Suspect in Six Killings Caught in Mother’s Yard

After a 10-day, coast-to-coast manhunt, authorities found accused killer Nikolay Soltys on Thursday hiding right in his mother’s backyard, capturing him moments after his relatives fled the breakfast table in terror to call for help.

Barefoot, disheveled and carrying a potato peeler and a map, Soltys was arrested without incident by undercover officers who had kept his family under surveillance since the bloody killings of his wife, son and four other relatives.

Sacramento County Sheriff Lou Blanas said the unshaven Soltys may have been hiding for several days in a wooded ravine behind his mother’s home in this capital suburb. He may have sneaked over a fence into her yard Wednesday night, carrying a sleeping bag and a backpack containing a knife believed to have been used in the murders.

Calling the Ukrainian immigrant a vicious criminal, Blanas said it appeared he had traveled on foot while at large. It remained unclear whether he had been aided by others.

“This is a day for celebration,” Richard Baker, FBI special agent in charge in Sacramento, said at a news conference. “However, as we celebrate the capture of this individual, let’s not forget the victims.”

Relatives of the dead in Sacramento County’s close-knit Ukrainian community expressed relief that the fugitive, who acquaintances say has a history of mental instability and domestic violence, was behind bars. But they said the capture did little to relieve their sorrow.

Soltys’ cousin, Sergey Kukharskiy, whose parents, son and niece were slain, stood across town at the site of their murders and said: “We are Christians, so we will forgive him.

“Still,” he added in a voice thick with emotion, “the memory [of our loved ones’ deaths] will be in our minds forever.”

Soltys, 27, a former shoemaker, could be arraigned as early as today on six counts of murder. Detectives who interviewed him for hours Thursday described him as tired and cooperative but would not reveal what he said.

Head bowed, Soltys was paraded by deputies out the front door of the sheriff’s headquarters about 6 p.m. and walked to an unmarked vehicle to be taken to the County Jail. TV camera crews shouted questions at Soltys, who was outfitted in an orange jumpsuit and a blue bulletproof vest, hands shackled behind his back. The suspect said nothing.

Soltys, who came to the United States from a Ukrainian village three years ago, became a fugitive Aug. 20, the day of a fatal rampage that began among the drab duplexes of the Sacramento suburbs. He is suspected of slashing his pregnant wife to death, then driving across town and slaying an aunt, uncle and two young cousins.

Detectives say Soltys appeared at his mother’s Citrus Heights house, where he whisked away his 3-year-old son. Soltys’ car was discovered late that evening abandoned beside a home improvement store. His son’s blood-splattered body was discovered in a rural area the next day inside a cardboard box, slumped over a few toys, his throat slashed.

Within days, Soltys was placed on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list, and 14 of his surviving relatives were put in protective custody at a downtown Sacramento motel.

On Tuesday, they left those lodgings, eager to return to their jobs and place their children back in school. But teams of undercover officers continued to keep watch over their homes. Among those was the home of Soltys’ mother, Varvara, who was joined by Soltys’ brother, Stepan; his wife, Zoya; and their three children, Oleg, Bogdan and Yuliya.

The dramatic climax of the case came at the house Thursday morning, when the family gathered in the kitchen about 7 for breakfast. As the meal concluded, Stepan Soltys looked out a sliding glass door and saw his haggard brother in the backyard, said Citrus Heights Police Officer Bill Samuelson.

The two siblings made eye contact, and then “Nikolay made a motion of putting his finger to his mouth, like: ‘Shhh, be quiet,’ ” Samuelson said.

Though the family had been outfitted with a “panic alarm,” a heart-shaped device the size of a pager that alerts the sheriff’s communication center, it is unclear whether the family tried to use it. James Lewis, a sheriff’s spokesman, said the system was “working when we installed it.”

Stepan Soltys rushed his family into their car and raced off, unaware of the undercover officers just outside, and frantically attempted to dial 911 on a cellular phone.

Pulling up in front of a store a few blocks away, the terrified relatives were aided by manager Jennifer Murphy, who said Stepan Soltys was so shaky and upset that he was mistakenly dialing 119.

Murphy punched in 911, and listened as first Stepan, then his daughter struggled in limited English to tell their story. Eventually, a Russian-speaking sheriff’s deputy intervened and got the picture--the fugitive was just down the road.

Undercover officers, who had followed the family to the store, unsure what was afoot, rushed back to the house. As the area was sealed off by a flood of squad cars, agents moved in and peered over a fence into the backyard.

What they saw was a pair of feet sticking out from beneath a metal desk next to an abandoned refrigerator. Armed with a shotgun, Sheriff’s Det. Chris Joachim and Sacramento Police Sgt. Virgil Brown entered the sloping yard and ordered the suspect to come out.

Soltys sprang to his feet and threw his arms in the air. Clad in sweatpants and a blue T-shirt, he did not resist arrest. Nor did he say a word as detectives handcuffed and searched him.

