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The chunks had been flushed down a toilet in an attempt to dispose of evidence in the brutal murder of 69-year-old filmmaker Yevgeny Zorin, who lived in the building at 20 Ulitsa Zoi i Alexandra Kosmodemyanskikh, police spokesman Viktor Maximov said Tuesday.
"The plumber went to the police, and our guys managed to pick up the suspect rather quickly," Maximov said. Police arrested the 29-year-old suspect about an hour later.
At the time of the arrest, the suspect was carrying a plastic bag containing Zorin's severed head, Maximov said.
The suspect killed Zorin in unclear circumstances and chopped up the body to dispose of the evidence, apparently, flushing some of the remains down the toilet, Maximov said.
"The suspect said Zorin had made unwanted sexual advances, and that's why he killed him," Maximov said. "But we only have his word. Hard to say if it's true."
City Prosecutor's Office spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko confirmed Tuesday that the suspect, whom she declined to identify by name, was detained Saturday for 10 days, but said he had not yet been charged in the murder investigation.
Zorin began his career in the mid-1960s traveling around the Soviet Union and making films about village life for Soviet television, said his friend and fellow director, Vladimir Berman. Zorin later moved on to filming nature documentaries.
"He had a great eye and was very talented," Berman said Tuesday.
Zorin fell on hard times during and after perestroika, however. "Studios began shutting down, and he lost his job," Berman said.
Berman said Zorin had long dreamed of making a documentary about Vasily Koren, a 17th-century wood-engraver whose works focused on religious themes.
According to "The Grove Dictionary of Art," Koren, who moved to Moscow in 1661, produced woodblock prints of Book of Genesis and the Apocalypse and founded the most important school of Russian folk engraving.
"It was to be his masterpiece," Berman said. "He wanted to make a film about faith and Christianity that he couldn't under the communists. But he was turned down by everyone he pitched the idea to."
Plumbing clogged with human flesh has led to arrests in at least one other case in recent years.
In June 2004, police were called to an apartment in southwest Moscow after a plumber discovered what appeared to be human flesh clogging the building's pipes, causing the toilet, sink and bathtub to overflow in an apartment on the 11th floor.
Police searched the residences directly above the apartment that was flooded with bloody water and discovered two men with blood on their hands in an apartment on the 13th floor.
The two men were arrested and charged with the murder of a woman in her 20s, who had apparently been killed the previous evening in a drunken quarrel. The two suspects reportedly decided to hide her death by dismembering her, flushing the remains down the toilet and discarding body parts outside that could not be flushed.
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