Out for a stroll in Moscow's popular Izmailovo Park, a hapless passerby stumbled across the body of a woman who had been stabbed repeatedly in the chest and left to rot, Interfax news agency reported Wednesday.
Investigators dispatched to the site concluded that the victim had been a 43-year-old local woman, Interfax reported, citing an unnamed source in law enforcement. The victim succumbed to multiple stabs wounds to the chest early Tuesday, the report said.
The Moscow branch of Russia's Investigative Committee announced Wednesday that it had launched a murder case to elucidate the circumstances surrounding the crime.
This latest incident adds to a list of gruesome happenings at Izmailovo Park, an area known for its dense wooded areas and labyrinthine pathways.
In September, the lifeless body of a young woman, later identified as a Kygyz native, was discovered in the park. Her on-again, off-again boyfriend — a man who allegedly referred to himself as the "forest maniac" in correspondences with her parents — was detained on suspicion of having strangled her in the woods with her scarf, tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets reported at the time.
In 2011, a man's body was pulled from one of the park's sprawling ponds, Lenta.ru reported.
Blame for the park's grisly underbelly does not lie exclusively with human beings. In 2008, a 55-year-old Moscow man was killed by a pack of vicious stray dogs, media reported at the time.
