Her Skin Became Luxury Handbags: Ukrainian Model Chosen as ‘Pink Bride’ for Ritual in Dubai

Her Skin Became Luxury Handbags: Ukrainian Model Chosen as ‘Pink Bride’ for Ritual in Dubai

PART1

Three exclusive cream-colored bags and one men’s belt found during a search of a private villa turned out to be made not from calfskin, but from the skin of a twenty-six-year-old Ukrainian citizen. DNA testing confirmed that the material from which these accessories were made belonged to Alina Sokolova, who was officially listed as missing after a boating accident .

  Alina Sokolova lived in a residential area of ​​Kyiv.  in an old panel high-rise building, where the elevator broke down every week, and the hot water was turned off for the entire summer.  She lived with her mother and younger brother, who had just entered college.  The family was catastrophically short of money.  Mom worked as a nurse and earned pennies, which was barely enough for food.

  My father left the family 10 years ago and didn’t help in any way.  Alina tried to carry the family on her own.  She was not a professional top model like the ones you see in magazines. The girl earned extra money by filming for cheap clothing catalogs, performing at promotional events in supermarkets, and occasionally appearing as an extra in music videos.

It was hard work for little money. Loans for household appliances and apartment debts grew like a snowball. Collectors started calling in the evenings, threatening legal action.  It was at this moment that a woman wrote to Alina in despair on Instagram.   The woman’s profile looked expensive and respectable.

  Her name was Victoria, and she introduced herself as a scout for the Dubai modeling agency Golden Sense. The message said that Alina had the ideal type for working at private events in the Emirates. Victoria suggested meeting and discussing the details.  The meeting took place not in an office, but in the lobby of an expensive hotel in the city center.

  Victoria came with a folder of documents and a tablet.  She got straight to the point without wasting time on empty talk.  The job was simply to attend rich people’s parties, smile, make conversation, and brighten up the evening.  No intimacy, strictly hostessing and modeling.  Salary: $5,000 per month net plus accommodation, food and flights.

  For Alina, $5,000 was a sum she couldn’t earn in Kyiv even in a year.  Victoria put the contract on the table.  It was thick in English with Russian translation. There were many clauses about fines for being late and violating the dress code, but the most important one was the clause about complete secrecy. Models were prohibited from posting stories, taking selfies at work, or revealing who was at the party or where it was taking place.

Victoria explained it simply.  Clients, sheikhs and large businessmen.  They don’t need gossip in the press.  Alina skimmed the text.  She didn’t understand many of the legal terms, but the $5,000 figure in the payment column overshadowed all doubts.  She signed the contract without even consulting a lawyer.

  She felt like she had won a lucky ticket and would now save her family from poverty.  Before the trip, it was necessary to undergo a medical examination. Victoria referred Alina not to a regular clinic, but to a private medical center.  The doctor, a man of about fifty with cold hands, was behaving strangely.  He hardly listened to the heart or measured the blood pressure.

  But he examined Alina’s skin for a very long time and very carefully.  He asked her to undress completely and shone a special lamp on her back, thigh and stomach.  He measured the distances between moles with a tape measure, felt the skin for elasticity, and recorded information about the presence of scars.

  Alina asked: “Why such a thorough examination of the skin?”  The doctor replied dryly, without looking up, that the sun in the Emirates is very hot, and the agency must be sure that the model will not have problems with pigmentation or allergies. It sounded logical, and Alina calmed down.  The doctor gave it a stamp of approval.

   On October 14, Alina flew out of Boryspil. She told her mother that she was going to work at a diamond exhibition and would be staying in a hotel with other girls.  Her brother asked her to bring him a new phone, and Alina promised to buy it with her first paycheck.  She was met at Dubai airport .

  It was not a taxi, but a huge black jeep with tinted windows. The driver in a white shirt silently took her suitcase and opened the door.  Alina sat down in the cool salon, expecting to see the skyscrapers and lights of the big city that she had read so much about.  But the car went in the other direction.  They drove out onto Shirokoye Highway, and half an hour later the city lights were left behind.

  All around there was only the darkness of the desert.  Alina knocked on the partition between the seats and asked the driver where they were going. The driver, in poor English, replied that he was taking her to the company owner’s van for instructions and then would take her to the hotel.  Alina tensed up, but decided not to panic ahead of time.

