Israeli man suspected of strangling wife to death

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Israeli police suspect that a man staged the murder of his wife as if it were a suicide after autopsy results revealed she was strangled.

A gag order on the case was lifted Thursday.

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The husband, Guy Shapiro, was arrested during a police chase as he tried to flee by car in southern Israel. He eventually got out of the car and shot himself with a gun. He is currently hospitalized in serious condition.

In addition to possible murder charges, Shapiro could also be indicted for falsifying evidence and obstruction of justice.

He told the medics that he was working from home and his wife had gone to take a shower. A long time passed without her exiting the bathroom, so he tried to open the door and found it locked. When he eventually got in, he found her body.

The Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and museum, where his wife Rachel worked as an archivist and researcher, said it was “shocked and pained by her premature death.”

Shapiro’s public defender, Idan Gamlieli, said, “This was a tragic and difficult incident. Guy is cooperating with the investigators and has given them his story. He says he had no intention of causing the deceased’s death. We’re waiting for the end of the investigation.”

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In a different court Thursday, the trial began of a man who was charged with murdering his mother two months ago. According to the indictment, Andrei Kaminsky stabbed, strangled and beat his 53-year-old mother, Tatiana, then left her on the kitchen floor of the apartment they shared.

A neighbor, Ludmilla Rachimov, said she heard screams and “started knocking on the door as hard as I could. I yelled at them to open the door for me.” When the 29-year-old Kaminsky did so, she continued, “I asked, ‘What happened? What did you do to her?’ He told me, ‘Luda, you want to see her?’ I said yes.”

When he opened the kitchen door, she saw Tatiana lying there, “and everything was full of blood,” Rachimov said. “He told me, ‘That’s it. I murdered her.”

Rachimov said Kaminsky beat his mother regularly. “Two years ago, she gave me a key to her house and said, ‘If by any chance you don’t see me for a day or two or don’t hear from me, go into the house and see whether or not I’m okay.’ But he discovered that she gave me a key and changed the lock.”

Tatiana would periodically visit her and ask her to apply makeup to cover the bruises on her face and body so that nobody at work would see them, Rachimov continued. “She tried to persuade him to go for psychiatric treatment, but he didn’t want to and said he was fine.”