00:00:06
it took a russian immigrant just seven
00:00:08
years to rise from a janitor to one of
00:00:10
the most successful stock brokers in the
00:00:13
united states
00:00:14
then
00:00:15
he disappeared
00:00:17
a dog hair a piece of plastic and the
00:00:20
speck of orange paint were all that
00:00:22
remained in a crime motivated by
00:00:25
jealousy and greed
00:00:30
[Music]
00:00:36
[Music]
00:00:54
in the 1970s and 80s people living in
00:00:57
the former soviet union faced a life of
00:01:00
hardship and despair
00:01:02
some like 23 year old michael
00:01:04
prosimenchikov
00:01:06
wanted more
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he was living a life of deprivation of
00:01:10
long lines for food you know of crowded
00:01:12
buses michael actually grew up in an
00:01:15
apartment with seven other families
00:01:17
living in the same unit
00:01:19
with little to lose michael and his
00:01:21
family emigrated to the united states
00:01:24
at first michael took a job as a janitor
00:01:27
he worked hard perfected his english and
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waited for the right opportunity
00:01:32
he grasped at the american dream in all
00:01:35
of its incarnations he wanted to have
00:01:36
material wealth he wanted to have
00:01:38
recognition for being successful at a
00:01:41
career
00:01:42
this is a guy who was really driven who
00:01:43
had goals and he really set out
00:01:45
aggressively to accomplish them
00:01:48
eventually michael earned a license as a
00:01:50
stockbroker passed a test for securities
00:01:53
dealers and got an entry-level position
00:01:56
in a minneapolis firm
00:01:58
when he started out he asked his fellow
00:02:00
russian immigrants for business and they
00:02:03
responded generously
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within seven years
00:02:07
michael was earning well over one
00:02:09
million dollars annually
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and he liked to make sure
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everyone knew it
00:02:14
and tell you the truth a lot of people
00:02:16
didn't like him
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because he was making such approach
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like i am you know big shot whatever i
00:02:24
drive a mercedes big deal i drive
00:02:26
mercedes too but who cares
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on january 28 1991 michael told his wife
00:02:32
he'd be working late
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but he never came home
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i said michael didn't come home last
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night
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and my wife turned to me right away and
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she said i bet he i bet he's dead
00:02:43
police found michael's car in the
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parking lot of lake minnetonka just a
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few blocks from his office
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a police officer actually saw the
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mercedes park there around midnight that
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evening also which was unusual it's an
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isolated beach
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a very cold january evening and here's
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this mercedes sitting there at the beach
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michael's briefcase was on the front
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seat
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there was no blood in the car or any
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sign of violence
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[Music]
00:03:13
investigators found what appeared to be
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blood on the frozen surface of the lake
00:03:18
a few hundred yards away
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but tests on the stain were inconclusive
00:03:26
two days passed
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then
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a workman at a city compost pile saw a
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flock of crows hovering around some
