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A London-based film crew from Pioneer Productions visited Houston to interview lawyer Alexey Tarasov. They are producing a documentary for the Discovery Channel about the high-profile case of Natalia Leshchenko-Wilson, which is being handled by the Texas-based Russian-speaking lawyer.
Nick Hardy, the Director of Digital Video at Pioneer Productions, interviewed Alexey Tarasov for over three hours in his downtown Houston office. The film is scheduled for release in the U.S. this September.
Alexey Tarasov shared, “I was not surprised when the British television crew told me they wanted to come to Texas for this film, given the fact that the plot of this case is more gripping than any Hollywood thriller.”
On February 2, 2010, Slavka Naydenova, a U.S. citizen of Bulgarian origin, was found murdered in her Washington suburb home. The autopsy revealed 57 stab wounds. Her 8-year-old son, Paul Wilson, also succumbed to a fatal stab wound to the heart.
Naydenova was the sister of Bulgarian billionaire Ilya Pavlov, who was assassinated in 2003 in Sofia. Suspicion for the double murder fell on Natalia Leshchenko-Wilson, the Russian wife of Slavka’s ex-husband, Lester Wilson.
Leshchenko, who had worked as a nanny for Russian-speaking families in Washington, moved to the U.S. in 2007 to visit her student daughter and later married Lester Wilson, a naturalized American from Aruba. Lester’s son from his first marriage lived with his mother, Slavka.
No physical evidence linked Leshchenko-Wilson to the crime scene. A clump of hair found in the victim’s hand didn’t match Leshchenko-Wilson’s. Despite this, she was convicted of the crime and sentenced to two life sentences.
“Evidence shows that Natalia Leshchenko-Wilson is not guilty of the crime she confessed to under police pressure,” Tarasov stated. “It was found that the evidence leading to her confession was fabricated, and there were significant constitutional violations during the investigation. Under American legal practices, this is sufficient ground for the sentence to be overturned. Our law firm has filed the corresponding petition.”
Tarasov Believes Russian Woman Admitted to Double Murder Under Police Pressure
Lawyer Alexey Tarasov is confident that the Russian national Natalia Leshchenko-Wilson admitted to a double murder under the pressure of an intense police interrogation. The confession was the result of a grueling 22-hour interrogation session.
Leshchenko-Wilson was taken from her home at 2 a.m. on February 3, 2010, immediately following the murder. She was transported to police headquarters and placed in an interrogation room. Early in the interrogation, Leshchenko-Wilson was accused of committing the heinous murder of her American husband’s ex-wife and child.
The police then used deception, showing her a fabricated forensic report claiming that her hair was found in the deceased person’s hand. It was later established that the hair was not hers, and no such forensic conclusion had been made. Leshchenko-Wilson was told that the evidence against her was so irrefutable that if she did not confess, she would face the death penalty.
In the U.S., Slavka Naydenova, the sister of Ilya Pavlov, worked in real estate. After divorcing Lester Wilson, Slavka married Philip Nikolov, her brother’s former bodyguard. Despite Nikolov publicly threatening Slavka just days before the murders, the investigation did not pursue his potential involvement in the crime.
Following interviews in Houston, the London TV crews went to Virginia to continue filming the documentary.
Source: Vera Kizilova, “The Russian America” newspaper, April 15, 2014
