MOSCOW, November 13 (RIA Novosti) – A male prostitute in northern Russia was ruled guilty on Tuesday of stabbing to death a “black mage” in a bid for heavenly redemption for his fornicating ways.
Astemir Zhilyayev, born in 1987, was sentenced to eight years in a maximum security prison on murder charges, St. Petersburg prosecutors said on their website.
The man used to work as a gigolo, but eventually came to regard his profession as a sin, the report said.
His way of redeeming himself was to “sacrifice” a self-proclaimed sorcerer, the prosecutors said, without elaborating on Zhilyayev’s belief system. Magic is considered ungodly in Russia’s two most prominent religions, Christianity and Islam.
Zhilyayev’s first target was an unidentified “witch,” but he said in the courtroom that he could not bring himself to kill a woman.
He then found a male “black mage” through a newspaper ad, signed up for a consultation and stabbed the hapless “sorcerer” in the neck with a kitchen knife, the report said.
Zhilyayev fled the scene unhindered by either black arts or law enforcement and spent two years on the run, but was eventually apprehended, tried and convicted, the prosecutors said.