Jealousy Led To Gaol Term

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31098, 29 June 1966, Page 2

Jealousy Led To Gaol Term

(N.Z.P.A. Reuter—Copyright) MOSCOW, June 27. A Moscow woman was so intensely jealous of her handsome husband that she hired a gang of toughs to maim him so that other women would not be attracted to him.

lya Ilyinskaya never took her eyes off her husband, Nikolai Ilyinsky, at the geological institute where they both worked.

She insisted on accompanying Mm wherever he went on scientific expeditions lest he be unfaithful to her.

She flushed in anger if she saw him smile while talking to another woman at work and she lost all her girlfriends soon after her marriage because of her violent scenes when she thought Nikolai had fallen in love with them. Finally lya decided to ensure her husband stayed faithful by hiring three young toughs to beat him up so badly that he would be left a cripple in whom no woman would be interested. “Crack a few of his ribs and make sure you spoil his handsome face,” she told them. One night lya left a window open in her darkened flat. The toughs climbed in, beat up Nikolai and took away a handbag full of money and a watch she had left for them. Nikolai was taken to hospital seriously Injured.

But police soon caught one of the thugs, who told the whole story, Under examinaion lya broke down and confessed. “He was handsome, healthy

—young women couldn’t leave him alone—and I was just an old woman to him,” she sobbed. “So I thought if he was a cripple nobody would want him—only me.” lya was sentenced to three years in a prison camp. The toughs got three years each.