Murdered his father, stepmother, her parents and two friends in the family then blamed the killings on the Russian Mafia.

Was sentenced to eight years imprisonment in March 1998.

Alexi Polevoi

According to supporters, evidence failed to show how Alexi Polevoi could single-handedly have murdered his father, stepmother, her parents and two friends in the family house at Louveciennes.

One of the victims was a former army officer turned bodyguard and the killings appeared to be professional hit -- 15 shots fired, from three different guns, with only one round missing its target.

On March, 1998 -- eight years after the carnage -- investigators have been accused of turning a blind eye to evidence of Russian mafia involvement.

Although Alexi -- who was 16 at the time of the killings -- admitted his guilt after police found his fingerprints on the murder weapons, he retracted his confession nine months later, claiming that he had been forced to load the guns by a masked Russian who had threatened to kill him, his mother, his girlfriend and his baby sister unless he "confessed" to the crime.

However, magistrates and police maintained that Alexi was a fantasist as well as a mass-murderer. His dream-scenario linking the killings with the business dealings of his father - Yevgeni Polevoi, 42 - was dismissed as irrelevant by the judge ruling over the case. Alexi, the prosecutor insisted, was motivated purely by rage against his heavy-drinking father, who delighted in humiliating him in public. As for the other victims, they died because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The prosecution failed to take into account dad's own fears of assassination by unscrupulous business contacts.

Mr Polevoi, a Soviet apparatchik turned entrepreneur, was fired at in Moscow shortly before his death and again while out hunting. Five months after the Louveciennes killings, dad's key business associate was found dead in his Moscow office. In December 1995, Polevoi's brother, Dmitri, who had inherited his business affairs, also died from bullet wounds, in Belorussia.

Mayhem.net

Teenage mass murderer jailed in France

March 14, 1998

A French juvenile court has convicted a Russian teenager of murdering his father and five friends and relations and sentenced him to eight years imprisonment.

The teenager, identified in court under French law only as Alexi P, was 16 at the time of the killings.

Although he initially confessed to the killings, he later retracted his statement and claimed they were the work of the Russian Mafia.

The prosecution had called for a sentence of between 18 and 20 years for Alexi, who spent three years in custody awaiting trial.

In February 1995 Alexi called police to a house in Louveciennes, a suburb west of Paris.

The officers discovered the bodies of six Russians - those of his father, a wealthy businessman, his step-mother, her parents and two family friends. Only his young half-sister was left alive.

Police said the teenager's fingerprints were on the three weapons used.

There were gunpowder traces on his hands and before calling the police, he smoked a cigar, drank a beer and drove into Paris.

Several months after Alexi confessed he gave investigators a different version of events.

He said the killings were "guided" by a mysterious hooded "man in black" seeking "a red file".

The mystery killer forced him to finish off his father, he said, and warned him against talking, saying "See what we're capable of."

Defence lawyers also brought in a series of character witnesses to testify that Alexi had a non-violent personality.

They argued that the theory of a mafia link was strengthened after Alexi's uncle was shot dead ten months later in Belarus.

The argument was dismissed by prosecutors as "fantasist".

They claimed Alexi hated his father who, though financially generous was a violent and drunken bully.

Alexi Polevoi

March 14, 1998

A French court has sentenced a Russian-born teenager to eight years in jail after finding him guilty of killing six people, including his father, a wealthy businessman.

The nineteen-year-old who was identified only as Alexi originally confessed the murders three years ago, but later retracted, saying they were the work of the Russian mafia.

The prosecution had called for a much longer sentence of eighteen to twenty years.