By Ivan Pereira
The Georgia man accused of gunning down a Forest Hills orthodontist in front of his daughter was further linked to the murder in Queens Supreme Court not only by police forensic experts but also by testimony from a family friend who said the accused shooter spent the night before the killing in his apartment.
Detective William Bienick of the NYPD’s latent print lab testified Tuesday that he and his staff positively identified three fingerprints found on a makeshift silencer used by the gunman who killed Dr. Daniel Malakov to Mikhail Mallayev, charged with first degree−murder and conspiracy along with Mazoltuv Borukhova, Malakov’s estranged wife.
After testifying that the prints on the silencer matched Mallayev’s, Bienick was asked by the prosecution:“With exclusion to all other people?”
He answered,“Yes.”
The Queens district attorney contends Borukhova, 35, an immigrant from Uzbekistan, hired Mallayev, 51, of suburban Atlanta, who is her uncle by marriage, to come to Queens and shoot Malakov on Oct. 28, 2007, at the Annadale Playground at Yellowstone Boulevard and 64th Road. Malakov was dropping off his then−4−year−old daughter Michelle to meet Borukhova, who had lost custody of the girl six days before the murder.
ADA Brad Leventhal said the shooting was in retaliation for Malakov’s winning a prolonged custody battle.
Bienick said his analysis discovered 15 points of identification between the prints found on the duct tape of the silencer and Mallayev’s prints, which were on file from a 1994 arrest.
Mallayev’s court−appointed attorney, Michael Siff, contended that the fingerprint evidence was not concrete and tried to object to the detective’s testimony, but was denied several times by a visibly annoyed Justice Robert Hanophy.
“Oh, come on, already,” the judge shouted at Siff after prosecutors objected to several of his questions.
The fingerprint evidence came days after Rafael Mosheyea, 45, of Flushing, told the jury that Mallayev, 51, came to his apartment three days before Oct. 28, 2007, and slept on his couch. Mosheyea, who said he met Mallayev back in Uzbekistan, told the jury on Feb. 11, that the accused gunman and his son, Boris, showed up at his door without notice and asked for a place to stay.
The Flushing man said he was shocked when Mallayev left his apartment on Oct. 28 early in the morning without saying goodbye.
Mallayev, who has a daughter living in Brooklyn, initially told detectives he was not in Queens during the time of the murder, but changed his story when investigators informed him that his cell phone records placed him in the borough on Oct. 28, according to prosecutors.
Borukhova made nearly 70 phone calls to her distant uncle in the week leading up to the shooting, but only two following it, prosecutors said. She allegedly paid Mallayev nearly $20,000 for the murder, according to Leventhal.
Reach reporter Ivan Pereira by e−mail at ipereira@timesledger.com or by phone at 718−229−0300, Ext. 146.
