SEATTLE ?€” Anatoly Solovyov and Alevtina Solovyova flew halfway around the world to Seattle to find justice and closure after the murder of their 20-year-old daughter, a so-called "mail-order bride."
But with the daughter's body as yet unburied and prosecutors now claiming that her American husband strangled her with the help of his male lover, perhaps the most surprising development of all is that the elder Solovyovs still have love in their hearts for the country that took their daughter's life. So much love, in fact, that they want to become U.S. citizens themselves.
Originally, it was Anastasia Solovyova King alone who dreamed of settling in the United States. The daughter of two music instructors from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, she excelled not only at piano and chorus, but she also studied English assiduously, babysat for an American diplomat in Bishkek, and, when she was old enough, joined a bridal agency that would introduce her to American bachelors.
For all of her success in Kyrgyzstan, it was apparent that the 18-year-old ethnic Russian felt that she could build a better life by leaving the former Soviet republic and heading for the United States.
So when the mail-order bride agency delivered a squat, balding man who was almost 40 years old, both she and her parents optimistically saw Indle King Jr. for his finer qualities: He was intelligent, attentive, well-dressed, and he spoke glowingly of his upper middle-class life and family back in America. After a few meetings, the Solovyov family was sold.
In their small apartment in Bishkek, the young woman's parents had no way of knowing that their future son-in-law was actually a financial and emotional failure, a man with a history of relying on his well-to-do parents for money and a proclivity for violent relationships.
Just a few years earlier, he had been divorced by Yekaterina Kazakova, another mail-order bride whose court petition alleged that he had hit her in the head with his fist, thrown her against the wall and continuously pounded her head against the wall.
Unaware of King's previous history with international marriage, Anastasia Solovyova soon left Bishkek for a comfortable townhouse in a subdivision north of Seattle.
"At first, she seemed happy. She thought she loved him," said Natasha Jankauskas, 22, who worked with Anastasia King at a downtown Seattle seafood restaurant soon after she came to America. "But they were never suited for each other. ?€¦ She was tall, beautiful and outgoing, and her husband was very monotone and pretty unattractive."
After a few months, the couple's problems exceeded mere incompatibility. "He started getting frustrated with her," Jankauskas remembered. "And then it got to the point where Anastasia came in to work crying one day because he had smacked her during a driving lesson."
Indle King filed for divorce last August. Anastasia King's body was found in December.
Yet Anastasia King, whom teachers from her Kyrgyz music conservatory later described as both "amazingly hard-working" and a "universal favorite, constantly surrounded by friends," persevered and even thrived in America.
She studied assiduously when she wasn't working as a restaurant hostess and within two years gained admittance to the prestigious University of Washington, where she intended to study law.
At the same time, she appeared to be bracing for her own legal battle. She began keeping a diary and journals to document the increasingly dysfunctional relationship, and eventually stored them in a safety deposit box at a local bank, away from the controlling eye of her husband.
According to court documents, the diary detailed "instances where [Anastasia King] was the victim of domestic violence, invasion of privacy and sexual assault." It also included mentions of her ensuing disgust with her husband and evidence of her own extramarital affairs.
Indle King filed for divorce in August of last year. In September, Anastasia King visited her parents in Kyrgyzstan and then flew back to Seattle, but never returned to work. Co-workers reported her missing on Oct. 2. Almost three months later, on Dec. 28, police found her body wrapped in a dog blanket and buried in a shallow grave on the Tulalip Indian reservation north of Seattle.
But just when her already-stunned family and friends were expecting murder charges to be filed in Snohomish County Superior Court against her husband, the investigation began to center on Daniel Kristopher Larson, a 20-year-old registered sex offender who himself had rented a room briefly at the Kings' home.
It was Larson who first brought investigators to Anastasia King's body, based on what he claimed was Indle King's confession to him, but further questioning led investigators to conclude that Larson himself had strangled her while her 123-kilogram husband pinned her down. Furthermore, investigators say, one of the reasons for the murder was that Anastasia King had discovered that Larson and her husband were lovers.
Because Larson was already in jail for soliciting sex with a 16-year-old Ukrainian girl, prosecutors had worried that he was an unreliable witness. But now he has been charged with murder in the case, and Larson can invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refuse to testify at all.
The result is that Indle King, though in jail for perjuring himself during the search for his wife's body, has not been formally charged with murder.
Anastasia King's remains have likewise not yet been released for burial, although her parents have already chosen a gravesite, under a young evergreen tree, at a local cemetery.
No matter what the specifics of why, how, or even who committed the crime, people here agree that the woman from Kyrgyzstan was ultimately a victim of the leap of faith her family took to help her find a new life in the United States.
But in the process of trying to come to terms with their grief in this faraway country, Anastasia's father, 63, and mother, 55, have also fallen under America's spell. At the end of two weeks that included grueling interviews with the prosecution and a tearful Orthodox memorial service, the grieving couple held what was to be their final press conference.
