man and woman who been using her cards
And the name from the deposited check,
Dmitriy yakovlev.
♪ ♪
- I have a friend who works for homeland security.
- They were able to pull a file for us
To show photographs of the dmitriy yakovlevs
That came up.
- In the file, one of the dmitriy yakovlevs
Is a balding man with glasses,
A match for the man who'd been shopping at century 21.
- His wife was julia yakovlev.
- And I called back my friend again,
And he came up with a photo of julia yakovlev,
And it was the female in the photo
At the century 21 department store.
♪ ♪
We were drafting arrest warrants,
And we put out a notice
That if there's any travel
From a dmitriy or a julia yakovlev
For us to be notified,
And we got a hit that a dmitriy yakovlev
Was outbound out of jfk to russia.
♪ ♪
- He's scheduled for a flight that takes off
In less than two hours.
- So we left the u.S. Attorney's office,
Went directly there. It was a rainy day.
It was late in the afternoon.
New york traffic's terrible.
There's no way to get around new york traffic,
But we got to get to jfk airport...
♪ ♪
Or we may never see him again
And never figure out what happened to irina.
[car horn blares]
♪ ♪
[tense bassy music]
♪ ♪
- We learn there's a dmitriy yakovlev
On an outbound flight to russia.
[airport announcer speaking indistinctly]
We were still drafting arrest warrants,
But we wanted to make sure he didn't leave the country.
[tense music]
Airport personnel knew we were coming
And basically escorted us right to the gate.
♪ ♪
There was a moment of relief when you get there
And the plane's still there.
- Because the surveillance footage
Of dmitriy yakovlev was so clear,
Agent ruscio knows exactly who he's looking for.
- Dmitriy yakovlev was being escorted off the plane to us,
And we were waiting right off the ramp.
And as soon as I saw this individual,
We knew right away it wasn't the right guy.
I talked to him shortly.
It was about a 24-year-old named dmitriy yakovlev
Who was on his honeymoon,
And we said, "we're sorry. Have a nice trip."
And he went on his way.
- As agents await the arrest warrant,
Detective stradford heads to dmitriy
And julia's neighborhood to keep a close eye
On the real yakovlevs.
- They lived in a house that was very expensive
In seagate.
It's an area in south brooklyn near coney island.
Over the years, it's had an influx of immigrants
From russia and ukraine.
- It's a gated community with nice homes
And a private beachfront.
- It's not public area
Where you could just walk the streets.
You have to have a purpose
Why you come, if you don't live there,
Why you come to that area.
♪ ♪
- We would see a woman come out
That we eventually identified by the photos
As being julia yakovlev.
She'd be walking their little toy dog,
Smoking a cigarette
In high heel shoes.
She looked to be high maintenance.
Dmitriy just looked like just a weaselly--
Like a rat,
But he just had that look like I'm the man.
♪ ♪
- On July 24, the u.S. Attorney's office
Gives the go-ahead to arrest the duo
For grand larceny and identity theft.
- It was early in the morning,
And we caravanned the fbi and nypd to seagate.
We get to the house.
We're like, "where's dmitriy?"
One of the officers or agents outside
Said, "hey, there's somebody up on the balcony."
♪ ♪
- And he had like a kettlebell in his hand.
He was working out.
His robe was open.
- He's completely naked underneath the bathrobe.
♪ ♪
He wants to know what this is about,
And we tell him credit card fraud
And identity theft, and he says something flippant
About the police, you know, are knuckleheads.
You don't know what you're talking about.
- I literally said, "dmitriy, we got a federal warrant
For your arrest."
And I put cuffs on him. He did not get angry.
He was almost too calm.
If you get in cuffs, all right, by the fbi,
You should be a nervous wreck or at least angry
If you didn't do anything.
He was ice cold,
And that was kind of scary.
Julia, she seemed more angry, more agitated.
- Once she realized that she was being arrested,
The waterfall came.
The mascara's running.
We transport them to 26 federal plaza.
We separated them.
Julia's in the interrogation room.
It's myself and tracie.
And then we tell her that we know
Everything that's been going on,
And we know what you've done,
And she said, "well, you have to talk
To dmitriy about this."
There wasn't any way
We were gonna get more from her.
- In a room down the hall, the conversation
Is markedly different.
- Dmitriy, he just kept talking.
He started giving us his background first.
He talked about military, and he was a doctor.
- Dmitriy was a surgeon, and he served
Two years in the soviet military.
And after leaving the military,
He worked as a physician in the soviet union.
Then when he came to the united states,
He changed professions and got involved
In real estate development, repurchasing homes.
- And then when he started talking about
The credit cards, he explained people give him
Their credit cards when they owe him money
If they can't pay him back,
And I think I asked him.
I said, "like who?" and he said "viktor."
