Accused Mass Killer Found Dead in Cell

Nikolay Soltys, the 28-year-old immigrant accused of last summer’s rampage slaying of his wife, young son and four other relatives, was discovered hanging in his jail cell early Wednesday, authorities said.

Jail officials said Soltys apparently committed suicide using a makeshift rope he fashioned from a plastic bag and strips of cloth, then wedged behind a wall-mounted light fixture in his cell, out of sight of a surveillance camera.

“If someone is bent on killing themselves, they’re going to do it,” said Sheriff’s Capt. Jim Cooper, who oversees the Sacramento County Jail. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

But Soltys’ attorney said he considered the death suspicious and questioned how the Ukrainian immigrant had been able to pull off a suicide while under intense scrutiny in a high-security cell.

“I’m baffled,” said lawyer Tommy Clinkenbeard. “How ... did something like this happen with Nikolay Soltys being watched 24 hours a day with a camera?”

The death brought an abrupt conclusion to a case that shocked Sacramento and sent waves of fear through the region’s large immigrant community.

Soltys, who immigrated to the United States three years ago, vanished after the August slayings of his pregnant wife, Lyubov; an uncle, Petr Kukharskiy, 75; an aunt, Galina Kukharskaya, 74; and two cousins, Dimitriy Kukharskiy and Tatyana Kukharskaya, both 9. The body of the accused killer’s 3-year-old son, Sergey, was discovered a day later in a cardboard box tossed on a trash heap in a remote vacant lot, his throat slashed like the others.

The slayings put the slim, quiet young man on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list, and prompted authorities to whisk Soltys’ surviving relatives into protective custody. Many Ukrainian immigrants, including some who did not know the accused killer, expressed fear of him in the days that followed.

After a 10-day, coast-to-coast manhunt, authorities found Soltys hiding in his mother’s backyard. He was captured moments after his relatives, who were having breakfast, spotted him and fled the home in terror.

Barefoot, disheveled and carrying a potato peeler and a backpack with the knife believed to have been used in the murders, Soltys had been hiding for several days in an abandoned house not far from the suburban duplex he had shared with his wife and son. He then traveled on foot at night to reach the home of his relatives.

Soltys suggested in a note he left in his abandoned vehicle that he killed his relatives because they were “poisoning” his reputation. He later told investigators that his wife had been disrespectful. Their troubles began years earlier in Ukraine, where her family accused Soltys of regularly beating her and at one point going after her with an ax.

“Of course it is sad news that a person died, even though he did commit so horrible a crime,” the Rev. Valentin L. Kalinovskiy, a family friend, said after learning of Soltys’ death. “But it is over, and it’s going to be a little bit easier for the family and our community. No more trials, no more decisions to make.”

In jail, Soltys was put on suicide watch when he arrived, then spent three days in the facility’s psychiatric unit in late October, when he attempted to tattoo himself with a pencil. Soltys again landed in the unit for 17 days in late November and early December after he inexplicably jumped from the second tier of his jail housing unit, breaking his heel.

During those stays, Soltys refused psychiatric medication, Clinkenbeard said. The defense attorney said Soltys remained profoundly depressed throughout his incarceration, prone to fits of uncontrollable crying. Mental health professionals from UC Davis Medical Center evaluated him as recently as Dec. 11, concluding that he was not suicidal.

Clinkenbeard said he disagreed with that evaluation and raised concerns about his client to authorities, but was unable to sway them. In recent days, however, Soltys appeared finally to have taken an interest in his own defense, after weeks of refusing to engage in it in any meaningful way, the attorney said.

Clinkenbeard said jail officials should have paid more attention to the possibility that Soltys might try to kill himself.

“We’ve known from the beginning he was very depressed,” the lawyer said, adding that “the potential has always been there for him to commit suicide.”

Sheriff Lou Blanas, who oversees the county lockup, said he and jail officials had engaged in a round of “second-guessing” but came away “satisfied this is a suicide” and convinced that jail staff had done everything possible to prevent it.

“This is not a happy day,” Blanas said, adding that he could never put enough guards in the jail “to hold the hand of every inmate to prevent a suicide.”

The sheriff said there was no sign of a struggle involved in the death. Soltys was kept in isolation for his own safety, given the notoriety of his crime and the possibility that another inmate might try to harm him.

The body will be taken to neighboring San Joaquin County for an independent autopsy. The death is being investigated by the Sacramento County sheriff’s homicide team and district attorney’s investigators.

Clinkenbeard, however, said an outside investigation seemed warranted because the Sheriff’s Department runs the jail and the district attorney was prosecuting Soltys.

If the case had gone to trial, Clinkenbeard said, he would probably have used an insanity defense. Soltys, he said, had breathing problems at birth and suffered debilitating headaches as a youth. He grew up in a part of Ukraine that was not far from the Chernobyl nuclear plant and was laced by heavily polluted rivers, raising the possibility that he suffered some mental illness caused by the environment, Clinkenbeard said.

The makeshift rope was made from the inmate’s bedsheet or part of the cast he was wearing after his December jump, and a plastic bag he obtained from the jail commissary, Blanas said. The cell’s ceilings were low, so the 6-foot Soltys would have had to lower his body until the noose clenched around his neck and strangled him, jail officials said.

Cooper said the closed-circuit camera captures only a view of the bunk bed in the 7-by-11-foot cell. Soltys died in an area near the toilet, which is not in view. In addition, a microphone in the cell that is monitored from a central station manned by deputies picked up no unusual noises, Blanas said.

Jail deputies fed breakfast to Soltys and noticed nothing amiss during a 6 a.m. check of the cell, Cooper said.

But when they came around for the 7 a.m. check, the small window on the solid door had been covered with a film of soap.

Deputies opened the door and found Soltys hanging from the crude rope, facing away from the wall. Attempts to revive him failed, Blanas said.

The sheriff said no suicide note was immediately found. It was the second suicide this year at the jail, which normally averages about two a year, he said.