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Three bullets and two casings were found at the scene in 2002, so by the prosecution's logic Pichugin had spent three years dreaming of doing away with the Gorins in exactly the same contrived way. But what if they had found seven bullets and five cases? That would have meant a botched job, and a reduced fee.
It's unclear why Pichugin, having hatched his plan, should have cared how the Gorins were killed. And he seemed eager to help Korovnikov avoid being caught. He invented a suicide scene in which Gorin finished himself off with a second round, just to make sure. And he even threatened the hitman with a 30,000-dollar fine. But in 2002 the clueless killers got it wrong and for whatever reason dragged the bodies away, thereby losing a hefty chunk of their fee.
The defence asked Korovnikov: "You claim that Gorin was your friend, and that he trusted you with his most dangerous secrets. Did you tell him in 1999 that his friend Pichugin had tried to hire you to kill him?" "No," the serial murder and rapist answered. "I didn't want to upset him. He might have done something to himself in his shock."
Korovnikov, who had previously torn apart plenty of people in his escapades, was claiming that the contract on offer had upset him. He turned it down and spent the entire journey home wondering how a man could take out a contract on a friend. He had no qualms about taking a 100-rouble ring from a dead girl, but he did not want to upset Gorin...
And all this was heard by the jury and the court that subsequently convicted Aleksey.
The impression is that Korovnikov's evidence followed the same principle as Goebbels' propaganda - the bigger the lie, the easier to believe. The kill was offered to Korovnikov in 1999 but was carried out by unknown persons in 2002, yet Korovnikov, as soon as he saw investigator Demidov in jail four years later, immediately remembered everything. As if he had been waiting for that moment all his life. The main question is, why should he take the rap for another crime? Is he soft in the head? It's actually much simpler than that. He was already doing life, so it made no difference to him.
It did make a difference to Demidov and Ananyev as they arrived to see him. They had decided to help Korovnikov remember who wanted the Gorins killed, so they showed him a photo of Aleksey Pichugin. To make sure they showed him just one photograph, although the correct procedure is to show several to provide a choice. Korovnikov, of course, immediately and confidently recognised the man who had tried to take out the contract. The only trouble was that the prosecutors had no decent picture of Pichugin. So they showed him the man he had to accuse in a dark photo, and in profile.
This was a breach of identification procedure, so the investigators decided to make up for that back at Lefortovo. So that all the paperwork was in order. They were hoping Korovnikov had a good memory. Wrong. They led him into a room where Aleksey and two others were sitting. Korovnikov looked and looked and looked, but to no avail - he could not spot the right man. Finally he gave up: "Stand sideways on!". As soon as they did that he pointed his finger - that's him, Pichugin. He had clearly only ever seen Pichugin in profile. In a family photo.
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