♪ ♪
- This is the first time we had heard of viktor,
And we had no idea who viktor was.
- He goes, "viktor alekseyev, he owed me money,"
And he gave me his credit cards.
- Investigators take note, eager to speak
With viktor alekseyev.
- And I'm not sure if it was me or alexei said,
"anybody else?"
And he says, "I can't think of anyone."
And then we mentioned, "do you know irina malezhik?"
He answered pretty quickly.
And he goes, "oh, yes, irina, she owed me money, too,
And she gave me her credit card."
♪ ♪
- Discarded on the side.
It was a torso and some arms and legs
And two videotapes and a dracula mask.
- That really made the hair on the back
Of our necks stand up.
- People who dealt with dmitriy yakovlev
Suddenly disappeared off the face of the earth.
♪ ♪
[tense bassy music]
[eerie music]
♪ ♪
- Investigators are questioning
Julia and dmitriy yakovlev
About the disappearance of irina malezhik
When dmitriy casually explains
Why he's been using her credit cards.
- Dmitriy essentially stated that irina
Owed him money and gave him her credit cards as repayment.
- Dmitriy tells them he loaned irina $20,000 for furniture,
And now they're even.
- And we go, "how do you know irina?"
And he goes, "oh, irina worked for me in some odd jobs."
She was doing translations for his buying
And selling of houses.
♪ ♪
- Though vague with the details of the financial arrangement,
With the admission of using credit cards,
Agents now have enough to charge the couple
With identity theft.
Dmitriy is jailed without bail,
And julia is sent home on house arrest.
But our guys aren't done.
There's still a missing woman, and we need to find her.
- We started interviewing people in the neighborhood.
We met a local resident,
And we talked about the timeline of the disappearance.
And he said, "hey, you know, that's interesting.
"about that time, we were all wondering
"why dmitriy ripped out his basement floor
"and put in a new basement floor.
There was nothing wrong, and the house was mint."
- It was the timing against irina's disappearance.
- We thought maybe he buried irina's body
Under the basement floor.
That gave us probable cause to get a search warrant.
- That was something we had to act on quickly
Because julia was back in the house.
- The search is being conducted for the remains
Of irina malezhik.
- We served the search warrant.
We entered the basement.
- We had brought in a cadaver dog to come in.
♪ ♪
And the dog took her turn and ran around the basement.
- We had about a half a dozen jackhammers,
And we would keep passing the jackhammers off
At these spots where the dog hit.
♪ ♪
And we found nothing under the basement floor.
- But in the boiler room, agent razzagone
Finds some unsettling items.
- We found a set of keys, and we found some photos.
There was a man and a woman
Engaged in intimate situations in the photos.
The man in the photo appeared to be dmitriy.
The woman did not look like his wife, julia.
- The woman in the photos clearly isn't irina either.
- And there was a pair of women's
Thong underwear on the floor,
Just kind of stashed in the corner.
- Julia was home, and we just asked her,
"are these your underwear?"
And she goes, "no, I've never seen those before in my life."
- I thought right away, they were irina's.
He's holding onto these as a souvenir.
I was very like, "get them to the lab.
Get them out."
- As the rest of the basement is processed,
Agent ruscio pursues the viktor alekseyev lead.
- Dmitriy had mentioned it
That he had utilized viktor's credit cards,
That viktor owed him money.
♪ ♪
We found an address in seagate not too far
From where dmitriy and julia lived
That viktor alekseyev resided.
- Agent ruscio knocked on the door.
A man came to the door.
He said his name was ravi.
Ravi told them the home was owned by viktor.
Ravi was his tenant.
- I asked if viktor was home,
And he told me viktor is dead.
♪ ♪
- That really made the hair on the back of our necks stand up.
♪ ♪
- My first thought was to ask him if it was natural causes.
And that's when he got really agitated
And started saying, "no, the guy you're digging
In his basement murdered him."
And I was, like, taken aback.
- Ravi tells agent ruscio the last time
He saw viktor was almost four years ago,
On December 19, 2005.
- Ravi said, that day, dmitriy was coming over
To help him move a very large safe
That viktor had in the apartment.
♪ ♪
- And then viktor alekseyev got in dmitriy yakovlev's car
To go to the airport to depart for russia.
- Ravi tells them that shortly after the two men left,
Viktor's ex-girlfriend showed up.
- His former girlfriend asked ravi, "what happened?
Where is he?"
Because she was supposed to be picking him up
To take him to the airport, and viktor was gone.
- She just found it just too--
Like, all of a sudden, you know, he's gone,
And he doesn't tell me anything about it.
- Ravi tells them that viktor's ex
Never got a hold of him, and as her worry escalated,
She called delta airlines.
- Viktor never got on the flight.
