Mother Kills Son After Imprisoning Father on Rape Charges

“What punishment do I consider fair? If Alexandra is sane, then the harshest — 20 years. But if she’s mentally ill… She has moments of clarity, when she’s a normal mother, a woman. Let her come back and understand what she’s done, feel all this pain. So many people wept for Pashka (name changed per Russian law — Ed.), but not his mother. And his mother doesn’t care, she sent him to heaven,” says 40-year-old Lyubov Kotova from Diveyevo with bitterness and grief.

For the past week, this fragile, short woman has been trying to cope with the tragedy that has befallen her. Her godson was killed in Moscow by his own mother, 46-year-old Alexandra Shalina. And her best friend, the victim’s 55-year-old father Alexander, has been in a pre-trial detention center (SIZO) since spring 2024 on charges of raping his stepdaughter and does not even know that his beloved son is no more.

Lyubov last saw her godson alive over a year ago, when Pasha celebrated his fourth birthday in his native Diveyevo. No one then imagined that Alexandra would soon flee to Moscow with the children, and while relatives and friends would be beating a path to the doors of child welfare, court, and the Investigative Committee, she would strangle and drown her five-year-old son in the bathtub.

Now the boy’s family can only tend his fresh grave, look through old photographs, and bring toys to the cemetery that little Pasha’s hand will never touch. MSK1.RU tells how the murder of a five-year-old child became the price of adult indifference.

Roamed the country and lived in a hermitage

Locals remember 46-year-old Alexandra Shalina (née Popova, first marriage Belova) differently: some call her a holy fool, not of this world; others say she should have been treated long ago. Alexandra was born in Yakutia in 1986. In the mid-2000s, she lived in Chuvashia and Tula, and in the 2010s she ended up in Diveyevo in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast.

For a time, Alexandra worked as a cashier at the local liquor store Bristol. According to family acquaintance Irina, even then people noticed oddities about the newcomer: she often had aggressive outbursts.

“I go into the store, and there’s our local drunk asking Alexandra to ring up a bottle quickly. He’s clearly hungover – standing there begging. She didn’t like his tone, gave him the goods and came out from behind the counter. He’s sitting on the porch, drinking from the bottle, and Alexandra is hitting him in the face and kicking him. Passersby are shouting to him, ‘Hit her back!’ But he, despite his shabby appearance, says, ‘I have a principle – I don’t raise my hand to women,’” Irina recounts.

At first, Alexandra lived in a hermitage attached to one of Diveyevo’s churches, then with her daughters — then 9-year-old Maria and 2-year-old Anna (name changed per Russian law) — she moved from one rental apartment to another.

“She met Alexander online and at first didn’t tell him she had two children. She only confessed when he suggested she move in with him. Sasha loved her very much and simply accepted it, saying, ‘It’s okay, I have two sons from my first marriage, you have daughters.’ They soon got married,” recalls the deceased boy’s godmother, Lyubov Kotova.

According to her, the children of 55-year-old Alexander received their father’s new wife with restraint. By then, 20-year-old Vadim had already moved to Nizhny Novgorod, and the younger, Stanislav, was 16 and still lived in his father’s house.

“I love my son”

Alexander quickly found a way to his wife’s daughters. The older, Maria, was already a schoolgirl, and her stepfather often drove her to school. When she grew up, she moved to another city with her boyfriend and began her own life. According to acquaintances, Maria only communicated with relatives by phone and almost never appeared in Diveyevo. The younger girl, Alexander raised as his own from the age of two.

“Anya called him ‘dad,’ they even had their own jokes. He always cared about her health: when Anya started having vision problems, she went not to her mother but to Sasha. He took her to the eye doctor to get glasses. He got her ready for school every time too,” Kotova tells MSK1.RU.

In the summer of 2020, the couple had a son. The boy’s godparents were his older brother Stanislav and family friend Lyubov Kotova. Alexander’s page has many photos with his sons, but he paid most attention to little Pasha. He adored him and proudly declared, “I love my son.”

“In his free time, Alexander was always with his son: he took him to the garage, drove him around in the car. He tried to buy everything possible for the little one,” Kotova recalls.

“Take the children, or I’ll bury them now”

Alexandra’s behavior disrupted the family idyll. She had run away from home even before giving birth, and after her son’s arrival, the situation became frightening. A couple of times, the man had to rush off at night to another city to remove his wife and children from a train.

“Alexander took care of Anya and Pasha: feeding them, dressing them. Alexandra kept running away — sometimes to a monastery in another city, sometimes elsewhere,” recalls family acquaintance Irina.

