Two San Fernando Valley men sentenced to death more than a decade ago for the murder of five people had their sentences commuted to life in prison by President Biden on Monday.
In 2007, Yuri Mikhel and Jurijus Kadamovas were sentenced to death after being convicted of murdering five people in a kidnapping-for-ransom scheme. Prosecutors said the two men dumped the bodies in a remote reservoir in Northern California.
Mikhel and Kadamovas were among 37 criminals whose death sentences Biden commuted to life without parole. Biden did not commute the sentences of three other men on federal death row convicted of mass murder and terrorism: Robert Bowers, convicted of the 2018 mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing; and Dylann Roof, convicted of the 2015 mass shooting at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina.
“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, I grieve for the victims of their despicable actions, and I ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable losses,” Biden said in a statement. “I am more convinced than ever that we must end the use of the death penalty at the federal level. »
Soviet-born immigrants Mikhel and Kadamovas hatched the kidnapping plot while working at an aquarium store on Ventura Boulevard. They kidnapped five people over a four-month period beginning in 2001.
They lured their victims with business offers and demanded more than $5.5 million from victims’ family members. They received more than a million dollars in ransom, but still killed their victims by strangulation.
The two men went to New Melones Reservoir near Yosemite to dump the bodies.
Their victims were Nick Kharabadze, 29, of Woodland Hills; Alexander Umansky, 35, of Sherman Oaks; Rita Pekler, 39, of West Hollywood; George Safiev, 37, of Beverly Hills; and Meyer Muscatel, 58, of Sherman Oaks.
Once behind bars, Mikhel hatched several escape plans, including a plan to use a bolt cutters, a pepper shaker, a rake and fence cutters to escape from a detention center in San Bernardino and fleeing with Kadamovas on a motorbike. But a letter detailing the plot was found in a trash bin by a guard and the plan was foiled.
President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to expand the death penalty to “drug and human traffickers.” During Trump’s first term, 13 inmates were executed on federal death row, resuming federal executions after about 20 years.
At the end of his first term, Trump commuted the sentences of 70 people and pardoned 73 others, including former campaign and White House adviser Stephen K. Bannon, who was charged with federal fraud and money laundering of money as part of a scheme to defraud supporters of building a border wall with Mexico.