- Agent ruscio came running back,
Like, screaming, "we have another victim."
♪ ♪
[tense bassy music]
[eerie music]
♪ ♪
- Agents investigating dmitriy yakovlev's involvement
In the disappearance of irina malezhik
Have just made a jaw-dropping discovering,
Another possible victim from four years earlier.
- Deadpan as anything, ravil said, "viktor is dead,
"and the guy whose house you're digging up the basement
At is who we think did it."
- It was like, "mm-hmm, viktor's dead. How?"
Told us that you can talk
To his ex-girlfriend about that.
We contacted her.
She came into the u.S. Attorney's office,
And she filled in a lot of blanks.
- We learned that viktor was a jewelry dealer.
He dealt in high-end costume jewelry.
- He was doing well, and she said
Dmitriy was trying to be involved in the business
That he was doing.
She was--you know, she didn't like dmitriy.
She doesn't remember how they met,
But it was like she showed up one day,
And he was at viktor's house.
They watched these russian soap operas.
They play cards. They drink.
You know, they, all of a sudden,
Had this budding relationship.
- The ex tells detectives that on December 19, 2005,
Viktor was supposed to fly to russia
For three months for business, but she never saw him again.
- And she hadn't heard from him since.
- She reported viktor missing to the local precinct,
And then went to dmitriy
To ask about viktor's whereabouts.
Dmitriy claimed he didn't know.
He said he just helped him move the safe and he left.
[tense music]
The things that dmitriy had said to her
Were very chilling.
He told her that he'd seen some photos of her
In intimate situations with viktor.
- That's when detectives have a revelation.
♪ ♪
She was the young woman in the photos
Hidden in dmitriy's basement.
- The man in the photos was not, in fact, dmitriy.
♪ ♪
- Viktor and dmitriy just happened to look alike.
- And she told us she knew those photos
Were maintained in the safe.
Viktor was very protective of that safe.
♪ ♪
But somehow, dmitriy had gotten access.
♪ ♪
- But her story doesn't end there.
Viktor's ex tells agents that a few weeks
After he'd gone missing, in January of 2006,
She received an alarming call.
♪ ♪
- She was contacted by a friend
Who lived in new jersey that human remains
Were found in a garbage bag
Just off the road in the south mountain reservation.
A local patrol officer found the bag,
The bag split open, and things fell out,
Arms and legs. There was no head.
There was no torso.
- A chilling story, but it's the location
That captured her attention.
- Before he moved to seagate,
Dmitriy had an apartment
Next to south mountain reservation in new jersey.
- Call it a hunch. Call it whatever it is.
But she just knew that it had to be viktor.
She contacted the essex county prosecutor's office,
And I believe she got them in touch with the nypd,
Who was able to eventually confirm through dna matching
That it was, in fact, viktor.
♪ ♪
- And now four years later,
Police still hadn't found viktor's killer.
Armed with this information, the task force
Head to essex county, new jersey,
Where his severed remains had been found four years earlier.
And the medical examiner provides them
With some unexpected and crucial intel.
- She explained to us that the bone wasn't sawed.
He cut through the soft tissue around the knees,
Around the wrists, the hips.
He was dismembered by someone
That was in the medical profession.
- We knew right away that it had to be dmitriy yakovlev
Because dmitriy yakovlev was trained as a surgeon
Back in russia.
- They also learned what bizarre items were found
Next to viktor's severed limbs.
- There were two videotapes and a dracula mask.
We called his ex-girlfriend, and we said, "hey,
"you mentioned to us about some soap operas
"viktor and dmitriy would watch.
Do you remember what they were?"
And she said yes, so she told us,
And sure enough, that videotape was the show.
And she was aware of the dracula mask
Because dmitriy had had that mask.
♪ ♪
- As evidence piles up, stories about dmitriy
Continue to pour in from locals.
- We find out that in 2003, a man named michael klein
Sold the house to dmitriy yakovlev.
- Michael klein, he was an old man
Who owned a property in seagate.
Michael was a former mechanic,
And he bought these houses basically to fix up
And rent out.
- His plan was to sell his home
And move to mastic, long island
And live with his girlfriend.
- But agents learned
That November 26, 2003,
Was the last day anyone saw michael klein.
- Michael klein went to the closing and never returned.
♪ ♪
- Is this another victim?
- We had another person who dealt with dmitriy yakovlev
And then suddenly disappeared off the face of the earth.
- Klein's disappearance is now the first one on record
Chronologically, two years before viktor's murder
And four years before irina malezhik vanished.
Agents dig into this new discovery.
- We learned michael klein's common law wife
Had filed in the local precinct
A missing persons complaint.
♪ ♪
- Michael klein was a grown man.
And at the closing, he got a check
For over $300,000.
The investigators probably figured
He might have just left because he had
The money to leave.
