A woman’s body was found this week in her own closet, wrapped in plastic and hidden away. This has sparked a criminal investigation in Pennsylvania that is centered on mystery and memory.
The Philadelphia Police Department said that Lola Karabaeva, 61, was found dead at her home on Diplomat Place in the Bustleton area of Philadelphia on Wednesday.
Vladimir Lushevskiy, her 65-year-old husband, is now being charged with one count of abuse of a body.
Police say that more charges may be coming “depending on the outcome of the investigation.” Detectives who specialize in murder are currently looking into that case.
And yet another death, this one from 20 years ago, may play a big part in the case that is still being investigated.
Their son, Evgeniy “Eugene” Lushevskiy, who was 19 at the time, was on a gap year trip in 2004. The tourist from Uzbekistan hiked up Mount Baldy in Claremont, California. He never got down, though.
The son was last seen alive on October 31, 2004, by the Search and Rescue team of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office. On that night, “an unseasonably early snowfall came in,” the sheriff’s office wrote in a long report about the search for him.
“Eugene’s backpack was found near the top of Mt. Baldy on November 6, 2004,” the sheriff’s office wrote in the first search report. The video camera that Eugene had was found in the bag. Shots on the camera showed parts of his trip to the mountain, climbing at night, cooking over a fire, and the sunrise on November 1, 2004, Monday.
Even though early winter storms made it harder to search, it went on for a couple of weeks, with as many as 115 Search and Rescue workers on the mountain in one day. The search was done on foot and by helicopter.
Over the next six years or so, the searches went on, but bad weather and steep mountain hills kept getting in the way. Lastly, human remains were found in a “extremely dangerous” river area in 2010. The long-lost teenager’s body parts were identified as his or hers in April 2011.
CBS News cited law enforcement sources who said they think the death of their son years ago may have been the cause of the fatal fight between Karabaeva and her husband. This way of thinking is partly based on the date the woman disappeared.
That same day, Oct. 12, was also Karabaeva’s son’s birthday, and she was last seen or talked to by friends.
Police say the friend who called to report Karabaeva missing said they talked to her that night around 2:30 a.m.
WPVI, an ABC affiliate in Philadelphia, got surveillance video that showed proof of life. Karabaeva can be seen pulling up to the house, getting out of her car, and then fighting for a few minutes with the front door in that video.
A friend said the woman had just come back from traveling abroad.
The friend said, “I don’t know, she’s been in Europe for two or three weeks.” “All I saw was her car.”
Several neighbors told the TV station that the next day, they saw Vladimir Lushevskiy coming and going from their house and then moving his and his wife’s cars.
“That was weird,” said another neighbor. “He moved the cars around a lot on Saturday.” Moving in and out. Going in and out.
The woman’s car was finally found in the parking lot of a nearby church.
Then they found the disturbing thing: a woman stuck to a board in a room and wrapped in some kind of plastic. Duct tape sealed the package.
“From what I know, the police were here on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday,” the second neighbor said. “Every day they went inside, and yesterday they found it.”
