Russia's Sausage King killed with crossbow
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Summary

November 3, 2020: A Russian Oligarch was slain, in his home sauna, murdered with a crossbow. He and his wife were relaxing in their sauna when several masked-men broke in, tied them up, robbed the place, and eventually shot the oligarch with a crossbow. His wife managed to slip out of her restraints and call the police. The robbers stole their car to escape, and left it in a town west of Moscow.

Other facts that might not be directly related to this event, but are mentioned in the article:

When Police later arrested a suspect, they found an old man handcuffed to a bed in the suspect's home.

The victim owned a chain of slaughterhouse and meat-packing/processing facilities, and was known as the "Sausage King".

The slain victim had previously reported to authorities that he was being extorted by a criminal gang attempting to force him to sign over the deed to his fancy apartment in Moscow.

Source

Bibliography

Game and Story Use

  • Such a strange set of circumstances, it seems like it could be a model for a peculiar murder mystery, investigative scenario, or tale about organized crime.
  • Given the targeting of a Russian Oligarch, it's easy to work espionage motives and elemetns into the story, or envision it as an assassination or politically-motivated killing instead of a burglary gone wrong.
    • Or likewise, business motives.
    • Given the extortion angle, this might be the gang keeping their promises, with the burglary being either opportunistic or a cover.
  • For an wainscot fantasy/urban fantasy setting, it would be easy to add occult significance or other mysterious logic to the choice of murder weapon.
    • Perhaps the crossbow was chosen because of the involvement of vampires or similar creatures that might be especially vulnerable to being pierced by wood projectiles.
    • It could be that the real goal of the robbery was to steal a magic weapon, which they then ended up using to kill the previous owner. This may have been part of the goal in the first place, or an attack of opportunity that developed organically as the original plan of the crime spiraled out of control.
      • Killing the previous owner might be a required part of bonding the weapon to a new user.
    • The "King" was slain with a crossbow. This might be a ritual enactment towards a specific magical effect, such as a magic spell that requires King's blood to be at full strength.
    • The use of a medieval weapon may send a particular message about the murderers, the victim, or the true motive behind the crime.
      • The crossbow could be the calling card or a particular villain or assassin.
      • Or it may be a warning sign that the guilty party intends to "get medieval" on all their other foes.
  • How does the elderly man handcuffed at the suspect's home figure in to this?
    • It may be an otherwise unrelated crime that just indicates the suspect's cruelty and mental instability. You could use a similar prisoner NPC as a detail to illustrate just how vile your big bad evil guy is.
    • The handcuffed man may have been forcibly coerced into revealing to the killer some piece of information about the victim, the crime scene, the security system at the location, or the particular weapon chosen.
    • He may know where the other culprits and conspirators are hiding, or have similar vital clues about the criminals or crime.
    • There could have been a disagreement among multiple robbers, that ended with one of them being left for the cops.
    • Old man is one of the gang and quickly cuffed himself to a chair as the police came in so that he could pretend to be a victim and so escape arrest.
  • Crossbow is quiet … but then so is a knife if you already have the victim tied up.
  • Sadly, being Russian, there is no way that the dead man could have been called Albert Ross (apologies to the ghost of Coleridge).
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