PART2

  An hour later, the car turned off the highway onto a narrow road leading to a high fence.  The fence was made of stone about four meters high.   There was barbed wire at the top.  The gate opened and the jeep drove inside. The territory was huge, but empty. No parties, no music. In the middle of the courtyard stood a large white house, similar to a palace, but somehow uninhabited, too quiet.

  At the entrance she was met by a woman named Claire.  She was a European woman, dressed in a formal business suit.  Claire didn’t smile.  She immediately said: “Welcome to the residence. Hand over your phone and passport.”  Alina was surprised and asked, “Why?” Claire answered sternly that it was a security rule. Very important people lived here and no gadgets were allowed.

 A passport was needed for visa registration. Alina, feeling uncomfortable under the gaze of the guards, handed over her phone and documents. Claire promised that in the morning she would give her a working phone for communication. Alina was taken to a room. The room was luxurious. Marble floor, a huge bed, expensive furniture.

 But the windows did not open, and the door was locked from the outside. As soon as Alina entered, she was told to rest. In the morning, Alina was woken early. Two maids entered the room and brought breakfast and strange clothes, a long white shirt made of natural silk, similar to a robe. Alina no longer saw her jeans and T-shirt .

 Claire came after and said that the work began with preparing her appearance. Alina was taken to another wing of the house. It smelled of dampness and flowers. A very strong cloying smell of roses. She was led to a room,  lined with pink marble. In the middle of the room stood a bathtub filled with cloudy rose water. Claire said it was a special bath with oils to moisturize the skin.

 Alina had to lie in it for two hours three times a day. The first few days, Alina tried to ask about work, about exhibitions, about when she was going to the city. Claire answered monosyllabically: “Soon, first I need to make you look perfect.” The food they brought Alina was strange. It was mostly liquid soups and herbal-flavored cocktails.

 After eating, Alina felt very weak and drowsy. Her head became heavy, her thoughts were confused. She wanted to sleep all the time . She stopped worrying about the door being locked. She didn’t care anymore. She just lay on the bed, looked at the ceiling and waited for them to come for her to take her to the bathroom.

 After a week, Alina noticed changes. Her skin became very pale and soft, like a baby’s. But it was  An unhealthy softness. The skin had become thin. The veins were visible through it . Any touch was sensitive. The water in the bathroom stung more and more each time. The scent of roses, which had seemed pleasant at first, now made her nauseous.

 Claire came every day, examined Alina, touched her arms and back, nodded to herself and left. One day, Alina saw another girl in the hallway . Two guards were holding her by the arms. The girl could barely move her legs. Her eyes were glassy. She was looking through the walls. She was wearing the same white robe.

 Alina wanted to shout to her, to ask what was happening, but her tongue wouldn’t obey. She was as if in a fog. On the tenth day, Alina was brought into the office. A man in traditional Arab clothing sat there. This was not the doctor who examined her in Kyiv, nor the driver. It was the owner. He was sitting at the table and drinking tea.

 Claire put Alina in the center of the room and took off her robe. Alina stood naked,  She was shaking from cold and fear, but the drugs in her food suppressed her panic. The man stood up, walked over to her, and ran his finger down her shoulder. He didn’t look at her face, only at her skin. He said something in Arabic. Claire translated.

 The material is ready, the quality is top notch. The purification stage can begin. The purification stage turned out to be hell. The baths had changed. Now they added something burning to the water. Alina cried when she sat in the water, but the guards forcibly held her there. Her skin burned. After the bath, they smeared her with thick ointments that numbed the pain but made her body even more alien.

 Alina realized these weren’t spa treatments. They were preparing her for something terrible. In rare moments of clarity, when the drugs’ effect wore off a little, she tried to find a way out . She knocked on the door, but no one opened it. There were no windows at all in her new room in the basement. Only the ventilation hummed under  ceiling.

 One night, she woke up to the sound of someone screaming. The scream was distant, muffled by the thick walls, but full of horror. It wasn’t just any scream. It was the sound of a soldier being killed. Alina huddled in the corner of the bed, covering her ears with her hands. She realized it was the girl she’d seen in the hallway screaming.

In the morning, Claire came in with a new cocktail. She was cheerful, which was rare. She said, “Today is a great day.”  Today your transformation begins.  You will become a part of eternity.” Alina looked at her and asked: “Where is that girl?  Blonde.” Claire smiled with just her lips. Her eyes remained cold.