When her son was just over a year old, Alexandra again left Diveyevo — this time for Abkhazia, supposedly on a religious tour. According to family friends, that’s when the first dark warning signs appeared: Shalina burned the children’s documents and demanded money from her husband.

“She called him and blackmailed him: ‘Take the children, or I’ll bury them in the rocks right now.’ When Sasha and Stas brought them back, Alexandra was as thin as a reed. She used to be plump, but now she was a skeleton. Later Sasha let slip that his wife had joined a sect — she spent several days in some pit, fasting on water. That’s how they tested her faith, he said,” family acquaintance Irina told MSK1.RU.

“Can you take Pashka? I’m so tired, I can’t”

Godmother Lyubov Kotova recalls that Alexandra always gave the impression of someone not particularly interested in the outside world.

“We didn’t have a warm relationship; I was more friends with Sasha. But when I visited, Alexandra didn’t refuse me, she let me play with Pashka. Sometimes I even thought she was indifferent to the children — both the little one and Anya. If someone takes the child, it’s no big deal. Pasha was little and lively, I sat with him for half a day, it wasn’t hard for me,” she recalls.

The Shalins’ neighbor Tatyana also looked after little Pasha. Her house adjoined the family’s plot. Working as a bell-ringer at a church in Diveyevo, she often brought children’s clothes donated by parishioners for the boy.

“Pashinka was advanced for his age, very calm. His face had a kind of spiritual look,” Tatyana recalls. “Even though there was always food in the house, he ate very little — just a handful, only drank milk. It was as if he was already a saint in life. His family all loved him dearly: his father, Stas, and Anechka. As for Alexandra, sometimes something would come over her: she’d yell at the children, then calm down. The daughter was caught in the crossfire. She obeyed her mother unquestioningly — whatever she said, Anya did.”

Alexander and Alexandra divorced in 2021. Despite the breakup, the man allowed his ex-wife and children to continue living in his house.

In Diveyevo, Alexander ran a taxi service. Locals were eager to work for Shalin as mechanics, drivers, dispatchers. Village residents recall those times with nostalgia: you could call Shalin’s company almost any time and go where you wanted. For a large but isolated village like Diveyevo, this was a lifesaver: you couldn’t cover such distances on foot, and not everyone had a car.

Alexandra also worked for her husband. As Lyubov Kotova recalls, after the divorce, Shalina managed to turn her ex-husband against her. The trigger was a conflict between the women over the funeral of one of the taxi drivers.

“Sasha sided with the mother of his son and even stopped talking to me for a while. He couldn’t stand that I had argued with Alexandra. So in the months before his arrest, we didn’t speak,” Lyubov says bitterly.

Filed 15 complaints to jail her ex and stepson

In spring 2024, Alexandra filed a police report: allegedly, her ex-husband had been raping her teenage daughter for five years. That same evening, police detained the man returning from work. Soon, the Main Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee for Nizhny Novgorod Oblast charged Alexander, and he ended up in SIZO.

The woman also targeted the man’s son Stanislav. The young man had moved to his own apartment in Diveyevo but occasionally visited his father’s house. Knowing this, in 2024 Alexandra accused her stepson of assault: she claimed he attacked her with a hammer in the garage. The young man was saved by surveillance footage showing the woman had beaten herself. In the end, Shalina got off with just a fine for giving false testimony.

“That day I was digging in my garden. I see Alexandra run into the yard and shout to Stas: ‘I put your dad in jail, you think I can’t handle you?’” recalls family acquaintance Irina.

According to family members, Alexandra was trying to get hold of her ex-husband’s house. Before filing the complaint against him, she had used maternity capital funds to buy a third of the property from him. The other two shares belonged to Alexander and Stanislav, whom she later tried to get rid of.

“In total, she filed 15 police complaints against me and my father. The grounds were completely different,” Stanislav told MSK1.RU.

The family home has now been put up for sale, but no buyers have been found yet. The building looks abandoned: the yard is covered in snow with no paths trodden, and an advertisement for Shalin Sr.’s taxi service still hangs on the facade.

“Everything was framed as if we drove her to it”

The older brothers and Lyubov understood that Alexandra posed a danger to the children. According to them, they repeatedly filed appeals with local child welfare authorities, but for a long time no one paid attention. The family last saw Pashinka in summer 2024.

“It was Pashka’s birthday, I asked to visit, I said, ‘Can I come, I’ll bring a gift.’ He had just turned four,” the godmother told MSK1.RU. “I played with him a little. Before that, child welfare had come. We relatives had begged for it. They gave Alexandra two weeks to tidy up the house. But she quickly packed up undercover and left for Moscow. Why weren’t her documents transferred to the capital? Why did everyone not care?”

