The United States has sentenced a Ukrainian graffiti artist, Maxim Gelman, who carried out a massacre in New York a year ago. Then his stepfather, an ex-girlfriend with her mother and a random passer-by died from 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 indictment consisted of 13 counts.

In sentencing, the judge called Maxim Gelman “a cruel criminal and a sociopath.” The court found the migrant guilty of murder back in November 2011.

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

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

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

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

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 underway in New York. Thanks to published photographs of the suspect, metro passengers identified Maxim before the attack and reported it to the police. When Gelman took out a knife and began to act, the police were already in the subway car. First, the victim, Joseph Losito, knocked down “Mad Max” with a kick, and then the police arrived in time and pinned him down. It happened at Times Square station.

We would like to add that the case of the attacks in the metro was separated into separate proceedings, since these crimes were committed in another area. For them, Maxim Gelman will be tried separately. For 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 his gangster Russian roots

During interrogations, the person detained for the murders gave contradictory testimony and it was never 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 fagot,” writes The New York Post. In response to this cynical remark, the young man wished Gelman to burn in hell. The enraged accused began to threaten Honig with murder right in court, and then he was temporarily moved to a punishment cell. When the criminal calmed down and the meeting continued, he continued to insult the victims. Gelman called the murdered Elena a “whore,” and also stated that his stepfather allegedly harassed his mother, for whom he stood up.

The criminal demonstrated this cynicism and complete disregard for society and the court during the reading of the verdict. "Your honor! You can **** my Russian ****!" - Maxim Gelman cursed dirtyly at the judge.

Let us note that in a recent interview with 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 are checking the information received.

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

Also in the 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 court in Brooklyn on Monday appointed Maxim Gelman, accused of four murders and inflicting grievous bodily harm on four other New Yorkers, as well as armed assault and robbery, a free lawyer.
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• 02.06 A New York man killed his wife for insurance, and 17 years later, his son. His second wife helped expose him when she found out that her husband had insured her life
• 08.14 A court in New York sentenced a Ukrainian citizen to 20 years in prison for sexual exploitation of a child.
• 08.08

Maxim Gelman, accused of four murders, has been assigned a free lawyer in the United States

Flowers and photographs at the house of Elena and Anna Bulchenko

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

Meanwhile, New York tabloids have already dubbed the 23-year-old native of Ukraine a “Brooklyn maniac.” Over the weekend, police in New York spent 28 hours hunting Gelman after he first killed his stepfather, Alexander Kuznetsov, by stabbing him 11 times, and then Elena Bulchenko, whom he was reportedly obsessed with and who had previously rejected his persistent attention, and her mother Anna Bulchenko. After these murders, Gelman stole two cars, stabbing the drivers. In the first stolen car, he killed a pedestrian. Gelman’s adventures ended in the subway, where he stabbed a passenger and tried to break into the driver’s cab, introducing himself as a policeman. Gelman did not know that there were two policemen in the cabin who had participated in his search and had previously received reports that the criminal had been spotted in the subway. They detained Gelman.

Meanwhile, it turns out that Gelman had previously 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; V last time- On January 26 of this year, when the drug “crack” was seized from him. The police believe that Gelman was himself a drug addict and may have been involved in drug distribution in Brooklyn. Elena Bulchenko’s friends also talk about this and warned the girl to stay away from Gelman.

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

"An ordinary teenager with quirks"

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 parked next to each other in the garage. The journalist was not closely acquainted with Maxim - “due to the age difference”, 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 own oddities, which are typical of all young people,” Sirotin told a correspondent for the Russian service of the Voice of America. “Maybe he was a little aggressive in some ways - but, again, like all teenagers, especially boys.”

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

“He brought his friends to the gym that belonged to our complex and set up a hairdressing salon there,” recalled Gelman’s neighbor. “He started cutting their hair, 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 sign in the hall prohibiting cutting hair. “If there was such an announcement, I would not have done it,” he said then. After this, the family was fined, if I’m not mistaken, $500.”

“Another time Maxim brought to our outdoor pool There were too many friends who behaved noisily,” Sirotin continued. - This happens quite rarely with us. But when they reprimanded him, he immediately left and took his friends away.”

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

“That’s why our whole house is shocked by what happened,” Sirotin noted. “Everyone who knows this family could not imagine that this could happen. Now they say that the young man just went crazy.”