She had already fulfilled her destiny. She had become beautiful. Alina was no longer fed solid food at all. Only water with rose syrup. She had become so weak that she could not get out of bed without assistance. Her body had become almost transparent. The tattoo on her shoulder blade, a small bird that she had gotten when she was 18, had become bright, as if drawn with a felt-tip pen on paper.

 Claire brought special tools – paper clips. The maids began to scrape Alina’s skin every day, removing the top layer of dead skin cells. It was not painful because of the ointments, but terrible. They polished it. How do they polish wood before varnishing? Alina was turning into a thing. She was still breathing, her heart was beating, but for these people she was already just an expensive sheet of skin.

 One day, three men came into her room. They were not doctors or security guards. They were dressed in  aprons, like butchers or tanners. One of them held a toolbox. They examined Alina silently, discussing her as if she weren’t there. One of them took her hand, turned it, looked at her elbow, then at the tattoo.

 He clicked his tongue in displeasure when he saw the bird and said in English, “The design will have to be cut away or played up in the cut.” Alina understood. They weren’t talking about her as a person. They were talking about her as a piece of fabric to be sewn. The preparation process was completed on November 4, exactly three weeks after Alina’s arrival in the United Arab Emirates.

According to data recovered from the servers of the private security company servicing the perimeter of the estate, on that day, an unmarked gray minivan drove onto the grounds, delivering equipment classified in customs declarations as tools for processing organic materials. Inside was a team of two specialists, whose identities the investigation was able to establish only months later.

These were  Former employees of the pathology department of a private clinic in Eastern Europe, hired under contract through a chain of shell companies. Their task was not to treat patients, but to professionally remove biological material while preserving its integrity and aesthetic properties.

 Alina’s morning began not with the usual intake of liquid food, but with a complete abstinence from food. This was standard preoperative practice, necessary so that dehydration makes the skin denser and drier, which would facilitate subsequent processing. Claire, the staff manager, entered the room accompanied by two orderlies.

 Alina was injected with a powerful muscle relaxant mixed with a sedative. The substance acted instantly. The girl’s consciousness remained relatively clear. She saw and heard what was happening, but she completely lost motor control. Her muscles relaxed to such a degree that she could not move even a finger or close her eyelids.

 Her body turned into a heavy  An unruly object, which the orderlies transferred to a gurney and covered it with a white sheet. Alina was wheeled through long basement corridors whose existence she hadn’t suspected. The walls were lined with white tiles, and the air was thick with the smell of ozone and sterilizing solutions, reminiscent of an operating room.

 The journey ended in a room described in the investigative documents as a ceremonial hall. It was a spacious, circular room with a high, domed ceiling. In the center was a shallow pool, carved from a single piece of pink marble. The water was heated to 38°C and had a rich reddish-pink hue due to the addition of damask rose extract—  anticoagulants that prevent blood clotting.

Powerful surgical lamps were positioned around the perimeter of the pool, aimed at the center. The client, the same man who had examined Alina earlier, was already in the room. He was dressed in  A sterile protective suit, over which was thrown a traditional robe. He was not physically involved in the process.

 His role was observation. For him, it was an act of possession, the pinnacle of consumption, when a person, bought with money, becomes a luxury item. Alina, completely immobilized, was lowered into the warm water of the pool. The liquid covered her body, leaving only her face above the surface. Muscle relaxants blocked the gag reflex and attempts to gasp, so there was no panic on a physiological level , only a cold awareness of the inevitability of death.

 The Pink Bride ritual did not involve incantations or mystical acts. It was a cynical name for the technological process of slaughter. The essence of the method was to exsanguinate the victim in warm water saturated with oils, which allowed the skin vapors to open as much as possible and absorb preservatives while the body was still alive.

 Death occurred from hypoxia and blood loss. The specialist approached the head of the bed.  A thin surgical scalpel was used in the marble bathtub . Incisions were made in the area of ​​the carotid arteries and on the wrists underwater to prevent splashes from reaching the valuable material, the skin of the chest, back, and thighs. Thanks to the anticoagulants in the water, the blood was expelled quickly and mixed evenly with the pink solution, without forming clots. Alina died in silence.

Cardiac arrest was recorded by monitors connected to sensors on her temples 12 minutes after the start of the procedure. All this time, her eyes were open, registering the white light of the lamps and the masked figures bending over her. As soon as the instruments showed a straight line, the body was immediately removed from the water.

Delay was unacceptable. Postmortem tissue changes had begun, which could reduce the quality of the leather. The trunks were transferred to a steel dissection table with a fluid drainage system. Then the tanners began their work. This was the most difficult and expensive part of the operation, requiring pinpoint precision.

