"...She was a liberal Russian parliamentarian, an MP representing the party Democratic Russia, the most well-known and outspoken female politician in Russia until she was murdered November 19 in the stairwell of her St. Petersburg apartment, the victim of three bullets to her head."

*"...They climb 122 stairs, past empty vodka bottles and crushed cigarette butts, through the dimly lighted and urine-reeking stairwell of the ordinary Russian apartment building, to a small doorway opening into the attic."