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discarded christmas trees
00:03:37
and i looked in there and it was quite
00:03:39
obvious it was a bent section of a human
00:03:42
leg all the way
00:03:44
up to the hip you know just that while
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in this game it's a pretty big guy
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investigators also found
00:03:51
a human torso
00:03:53
the head and the hands were missing so
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it looked like someone was trying to get
00:03:57
rid of anything that could be identified
00:03:59
as far as identifying the body
00:04:02
but they did find
00:04:04
the end of a finger tip when police ran
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the fingerprint they discovered it
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matched the fingerprint of michael
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prozamanshikov's brokerage license
00:04:16
law enforcement theorized that michael
00:04:18
may have been targeted because he was a
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russian immigrant so they urged caution
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then the fbi called me and said please
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do not come to the funeral
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and i said well why well the word is
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that you're a friend of his whoever did
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this could shoot you at the funeral so
00:04:38
don't come to the funeral and i thought
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wow
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investigators took this unusual step
00:04:43
because
00:04:44
they had no idea why michael was
00:04:47
murdered
00:04:48
but they did know
00:04:50
he had plenty of enemies
00:04:56
in the search for michael
00:04:57
prosimanchikov's killer
00:04:59
investigators didn't have to look far
00:05:01
for suspects
00:05:03
although michael made a lot of money for
00:05:05
himself as a stockbroker
00:05:07
not all of his clients liked the way he
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did it
00:05:11
xena shirl says she gave michael twenty
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thousand dollars but told him to invest
00:05:15
only in stocks that she chose
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i came to him and i said this is the
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deal
00:05:21
you do not touch it this is whatever
00:05:24
you do what i tell you what to do
00:05:26
he said yes
00:05:28
almost immediately xena realized michael
00:05:31
was buying and selling stocks in her
00:05:33
account without her permission
00:05:36
i had a bill from the company that i own
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them
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almost like eight or ten thousand
00:05:42
dollars
00:05:43
for
00:05:44
uh commission buying and selling so i
00:05:46
went to his company and i said mike
00:05:50
look this is one
00:05:51
in the brokerage business that's called
00:05:54
churning the account
00:05:55
buying and selling stocks in a
00:05:57
customer's portfolio for the sole
00:05:59
purpose of generating commissions
00:06:02
other clients allege that michael
00:06:04
promised returns of 18 a year in order
00:06:07
to get their business a practice that's
00:06:10
illegal in many states michael he
00:06:13
crossed a lot of bridges he it i mean
00:06:17
a lot of illegal things
00:06:19
towards them
00:06:21
investigators also learned that michael
00:06:24
didn't always pick good stocks for
00:06:26
example he bought shares in texas air
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for many of his clients at 48
00:06:32
per share in a matter of weeks
00:06:34
it fell to 15.
00:06:37
i would say
00:06:38
most of the people we had talked to that
00:06:40
had lost money
00:06:41
were
00:06:43
really not that upset that michael
00:06:45
had disappeared or that he had been
00:06:47
murdered
00:06:49
[Music]
00:06:50
we even had several people that said
00:06:52
they wish they could have done it
00:06:56
on the night michael was reported
00:06:58
missing his wife said he called her
00:07:00
around 8 30 he said he was with a client
00:07:03
and was working late
00:07:06
she also said michael asked her for his
00:07:09
supervisor's home telephone number