Sirotin believes that Maxim was like most children from immigrant families in Brooklyn - "he was bilingual and bicultural, so to speak - he had friends both in the Russian environment and in the American one." Many teenagers in families from the former Soviet Union make friends among immigrants like themselves, 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. Thus, the owner of the Brooklyn nightclub Blue Velvet Lounge, Yana Levina, told the New York Times that she once even had to kick Gelman out of the establishment.

According to Sirotin, he knew neither about Maxim Gelman’s recent arrests nor about his addiction to drugs, “because the family is quite secretive.”

“When we went with his parents to the ocean, to the beaches,” said the neighbor, “they never talked about family. We discussed the cost of housing, talked about rising food prices, politics, what was happening in Russia, Ukraine or America. To be honest, I didn’t even know at first that Alexander Kuznetsov was not Maxim’s natural 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, and his wife and son remained in New York. In 2005, Maxim and Svetlana Gelman also received US citizenship.

Alexander Sirotin says that Maxim’s mother and stepfather were “nice people.”

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

Judging by the conversation, it was a man with higher education and, as I assume, in “that life” he occupied some good place. And in America he was the driver of an “ambulette” - a minibus that transports sick and elderly people. The whole time I knew him, he worked for this “Russian” company - I suspect his English was bad. But Maxim’s mother, Svetlana, speaks English well, 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

Inexplicable...

“When someone drew 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 removed himself from Maxim’s upbringing, or his wife made him understand 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 last two days, returned home on Monday. On the morning of the same day, the police lifted the cordon around the house.

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

Maxim Gelman appeared in court on Sunday evening. According to press reports, in the courtroom the defendant behaved “boldly and defiantly,” and when the police escorted him to the car, Gelman swore obscenely at the assembled crowd of hostile citizens. He also shouted that everything that happened to him was a “set-up.” 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 these are just my conclusions.”

The police continue the investigation and have not yet named the motives for Gelman’s behavior. NYPD Chief Raymond Kelly called his crimes "monstrous" and "beyond explanation."

Sometimes in New York, monstrous bloody showdowns take place not only in Harlem, among African Americans and Latinos, but also in respectable areas of the “city big apple" Sometimes our former fellow citizens are involved in such atrocities.

Maxim Gelman, 23 years old, moved to Brooklyn in 1994 with his mother Svetlana to live with his father, who received refugee status even earlier. The guy studied at Lincoln School and was fond of skateboarding and graffiti. Reviews from neighbors were entirely positive.

“They live in the same condominium as my husband and I, but in a different entrance. Literally behind the wall. Maxim's patio is next to our bedroom, and their car was always parked in the garage next to mine. Maxim's mother Sveta is the most intelligent woman I have ever known. And his stepfather, Shurik, was an amazing person,” Raisa Chernina, known in the Russian community of New York as a public figure, said in an interview.

She explained what happened on the fateful Friday, February 11, in only one word: “Drugs.” Although in fact the drugs were just doping in this situation. The circumstances that forced Maxim to carry out the massacre in the middle of Brooklyn are still unclear. Presumably, the reason why Gelman “went off the rails” could be his unrequited love for a certain Elena Bulchenko, with whom he had young man The relationship didn't work out.

Gelman began killing at 5 o'clock in the morning. During a quarrel (the reason for which was his stepfather’s refusal to give Maxim his car), he pulled out a knife and inflicted several fatal wounds on his stepfather. He grabbed the keys and stole his parents' Lexus.

The murder takes place in front of Maxim's mother. The woman, terrified, doesn’t know what to do, calls 911. Meanwhile, Maxim rushes along the roads of New York and hits a 40-year-old woman, who is taken to the hospital with numerous injuries. All this time he is looking for his ex-girlfriend Elena.

Finally he gets to Elena's house, in a state of drug intoxication, he breaks into the house and begins to stab everything that moves with a knife. He inflicts several stab wounds on Elena's mother, who is trying to shield her daughter from the murderer with her body.

Stepping over the woman's body, he attacked the girl. He stabbed the unfortunate Elena Bulchenko 40 times. The girl tried to escape, but the guy caught up with her on the street and finished her off right on the sidewalk. Having dealt with the offender, Gelman shouts: “My girlfriend ruined my life!”

He attacks 60-year-old city resident Art DiCrisento and stabs him several times. All in order to take possession of his old Pontiac. Rushing at breakneck speed through the city streets, he hits and kills another pedestrian, 60-year-old Steve Tannebaum. All over the city, cops are hunting for the "crazed Russian."

