By Ivan Pereira
Dr. Mazoltuv Borukhova, the woman accused of plotting her estranged husband’s death outside a Forest Hills playground, went on the defensive Thursday as the prosecutor in her murder trial attempted to poke holes in her account of how the homicide took place.
Assistant District Attorney Brad Leventhal continued his cross-examination of Borukhova during the jury trial in Queens Supreme Court by questioning her recollection of what happened when her spouse, Dr. Daniel Malakov, was shot twice in the chest outside the Annadale Playground on Oct. 28, 2007. Borukhova, who is facing murder and conspiracy charges with her uncle Mikhail Mallayev, testified that she saw her then 4-year-old daughter Michelle at the playground.
The defendant, who like her late husband is an Uzbek immigrant, said she and Malakov were approximately three feet apart and playing with Michelle, when all of a sudden his face went “pale” and he stumbled to the ground from the shots.
“I didn’t see anybody running. I didn’t see anybody shooting,” Borukhova, 35 said.
Leventhal challenged her claim by standing 16 feet away from her in court, right in front of the jury pool box. The prosecutor slammed his hand on the box three times, making Borukhova and several jurors flinch.
“You hear that?” Leventhal asked after each pound.
“Yes,” a startled Borukhova answered each time.
Several eyewitnesses have testified that they heard the shots from farther distances and saw the shooter running.
Leventhal contends that Borukhova, an internist, paid Mallayev, 51, nearly $20,000 to kill her estranged husband. Malakov, 34, an orthodontist, gained custody of Michelle less than a week before his death following a long and bitter dispute with Borukhova.
The prosecutor pointed out that Borukhova’s accounts of the shooting differed from her own statements to police officers hours after the homicide Det. Edward Wilkowski testified that the internist told him that Michelle ran from her father into her arms alone, minutes before the Malakov was shot.
Other eyewitnesses testified Malakov was holding his daughter by the hand and let go of her before he was killed and Michelle ran down the street to a woman.
Despite her previous statements, Borukhova stuck to her story that she and Malakov held their daughter before the murder.
Mallayev, who did not take the stand, was arrested three weeks after the murder after his fingerprints were matched to prints found on a makeshift silencer left at the playground by the shooter, according to prosecutors. An eyewitness who was 40 feet from the shooting positively identified Mallayev as the gunman during the trial.
Officers arrested Borukhova in Feb. 2008 after they found she and Mallayev had 65 phone conversations in the six days proceeding the shooting but only two following it.
Borukhova testified that those calls were about Mallayev’s wife, who she was treating for high blood pressure, but could not say why the calls stopped after Oct. 28 2007.
If convicted, she and her uncle face up to life in prison without parole.
Reach reporter Ivan Pereira by e-mail at ipereira@timesledger.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 146
