Child

My uncle, a police investigator, told me about a 40-year-old man arrested in our city in the 1990s on suspicion of murdering an infant and his father. During interrogation, the detainee, who had previously worked as an obstetrician (let's call him Mikhail), immediately confessed to the child's murder. When asked who killed the baby's father, he told the following story.

Before the murder, he worked in a maternity hospital and delivered a woman's baby. He knew her husband—they were friends, and Mikhail often visited them. He also delivered his wife's baby. When the baby was born, the woman suffered greatly and screamed that she hated the child and that she would kill him. The obstetrician told the father that this sometimes happens—perhaps his wife had suffered mental trauma in the past, which is why she had such an attitude toward the child.

The father mainly took care of the child. His mother felt uncomfortable even being in the same room with him, and when her husband came home from work, she was eternally grateful for freeing her from childcare.

A few months later, her husband went on a business trip, and his wife stayed home. A week later, her father received a telegram saying his wife was seriously ill and that he should return. He returned urgently, and his wife told him that her baby son was to blame for her illness.

When she was already recovering, her father, while descending the stairs (incidentally, they lived in a private two-story house), stepped on a child's toy and almost fell. He didn't think anything of it and went to bed.

The next day, returning from work, he spent a long time calling for his wife from the hallway. When he went inside, he found her dead under the stairs—she had also stepped on a toy, lost her balance, fell, and broken her spine.

 The father became depressed and began to repeat the same things his wife had said. A few days later, the obstetrician, who knew about the whole story because they were friends, decided to visit him. Hearing that he was planning to kill his son, he injected him with a sedative before leaving. He didn't dare report it to the police, thinking that if his friend got some sleep, the obsession would subside.

The next day, he returned to his friend's apartment. His friend was sleeping in the kitchen. He couldn't wake him up, and soon he began to feel dizzy. Then he noticed that all the knobs on the gas stove were turned to the maximum. His friend couldn't turn them himself, as the sedative was strong enough to keep him asleep until lunch. He turned off the gas, went to the nursery, and found the baby near the slammed door.

 Mikhail said he realized at that moment that his late wife, and then her husband, were right: their child was the product of hell. The next thing he remembered was standing over the infant's mutilated corpse, clutching a kitchen knife.

He was caught the next day, as neighbors saw him leaving the house, covered in blood.

Naturally, no one at the police believed him. Mikhail was convicted of double murder with particular cruelty and sentenced to life imprisonment.