Drug addict who fatally beat his wife in a Raleigh motel will avoid life in prison
Mark Brichikov, a longtime drug addict who admitted to the motel-room beating that killed his wife, avoided life in prison Wednesday with a conviction of second-degree murder.
Both Brichikov, 37, and his wife, Nadia, were troubled by heroin or crack cocaine. They reunited at the former Knights Inn on New Bern Avenue in 2018 after stints in rehab, the hospital and jail.
Their night together ended with Nadia Brichikov, 48, dead in the open doorway of room 241 as other motel guests passed, unconcerned.
“Nadia is the person standing on the side of the highway,” Assistant District Attorney Mark Stevens said in his closing arguments Tuesday. “She was a human being, and she did not deserve to die as she did.”
The verdict was read to a mostly empty courtroom Wednesday. No family members attended on either side.
Brichikov, 48, was beaten so badly that bones were broken on both sides of her face, leaving a bump the size of a cantaloupe. Police had to identify her by the grapevine tattoo on her right arm.
“That’s malice,” said Stevens, showing jurors a crime-scene photo. “That’s ill will. That’s hatred. That’s anger.”
Difficulty dealing with addiction
But the case highlighted the difficulty dealing with intractable drug addiction. Nadia Brichikov graduated from N.C. State University, said his attorney Alexis Strombotne. She had a son, of whom she lost custody.
She had Fentanyl in her system at the time of death, and had survived a near-overdose only days before. Strombotne showed jurors a history of text messages, including one from her husband Mark sent shortly before the murder, in which he begged her, “please don’t do any drugs please Knights Inn is a bad place.”
But though he was working and had gone into rehab, Stevens noted that Brichikov’s behavior after the beating showed nothing like remorse. A “coward,” Stevens said, who fled the motel room for Wilmington without wallet or cash.
“Jumped a fence, walked 5 miles, stole a truck, drove 100 miles, used a credit card, bought a bunch of heroin,” Stevens said.
Jurors declined to convict Brichikov of first-degree murder after roughly 6 hours of deliberation.
He will serve a sentence of 28 to 34 years as jurors agreed the case involved three “aggravating factors”: it was especially cruel, involved Brichikov violating probation or parole and abusing a relationship of trust.
This story was originally published December 11, 2019 at 11:09 AM.