Moscow Police Reportedly Hold 7 in Murder of Relief Worker : Slaying: Co-worker says Laura Binkley, a former Redondo Beach resident, was killed by a gang of robbers that thought she had large amounts of money in her apartment.

Moscow police have arrested one woman and six men in connection with the robbery and murder of a former Redondo Beach resident who was found strangled last month in her downtown Moscow apartment, a co-worker of the murdered woman said.

Laura Binkley, 32, a Canadian citizen who was in Russia working for a Palos Verdes Estates-based international relief organization called Adam Children’s Fund, apparently was killed by a Moscow gang that targeted foreigners, the co-worker said Friday.

“There was a rumor that she (Binkley) had lots of money in her apartment, tens of thousands of dollars,” said Adam Children’s Fund operations director Dave Peters, who recently returned from Moscow. “Actually, she had less than a thousand. The woman in the group (of suspects), her game was to attend American churches there and befriend people with the idea of being invited to their homes. Then the guys would rob them.”

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Jennifer Sloan, a spokeswoman for the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ottawa, confirmed Friday that at least one arrest was made in the case, but was unable to provide details or information on other arrests.

Peters said letters that Binkley wrote to family and friends in Canada and the United States, which were later sent to Russian authorities by Canadian officials, helped Moscow police solve the case. Before her murder Binkley had described a meeting with a young Russian woman named Vera who had visited Binkley’s apartment and had seen her open her personal safe. The woman then had apparently stolen Binkley’s keys.

Later the woman approached Binkley and begged for forgiveness. The two went to church together Oct. 10. Peters said Moscow police believe that when Binkley and the woman returned to her secured apartment building after the church service, the woman left the front door ajar, allowing two male accomplices to enter the building and burst into Binkley’s apartment.

“They (the two men) killed her quickly,” Peters said. “When her body was found she still had her overcoat on. An autopsy showed she died of blows to the head and strangulation.”

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Binkley’s body was found two days later when she failed to show up for a meeting with a friend. The three alleged participants in the murder, as well as four other alleged co-conspirators, were arrested last month, Peters said. He added that Moscow police believe the the group is responsible for other robberies of foreigners.

Bill Milner, vice consul at the Canadian Embassy in Moscow, said last month that although attacks on foreigners have increased dramatically in Russia in the past several years, Binkley was the first Canadian citizen murdered in Moscow in recent memory.

A native of Toronto, Binkley came to Southern California in 1991 to work as a youth minister at Lunada Bay Christian Fellowship in Palos Verdes Estates. During that time she lived in Redondo Beach. Wayne Coombs, senior pastor at the church and executive director of the Adam Children’s Fund, later hired her to work as a paid staff member of the organization in Russia.

Binkley had been assisting an orphanage in Orekhovo-Zuyevo, a village about 60 miles east of Moscow, procuring food and other supplies for the orphanage’s children. She would spend several days each week at the village and usually return to Moscow on weekends.

Binkley was buried near Toronto last month.