Vidnoye, Moscow Province, Russia, January 2, 2024
Photo: rbk.ru
On Friday, December 29, the body of 90-year-old Roman Legoida was found with multiple stab wounds in the city of Vidnoye in the Moscow Province.
The victim was the father of Vladimir Legoida, head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Synodal Department for Relations of the Church with Society and the Media since 2015 and head of the Patriarchal press service since 2019.
The police quickly detained a suspect in the murder, TASS reported the next day.
According to investigators, the suspect attacked the victim in order to steal 100,000 rubles ($1,120) from him. He then dumped his dead body in a road-side ditch. Some of the stolen funds were found in the apartment of the 25-year-old suspect. According to various reports, the man was previously imprisoned in the Bryansk Province for theft but was released to participate in the war in Ukraine. It is believed he deserted the army after a few months and returned to the Moscow region.
Vide was later published in which the man admitted his guilt.
“I approached him to give me a ride to another store. He gave me a ride, but I stopped him along the way and showed him my knife… We started to fight, he tried to snatch the knife from me. And that was it. I killed him,” the man confessed.
His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia expressed condolences to Vladimir Legoida and his mother:
With a heavy heart I received the sorrowful news of the tragic death of your father and husband Roman Timofeevich Legoida, who had a long life’s journey.
I am convinced that the zealous service of his son in the field of holy Orthodoxy, who firmly and consistently defends the Church’s position in the media space, is, among other things, a fruit of the parental care of the deceased.
I pray that the newly departed servant of God Roman might be granted repose in the abodes of the righteous, and also for the consolation of his relatives and friends who have suffered an irreplaceable loss. May the Merciful Lord strengthen all of you with the remembrance of His promises of the resurrection of the dead and the life of the age to come.
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