“The whole time he was very stoic,” Brown said at the news conference, where large wanted posters of Soltys’ face triumphantly featured a new word Thursday--”captured.”

Soltys was taken to sheriff’s headquarters, where detectives spent the day interviewing him and trying to piece together his movements during the last 10 days.

Blanas said detectives were unsure if Soltys had remained in the Sacramento area the entire time after the killings. He said detectives watching Varvara Soltys’ house had checked the backyard Wednesday evening, but found nothing.

“At night there’s so many ways to get into that backyard, you can’t cover every inch,” Blanas said.

The search had stretched into Ukrainian communities as far away as Binghamton, N.Y., where Soltys once lived. But no sightings elsewhere in the country were ever verified.

“There are still questions about how he got from where he dumped his car to the location where we arrested him,” a distance of about five miles, Blanas said.

Other lingering questions include a possible motive in the killings, which claimed the lives of Soltys’ wife, Lyubov, 22; son Sergey; uncle Petr Kukharskiy, 75; aunt Galina Kukharskaya, 74; and two cousins, Dimitriy Kukharskiy, and Tatyana Kukharskaya, both 9.

In praising the collaborative efforts of law enforcement, Blanas said detectives had pursued more than 900 tips. He also took pains to thank Sacramento’s Ukrainian community--70,000 emigres from the former Soviet Union--for their help and cooperation.

That comment was particularly welcome by immigrants, some of whom felt hurt by earlier remarks by officials who said cultural barriers were hindering their ability to assemble a clear portrait of the suspect.

In their own afternoon news conference, the fathers of Dimitriy and Tatyana returned Blanas’ thanks, saying they had no words to express their gratitude to all who had helped them.

Boris Kukharskiy, Nikolay Soltys’ cousin and the father of victim Tatyana, singled out a woman who had tried to revive his daughter in the street after she had been stabbed.

“He will remember your sharing and your help for all his life,” a translator said. “It’s impossible to forget.”

On Thursday, it was unclear whether Stepan Soltys would receive the $120,000 in reward money offered for information leading to his brother’s arrest. Gov. Gray Davis contributed $50,000 in state funds to that sum this week.

While detectives met with Soltys in a small interrogation room, Sheriff’s Department helicopters circled overhead for hours back at the capture site, broadcasting warnings to residents to stay inside as dogs searched the area. Investigators hope the gully, choked with blackberry brambles, shaded by oak and eucalyptus trees and threaded by a creek, might conceal evidence connected to the killings.

Watching news reports of the arrest, neighbors expressed horror as they realized that Soltys may have been lurking in the adjacent woods for days.

“I let my daughter walk home every day from that bus stop,” said Tori Harrison, a 29-year-old mother of a sixth-grader, pointing to a path worn smooth by neighborhood children who play there.

It was a great relief, she said, to watch on television as a sheriff’s patrol car took Soltys downtown for booking.

Across town, at the gray duplex where Lyubov Soltys was killed, six parishioners from the family’s Bethany Slavic Church packed up their belongings, stuffing them in plastic bags and boxes and hauling them away in two cars.

One woman said the arrest was good news because of the fear Soltys had sowed while on the loose.

“Everybody was so afraid,” said the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The whole family was getting together and sleeping in one place.”

Lyubov Soltys, who joined her husband in Sacramento earlier this year despite allegedly suffering abuse at his hands in the Ukraine, will be buried in Ukraine, beside her son, the woman said. She declined further comment, but added a parting blessing as she turned away to wrap glassware from Lyubov’s kitchen cabinets:

“Go with God.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Rampage and the Capture

Authorities captured Nikolay Soltys, 27, who they believe killed six family members.

Aug. 20

Pregnant wife found slain.

Elderly aunt and uncle and two young cousins found slain.

Aug. 21

Body of Soltys’ son, Sergey, is found.

Aug. 30

Soltys is captured hiding in his mothers backyard.

*

The Capture

How police and witnesses describe the arrest of Soltys at his mother’s house Thursday:

7:45 a.m.

Stepan Soltys, the suspect’s brother, is eating breakfast, looks through glass in back door, sees Nikolay crouched beneath a discarded desk in backyard.

Nikolay motions Stepan to be quiet. Stepan assembles fearful relatives in garage. They jump into car and flee, unaware of plainclothes police watching the house.

Car stops at Aaron Brothers Art Mart. Stepan jumps out, shaking, cell phone in hand, repeatedly dialing 119. Store employee leads him inside, helps dial 911.

Teams of officers close in on house from two directions, see suspect’s feet sticking out from under desk, next to old refrigerator.

8 a.m.

Soltys, unarmed, raises his hands, surrenders without struggle. Investigators believe he sneaked into backyard overnight from woods near house.

Source: Times staff and wire reports *

Times staff writers Jenifer Warren, Geoffrey Mohan and Virginia Ellis contributed to this story.

*

MORE INSIDE

Relieved: Capture ends a reign of terror and embarrassment in immigrant community. A22