Two San Fernando Valley men sentenced to death for killing five people more than a decade ago had their sentences reduced to life in prison by President Joe Biden on Monday.
In 2007, Iouri Mikhel and Jurijus Kadamovas were sentenced to death for the murder of five people in a kidnapping-for-ransom scheme. Prosecutors say the two dumped the body in a remote reservoir in Northern California.
Michal and Kadamovas were among 37 criminals whose death sentences were commuted by Biden to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Biden did not commute the sentences of three other federal death row inmates convicted of mass murder and terrorism: Robert Bowers, convicted of the 2018 mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue; Dzhokhar Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing; Dylann Roof, convicted of the 2015 mass shooting at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina
“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and feel pain for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable losses,” Biden said in a statement. We are more convinced than ever that we must end the use of the death penalty at the federal level.”
Michal and Kadamovas were Soviet-born immigrants who hatched the kidnapping plot while working at the aquarium on Ventura Boulevard. Starting in 2001, they kidnapped five people in four months.
They lured victims by offering them business deals and solicited more than $5.5 million from their families. They received more than $1 million in ransom but killed their victims by strangulation anyway.
The two drove to New Mellons Reservoir near Yosemite to dump the body.
Their victims were Nick Kharabadze, 29, of Woodland Hills; Alexander Umansky, 35, of Sherman Oaks; ; Rita Pekler, 39, from West Hollywood; George Safiev, 37, from Beverly Hills; Meyer Muscatel , 58, of Sherman Oaks.
After being imprisoned, Mikel hatched multiple escape plans, including breaking out of a detention center in San Bernardino using bolt cutters, pepper shakers, a rake and a fence knife, and escaping on a motorcycle with Kadamovas . But the plan was foiled when a guard found a letter detailing the plot in a trash can.
President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to expand the death penalty to “drug dealers and human traffickers.” During Trump’s first term, 13 inmates on federal death row were executed, restarting the federal death penalty for the first time in about 20 years.
By the end of his first term, Trump had commuted the sentences of 70 people and pardoned 73 others, including former campaign and White House adviser Stephen K. Bannon, who had been charged with crimes Federal fraud and money laundering charges for defrauding Trump supporters.
