LOS ANGELES — A former Los Angeles Police Department civilian employee was convicted Monday of first-degree murder for killing his wife and teenage son in their Valley Glen apartment.
Viktor Yuryevich Glukhovskiy — who worked in the LAPD’s Security Services Division — was convicted of the Dec. 26, 2018, killings of his wife, Natali, 39, and their 13-year-old son, Alex, who were each shot in the head in their beds in the family’s second-floor apartment in the 13800 block of Oxnard Street.
Jurors found true special circumstance allegations of lying in wait and multiple murders. But the jury found untrue a special circumstance allegation of murder for financial gain. Prosecutors had suggested the killings were done in part to cash in on insurance policies, but also so Glukhovskiy could begin a new life with another woman.
A court hearing was set for Thursday, when victim-impact statements will be given. Sentencing for the 49-year-old defendant was scheduled for Jan. 17. He faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“This is a case about a family annihilated,” Deputy District Attorney Dan Akemon told the downtown Los Angeles jury hearing during opening statements of the trial last month.
The prosecutor said Glukhovskiy had a “dark secret” that he was in love with another woman, was “willing to murder” to be with her, and had been plotting the killings for months.
The deputy district attorney said Glukhovskiy left the apartment that morning, turned off his cell phone to try to conceal his whereabouts, circled back in his distinctive white Jeep that was seen on surveillance video, and changed his clothing and donned a hoodie and gloves after parking in the neighborhood.
Akemon told the panel that the gait of a hooded man who was seen on surveillance video walking outside the apartment complex early that morning is “identical” to the way the defendant is seen walking in surveillance footage subsequently taken in January 2019…
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