After fleeing, Alexandra cut all ties with the village where she had lived for more than a decade. She blocked the social media and phones of her son’s older brothers and anyone who might follow her to the capital. Stanislav kept appealing to the local welfare office and even filed a police report to find his brother and his mother, but according to the godmother, Diveyevo law enforcement just shrugged.

In Moscow, Shalina and the children settled with her friend Zinaida and her live-in partner. The woman sent her son to kindergarten and her daughter to school. At first, Alexandra got a job at a trampoline center in the capital, working with children, and later worked as a kitchen worker in a shopping mall. Judging by her posts and subscriptions on social media, she became seriously interested in Judaism and Jewish communities after the move.

“Free,” was briefly written in the woman’s status.

In spring 2025, hearings began in Diveyevo on Shalina’s ex-husband’s case, and she and her daughter came to the village several times to testify. At one hearing, they stated they wanted not only a prison term for Shalin but also compensation of 40 million rubles (approximately $400,000 at current exchange rates). The girl said she planned to use the money to buy housing in Moscow in the future.

“No one heard him”

The attack on little Pasha occurred on January 24. According to Alexandra’s lawyer Igor Panin, that morning his client went to church, confessed, and repented. Returning home, she led the child into the bathroom and began to strangle him with the belt of her robe. She drowned the gasping child in water. Realizing her son showed no signs of life, the mother called the police and surrendered to officers who arrived at the scene. During interrogation, Alexandra said she had long contemplated the murder because she didn’t want to raise Pasha. She also considered killing her daughter Anya, claiming the girl interfered with her personal life in Moscow.

“The Investigative Committee said she gave testimony that she wanted to stab the older girl. But then voices in her head supposedly said the girl was sinful because she smoked cigarettes. Such a lifestyle made her depraved and not to be killed. But her son was a little angel,” the victim’s godmother Lyubov says with tears in her eyes.

A criminal case was opened against Alexandra Shalina for the murder of a minor (Part 2 of Article 105 of the Russian Criminal Code). The woman pleaded guilty. She faces up to 20 years in prison.

According to Kotova, at the time of the murder, besides Alexandra and her son, the older daughter and Zinaida’s live-in partner were also home. But none of them intervened or stopped the attack.

“They claim they heard nothing. We later started to think that maybe they all beat Pashka in that apartment. According to Zinaida and her partner, Alexandra tormented her son every day. But then why didn’t they take any measures? They said they called child welfare, but they supposedly found no reason to come. I don’t believe it,” Lyubov tells MSK1.RU.

“They made up Pashka’s face before the funeral, of course. Stas says that when they were shown the body, the child’s entire face was covered in abrasions and scratches,” she continues.

On January 26, a hearing was held at the Nagatinsky Court to decide on a preventive measure for Alexandra. When the woman was brought into the courtroom, she hid her face in the hood of her down jacket and turned away from journalists. Afterwards, Shalina shrank into the corner of the “aquarium.” The court sent her to SIZO for two months. After the hearing, lawyer Igor Panin said he had reasons to doubt his client’s “mental competence.”

“She considers herself a pious person. And on that basis, she ‘eased’ her son’s life so he wouldn’t sin and would pass into the next world. That’s how she explains the whole thing. She sent her child to heaven,” lawyer Panin shared with journalists.

Who is left with Alexandra’s daughter?

According to the lawyer, the fate of Alexandra’s daughter Anya is not yet decided — she is currently living temporarily with a neighbor. As the deceased boy’s godmother clarified, this neighbor is Zinaida, in whose apartment the murder took place.

“They won’t give the girl up. Especially since in the paternity column for Anya, Zinaida’s partner is listed: she now carries his surname and patronymic, whereas before it was all from Sasha. It’s unclear when Alexandra managed that. Probably, this partner will become the girl’s guardian. That suggests the whole thing was planned long ago,” Lyubov Kotova tells MSK1.RU.

MSK1.RU has learned that Zinaida has long been married to Pavel Belousov — it is to him that Alexandra’s teenage daughter Anya is registered. Previously, the couple lived in Tula and Diveyevo and were close friends of Shalina. Online, there are photos of Zinaida with Alexandra’s older daughter Maria. Under one of the photos, Pavel himself appeared: he complimented her cleavage and wrote that she was “sexy.”

“Zinaida said she raised Anya from infancy: the mother gave birth and ran off again. She recalled, ‘I had the little child in my arms, and Alexandra was gone, off somewhere.’ That must have been back in Tula. After Pashka’s murder, I called her: she was sobbing uncontrollably, couldn’t calm down. I’m not judging her — maybe she’s sincere, maybe she’s trying to justify herself,” Kotova says.