Meanwhile, Saturday night arrives. The guy, realizing that he has nothing to lose, attacks the car service driver. But he bravely fights back and Gelman runs away, stabs the owner of a Nissan parked near the church, gets into the car and drives away.

Having abandoned the car near the metro, he goes down into the subway, trying to get lost in the crowd. However, vigilant police were able to identify him. Fleeing from the law enforcement officers, Maxim casually stabs several times the passenger who appeared in his path at the wrong time.

However, the passenger was not so simple. The man has been involved in martial arts all his life. Although he was stabbed in the head, he was able to neutralize the scumbag and detain him until the New York Department police arrived.

Everyone, from the police chief to the guy's neighbors, is shocked by what happened that fateful weekend. Maxim was immediately dubbed the “Brooklyn Butcher.” The guy behaved impudently during interrogations and said that people had to die because: “He said so”!

The killer does not repent of anything and plans to go to psychiatric clinic, in order to confirm his insanity, serve a sentence of several years compulsory treatment and go free. Otherwise, he faces 175 years in prison.

Maxim Gelman is a drug addict with extensive experience. Some publications call him an “artist”: Gelman was engaged in graffiti - he drew on the walls, signing his drawings as “Max” or “Wes”. According to Maxim’s “friends,” he smoked PCP (Phencyclidine) and used many other drugs.

Russian-speaking American Maxim Gelman, accused of murdering four people and wounding and mutilating four more, pleaded guilty, although before that he had categorically admitted guilt in the murder of his stepfather, girlfriend and her mother, as well as a bystander.

Let us remind readers that in February of this year, 23-year-old Maxim Gelman, a native of Ukraine, was arrested on charges of stabbing his ex-girlfriend, 20-year-old Elena Bulchenko and her mother Anna, 56 years old. Before that, he stabbed his stepfather Alexander Kuznetsov, 54 years old.
Maxim lived with his mother and stepfather in one of the quietest areas of Brooklyn - Sheepshead Bay. The young man is said to have been using powerful drugs. Maxim killed his stepfather, the driver of the Black Sea company, on February 11 at 5 a.m., inflicting more than 30 stab wounds on him because Alexander did not allow his stepson to drive while under the influence of drugs.
After this, Maxim rushed to Elena Bulchenko, whom he apparently loved, but who did not reciprocate his feelings. Elena and her mother Anna also became victims of Maxim, and after leaving their apartment, he stabbed the first car owner he met and stole his car. Then he knocked down an elderly man to death...
In total, Gelman has four dead bodies, several wounded in Brooklyn and one in Manhattan. The Manhattan attack will be tried separately in that borough's court. When arrested, Maxim claimed that he was provoked. During the search, police found a bloody knife on him.
Elena Bulchenko worked at the Bright Smile Dental office on West 5th Street in Brighton Beach. She dreamed of becoming a nurse. On the day of the funeral, near the house where Anna and Elena lived, people brought flowers, gifts, and lit candles. Lena was just beginning to live...
Since his arrest, Maxim Gelman has been in pre-trial detention under medical supervision, since Gelman’s lawyer argued that the accused’s psyche is unstable. However, the testimony of doctors and eyewitnesses did not allow us to assert that the murders were committed by a mentally ill person.
Finally, 24-year-old Maxim decided to plead guilty. When asked by the judge if he understood what the admission of guilt meant for him, Maxim replied: “Yes.” Dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit, with his hands cuffed behind his back, Gelman answered “Yes” to the judge on each of the 13 charges.
Gelman's lawyer Edward Friedman asked for an additional psychiatric examination. The Brooklyn District Attorney's Office is seeking a life sentence. The judge made it clear that he was inclined to agree with the prosecutor. The verdict will be announced later.

End working week It turned out to be a turbulent month for New Yorkers. For more than a day, the police could not catch 23-year-old native of Ukraine Maxim Gelman, who carried out a massacre on the streets of the city. Four people became victims of the immigrant, armed with half a dozen knives, including his stepfather, as well as his long-time lover, who rejected Maxim’s obsessive advances.

Maxim Gelman took up the knife early in the morning on Friday, February 11. The first victim of the 23-year-old native of Ukraine was his stepfather Alexander Kuznetsov. The young man asked his mother's partner for the keys to his Lexus. Having been refused, Gelman flew into a rage, grabbed a kitchen knife and inflicted at least 11 wounds on Kuznetsov. The man later died. Maxim Gelman left his mother alive.