00:07:12
in phone calls to his wife that night he
00:07:14
spoke russian which she considered
00:07:16
unusual michael did not like to speak
00:07:18
russian in front of american clients he
00:07:20
considered it rude you'd only speak
00:07:22
russian in front of some other russian
00:07:25
she just assumed that whoever he was
00:07:27
with was some of the russian
00:07:32
later michael called his boss at home
00:07:35
with an unusual request
00:07:38
he was asking for money two hundred
00:07:40
thousand dollars that he said he needed
00:07:42
to raise for a client that night
00:07:45
this of course put everyone on their
00:07:47
guard because to get a call from a
00:07:49
broker at night seeking two hundred
00:07:50
thousand dollars is highly unusual
00:07:53
michael said his client was leaving town
00:07:55
early the next day and needed the money
00:07:57
immediately
00:07:59
naturally michael's boss said no
00:08:02
he just said it's not that we're
00:08:04
unwilling to come up with the two
00:08:06
hundred thousand dollars but
00:08:08
we certainly aren't going to be able to
00:08:10
come with it tonight
00:08:12
and michael's boss said
00:08:14
that he made a strange reference to a
00:08:17
boat
00:08:18
what he said was didn't you tell me that
00:08:20
you that your father gave you 200 000
00:08:23
to buy a boat to help you buy a boat
00:08:26
well his supervisor hadn't told him
00:08:27
anything like that
00:08:29
and his supervisor later concluded and
00:08:31
later told the police that he suspected
00:08:33
that michael was trying to send an alarm
00:08:35
of some kind by
00:08:37
reminding him of a conversation that had
00:08:38
never happened
00:08:40
the medical examiner believes that
00:08:42
michael was killed later that night
00:08:45
it's difficult to be precise
00:08:47
but
00:08:48
because he wasn't completely frozen i
00:08:50
didn't think he'd been out there longer
00:08:53
police found michael's torso his legs
00:08:56
and a piece of his finger
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on the tarp with the torso
00:09:01
investigators found a single black hair
00:09:05
it was very fine
00:09:07
and had kind of a crimped appearance to
00:09:09
it it's not indicative of a human hair
00:09:12
microscopic examination revealed it was
00:09:15
a dog hair
00:09:17
the medulla or central core of animal
00:09:20
hairs can help identify the breed
00:09:23
in this case analysts determined the
00:09:26
hair was from a bernese mountain dog
00:09:29
which is tri-colored and usually very
00:09:31
large
00:09:32
the only other evidence that the scene
00:09:35
was on the gate that led to the garbage
00:09:38
dump
00:09:41
it looked as if a car had hit it to
00:09:44
force it open there was some brownish
00:09:46
paint transfers on the gate at the
00:09:48
compost site from the gate being pushed
00:09:51
open by a car
00:09:53
and there was a small plastic fragment
00:09:55
that looked like a piece of the car's
00:09:57
bumper
00:09:59
a witness told police
00:10:02
that he saw michael's black mercedes
00:10:04
benz in the lake parking lot next to a
00:10:07
small brown vehicle similar in color to
00:10:10
the piece of bumper found at the compost
00:10:13
site
00:10:15
he also stated that the car possibly
00:10:17
could have been a
00:10:19
mazda626 it looked consistent
00:10:22
with a mazda626
00:10:24
this narrowed the list of suspects
00:10:27
considerably they were looking for
00:10:29
someone driving a brown mazda who had a
00:10:32
bernese mountain dog and was one of
00:10:34
michael's clients
00:10:40
while investigating the murder of
00:10:42
stockbroker michael prasimanchikov
00:10:44
investigators learned he had many
00:10:47
disgruntled customers
00:10:50
he had also been soliciting investors to
00:10:52
build a resort in reno nevada to be
00:10:55
managed by a company called
00:10:57
omni financial quite a bit of money that
00:11:00
investors put into this scheme
00:11:03
and it ended up that
00:11:05
actually the address for omni financial
00:11:07
was
00:11:08
in the middle of the desert it was an
00:11:09
old deserted shabby
00:11:11
motel vacant
00:11:13
is really what the address was where
00:11:16
this resort was supposed to be the
00:11:18
investment was a scam
00:11:20
and this created even more unhappy
00:11:23
customers
00:11:24
authorities believe that money was
00:11:26
probably the motive for michael
00:11:27
prozamenshikov's murder
00:11:29
news of michael prossimenschikov's
00:11:31
murder generated a number of potential
00:11:34
leads
00:11:35
