NYC doctor's murder-for-hire case goes to jury
By COLLEEN LONG, Associated Press
Mar 9, 2009 7:35 PM CDT

A woman who plotted with a relative to kill her ex-husband over a custody dispute chose a public park as the crime scene so she wouldn't be suspected and planned to tape the shooting in case she was double-crossed, a prosecutor said Monday.

Mazoltuv Borukhova bought a button-hole camera to film her distant cousin Mikhail Mallayev shooting her ex-husband, but Borukhova couldn't figure out how to work the camera and Mallayev fired before she arrived, prosecutor Brad Leventhal said in closing arguments of their murder trial.

Borukhova, an internist, and Mallayev have pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the October 2007 death of Daniel Malakov. They face 25 years to life in prison if convicted. Jurors began deliberations Monday.

Malakov, a 34-year-old orthodontist, was shot in the back by a gunman in a dark coat with a makeshift silencer as he dropped off his 4-year-old daughter, Michelle, with his ex-wife, police said.

"The whole idea to do it on a Sunday morning in a park in front of people was to eliminate herself as a suspect," Leventhal told jurors, referring to Borukhova. "Hide in plain sight. ... Who possibly would think she was a suspect if she had it done it in front of her kid?"

Malakov had been granted temporary custody of the child a week earlier after a judge said Borukhova was hindering their relationship. Borukhova had told her ex-husband's relatives: "He took my child. It's already been decided. His days are numbered," according to Leventhal.

"She couldn't bear the fact that he was going to have custody of that little girl," the prosecutor said.

Leventhal also pointed to Borukhova's testimony that she never heard gunshots as evidence she plotted the shooting and believed a silencer would be used. Several witnesses testified they had heard shots fired.

Malleyev killed Malakov for the $20,000 that Borukhova paid him, Leventhal said.

"He was drowning in debt. And a drowning man will take any life preserver thrown to him and she threw out $20,000," the prosecutor said.

Borukhova's attorney, Stephen Scaring, argued that no direct evidence linked his client to the killing and said she bought a camera to document her husband's interactions with her daughter for the custody case.

Mallayev's attorney, Michael Siff, said it was impossible for the witnesses in the park to clearly see who shot Malakov.

The distant cousins exchanged 65 phone calls in the week before the shooting, Leventhal said. Defense attorneys said the calls concerned the medical problems of Mallayev and his wife. Leventhal said the couple doctored records to make it appear as if Borukhova was seeing Mallayev and his wife as patients.