 A typical autopsy in a morgue is carried out roughly, with long  incisions down the middle of the torso, which irreversibly damages the integrity of the fabric. A technique similar to plastic surgery was also used here. Incisions were made along the lines that would later become the sutures on the bags along the inner arms, sides, groin, and back of the neck.

 The skin was removed slowly, separating it from the subcutaneous fat and muscle millimeter by millimeter. Particular attention was paid to the area on the shoulder blade, where a tattoo of a bird was located . The client ordered the design preserved for use as the central design element on one of the pieces, a kind of mark of authenticity for the exclusive series.

 The craftsmen worked together for three hours. The removed skin was a single layer, reminiscent of a wetsuit. It was immediately placed in a container with a tanning solution based on chromium and plant extracts to stop decomposition and strengthen the collagen structure. The remaining body, muscles, bones, and internal organs are no longer  was of interest to the client.

It became biological waste. According to testimony from a former Villa employee, given later in exchange for a reduced sentence, Alina’s remains were packed in sealed plastic bags and transported to a crematorium located on the grounds of a private veterinary clinic owned by the holding company. There, the body was burned under the guise of disposing of the carcass of a sick thoroughbred horse.

The ashes were scattered in the desert, leaving no trace of DNA that could be found by random search parties. Meanwhile, in a clandestine workshop set up in the same basement, the tanning of the leather began. This process took two weeks. Human leather is thinner and more elastic than cow leather, but more difficult to process.

 It requires more delicate chemicals. The artisans used ancient tanning recipes used for making lambskin gloves, but with the addition of modern synthetic fixatives. Alina’s skin was bleached to remove cadaveric spots and uneven pigmentation. Then it was dyed.  in a delicate creamy beige, listed in the order catalog as “ny alabaster.” Alabaster nude.

The tattoo on the patch of leather retained its colors, becoming the only bright spot against the pale background. From the resulting material, three women’s medium- sized tot bags, one men’s belt, and two wallets were cut and sewn. The fittings for the items were made of white gold and inlaid with small rubies, symbolizing drops of blood.

 On the inside of each item, on a red velvet lining, the workshop’s mark and serial number one of six were embossed. There were no “made in” tags or information about the composition. Buyers of such things do not ask questions about the origin. They pay for uniqueness and the knowledge that they own something forbidden, something that once breathed.

 The first bag, the one with the fragment of a bird tattoo on the front flap, remained with the sheikh. He placed it in a special display case in his office next to a collection of rare items.  Antique weapons. The remaining items were packed in ebony gift boxes and sent by courier to trusted business partners in Europe and Asia as New Year’s gifts.

It was a sign of special trust, an invitation to a private club where human life was merely a commodity. While craftsmen polished the gold clasps on Alina’s leather bags, her mother in Kyiv began to sound the alarm. Three weeks had passed since the last call. Her daughter’s phone was turned off, and her messages remained unread.

 The mother contacted the police, but they were reluctant to process her report. The local police officer, a tired man with a pile of papers on his desk, said bluntly: “She went to Dubai to work as a model.”  Woman, you understand what they are doing there.   She went on a spree and found a rich sponsor.   I’m embarrassed to call.

  “He’ll show up in a month with the money.” A criminal case wasn’t opened, limiting itself to a formal registration of a missing person report        . However, Alina’s mother didn’t give up. She found contact information for the Golden Sense agency, which had been used to recruit Alina. The agency’s website looked professional, but when she tried to call the London number listed, the answering machine reported that the number didn’t exist. Emails returned with a delivery error.

The woman began writing on social media, to groups of Ukrainian emigrants in the Emirates, begging for help. Her posts with a photo of Alina and a request for anyone who had seen her in Dubai to respond began to spread across the internet. This created the very information noise that the  business owners had been so eager to avoid.

 The security department of the Almalik Invest holding company recorded a surge in online activity associated with the name Alina Sokolova. Reputation monitoring algorithms issued a red alert . Claire received a notification on her encrypted phone. The problem needed to be addressed. Simply, the disappearance of a person looked suspicious, especially against the backdrop of an active search.  Mother.

 A cover story was needed that would settle the matter once and for all. A tragedy that would appear natural and wouldn’t imply the presence of a body. On December 14, a month and a half after the murder, Alina’s mother received a call. It was the Ukrainian consul in Dubai. His voice was mournful and official. He reported that Dubai police had completed their investigation into the incident that occurred in the waters of the Persian Gulf.

