A Russian professor who beheaded his beloved student – and then planned to commit suicide like Napoleon Bonaparte – has been sentenced to more than 12 years in prison, according to a report.
Oleg Sokolov, 64, a former history professor at St. Petersburg State University, was found in a river in November 2019 with a bag containing the severed arms of 24-year-old Anastasia Yeshchenko.
Her severed head was discovered in an IKEA bag in his luxury apartment, while her torso and legs were recovered in St. Petersburg’s Moika River, East2West News reported.
Sokolov – Russia’s most famous Napoleon re-enactor – was unmoved wearing a mask when a court in St. Petersburg sentenced him to 12½ years in a penal colony on Friday.
“ He shot her and then tried to strangle her, but she continued to show signs of life, so he shot her again, ” said Judge Yulia Maksimenko, adding that he shot her four times with a rifle before firing her with a knife. and saw into pieces.
One of the bullets, fired from a Soviet-era TOZ-17 stylized as a 19th-century cavalry gun, passed through the woman’s right eye, East2West reported.
After killing her and hiding her body parts under a bed, Sokolov partied with friends.
“His friends visited him, they all drank cognac,” the court heard.
Once they left, he decapitated the body in his bathroom and cut it to pieces.
Sokolov was caught in the icy river found trying to throw away the arms of his lover, which he had cut off by her shoulders.
The disgraced academic pleaded guilty to her murder, but told the court that it was not premeditated and that the doctoral student had driven him to “a state of complete madness” by making insulting remarks about his children from a other relationship.
As it turned out, he had suspected Yeshchenko of cheating on him – and turned violent when she told him she was planning on going to a friend’s birthday party.
She had told him her freedom was to be respected, but the judge said Sokolov was deeply jealous amid the 40-year age difference.
Sokolov – who had lectured at the Sorbonne and had been awarded the Order of Merit of the Legion of Honor by France – and Yeschenko had both taken part in Napoleonic reenactments in full historical regalia.
Earlier Sokolov said in court: “I want to express my deep and complete regret for what I have done. Not only do I believe I should be punished, I also want to be punished to atone for the crime I have committed. “