Having dealt with his stepfather and taking possession of his car, Gelman went to the house of his longtime lover Elena Bulchenko. The girl was not there, and her mother Anna opened the door for the Ukrainian. An enraged Gelman stabbed the woman and began to wait for Elena to appear. Six hours later, the 20-year-old girl returned home, where Gelman, armed with a knife, was waiting for her. A Ukrainian immigrant attacked Elena, but the girl tried to escape. Gelman caught up with her and finished her off. Later, more than a dozen stab wounds were recorded on the body of the murdered woman.

Then the killer got into his stepfather's stolen Lexus and drove through Brooklyn in an unknown direction. Eyewitnesses would later say that Gelman’s car was moving at great speed, knocking down everything in its path. As a result, the young man soon crashed into a Pontiac driven by 60-year-old Arthur Dicrescento. The elderly driver was luckier than Gelman’s previous victims - he lost his car, but survived, although he was hospitalized in in serious condition.

Maxim Gelman moved to Brooklyn with his mother Svetlana in 1994. Two years earlier, his father emigrated to the United States as a refugee. Having received American citizenship, Maxim’s father returned to his homeland, leaving his son and wife in New York. In 2005, Maxim and Svetlana Gelman also acquired US citizenship. According to media reports, the young man studied at the Abraham Lincoln School in Brooklyn, but it is unknown whether he graduated from it. The Ukrainian’s peers said that he was interested in skateboarding and graffiti.

A mile from the scene of the previous accident, Maxim Gelman, already driving a green Pontiac, hit and killed 60-year-old pedestrian Stephen Tannenbaum. Soon after, Gelman ditched the Pontiac and hailed a cab. Once inside, he attacked the taxi driver, Fitz Fullerton, but he fought back. Due to a fight inside the car, the car got into an accident.

After leaving the scene of this accident, Gelman stole another car, attacking its owner, Sheldon Pottinger. The man escaped with minor cuts to his hands. What Gelman did next is unknown. Pottinger's abandoned Nissan was soon discovered in Queens, neighboring Brooklyn.

By Saturday morning, the young man had made himself known again, this time on the New York subway, where he attacked a woman with a knife who was reading an article about him in the morning newspaper. According to the victim, Gelman pulled out periodical from her hands with the words: “Do you believe everything that they write about me?”

After this, the young man moved to another train, where he again attacked a passenger, wounding him in the neck. Then Gelman tried to break into the driver's cab, claiming to be a police officer. However, fortunately, there were real policemen in the cabin, who were assigned to guard the train amid reports of a criminal on the loose. They detained the killer when the train was near the Times Square station.

After the arrest, two knives were confiscated from Gelman - a kitchen knife and a pocket knife. Later, in his murdered stepfather's Lexus, police found four more kitchen knives that the criminal used in the first attacks.

The circumstances that pushed Maxim Gelman to commit a series of murders have yet to be established. According to one version voiced in the media, Gelman was obsessed with Elena Bulchenko, who rejected him. They met in the summer of 2010 and stayed for some time good friends. However, then Gelman became too intrusive, and Elena decided to stop all communication with him. She stopped answering his calls and refused to open the door when he asked to visit her. On one of these days, at the end of summer, Gelman threatened to kill Elena if she continued to avoid him.

Meanwhile, it is known that Gelman had previously repeatedly come to the attention of the police. Among Brooklyn youth he was known as a graffiti artist leading a riotous lifestyle. He was repeatedly taken to the police for damaging city property. In total, since 2003, Gelman was arrested ten times, and the last time, on January 26, 2011, a dose of crack was confiscated from him. Police believe that Gelman was a drug addict and could make money by distributing drugs on the streets of Brooklyn.

The Ukrainian has already appeared in court. He was charged with the murder of four people and the attempted murder of another, as well as theft of property and illegal possession of weapons. Until the next court hearing, Gelman was left in custody without the right to bail. According to eyewitnesses, in court the accused behaved impudently and defiantly, and on the way out he entered into controversy with the townspeople who had gathered to protest against him. The defendant's lawyer said that Gelman appears sane and understands the punishment facing him.

By the way, Gelman told investigators that he had cancer and everything that happened to him on Friday and Saturday was a “set-up.” The 23-year-old killer of four people called himself a “sacrificial lamb.”