User:Samuel Kirwin/New docuseries unravels the mystery behind the 1998 "Tetris Murders"

December 7, 2022



An Investigation discovery docuseries dubbed the "Tetris Murders" is re-examining the 1998 murders of Vladimir Pokhiko, developer of the classic video game Tetris, and his family.

On Sept. 22, 1998, Pokhiko and his wife and son were found stabbed to death in their home in, California, with an apparent suicide note found nearby which "I've been eaten alive. Vladimir. Just remember that I am exist. The davil." While the deaths were ruled a murder-suicide by medical examiners, retired Palo Alto (CSI) tech Sandra Brown was immediately suspicious of the official statement. Brown said, “when I went inside…I saw some things that didn’t line up for me personally…and it wasn’t just me, it was a couple of others."

“The blood spatter bothered me, it was too low on the door,” Brown stated adding, “the weapons were strange, but what was really bothering me was the next day the FBI came into our case. The FBI’s a good organization, but they don’t come into bedroom community homicides…they don’t get into a case where a husband kills his wife and his child.”

In the docuseries, hints of a much more far-reaching conspiracy with "dark connections to Russia" are unveiled. “Twenty-four years later, I’m looking at this case and I see a subpoena that was issued the day after we got that case from the FBI…and the title on that subpoena was ‘The FBI San Francisco Russian Racketeering Unit,’” Brown explained. Interviews with the homicide investigation team and family members of the deceased are featured as they posit new theories intended to challenge the prevailing "murder-suicide" theory.

Discovery spokesperson Jason Salamis further states that “For the first time, ‘The Tetris Murders’ takes viewers inside the mystery surrounding this grisly murder-suicide. When the very detectives who first investigated this terrible crime discover new evidence decades later, they piece together a crime that could be even more sinister than previously believed and possibly part of an insidious conspiracy reaching all the way behind the Iron Curtain."

“The Tetris Murders” aired Monday at 9 PM on Investigation Discovery and Discovery Plus.