In the Urals, a garden watchman was sentenced after leaving behind the corpse of his murdered common‑law partner.

      A sentence was handed down today in Kamensk-Uralsky in the criminal case concerning the murder of a woman and the theft from another woman's clothing, crimes with which 46-year-old local resident Maxim Popov, previously convicted, is charged.

      The murder was committed during the period from January to March of last year, the Sverdlovsk Region Prosecutor's Office reports. Popov and his 36-year-old partner took work at a gardening cooperative, where they were provided a house to live in. While drinking together, a conflict arose between the partners over the use of narcotics, during which Popov began to strangle the woman with his bare hands. She died at the scene from fractured laryngeal cartilages and mechanical asphyxia. Popov dumped her body in the cellar. The mummified body of the woman was not discovered until November, when new watchmen stumbled upon it after moving in.

      It was also established that on April 3 of the same year, Popov, while intoxicated near a shop, stealthily pulled a mobile phone worth more than 17,000 rubles out of the pocket of an unfamiliar woman's jeans.

      Taking into account the position of the public prosecutor, the Krasnogorsky District Court of Kamensk-Uralsky on Tuesday, December 2, sentenced Maxim Popov, charged under Part 1 of Article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (murder) and paragraph "g", Part 2 of Article 158 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (theft committed from clothing), to 13.5 years in a special-regime penal colony.