I wanted to share few newspaper articles I have read about Eduard Nektalov's murder...


I.D. 6TH AVE. SLAYER

The coldblooded assassin who shot dead a Diamond District jeweler in broad daylight was identified by cops this week — and it turns out he's been locked up at Rikers Island for months on unrelated charges, police sources told The Post.

The 37-year-old suspect in the slaying last May of Eduard Nektalov was busted in November for allegedly trying to shoot and kill a man in the Tremont section of The Bronx.

That bullet didn't hit its intended victim — but it was enough to keep the suspect at Rikers awaiting trial on attempted-murder charges.

Only in the last few days did investigators complete ballistics tests on a .45-caliber bullet recovered in the incident that linked the suspect's gun to the Nektalov slaying, the sources said.

The suspect, whose name has not been released, has a record of 11 arrests on assault, drug and two homicide charges, said police sources.

He served prison time on at least one of the homicide charges, and was once charged with assault for stabbing a girlfriend in the eye, said the sources. He's also afflicted with AIDS, the sources said.

The suspect's motive in the Nektalov killing is still unknown, said the sources.

Nektalov, 46, was speaking on a cellphone as he strolled along Sixth Avenue between 47th and 48th streets around 7:20 p.m. last May 20 when a mystery man ran up from behind and shot him.

The perpetrator fired one shot into Nektalov's head and two coup de gras shots into his body before fleeing.

Surveillance cameras from several buildings in the area captured the shooting — but none provided a good shot of the killer, police said at the time.

Nektalov had been indicted with his father, Roman Nektalov, in June 2003 on money-laundering charges in which he allegedly molded gold into screws, tools and belt buckles that could be easily smuggled to Colombian drug lords.

He'd been falsely rumored to have been cooperating with investigators in the case, sources said at the time.

In July, the elder Nektalov, 74, was acquitted of most charges in the case — but convicted of money laundering for an incident involving a diamond sale.

April 1, 2005 ~NY Post

By LARRY CELONA and MURRAY WEISS

6TH AVE. 'KILLER' ID'D IN LINEUP

Eagle-eyed witnesses positively identified the shooter of Diamond District jeweler Eduard Nektalov from lineups yesterday — and the suspect, jailed in another shooting, is expected to be charged in the slaying next week, police sources told The Post.

Cops have not released the name of the 37-year-old suspect, and are unsure of his motive in the jeweler's assassination-style killing May 20 on Sixth Avenue near Rockefeller Center.

It took six months for investigators to match the suspect's gun, seized when he was arrested in The Bronx last August, to the Nektalov killing.

In the Bronx incident, he was arrested for shooting at someone in a crowd of people in Tremont. He missed his target, and the charges were downgraded to weapons possession, said police sources.

By Murray Weiss and Larry Celona

April 2, 2005 ~NY Post

Police Eye Possible Suspect in Diamond District Shooting

NEW YORK -- A possible suspect has emerged in the gangland-style shooting of a jeweler last year on a busy sidewalk near Manhattan's Diamond District, police said Friday.

The 37-year-old suspect, who has a long criminal record, has been in custody since November in an unrelated shooting in the Bronx. Investigators have matched ballistics evidence from the Bronx case to that from the Diamond District slaying, police said.

Police planned to conduct lineups later Friday.

Eduard Nektalov, 46, was gunned down two months before he was to go on trial with his father, Roman, on federal charges they helped launder drug money for Colombian dealers at their business, Roman Jewelry.

On the evening of May 20, as Nektalov left the Diamond District and walked on Sixth Avenue, a gunman dressed in black shot him in the back of the head in front of a Gap store. Without a word, the shooter tucked his weapon away and vanished into a crowd.

Police investigators have said they don't believe the unsolved killing stemmed from the money-laundering case. But they said it could have been a professional hit ordered by the Russian mob.

Last July, a jury acquitted Roman Nektalov, 75, of conspiracy, money laundering and two other charges alleging he sold gold to Colombian drug dealers during a sting operation. He was convicted on a fifth count involving a diamond sale; sentencing was pending.

April 1, 2005 ~NY Newsday

Suspect in Jeweler's Murder Was on Lam

A twice-convicted killer being eyed in a brazen Diamond District slaying escaped in 1997 from a Puerto Rican prison while doing time for one of his murders, the Daily News has learned.

Carlos (El Loco) Fortier, 36, is the chief suspect in the killing of gem merchant Eduard Nektalov, who was gunned down last May on a crowded Sixth Ave. sidewalk, police sources said.

"Nobody cares about [Fortier]. We want who hired him [to kill Nektalov]," a police source told the Daily News, adding that two witnesses picked Fortier out of a lineup.

Fortier, who is HIV positive, has a history of stays in New York's psychiatric prison wards, where he was known for spitting blood on staffers and once assaulting his psychiatrist with feces, records show.

