Stranglings Put Neighborhoods on Edge.

(From The Moscow Times)

Lazy summer evenings with leisurely strolls through the park are a distant memory for some residents of northern Moscow. Over the past four weeks, they have seen one woman after another strangled to death in their backyards.

Many of the 10 victims who have been strangled since July 1 were young. Most were found naked, some sexually assaulted. In each case, nothing appeared to be stolen.

Complicating matters, police have made little progress in the cases and were still giving conflicting signals Thursday about whether a serial killer might be on the loose.

"We no longer let our children and grandchildren out in the evening, and I am worried about my wife," said Anatoly Lemagin, 57, who works as a guard at a construction site just a few minutes' walk from the kindergarten on Otradny Proyezd where a 42-year-old woman was strangled last Sunday.

"I never used to care that much. I always thought that my wife would just return whenever she finishes work," Lemagin said. "But these days I meet her by the metro station.

A few kilometers south on Ulitsa Yablochkova, a piece of white-and-red striped police tape still fluttered from a tree in the small wooded grove where the body of a Moscow City Duma aide was found on July 4. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled.