The alleged murder was also shocking in the defendants’ alleged use of the Internet to research techniques for melting the body and use of Skype to coordinate the crime.
The defendants were charged with murder, destroying evidence and obstruction of justice – by melting the body.
Ze’ev and Iris were married from 1995 to 2009 and had two children. In 2007, Ze’ev left his wife and moved in with a woman named Ana Tortikovsky with whom he had a daughter in 2008. The indictment does not specify anything else regarding Ana, but it does state that in 2011, Ze’ev married Olga.
Ze’ev was obligated by court order to pay child support to Iris for the benefit of their children, and recently his overdue debt to her had reached nearly NIS 70,000. Following Ze’ev’s failure to pay, Iris filed a collection action and eventually placed a lien on Ze’ev’s salary to garnish his wages in February.
Starting on March 11, the indictment stated that Olga started doing suspicious Internet searches. First she engaged with “the chemical forum, how to melt hair.” On March 12, she did dozens of online searches about “different ways for how to melt a person’s body,” “how to hide a body,” “which chemicals are the best to melt a body in home condition” and others, said the indictment.
Later, on March 12, Ze’ev bought a series of chemicals which would later be used to melt the body at a store in Jerusalem, the indictment alleged.
According to the indictment, on April 29, Ze’ev went to meet up with Iris at her office. He and Iris then traveled to Ze’ev and Olga’s residence.
The indictment was unclear on where Olga was during the murder itself, but she was close by enough to give Ze’ev additional “operational” strategy details about which neighbors
were nearby.
Upon entering the residence, Ze’ev stabbed Iris to death, said the indictment. Next, the indictment said that Ze’ev and Olga melted Iris’s body using a series of chemicals. The two drove and parked Iris’s car in the east Jerusalem neighborhood Beit Hanina to throw off any potential police investigation, according to the indictment.However, the next morning the police arrived at their residence to investigate that Iris was missing and arrested the two upon finding Iris’s melted remains.The state also requested to remand both defendants to police custody until the end of the proceedings. The state’s motion for remand will be heard on June 3.
