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Maksim Gelman 200 Years

January 19, 2012 by · Comments Off on Maksim Gelman 200 Years 

Maksim Gelman 200 YearsMaksim Gelman 200 Years, A 24-year-old man who admitted killing four people and wounding four others in a stabbing rampage in New York City last winter was sentenced to 200 years in prison Wednesday as he cackled and insulted his victims, disrespected the judge and insisted he wasn’t the bad guy.

Maksim Gelman, born in Ukraine, pleaded guilty in November in Brooklyn to murder and other charges in a two-day spree that included stabbing his stepfather and two others to death, fatally running down a pedestrian, stealing a car and attacking a subway passenger.

On Wednesday, he got the maximum sentence for each of 13 counts; some of the sentences will run consecutively, resulting in the 200-year term. He was awaiting sentencing on the subway assault, which occurred in Manhattan.

“You are a violent predator and sociopath,” Judge Vincent Del Giudice said.

Gelman was unruly in court, fidgeting, laughing, yelling at the judge and the family and friends of some of his victims who came to speak, and had to be removed from the courtroom once.

“I’m not the bad guy here. These people did bad things to me,” Gelman said in a rambling statement in which he blamed his victims and also the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, claiming he was a drug dealer who was being followed. “It’s not my fault that all this happened.”

Gelman’s deadly spree on Feb. 11, 2011, started with a family argument over whether he could use his mother’s car. He stabbed his stepfather to death in their Brooklyn home. His mother didn’t appear in court Wednesday.

Gelman took off in the car and drove to the home of an acquaintance, Yelena Bulchenko. Bulchenko’s friends have said he was obsessed with the 20-year-old woman and imagined a romantic relationship with her. Gelman claims she was a drug addict who worked for him, and set him up for robbery.

She wasn’t home, but Gelman stabbed her 56-year-old mother to death, then waited nearly nine hours with the body for the daughter to return. When she walked in, he stabbed her 11 times, killing her, authorities said.

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