Tetris co-author Pokhilko was killed by Russian mafia, new film claims

On the spot, they found the bodies of the 44-year-old co-author of Theatrice with a slit throat and a bloody knife in his hand, his 38-year-old wife and 12-year-old son - a woman and a boy were beaten with hammers and then stabbed to death.

A new documentary series The Tetris Murders, dedicated to the mysterious murder of the family of Vladimir Pokhilko, a man who is called one of the developers of the famous game, has been released on the Discovery+ channel, according to the New York Post. The authors believe that the official version: Pokhilko killed his wife and son, and then committed suicide, is incorrect, and in reality all three became victims of the Russian mafia.

On September 22, 1998, the Palo Alto police were called to the address where Vladimir Pokhilko's family lived. On the spot, they found the bodies of the 44-year-old co-author of Theatrice with a slit throat and a bloody knife in his hand, his 38-year-old wife and 12-year-old son - a woman and a boy were beaten with hammers and then stabbed to death. The note, written in Pokhilko's handwriting, read: “I was eaten alive. Vladimir. Just remember that I exist. Devil". The forensic expert ruled that all the murders were committed by Pokhilko himself, whose company AnimaTek was experiencing serious financial difficulties at the time. The case was closed with a decision that there had been a double homicide and suicide.

However, some Palo Alto police investigators who studied the circumstances of the case believed and continue to believe that in reality Pokhilko was the same victim as his wife and son. One of the investigators who was then at the scene of the crime, Sandra Brown, says in the new film that many things raised questions. For example, the fact that Pokhilko's blood spatter on the glass patio door contradicted the location of his body. “Something was wrong. The blood and the knife were not related. I thought, "This man didn't kill himself."

The note was also strange. Pokhilko's friend Grigory Shapirshtein said after his death that he was far from religion and never used such vocabulary. In addition, this note was written in a third person, which also raises questions.

The bodies of Pokhilko's wife and son were found in their beds, both were in pajamas. The woman was killed with one hammer, the boy with another, then both were stabbed to death with a large hunting knife. Pokhilko also committed suicide with himself in a peculiar way: the knife was plunged into the neck with such force that the larynx and spinal cord were visible through a wide wound. His body lay next to his son's bed.

It was also surprising that the next day after the massacre, FBI officers appeared at the crime scene. “I remember I asked: “Why are they here? We just have a case of domestic violence, a triple homicide in a small bedroom." According to Brown, members of the Russian community also came to her, claiming that Pokhilko was innocent and believing that the murder weapons - the hammer and knife - symbolized the Soviet hammer and sickle.

The best-selling video game of all time, Tetris was released in 1984. It was developed by a programmer, an employee of the Computing Center of the USSR Academy of Sciences Alexei Pajitnov. Pakhilko, clinical psychologist, employee of the Moscow Medical Institute. Sechenov, was a friend of Pajitnov and was interested in computer psychodiagnostic methods. Pakhilko immediately saw Tetris as a great opportunity for learning and testing, and persuaded Pajitnov to develop ways to port the game to other platforms. Despite the fact that Pokhilko was not a developer, he played an important role in the development and promotion of Tetris, which is why he is called one of the co-authors of the game.

Despite the fact that the game quickly became a sensation on a planetary scale, due to the peculiarities of the law on intellectual property in the USSR, Pajitnov and Pakhilko did not receive much benefit from this. In 1989, they moved to the US, where they founded AnimaTek, which released a new, less popular game, El-Fish. And in 1996, Pajitnov joined forces with a Russian oligarch to found Tetris, leaving Pokhilko in charge of AnimaTek. Things went better for Pajitnov, he finally began to receive royalties from sales of the game, while Pokhilko did not do too well. According to the official version, it was financial difficulties that led him to murder and suicide.

However, as the authors of the new film found, just two days after the murder, the FBI organized crime and racketeering department sent a subpoena to examine Pokhilko's bank accounts. This speed of response indicates that the FBI was investigating the Mafia trail in this case even before the murder took place. According to Brown, she spoke with people who know the details of the case, but after 20-plus years, they still fear for their lives. And this means that the killers of the Pokhilko family are still very strong.