He was released from prison on April 7, 2003, after completing a four- to six-year sentence for manslaughter stemming from a 1988 Manhattan slaying, records show.

Within days of his release, he was ordered to be extradited to Puerto Rico, where he was wanted for escaping from the Las Cucharas Correctional Complex on Jan. 30, 1997, records show. He had been serving an 18-year sentence for second-degree murder when he busted out.

It was unclear yesterday if Fortier was actually extradited. The Manhattan District Attorney's Office said they had no information on his case.

Fortier has been held since last summer at Bellevue Hospital after being arrested for allegedly shooting into a crowd in the Tremont section of the Bronx on Aug. 30. Ballistics tests prove the gun used in the Bronx is the same one that killed Nektalov, 46, on May 20.


By ALISON GENDAR, BARBARA ROSS and BILL HUTCHINSON

April 5, 2005 ~NY DAILY NEWS

Bronx Shooting Is Link to a Midtown Case

A Bronx man with a long criminal record was identified by several witnesses yesterday as the gunman who calmly walked up behind a diamond merchant at dusk on a crowded Midtown street last spring and shot him in the back of the head, law enforcement officials said.

The killing of the diamond merchant, Eduard Nektalov, who when he was slain was under federal indictment along with his father in an international money laundering case, had all the hallmarks of a contract killing and has stymied detectives for nearly a year. But in the last few days, evidence from a seemingly random shooting on a Bronx street last Aug. 30 linked the Bronx man, Carlos Fortier, 36, to the Nektalov killing, several law enforcement officials said.

Detectives from the Midtown North Precinct Detective Squad and the Manhattan South Homicide Task Force are working on the theory that Mr. Fortier, who is dying of AIDS, was paid to kill Mr. Nektalov, the officials said.

The evidence that led investigators to Mr. Fortier, the officials said, was several spent .45-caliber shell casings found after the Aug. 30 shooting at 152nd Street and Tinton Avenue in the Melrose section of the Bronx, the officials said. Recent test results showed that the shell casings matched those found on Sixth Avenue between West 47th and West 48th Streets in the diamond district after Mr. Nektalov, 46, was fatally shot on May 21, 2004, and the description of the gunman provided by witnesses matched that of Mr. Fortier, the officials said.

At the Midtown North Precinct station house yesterday, several witnesses to the diamond district shooting identified Mr. Fortier as the gunman.

No charges were filed against Mr. Fortier, who is undergoing treatment at Bellevue Hospital Center, but prosecutors from the office of Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said they expect to present evidence in the case to a grand jury next week.

No one was injured in the Bronx shooting, in which Mr. Fortier was accused of firing into a crowd and fleeing, the police said. When he was arrested a short while later on attempted murder, attempted assault and other charges, he denied firing the shots and no gun was recovered, according to court papers. Kaelin Akohonae, a lawyer who represents Mr. Fortier in the Bronx case, did not return a telephone call seeking comment.

Mr. Nektalov was killed after he had walked about 80 paces from the door of his family's shop, Roman Jewelers, at 74 West 47th Street, turning north onto Sixth Avenue on his way to the West 48th Street garage where he parked his Bentley. The gunman, described as an olive-skinned man with long hair, fell in behind him on the crowded sidewalk, approached from behind and fired. One bullet struck Mr. Nektalov in the back of the head and two others hit him in the back after he fell to the ground, the police said. He died on the sidewalk in front of a Gap store.

Mr. Nektalov, according to a federal indictment that later led to his father's conviction on money laundering charges, helped sell diamonds and gold to undercover agents posing as Colombian drug dealers, and forged gold into the shape of nuts and bolts and other household items to facilitate its shipment to Colombia.

In the days after the killing, investigators focused on the possibility that someone may have believed that Mr. Nektalov was planning to plead guilty and become a government witnesses, a theory that his lawyer, Christopher E. Chang, dismissed. They also were examining the theory that he was killed after someone asked him to intervene in a shooting in December 2003 involving one of his cousins, the police said. He had been asked to persuade the cousin to drop the charges, but the young man went forward with the case.

Yesterday, one law enforcement official suggested that investigators were hopeful that Mr. Fortier would provide information to the authorities because he is so ill.

At the time of his arrest in the Bronx shooting, according to court papers that include part of a transcript of his videotaped statement to a prosecutor, he acknowledged crimes he had committed in years past, but was adamant in denying that he had played any part in the attack on East 152nd Street.

"I killed a man in Manhattan with a knife and a man in Puerto Rico with a gun," he said, according to the transcript. "I paid for that. I have not seen a gun in eight years."

By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

April 1, 2005 ~NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/02/nyregion/02diamond.html?pagewanted=print&position=)