Snip: When the 41-year-old Lake Oswego resident recovered his stolen pickup recently, he found the interior littered with the culprit’s personal paraphernalia: burglary tools, stolen mail, newspaper classifieds, stolen compact disc players, a cell phone and dozens of cigarette butts. The kicker was a torn piece of letterhead from Multnomah County that suggested the thief was out on probation for a drug crime.
Carter, an environmental engineer, took the evidence to the Portland Police Bureau’s East Precinct, in whose jurisdiction his car was found, in hopes that officers would help find and prosecute the thief. “I told the police they could probably piece it together,” he says. “There’s probably 2 billion fingerprints all over this.” He was astounded to have a police sergeant tell him that no matter how much evidence he had, his case probably would never see the light of day.
Who killed Babichenko and what's his connection to Portland's Russian auto-theft ring?
Snip: Vancouver, Wash.'s eighth homicide of 1997 was also its strangest. On Halloween morning, Oleg Babichenko left home in his Toyota station wagon. Within minutes, his car exploded, and Babichenko, an immigrant from the former Soviet Union, was dead, the first death by explosion in Vancouver history.
"This is probably one of the most difficult cases I've ever been involved with," says Vancouver Police Det. Scott Creager, who is in charge of the investigation. He suspects Babichenko once may have been in the stolen-car business.
If Creager's suspicions are right, Portlanders have something to worry about. For the past few years, Portland police believe, Russian-speaking immigrants have established organized rings responsible for some of the city's high-end auto theft. The problem has become so bad that last week the Portland Police Bureau announced it was forming a six-person unit strictly to battle these Eastern European thieves. "In other cities--places like Brooklyn, Toronto, San Diego and even Bellevue, Wash.--what started out as property crime by Russian-speaking criminals eventually led to violence.
Davey, M.D. has found your Russian Maffia at work in Portland, Oregon.
see post #3679