 According to the report, a group of tourists had rented a yacht for deep-sea diving. During the dive, a storm arose, and one of the girls was swept away by a strong underwater current. The body was not found , despite a week-long search by the coast guard, but personal belongings and documents in the name of Alina Sokolova, left on board the yacht, were found.

 The consul expressed his condolences and announced that an official death certificate would be sent by mail. For the family, this was a life-destroying blow. The mother was hospitalized with a heart attack. Her brother dropped out of school to care for her. They They believed the official version because they had a document with international stamps against them .

 No one could have imagined that at that very moment, while her mother was mourning her drowned daughter, a part of Alina was at a social event in Paris, hanging on the shoulder of a major oil magnate’s wife in the form of an elegant cream-colored accessory. The cover story was perfect, except for one detail. Alina’s belongings, supposedly found on the yacht, were not handed over to the police immediately, but two days after the storm.

 And among these things was a mobile phone, the very one that was taken from her on the first day. The holding’s security specialists wiped its memory, deleting all calls and photos, but they made a technical error. They didn’t take into account that the phone was synced with cloud storage, the password to which Alina’s brother knew. When the phone was turned on on the yacht to create the illusion of its presence there, it picked up a network for a second and sent an automatic geotagging to the cloud.

Alina’s brother, trying to find at least some of his sister’s last photos, logged into her account a month after  A funeral that never actually took place, an empty coffin. He saw that the phone’s last activity was n’t at sea or in the port where the yacht was supposedly moored.

 The geolocation point pointed to coordinates deep in the desert, 70 km from the coastline, in a place marked on Google Maps as private property. No entry allowed. This discrepancy became the very crack in the dam of lies through which the truth would soon pour. The young man, a student at a technical college, understood that GPS data is difficult to fake , and a phone couldn’t accidentally make a mistake at 70 km .

 He began his own amateur investigation, comparing dates. The official date of death was December 12, but the geotag from the desert was dated October 14, the day of Alina’s arrival. And the next tag appeared only in December at the port. Where had the phone been for two months, and why had it been silent in that particular spot in the desert? He took screenshots, printed out maps, and didn’t go to the police, where they had already been investigated once.

  He was brushed aside and wrote a letter to a journalist from an independent European publication who specialized in investigating human trafficking in Eastern Europe. The journalist, whose name was Thomas, was initially skeptical of the letter from the Ukrainian student.  Hundreds of such stories about models sold into slavery arrive.

 But the geolocation detail caught his attention. He checked the coordinates. This wasn’t just a barn in the desert. It was a huge fenced-in complex that wasn’t listed on any tourist register, yet it consumed as much electricity as a small factory. Thomas decided to dig deeper and discovered that the land belonged to a shell company involved in leather and textile logistics.

 A strange coincidence for a residence in the desert. He initiated a request through his sources at Interpol to check if there were other signals from this square. The response came a week later and was shocking. Over the past five years, signals from four more phones had appeared briefly from this area, belonging to girls from Moldova, Russia, and Belarus, who remain missing.

The case had ceased to be a family tragedy and was beginning to take on the proportions of a serial death conveyor belt. Journalist Thomas Anderson, specializing in organized crime investigations, arrived in Dubai on January 20th disguised as a logistics consultant. Armed with geolocation data provided by Alina’s brother and a list of missing women from Eastern Europe, he understood that a direct confrontation with the local police at this stage would only lead to his deportation and the concealment of evidence.

Thomas chose a strategy of financial pressure. Through his sources in European banking structures, he tracked the transactions of the company Almalik Invest. It turned out that this holding company, officially engaged in real estate, regularly received transfers from closed auction houses in Europe, marked for art and antiques.

However, not a single painting or sculpture had passed through customs. Instead, the customs declarations contained codes corresponding to the export of exotic animal skin products to small businesses.  circulation. By comparing the dates of the girls’ disappearances with the dates of the shipments, the journalist discovered a direct correlation.

 Each time, three to four weeks after a phone of a particular model lost network connectivity in the area of ​​the deserted villa, the company sent a package weighing 2 to 3 kg by courier to Paris, London, or Hong Kong. Thomas contacted Europol, providing them with the collected dossier. The key argument was the possibility that citizens of European Union countries could also be involved in the purchase of products made from human skin, which fell under the jurisdiction of international conventions on human trafficking and the abuse of human remains. The case was given

priority status, as the scandal threatened to cause irreparable reputational damage to diplomatic relations. On February 5, after satellite reconnaissance confirmed data that detected heat signatures characteristic of industrial furnaces on the villa’s territory, the Dubai Public Prosecutor’s Office was forced to issue a search warrant.

