Moscow theater ex-head guilty of attempted murder of family

MOSCOW, December 3 (RIA Novosti) - Moscow City Court sentenced the ex-director of the Moscow Art Theatre on Wednesday to six years in jail for attempting to organize the murder of his ex-wife and family to get his hands on a five-room apartment.

Leonid Monastyrsky, 68, was found guilty of attempting to arrange the murder of his ex-wife - former ballerina Irina Dmitrieva - along with their daughter and her husband, a court spokesperson said.

Investigators said Monastyrsky had offered his security guard $45,000 in May this year to murder his family members. On July 16, he received a telephone call alleging that the victims were "dead."

The former director was arrested as he handed over 600,000 rubles ($20,000) to the security guard and two police officers who he believed were the killers. Monastyrsky later said he paid the money not to have "his family killed" but to "solve the problem."

Monastyrsky, who divorced his wife in 1991, said the couple often quarreled over the flat in central Moscow that had belonged to his father. In July 2007, his ex-wife, daughter and her husband moved into the flat without his permission and "made fun" of him and his new wife, he said.