Mafia Terror Reflected in 2 Funerals

By Christian Lowe and Valeria Korchagina
STAFF WRITERS

MOSCOW - Two funerals - one for murdered U.S. businessman Paul Tatum and another for victims of the recent cemetery bombing of Afghan veterans - converged Thursday to throw the brutal face of Moscow's crime wave into sharp relief.

While traumatized friends gathered at a funeral parlor for Tatum's cremation, new questions arose about the circumstances of his murder and the details of his long-running battle with the Radisson Slavjanskaya Hotel complex, of which Tatum was a 40 percent shareholder.

In another part of town, a handful of mourners returned to the Kotlya-kovskoye Cemetery, where a bomb attack last Sunday killed 14 friends and associates of the Afghan War Veterans' Fund.

That bomb had struck during a memorial ceremony for the late chairman of the fund, Mikhail Likhodei. His sister, Nina Likhodei - who was killed in the bombing - was buried just meters from the spot where she died.

Security at the cemetery was tight, with police and press far outnumbering the few dozens of close friends and relatives around the grave. Sniffer dogs searched the area for explosives beforehand.

Little remained to remind the mourners of the devastation caused by Sunday's explosion. The 4-meter crater it left behind had been filled in and paved over with asphalt.

Tatum, who died no less violently Nov. 3 when he was machine-gunned down in the entrance to the Kievskaya Metro, was cremated in a service at the Botkinskaya Hospital funeral parlor.

Watched by sobbing mourners, and accompanied by an organist playing Bach's Prelude in C-major, Tatum's simple wooden coffin was winched down from its plinth and lowered into the cremation ovens below.

The urn containing the ashes of the 41-year-old businessman was handed over to his close friend, Natalya Bokadorova, who said she hoped to have the ashes buried at Novodevichy cemetery, the resting-place of Russia's political and cultural elite.

"Paul loved me and I loved him," Bokadorova said after the ceremony. "He made me give my word that if anything happened to him, I would organize his funeral and bury him in Russia. I will now carry that out."

Tatum's family has not come to Russia for his funeral out of fears for their safety. And even as the cremation was underway there was further controversy arising from his killing.

It emerged Thursday that an American reporter, who was reporting on Tatum's Nov. 3 shooting, recently asked the U.S. embassy for protection before being put on a plane out of the country.

Embassy spokesman Richard Hoagland said in a telephone interview that "USA Today reporter Jack Kelly believed that he was in danger and approached the American embassy for assistance [last week]."

"The American embassy legally assisted him to depart Russia on a regularly scheduled flight," Hoagland added, reading from an official statement.

The newspaper's Washington offices declined to comment on the incident, calling it "an internal matter." No further details were available Thursday.

Earlier this week, Tatum's friends gave a press conference at which they said high government officials had taken sides against Tatum before his death, while a Western security consultant said some facts at the crime scene do not support police versions.

Friends of Tatum complained of reports in the Russian press suggesting Tatum - who had been embroiled in a battle with the Moscow State Property Committee, one of his partners in the hotel complex, since 1992 - was involved in illegal activities.

Instead, Tatum's friends turned the tables, saying the property committee and other Moscow authorities had for two years been carrying out a campaign of harrassment and character assassination.

Sergei Mitrofanov, a journalist with Nezavisimaya Gazeta who interviewed Tatum shortly before his death, told reporters Tatum had been falsely arrested and had had his passport confiscated without cause as part of that campaign.

The security expert, meanwhile, who asked to remain anonymous, questioned how the assassin was able to shoot a Kalashnikov machine gun with such accuracy - hitting Tatum 11 times in the torso, yet not wounding either of his bodyguards - while aiming down the steps of the Kievskaya metro station.

"A professional bodyguard would have thrown himself in front, or on top of Tatum," he said. "[Tatum's] bodyguards may as well not have been there."

Vyacheslav Anfinogenov, the investigator with the prosecutor's office handling the Tatum case, said investigators had looked into the possibility that the bodyguards might be accomplices in the killing, but added, "I think that will hardly turn out to be the case."

Security fears also surrounded Thursday's services in honor of those seven of the 14 people who died in Sunday's bombing who were directly related to the Afghan War Veretans' Fund.

The day began at St. Pimen's Church, near Novoslobodskaya Metro, where the ceremony was interrupted by a false bomb-scare. Special police were called in, but what appeared to be a bomb turned out to be a purse full of coins.

Around midday, a civil memorial service for the seven was conducted just outside the Red Army Theater, where mostly relatives and friends gathered on the square.

Out of seven coffins only two were open in the Russian Orthodox tradition. Many of the victims' bodies were badly damaged by the force of the explosion.

Only Nina Likhodei was buried at the cemetery, with the others being transferred to zinc coffins before they are flown to their homes outside Moscow.

Police are currently working on several scenarios in order to establish the motive of the killings. Deputy Interior Minister Colonel General Vladimir Kolesnikov, who is in charge of the investigation, said, according to Interfax, that the case will be solved "no matter who stands behind it."