The operation was carried out by special forces to rule out  Information leak. Early in the morning of February 8, armored vehicles sealed off the perimeter of the residence. Villa security offered no resistance, following instructions not to engage government forces. During the assault, the mansion’s managers, Claire Miller, Dr.

 Hassan, and several technical staff members were present. The villa’s owner, Sheikh Abdullah al-Malik, was absent, attending business negotiations in the city center. During an initial inspection of the premises, the task force found nothing suspicious, except for locked rooms in the relaxation area, which were empty and thoroughly washed with bleach.

 However, technical specialists discovered a hidden elevator leading to the second level. It was there that investigators found evidence that transformed the missing person’s case into a case of particularly brutal serial murders . The basement was a fully-fledged production facility. In one of the rooms, equipped as an operating room, forensic experts discovered traces of biological fluids in the drains of a marble bathtub.

 A rapid test confirmed the presence of human Hemoglobin. A  tannery was located in the adjacent room. Patterns, leather-scarving knives, and chemical reagents lay on the tables. But the main discovery was the finished product log kept by Claire. It described the parameters of the starting material in dry, clerical language.

 Sample number four. Age 26. Light skin, no defects. Tattoo on shoulder blade preserved upon request. Sheikh Abdullah al-Malik was detained in his office two hours after the raid began. During a search of his personal office,  detectives discovered a cream-colored women’s handbag on a shelf among collectible weapons .

 A fragment of a bird tattoo was clearly visible on the front flap. The handbag was seized and sent to a forensic lab. DNA testing, conducted within 48 hours, yielded a 100% match with genetic material taken from Alina Sokolova’s mother. This became irrefutable proof that the bag was made from the skin of the murdered girl.

The trial began on May 1st and was held behind closed doors due to the extreme brutality of the case. Seven people were in the dock : the sheikh himself, manager Claire Miller, Dr. Hasan, two orderlies, and two craftsmen. The defense’s strategy was based on an attempt to shift all the blame to Claire Miller, claiming that the sheikh was unaware of the origin of the material and believed he was purchasing exclusive synthetic leather.

 However, Claire, realizing she faced the death penalty, made a plea bargain. She provided audio recordings of conversations with the client, in which he personally discussed the design of future products and demanded a particularly soft material, citing previous batches. The investigation revealed that the “Pink Bride” ritual had been conducted at the villa for nine years.

 The victims of the purification were 11 girls from the CIS and Eastern Europe. Their bodies were destroyed, and the skin was used to create fifty haberdashery items, which were given as gifts.  high-ranking officials around the world. He conducted a secret operation to seize these items. Most of the owners voluntarily surrendered the bags and belts, claiming ignorance of their origin to avoid accusations of complicity.

The verdict was announced on August 15. The court found all the defendants guilty of premeditated murder, human trafficking, and desecration of the dead. Sheikh Abdullah al-Malik and Dr. Hasan were sentenced to death by firing squad. The verdict against a member of an influential family was unprecedented and was intended to demonstrate the state’s zero tolerance for such crimes.

Claire Miller received life imprisonment without parole . The remaining members of the criminal group received sentences ranging from 25 to 30 years in prison. Alina Sokolova’s mother refused the monetary compensation offered by the lawyers of the convicted. Her only demand was the return of her daughter. But there was nothing to return.

The court ordered the cremation of all seized human skin products.  Since they were recognized as biological remains, on September 20, in the presence of the Ukrainian consul and relatives, the bag with the bird tattoo was incinerated in a special furnace. The urn containing the ashes was given to the mother, who buried it in the Kyiv cemetery next to the empty grave dug a year earlier.

Alina Sokolova’s story didn’t become the plot of a Hollywood movie and quickly disappeared from the world’s headlines, supplanted by political news. The desert villa was confiscated by the state and bulldozed to the ground. Only sand remained in its place . However, rumors persist in the narrow circles of rare artefact collectors that not all the items in the collection were found and destroyed.

Rumor has it that somewhere in a private vault in Hong Kong or London, a belt or wallet made of unnaturally soft, pale leather still lies, worth more than gold because its price is a human life.