Ax Murder, Arrest End Couple's Hard-Won Success -- Russian Emigre Slain, And Spouse Is Charged In Grisly Slaying

NEW YORK - A month before he was hacked to death, scientist Yakov Gluzman bitterly complained in court that his wife was seeking to punish him.

Replying to a motion Rita Gluzman had filed in the couple's pending divorce case, Yakov described her as deceitful, unethical and - above all - vengeful.

"This motion is not about support, it is not about money, it is not about need," he said. "(It) is about retribution, payback and punishment. . . . She seeks to punish me for leaving a bad marriage."

The court papers are a road map into the once-storybook couple's rocky lives and the bitterness that arose after he left their New Jersey home and filed for divorce. But police in two states and the FBI now say that 49-year-old Yakov could have been underestimating his wife's fury.

More than punish, they claim, she wanted to annihilate.

They allege that on April 6, she and a cousin, Vladimir Zelenin, waited for Yakov at his new bachelor apartment across the state line in Pearl River, N.Y., then ambushed him with axes.

After Yakov was dead, police claim, Rita Gluzman, 48, cleaned up as the cousin sliced the body into 65 pieces.

She instigated the plot they had been discussing for a month, the cousin confessed after he was caught tossing body parts into a New Jersey river.

It was such a brutally spectacular crime that an FBI boss supposed it could be compared to the infamous case of Lizzie Borden, the Massachusetts woman accused 104 years ago of taking an ax and giving her mother 40 whacks - then, seeing what she had done, giving her father 41.

Prosecutors hope the comparison dies. Borden was acquitted.

But Gluzman's case is already unique for more than its violence. She's said to be the first woman charged under a new law making it a federal crime to cross state lines and attack a spouse. If convicted, she faces life behind bars.

Twenty-five years ago, such a twist of fate would have been unimaginable.

In 1971, Rita Gluzman was the smart, combative leader of a campaign to free her husband from a form of imprisonment - the one that denied many Jews the freedom to leave the then-Soviet Union and live in Israel.

The year before, after 15 years of trying, she and her parents had finally won permission to settle in Israel. It was granted one month after she and Yakov - childhood friends in their native Ukraine - had tied the knot.

Yakov, already a promising scientist with a master's degree in biology, was denied an exit visa, but was led to believe it would soon be granted.

Instead, the Soviets dragged their heels, even after the couple learned she was pregnant and facing the prospect of raising their child alone.

Meanwhile, Rita gave birth to a son, Ilan. A few months later, she came to the United States to muster sympathy for Soviet Jews and bang the drum for her husband. She talked her way into meetings with former United Nations Secretary General U Thant and many other prominent leaders, including then-Rep. Jack Kemp of New York.

She testified before Congress and gave many emotional newspaper interviews.

She vowed to "wear down" the Soviet authorities "drop by drop." In a few months, she did, and the couple was reunited in Israel.

`She tends to be single-minded'

As the court papers show, however, they did not live happily ever after.

In his divorce complaint filed last December, after he had moved out and after several unsuccessful attempts to patch things up, Yakov said that the couple's problems went back to the "very beginnings of marriage."

"(She) tends to be very single-minded and uncompromising," he said.

She was no doubt determined and hardworking. In Israel, while caring for their son, she laid a foundation for her own successful career by acquiring a master's degree in chemistry.

It wasn't easy, even after the couple's reunion, because Yakov soon left for a tour in the Israeli army, after which he again went to school, eventually earning a doctorate in molecular biology.

Moved to U.S. in 1977

In 1977, they came to the United States. They lived on Long Island, near his new job at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, run by Nobel Prize-winner James Watson.

Yakov stayed 10 years and made a scientific breakthrough that led to the development of a line of cells now used in cancer research around the world. Rita also developed a solid professional career in a company that made sophisticated electronic test-and-control equipment.

"Throughout our marriage, (Yakov) and I enjoyed a high standard of living," Rita said in one of her court filings.

They took multiple vacations a year, dined out frequently and shopped in tony stores, but the papers indicate they were not on the same page when it came to enjoying their success. He said she was a spendthrift; she said he squandered assets without telling her.

Disagreements over moving

Even so, the marriage held. Late in 1986, Rita decided she wanted her own business, and with his help they founded a company that made electronic components.

The events that appear to have finally broken the marriage occurred a year later, after Yakov took a new higher-paying job in Pearl River and they bought a $530,000 home in Upper Saddle River, N.J.

In her papers, Rita said she opposed the move because it required her to move her business from Long Island to New Jersey.

"The relocation was directly responsible for the decline in business," she complained.

In his papers, Yakov said Rita had picked Upper Saddle River; her sister, who had three children, was coming from Russia to live with them, and Rita wanted an area with good schools.

Yakov began taking trips to Israel without Rita. His own parents were now there, and he mused about moving back. But he always came back to New Jersey and continued to put money into Rita's company.

In February 1995, Yakov moved out and things turned even uglier.

In her papers, Rita said she discovered Yakov had a mistress in Israel. Yakov denied dating the young Russian woman until after he left his wife.

Rita learned that Yakov had asked Sen. Bill Bradley to help get the woman a U.S. visa. It was incredible, she said, "that (he) would be vigorously pursuing a visa application for a woman he had just started dating."

On April 2, four days before the slaying, Rita canceled a conference where the parties and their lawyers were to discuss the issues.

On April 5, Rita called her cousin, Vladimir Zelenin, who worked at her company. She said it was time to kill Yakov, Zelenin said in a statement to police and the FBI. The following evening, according to Zelenin, they went to Pearl River and in a frightful frenzy made the divorce case moot.