Soviets Detain Soldier Accused of Slaying U.S. Ambassador’s Butler

Soviet police have detained a soldier suspected of murdering a butler to the U.S. ambassador in Moscow earlier this month and are hunting for his accomplice, a newspaper reported Friday.

The butler, Clemente Pandin, and a Moscow lawyer were killed in the lawyer’s downtown Moscow apartment.

The Moscow Communist Party newspaper Moskovskaya Pravda said the soldier, a member of a military construction unit, was arrested in the Kaliningrad region bordering the Baltic Sea and confessed to the crime.

Police searched his apartment and found goods stolen from the lawyer’s apartment, it said.

The police released a sketch of a young military construction worker who also is being sought.

Pandin, 66, and the lawyer who has been identified only as Lebedev were found dead on May 3. Pandin’s wife had reported him missing two days earlier.

Pandin, an Italian citizen, was one of the butlers on the staff at Spaso House, the official residence of the U.S. ambassador. He had worked there for 26 years, greeting guests and supervising waiters at diplomatic functions.

He was a contract employee, not a U.S. government worker, and his duties did not include any security matters, U.S. Embassy spokesman James Bullock said at the time of the killing.