Anastasia King, who was from Kyrgyzstan and went to the United States as a mail-order bride, went missing. Her mother called the police and asked for a welfare check.
But as the investigation went on, a dark truth came out, and the police soon found out that Anastasia had died in a scary way. “Grave Mysteries: Hidden Truths” on Investigation Discovery tells the story of the horrible murder and how the police were able to figure out who did it. Let’s learn more about this case and find out where Anastasia’s murderer is right now, shall we?
How Did Anastasia King Die?
Anastasia King is from Kyrgyzstan. She met her husband, Indle Gifford King Jr., when she was 18 years old, in 1998. They met through a foreign matchmaking service, and Anastasia’s parents were glad to find her a good match. As a person, Indle was pretty well off. He ran a rental business and made a good monthly income from it. He also had an MBA from the University of Chicago, which made him a pretty good bachelor. So, Anastasia, who was said to be a kind and happy teenager, was happy to start a new life in a new country.
But Anastasia had no idea that the United States was full of terrible things. Once she and Indle got to the United States, they moved into their home in Snohomish County, Washington, where they hoped to have a great life. But when the couple went to see Anastasia’s parents in September 2000, things got bad. Anastasia and Indle went back to Washington State on September 21, 2000, but the Kyrgyzstan native’s mother couldn’t get in touch with her for a while, so the police started looking for them.
After that, Indle Gifford said that his wife had supposedly dumped him before returning to Washington State. But when official records showed that Indle and Anastasia had entered the state together, authorities knew there was a different side to the story. Still, it took the police several months to find Anastasia’s body in a makeshift grave in a garbage dump near Marysville. Even though the victim was naked, an autopsy showed that she had been strangled to death, and the police saw bruises all over her body.
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Who put Anastasia King to death?
At first, it was hard for the police to find out what happened to Anastasia King because they had no leads or eyewitnesses. From the outside, her marriage to Indle seemed fine, but Anastasia was also a student at the University of Washington and was well-liked by her friends. But, even though the police looked through the area and talked to some of her friends more than once, no obvious suspects came to mind.
But things changed when the police read Anastasia’s journal and found out that her husband often sexually assaulted her and made threats against her. Indle would abuse her when he thought she was disobeying him. He would take her money and threaten to send her away, but he would also hurt her. The police also found out that Indle had been divorced from a mail-order bride before, which cost him about $55,000.
People who knew Indle said he didn’t want Anastasia to treat him the same way. But because of the way he treated her, Anastasia kept pulling away from her husband, which led to constant fights. Even though Indle told the police at first that she had left him before she came back to their house in Washington State, official records showed that he was lying. But since Indle wouldn’t say much to the police, they decided to look into Daniel Larson, who lived with and was friends with Indle.
Daniel was in prison for a crime unrelated to Anastasia’s disappearance when the police asked him about it. Daniel was a registered sex offender. At first, he said he wasn’t guilty, but he soon admitted that he strangled her to death while Indle sat on her chest to make her unconscious. Also, he showed the police officers where he and Indle had buried Anastasia’s body. So, with a dead body and a statement that pointed the finger at Indle King, the police arrested and charged him with murder.
What happened to Indle Gifford King Jr.?
Daniel Larson pleaded guilty to second-degree murder when he went to court. He also agreed to testify against Indle King in exchange for a lighter sentence. Because of this, he was given a prison sentence of 20 years in 2002, which was later raised to 28 years. On the other hand, Indle King said he wasn’t guilty and seemed ready to face the jury at his trial. Even though Daniel was a hard witness who often contradicted himself, the prosecution soon found out that Indle had tried to get several people, including his friend, to lie for him in order to win the case.
Most of these people testified against Indle, and when Indle himself took the stand, the jury was sure he was guilty. So, Indle King was found guilty of first-degree murder and tampering with witnesses in 2002. He was given a sentence of 28 years and 11 months in prison. As a result, Indle is still in prison at the Stafford Creek Corrections Center in Aberdeen, Washington. He is still not eligible for parole, so he can’t get out.
Anastasia was born in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, a poor city in the former Soviet bloc, to two poor music teachers. She was their only child. As a young child, she told adults poems and fairy tales she had learned by heart. Anastasia seemed to have gotten her parents’ musical skills as well, and she showed promise as a classical pianist.
She was a beautiful young woman about to start a new life. She had the looks of a model and the personality of a young adult. Anastasia wanted to travel the world, especially to the United States. With the help of her parents, Anastasia met some people in the modeling business and started looking through catalogs for people to date.
It didn’t take her long to start writing to an American man. He courted the family by writing to them and going to see them. After a short courtship and some meetings in Kyrgyzstan, the couple got married when they got back to Seattle.
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Anastasia told her parents in her first letters home how much she liked living in the U.S. But after about a year of being married, the police were called to the King home because of a fight between family members. Anastasia showed the police officers scratches on her chest and stomach that she said her husband had given her.
In her diary, Anastasia wrote about how her husband hurt her and made her afraid to leave him because he said he would kill her if she did. Anastasia decided to go back to her home country to stay with her parents for a long time. Soon after, her husband caught up with her and brought her back to Seattle. The last time anyone saw Anastasia was then.
When they couldn’t reach their beloved daughter by phone, her parents went crazy. Her husband told everyone that Anastasia didn’t come back to Seattle with him because she left him in Moscow when she changed planes. Her parents went to Moscow to look for their only child, but they couldn’t find her. They looked in every hospital and morgue, but to no avail. The Mountlake Terrace Police Department got a report of a missing person, and they soon thought they were looking into a murder. In December 2000, Anastasia’s body was found strangled and buried in a shallow grave in Washington. This was the worst thing that anyone could have feared. Her husband and another person were caught for killing someone.
When Anastasia’s parents came to Seattle to help look for her, their families and friends came together to help. Also, they gave emergency money to help people pay for housing, food, transportation, and clothes. Finding an interpreter who could help people talk was the most important thing. As they waited for the two trials of the men who killed Anastasia, their victim advocate helped them deal with problems as they came up. Families and Friends helped with immigration, gave support in court, and talked to the media. After the trials, jury members called Families and Friends to talk about what they had heard and seen during the trials.
After Anastasia was killed, lawmakers in Washington State passed a law to screen potential suitors in the “mail-order bride” business. Maria Cantwell, a U.S. senator, took Anastasia’s story to Washington, D.C., and was able to get a law passed there. With the help of their Families and Friends advocate, Anastasia’s parents testified in court. Even though nothing can bring Anastasia back, these new laws may protect another young woman from what killed her.
But the daughter’s body hasn’t been buried yet, and prosecutors now say that her American husband strangled her with the help of his male lover. Perhaps the most surprising thing is that the older Solovyovs still love the country that killed their daughter. They love the United States so much that they want to become citizens themselves.
At first, Anastasia Solovyova King was the only one who thought about moving to the United States. She was the daughter of two music teachers from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. She was good at piano and chorus, and she also studied English hard, babysat for an American diplomat in Bishkek, and when she was old enough, she joined a bridal agency that would introduce her to American bachelors.
Even though she was successful in Kyrgyzstan, it was clear that the 18-year-old Russian thought her life would be better if she left the former Soviet republic and went to the United States.
So, when the mail-order bride agency sent her a short, balding man who was almost 40 years old, she and her parents were hopeful about Indle King Jr.’s finer qualities. He was smart, attentive, well-dressed, and he spoke highly of his upper middle-class life and family back in America. The Solovyov family was sold after a few meetings.
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