By Cathy Logg
Herald Writer
Anastasia King’s mother bowed her head Thursday and began to cry quietly in the back row of the packed Snohomish County courtroom as a clerk read the jury verdict pronouncing Indle Gifford King Jr. guilty of murdering her daughter.
"My heart is overflowing," Alevtina "Alla" Solovieva said afterward during a press conference with Mountlake Terrace police and county prosecutors.
"I really have no joy in the verdict," she said. "I have a bitterness that we no longer have our daughter."
Asked if she could ever forgive the man who was her son-in-law, she said that God says if a person repents of his sins, he should be forgiven, but Indle King hasn’t repented.
"I have no anger, I have no dark thoughts in my heart. I have light in my heart," she said. "Let this man think of himself and let him find his own way to forgiveness."
Solovieva and her husband, Anatoliy Soloviev, of Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, hope their daughter’s death will result in legislation to better protect other women who place their pictures in catalogs seeking American mates.
One proposal currently being considered by the Legislature, SB 6412, would require matchmaking agencies to let foreign women know that they are allowed to see background checks and marital histories on their prospective grooms in Washington.
Anastasia King was Indle King’s second mail-order bride. The first left him, and he resented the bitter divorce that he said cost him $55,000. Prosecutors say King and Daniel Larson, a tenant in King’s home, killed Anastasia King because Indle King wasn’t about to be humiliated by an immigrant bride a second time.
"This is a man I entrusted my daughter to, even though she would say to me, ‘It’s very difficult to live with him,’ and I would say to her, ‘Maybe you’re exaggerating things.’ The fact that he gained our confidence, that we trusted him, turned out to be like a knife in the back," Solovieva said.
"Today, justice has triumphed," she said. "We found so much compassion in America, so many good friends, that despite the loss of my daughter it does not allow me to lose my faith in justice."
She praised the police and prosecutors involved in the case.
"We are very grateful. Our hearts are filled to overflowing to these people who participated so ardently in this, who … traveled on this path and supported us. I’m so overjoyed that I met these people. They are so close to me in spirit. They are so plain, so direct, so just," she said. She got up from the table and faced them, bowed deeply and moved her arm in a sweeping arch.
"My heart is overflowing," she said.
Her husband expressed his anger at Indle King for his actions after Anastasia King disappeared, when Indle King claimed she had left him at the airport in Moscow instead of returning with him.
"The murderer must be punished," he said.
Indle King apparently thought because they were pensioners they wouldn’t be able to come to America to search for her, Soloviev said.
During the trial, Solovieva came to realize how difficult life with Indle King was for her daughter, she said. After the Kings visited Kyrgyzstan in September 2000, Anastasia King left for America intent on divorcing her husband, Solovieva said. Anastasia King couldn’t prove to anyone that he abused her, so she began gathering documents she stashed in a safe deposit box.
"She was not as gifted a speaker to prove all these things," Solovieva said. "As she was leaving to return to the U.S., she said, ‘Mama, we’ve been waging a battle a long time now.’
"She probably felt as she was dying that her friends would discover her safe deposit box and discover how difficult life was for her, because she was a person of few words," she said.
"The battle ended today," Solovieva said.
You can call Herald Writer Cathy Logg at 425-339-3437
or send e-mail to logg@heraldnet.com.
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