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Subway Stabber Maksim Gelman Claims To Have Killed 6 Others
By
Ben Yakas
Published Jan 15, 2012
Modified Jan 15, 2012
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Jan 15, 2012
Modified Jan 15, 2012
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Maksim Gelman, the 24-year-old Brooklyn man who plead guilty to killing four people and injuring four others during a 28-hour stabbing rampage across Brooklyn and Manhattan last February, is due to be sentenced this week. He discussed the murderous rampage in a long jailhouse interview with the Daily News, and claimed he was responsible for six more murders before this year: “All my friends, they all tell me I’m crazy,” he said in a phone interview from Rikers Island. “I believe I’m schizophrenic and bi-polar...I know what’s going on but I tend to overreact.”
Despite earlier reports that he had told police he was high on angel dust when he killed four people during the murder spree, Gelman denied being high: “I was sober when it happened. That day, I was going to kill more people but they weren’t home.” As for the six prior murders, he says he ran over two people in Sheepshead Bay six years ago; a mother and daughter were struck in an October 2006 hit-and-run in the neighborhood Gelman mentioned, and an arrest was never made. The four other victims were drug dealers who crossed him, including one in the Bronx and another in East New York.
Gelman's 28-hour murder spree began on February 11 when he stabbed his stepfather, 54-year-old Aleksandr Kuznetsov, in Sheepshead Bay after a family argument over the use of his mother’s car. He told the News Kuznetsov had to die because he tried to scam his mother out of two condos in her name. “I was about to chop him up, put him in cement and throw him in the ocean,” Gelman said matter-of-factly. “But my mother panicked and called 911.” Later in the day, he fatally stabbed a woman he referred to as his ex-girlfriend, Yelena Bluchenko, 20, and her mother, Anna, 56. Bluchenko, whom friends said that Gelman stalked, was portrayed by him as a former associate who betrayed him.
After killing the two women, he allegedly attacked a passing motorist, stabbing 60-year-old Art DiCrescento in order to steal his car. While driving DiCrescento's Pontiac Bonneville, Gelman struck 62-year-old Stephen Tanenbaum, who later died in the hospital. He was eventually caught by police at the Times Square subway station around the 40th Street and 7th Avenue exits after slashing subway passenger Joseph Lozito.
After he was apprehended, Gelman was held in the Bellevue psych ward after failing the intake physical and mental exam at Rikers Island. Among other things, he allegedly said of his stabbing rampage, "Sometimes, my mind isn't right."
Gelman—who was arrested at least 10 times before, mostly for graffiti or vandalism, and once for crack possession—also claimed the DEA set him up; it later came out that he told a cop after his arrest, "It's OK. I'll beat this. I'll go to a mental hospital for a few years and then I'll get out on the street again. You'll see." Unperturbed by guilt, he now only wishes he had used airline tickets he had for that day to go “lay low” in the Dominican Republic. “I hope a lot of times that I would have just gotten on that plane,” he added.
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maksim gelman
murder
rampage
subway stabber
Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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