- Now, six years later,
Investigators need to find out
What really happened to michael klein.
They head to mastic, long island,
To speak with his common law wife.
- The house was boarded up, very rundown.
She wouldn't open the door.
- Eventually, she told us, after she had gone
To the police, dmitriy yakovlev
Went all the way out to mastic, banged on her door,
And she told us, "he threatened to kill me
If I didn't keep my mouth shut."
She lived as a recluse from that point on.
- Agents learn the key ring found in dmitriy's basement
Belonged to klein.
And while they're sure
Dmitriy yakovlev has blood on his hands,
They still need something concrete
To connect them
To irina malezhik's disappearance.
♪ ♪
Agent razzagone is hopeful that the dna
On the underwear found in his basement
Will be a match to irina.
They need a sample of her dna to be sure.
- Detective stradford and my former partner
Had actually gone over to kyiv to get
A dna sample from irina's sister.
♪ ♪
- 10 days later, on November 6,
Just two years from when irina disappeared,
The sample is received at the ocme dna crime lab.
- They were, in fact, able to determine
They were irina malezhik's underwear.
♪ ♪
This was a match. I was jumping up and down.
It was like, "I knew it!
I knew it! He killed her. I knew it."
♪ ♪
[tense bassy music]
♪ ♪
[tense bassy music]
[somber music]
♪ ♪
- Two years after
Irina malezhik's disappearance,
Agents connect her dna
To a pair of underwear found in prime suspect
Dmitriy yakovlev's basement.
♪ ♪
- He kept it as a memento or a trophy.
He kept michael klein's keys, a stack of photographs
That belonged to viktor alekseyev,
And he kept the underwear of irina malezhik.
♪ ♪
- In a serial case, you have people
Who do the trophy thing, and dmitriy did it.
It's morbid, but they go back and hold them
And relive the moment that they took
These people's lives.
[tense music]
- As investigators compare the three cases,
A pattern emerges.
- They took place in succession
With two-year gaps between each one.
Dmitriy showed planning to befriend people,
To insert himself into their life.
- Dmitriy yakovlev was a serial killer
Who killed for monetary gain.
- There was a greed of indescribable proportions
To get money for his type of lifestyle.
- Dmitriy appeared to stalk his prey
By identifying people who would not be
As missed as others.
- Irina was unmarried. She didn't have a boyfriend.
Her family was living in ukraine.
Viktor alekseyev was rushing off to russia
To start a new business,
And michael klein was at a rather advanced age.
- And who knows if there are other victims out there?
- Prosecutors pursue this as a federal case,
Which will allow for a wider scope of evidence
To be admitted, but because it doesn't fall
Into the category of what's considered
A federal murder charge,
The duo is charged with identity theft,
And dmitriy's includes an enhancement
For a crime of violence.
- And that's how we were able to charge effectively
In the federal level dmitriy yakovlev
With the three murders.
- A week before the trial was set to commence,
Julia, who had been on house arrest,
Makes a surprising move.
- Julia took a plea.
She admitted to what she needed
And agreed to testify against dmitriy.
She was given 36 months in federal prison.
- Dmitriy decides to take his chances with the jury,
And the trial commences on February 14, 2011.
- The trial was about three weeks total,
And more than 30 witnesses testified.
- I think one of the biggest moments in the trial
Was when the medical examiner was presenting the photos
From the scene where the bag was found
And viktor's body parts found on the ground
And testified about the clean disarticulation that was done.
Dmitriy yakovlev worked as a surgeon
Before coming to the u.S. And just seemed visibly--
You know, took pride in that, almost like he was admiring
His work, looking at the pictures
And tracing with his finger.
- Dmitriy testified.
He was very smug on the stand.
And he just, you know, maintained his innocence.
- On March 3, 2011, after a seven-hour deliberation,
The jury comes back with a verdict.
- They found him guilty on every charge.
- I got a little choked up,
And we got justice for these people.
These people probably would have been
Missing forever if we didn't all come together.
And it was a team effort all the way.
The dream team.
- I felt justice was executed,
But we needed that conclusion.
♪ ♪
- Dmitriy was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison.
- The judge lamented the fact that,
Under federal law, he could condemn dmitriy
To no more than 30 years in prison.
♪ ♪
- Julia got out of prison and returned to brooklyn.
She is sitting at home in a nice house in seagate.
♪ ♪
- Dmitriy, on the other hand, never made it home.
- Dmitriy died in jail
Approximately a year and a half ago.
He died of throat cancer.
[somber music]
- God works in miraculous ways.
She's vindicated, so that's it.
I have a closure inside me.
I miss her bubbling, happy personality
And intelligence. She was very intelligent.
We were just always laughing together.
You cannot return her, but her memory
Will be with her family, with her friends.