including one from employees of a local
00:11:38
car wash
00:11:40
they said
00:11:41
they had an odd encounter with the
00:11:43
customer the morning after michael's
00:11:46
body was found
00:11:48
the customer requested we get some
00:11:50
hunting blood out of his trunk
00:11:53
which
00:11:54
got us thinking a little bit a little
00:11:56
you know a little strange
00:11:58
they said it was a brown mazda
00:12:00
and they gave police the license number
00:12:03
pnn393
00:12:06
the car was registered to zachary
00:12:09
persits a 39-year-old russian emigre who
00:12:13
worked as a dam inspector for the state
00:12:15
of minnesota he was a friend of
00:12:17
michael's
00:12:18
when he first met michael he was more
00:12:20
established than michael was and then
00:12:22
michael got into the brokerage business
00:12:24
and michael's earnings eclipsed those of
00:12:26
zachary they met in this country they
00:12:27
didn't know each other in the old
00:12:29
country their wives were friends
00:12:31
persit was married had two children and
00:12:33
was well known and respected within the
00:12:36
russian immigrant community
00:12:38
very nice very
00:12:40
musical
00:12:42
very
00:12:43
intelligent
00:12:45
i remember zachary is a good
00:12:47
artist
00:12:48
this guy was the greatest guy in the
00:12:50
world he wouldn't hurt a flea if you
00:12:52
interviewed them they'd say he was a
00:12:53
great neighbor
00:12:54
kept to himself
00:12:56
never bothered anybody
00:12:58
but pressets and michael were more than
00:13:00
just friends
00:13:02
michael was purseit's financial advisor
00:13:04
their relationship was rocky at best
00:13:07
investigators discovered that pursets
00:13:09
gave michael 150 000 to invest but there
00:13:13
were more losses than profits at some
00:13:16
point percitz discovered his stock
00:13:18
portfolio was worth
00:13:20
less than thirty thousand dollars
00:13:23
for the most part they weren't
00:13:25
investments that were suitable for a guy
00:13:27
that invested every
00:13:29
nickel he had
00:13:32
with michael when questioned by police
00:13:36
persits denied any involvement in
00:13:38
michael's murder and he willingly took a
00:13:40
lie detector test arranged by his lawyer
00:13:43
my investigator and co-counsel had
00:13:45
developed a suspicion that he hadn't
00:13:48
done this and so
00:13:50
i called a polygrapher
00:13:53
and had zachary tell him that he hadn't
00:13:56
done it
00:13:58
and he passed
00:14:00
and forensic testing could not determine
00:14:03
the origin of the blood in persit's
00:14:05
trunk
00:14:07
at the time dna testing wasn't as
00:14:09
sophisticated as it is today
00:14:12
back then the dna testing procedures
00:14:13
that were used required dna to be what's
00:14:16
called high molecular weight we needed
00:14:18
dna that hadn't gone through any
00:14:20
degradation processes at all
00:14:22
but investigators did find
00:14:24
some suspicious damage to percid's car
00:14:28
it had damage to the front right end
00:14:31
the paint was scraped and the bumper was
00:14:33
broken
00:14:35
the scratches on the bumper had what
00:14:37
appeared to be tiny specks of orange
00:14:40
paint
00:14:41
which were removed with a small probe
00:14:44
the samples we're talking about are
00:14:46
perhaps the size of a period or a small
00:14:48
dot with a pencil
00:14:50
so we're talking microscopic sized chips
00:14:53
paint
00:14:54
the paint sample was compared to the
00:14:56
paint from the broken gate using a
00:14:58
process called a solubility analysis
00:15:02
chemical solubility tests are a series
00:15:05
of reagents
00:15:06
solvents or
00:15:08
reagents that may cause color reactions
00:15:10
or cause it to dissolve or swell or do
00:15:13
something color change and if they are
00:15:16
similar that means that the paints could
00:15:18
have had a common source
00:15:20
the test showed that the paint on
00:15:22
purseit's bumper could have come from
00:15:24
the gate but the sample was too small to
00:15:27
be conclusive
00:15:29
but the piece of broken bumper found
00:15:32
near the gate was of more value
00:15:35
the forensic analysis revealed it could
00:15:37
only have come from one source it was
00:15:40
just a perfect match they were unevenly
00:15:43
cracked
00:15:44
so the odds of the pieces that they
00:15:47
recovered from the compost site being a
00:15:50
perfect even match to zachary's car the
00:15:53
odds of coming from some other source
00:15:55
were
00:15:58
so amazing that they've
00:16:00
they just decided
00:16:02
this had to come from zachary's car
00:16:05
and investigators learned that persits
00:16:07
owned a dog with long black hair which
00:16:11
proved to be
00:16:12
microscopically similar to the single
00:16:14
dog hair found with michael's body
00:16:17
[Music]
00:16:19
finally
00:16:20
investigators sprayed the inside of
00:16:22
persit's car with luminol
00:16:25
it revealed evidence of a gun shot
00:16:28
it looked like a stars there were
00:16:30
hundreds of spots on the roof of the
00:16:34
headliner of the car which would have
00:16:35
been consistent with the high velocity
00:16:37
missed
00:16:38
if someone gets shot in the head
00:16:41
this indicated that michael was sitting
00:16:43
in the driver's seat of persit's car
00:16:45
when he was killed
00:16:49
investigators found a receipt in
00:16:51
persit's office for a pair of handcuffs
00:16:54
that could have been used in the
00:16:55
abduction
00:16:57
i mean they had the receipt they had the
00:16:59
guy that he bought them from
00:17:01
zachary persitz was arrested and charged
00:17:04
with first degree murder
00:17:06
even his lawyer acknowledged the
00:17:08
strength of the prosecution's case
00:17:11
trying this case was like being a human
00:17:13
punching bag
00:17:15
[Music]
00:17:19
prosecutors believe that zachary persits
00:17:22
was enraged by the way his friend
00:17:24
michael prozamancikov handled his money
00:17:28
he watched his 150 thousand dollars
00:17:30
dwindle to less than thirty thousand
00:17:33
dollars
00:17:34
he came upon hard times he was not going
00:17:37
to be able to pay the tuition for
00:17:39
private school
00:17:40
he was not going to be able to make his
00:17:42
mortgage payments and
00:17:45
that's
00:17:46
where
00:17:47
the dynamics of zachary pursets began to
00:17:50
change he
00:17:52
was unable to stand the pressure of
00:17:54
seeing
00:17:56
all of his dreams vanish
00:17:59
at the same time
00:18:00
zachary persit saw that michael was
00:18:03
living quite well on the commissions
00:18:05
generated from all the stock
00:18:07
transactions
00:18:09
zachary's wife oftentimes would compare
00:18:11
their lifestyle to michael's lifestyle
00:18:14
saying
00:18:15
things like michael has a big house why
00:18:17
don't we have a big house
00:18:19
michael has a mercedes why don't we have
00:18:21
a mercedes and on and on
00:18:25
prosecutors believe
00:18:27
wanted revenge
00:18:29
the evidence suggests percit set up a
00:18:32
meeting with michael after work they met
00:18:34
in the parking lot at lake minnetonka
00:18:38
[Music]
00:18:41
once there
00:18:42
percits threatened michael with a gun
00:18:45
and demanded his money back with
00:18:47
interest
00:18:48
so michael called his boss at home
00:18:50
asking him for 200 000
00:18:53
but his boss refused
00:18:57
[Music]
00:19:04
persits handcuffed michael to the
00:19:05
steering wheel of his car and ordered
00:19:07
michael to drive to a deserted location
00:19:10
[Music]
00:19:11
[Applause]
00:19:13
[Music]
00:19:18
and then killed him
00:19:24
persits put michael's body in the trunk
00:19:28
and drove to the compost site about 60
00:19:30
miles away
00:19:33
percepts broke through the gate with the
00:19:35
car's bumper leaving a small piece
00:19:38
behind
00:19:40
after dismembering michael's body
00:19:43
presets wrapped the torso in a tarp
00:19:46
unbeknownst to him a single black hair
00:19:50
from his pet dog was on the top
00:19:52
[Music]
00:19:54
the rest of michael's body and the gun
00:19:56
have never been recovered
00:19:58
he thought he could pull off this
00:20:00
homicide and not get caught because he
00:20:01
had it all planned out and he didn't
00:20:03
realize
00:20:05
how tough it is
00:20:06
to hide trace evidence forensic evidence
00:20:09
it's always going to be there
00:20:12
zachary persitz pled not guilty by
00:20:14
reason of insanity
00:20:17
the jury however rejected that and found
00:20:20
him guilty of first degree murder
00:20:23
he was sentenced to life in prison
00:20:27
for michael prozamanshikov
00:20:30
the american dream
00:20:32
had turned into a tragedy
00:20:35
but the trail of evidence left
00:20:37
no doubt
00:20:38
who
00:20:39
was responsible the forensic evidence
00:20:43
was
00:20:44
the case
00:20:45
the investigators
00:20:47
did an overwhelming and professional job
00:20:51
the old expression is if you think you
00:20:53
know how to commit the perfect crime
00:20:55
there are 50 ways to get up and you're a
00:20:58
genius if you can figure out 25 of them
00:21:03
[Music]
00:21:13
[Music]
00:21:32
[Music]
00:21:41
you
