Russia’s ‘Sausage King’ killed in Moscow in crossbow attack

Several intruders broke into a sauna at the home of a Russian meat tycoon known as the “Sausage King” outside Moscow early on Monday, tied him and a woman up and demanded money before killing him with a crossbow.

The woman managed to escape the attack in the Moscow region and alert the police but the businessman was dead when officers arrived at the scene, said the Investigative Committee, which positions itself as a Russian version of the FBI.

The agency did not name the deceased man in its statement, but REN TV and other Russian media identified him as Vladimir Marugov, owner of the “Ozyorsky sausages” and “Meat Empire” sausage factories.

Grisly and sometimes surreal murders often made headlines in Russia in the 1990s after the chaotic Soviet breakup, but have become less common since the current president, Vladimir Putin, came to power at the turn of the century.

The Investigative Committee said the intruders had demanded that Marugov hand over cash kept at his home and had fled in a car. It said investigators had found the murder weapon, a crossbow.

The getaway vehicle was also recovered, it said, in a village in the suburbs of Istra, a town west of Moscow where affluent Russians have country homes known as dachas and like to spend the weekends.