The editors of MSK1.RU tried to contact Zinaida and her husband, but neither responded to repeated calls from journalists.

Burial service in the same church where he was baptized

Little Pasha’s body was released to his family only on the fifth day after the murder, followed by a painful transport to his homeland. For over five hours, the boy’s older brother drove along a snowy road behind the truck carrying Pasha’s body.

“You know, it wasn’t even the investigators who told me about my brother’s death, but journalists. We contacted the police ourselves when we came to Moscow to pick up my brother’s body,” the grief-stricken man told MSK1.RU.

On January 29, Diveyevo said goodbye to five-year-old Pasha. The boy’s funeral service was held in the same church where he had been baptized five years earlier. He was buried in the cemetery on Arzamasskaya Street, just a ten-minute walk from the house where he spent his early years. Beside the boy lie strangers: he became the first from his family to be buried in Diveyevo. On the fresh grave, relatives and friends of the Shalins left bright, untouched toys for the little one.

After the wake, some relatives moved to the home of the deceased Pasha’s godmother, Lyubov Kotova. Since early morning, she has been in the epicenter of overwhelming grief: she had to finish preparations for the funeral, buy flowers and toys for the grave, support Stanislav and Vadim, who lost their father and brother, and not forget her own children and husband in all this turmoil.

“I wish I could sleep for a couple of days, just to stop thinking about it. This week I’ve had to call an ambulance several times. I’m afraid I’ll start shaking again. Stas is holding up in front of everyone, but with us…” Kotova says in a tear-choked voice. “He’s taking it hardest of all: he lived under the same roof with Pasha, and even after moving out, he came to visit his brother. Then Stas had a daughter of his own, and the little ones often played together.”

When the funeral guests disperse to rooms to be alone with their grief, Lyubov sits down on the sofa. Behind her are photos of a large, happy family. But as Lyubov admits, her thoughts are not on her own family but on Alexander, who has been in SIZO for more than a year. His relatives still haven’t told him that his beloved son is dead.

“He needs to be prepared psychologically. The lawyer promised to arrange with doctors and a psychologist. Sasha takes every court hearing hard — they have to call an ambulance because of his blood pressure. It was already fluctuating before, and in SIZO it’s only gotten worse,” Lyubov says.

Alexander’s case is being heard by the Diveyevo Interdistrict Court. At the entrance to the freshly renovated building proudly stands the inscription: “Palace of Justice.” The hearings are closed because they involve data about Alexander’s minor stepdaughter. The man can only see relatives and friends when he is being escorted under guard.

“We were called once to testify, and then we managed to see Sasha, but otherwise only from the window of the police van. When he’s brought in, there are literally a few seconds to wave. He’s been in isolation for over a year: they don’t even allow visits from his sons, only parcels. We keep in touch through letters — that’s all we have left,” Kotova sighs sorrowfully.

Lyubov is certain that all of this could have been avoided if the judges and prosecutor had initially listened to witnesses and Shalin’s defense. During the hearings, it was repeatedly pointed out that Alexandra was predisposed to mental illness. The woman’s mother suffered from schizophrenia.

“The lawyer made inquiries and received official confirmation of the diagnosis of Alexandra’s mother. Schizophrenia is inherited through the female line. That was the first warning sign that her words should be verified. Even if the illness didn’t pass to Alexandra, it could have been passed to the girl. But the lawyer’s requests for a psychiatric evaluation were simply rejected,” Lyubov laments.

“How is he supposed to go on living?”

According to the woman, the prosecution now relies solely on the testimony of the stepdaughter and her mother.

“The child was examined: by the time Alexander’s trial began, she was a virgin. And two years later, the document signed by hand by a gynecologist was deemed a technical error. How is that even possible? I see it this way: they can’t find evidence of his guilt and are just holding an innocent man in SIZO,” Kotova fumes.

Relatives and loved ones hope that after Pasha’s murder, the case will be reviewed and the court will side with Shalin. Or at least replace the preventive measure with a softer one. Especially since the judge in the case has been replaced: the previous one was promoted. But no one can even imagine how Alexander will cope with the grief after losing his beloved son.

The editorial board has sent requests to the Diveyevo Interdistrict Court, local child welfare authorities, and the Main Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee for Nizhny Novgorod Oblast. No responses had been received by the time of publication.

Earlier we reported on how Diveyevo said goodbye to Pasha, killed in Moscow. We are collecting all news about this high-profile case in a separate story.