"I hope," Anatoly Solovyov told the assembled reporters wearily, "that authorities will find a possibility to allow us to remain here for the rest of our lives."
But with the daughter's body as yet unburied and prosecutors now claiming that her American husband strangled her with the help of his male lover, perhaps the most surprising development of all is that the elder Solovyovs still have love in their hearts for the country that took their daughter's life. So much love, in fact, that they want to become U.S. citizens themselves.
Originally, it was Anastasia Solovyova King alone who dreamed of settling in the United States. The daughter of two music instructors from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, she excelled not only at piano and chorus, but she also studied English assiduously, babysat for an American diplomat in Bishkek, and, when she was old enough, joined a bridal agency that would introduce her to American bachelors.
For all of her success in Kyrgyzstan, it was apparent that the 18-year-old ethnic Russian felt that she could build a better life by leaving the former Soviet republic and heading for the United States.
So when the mail-order bride agency delivered a squat, balding man who was almost 40 years old, both she and her parents optimistically saw Indle King Jr. for his finer qualities: He was intelligent, attentive, well-dressed, and he spoke glowingly of his upper middle-class life and family back in America. After a few meetings, the Solovyov family was sold.
In their small apartment in Bishkek, the young woman's parents had no way of knowing that their future son-in-law was actually a financial and emotional failure, a man with a history of relying on his well-to-do parents for money and a proclivity for violent relationships.
Just a few years earlier, he had been divorced by Yekaterina Kazakova, another mail-order bride whose court petition alleged that he had hit her in the head with his fist, thrown her against the wall and continuously pounded her head against the wall.
Unaware of King's previous history with international marriage, Anastasia Solovyova soon left Bishkek for a comfortable townhouse in a subdivision north of Seattle.
"At first, she seemed happy. She thought she loved him," said Natasha Jankauskas, 22, who worked with Anastasia King at a downtown Seattle seafood restaurant soon after she came to America. "But they were never suited for each other. ?€¦ She was tall, beautiful and outgoing, and her husband was very monotone and pretty unattractive."
After a few months, the couple's problems exceeded mere incompatibility. "He started getting frustrated with her," Jankauskas remembered. "And then it got to the point where Anastasia came in to work crying one day because he had smacked her during a driving lesson."
Yet Anastasia King, whom teachers from her Kyrgyz music conservatory later described as both "amazingly hard-working" and a "universal favorite, constantly surrounded by friends," persevered and even thrived in America.
She studied assiduously when she wasn't working as a restaurant hostess and within two years gained admittance to the prestigious University of Washington, where she intended to study law.
At the same time, she appeared to be bracing for her own legal battle. She began keeping a diary and journals to document the increasingly dysfunctional relationship, and eventually stored them in a safety deposit box at a local bank, away from the controlling eye of her husband.
According to court documents, the diary detailed "instances where [Anastasia King] was the victim of domestic violence, invasion of privacy and sexual assault." It also included mentions of her ensuing disgust with her husband and evidence of her own extramarital affairs.
Indle King filed for divorce in August of last year. In September, Anastasia King visited her parents in Kyrgyzstan and then flew back to Seattle, but never returned to work. Co-workers reported her missing on Oct. 2. Almost three months later, on Dec. 28, police found her body wrapped in a dog blanket and buried in a shallow grave on the Tulalip Indian reservation north of Seattle.
But just when her already-stunned family and friends were expecting murder charges to be filed in Snohomish County Superior Court against her husband, the investigation began to center on Daniel Kristopher Larson, a 20-year-old registered sex offender who himself had rented a room briefly at the Kings' home.
It was Larson who first brought investigators to Anastasia King's body, based on what he claimed was Indle King's confession to him, but further questioning led investigators to conclude that Larson himself had strangled her while her 123-kilogram husband pinned her down. Furthermore, investigators say, one of the reasons for the murder was that Anastasia King had discovered that Larson and her husband were lovers.
Because Larson was already in jail for soliciting sex with a 16-year-old Ukrainian girl, prosecutors had worried that he was an unreliable witness. But now he has been charged with murder in the case, and Larson can invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refuse to testify at all.
The result is that Indle King, though in jail for perjuring himself during the search for his wife's body, has not been formally charged with murder.
Anastasia King's remains have likewise not yet been released for burial, although her parents have already chosen a gravesite, under a young evergreen tree, at a local cemetery.
No matter what the specifics of why, how, or even who committed the crime, people here agree that the woman from Kyrgyzstan was ultimately a victim of the leap of faith her family took to help her find a new life in the United States.
But in the process of trying to come to terms with their grief in this faraway country, Anastasia's father, 63, and mother, 55, have also fallen under America's spell. At the end of two weeks that included grueling interviews with the prosecution and a tearful Orthodox memorial service, the grieving couple held what was to be their final press conference.
"I hope," Anatoly Solovyov told the assembled reporters wearily, "that authorities will find a possibility to allow us to remain here for the rest of our lives."
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