Police reveal identity of man arrested last week over 1993 murder

Police revealed Wednesday they are holding a suspect in the brutal 26-year-old murder case of a Jerusalem area woman that had frustrated investigators for decades.

Valery Sakovic, 64, is accused of the 1993 rape and murder of 27-year-old Vardit Beckerknut from Kiryat Anavim, whose body was found in a forest near Beit Shemesh.

The break in the case came from a DNA sample found on Beckerknut’s clothes which was identified using technology not available in the 1990s.

This gave investigators a pool of suspects based on their ethnic origins, which was then cross-checked against a list of owners of Subaru Legacys in 1993 — the make and model of car the victim was last seen getting into before she disappeared, Channel 12 news reported.

Sakovic appeared on the list of suspects, but at the time was living in Belarus. However toward the end of last year he was deported from Belarus back to Israel for crimes he had committed in the Eastern European country.

Police went to Sakovic’s hostel in Jerusalem and told him they needed to collect a saliva sample for a criminal offense without clarifying that he was a suspect in the murder case.

The sample proved to be a match and Sakovic was arrested. He appeared at Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court last week and his remand was extended for a week.

On Wednesday his remand was extended for a further ten days, and Sakovic’s identity, which had been under gag order, was revealed.

The judge noted last week that “a combination of police efforts and technological development has allowed a breakthrough in the case, and today the reasonable suspicion against the detainee is of a very high standard,” the Walla news site reported.

Sakovic’s lawyer told the Haaretz daily at the time of the first court hearing that his client’s rights had been violated after his arrest, and that he denies any connection to the crime.

“The suspect claims that he is not connected to the incident and he has been interrogated several times since his arrest yesterday. He has [only] one version — he does not know what the case is about,” said lawyer Michael Ironi.

“I think that the fact that he was interrogated without being given the right to consult with an attorney before the questioning is a blatant violation [of his rights],” Ironi added.

Beckerknut, a photography student at the Camera Obscura School of Art in Tel Aviv, was last seen hitching a ride out of Tel Aviv in November 1993. Her body was found two days later in the Eshtaol Forest.

Sakovic, divorced with two children, immigrated to Israel from Belarus in 1990 and went back and forth between the two countries several times after 1994. He reportedly admitted to interrogators he had been in the area where the body was found, but denied the charges.

“I do not know whether I should be happy,” Beckerknut’s mother, Raya, told the Ynet news site. “All these years I was very disappointed, nothing came of it. I cannot be happy and I cannot be sure if they can prove it.

“I hope that the technological means will lead to identifying the man who murdered my daughter,” she said.