UPenn Student Accused of Murder

An undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania accused of beating to death her ex-boyfriend’s girlfriend over Christmas break is now in custody.

Irina Malinovskaya, 22, a senior at Penn’s Wharton School of Business, faces first-degree murder charges for killing Irina Zlotnikov, 24, with a “blunt object,” New Castle County, Del., police said.

Zlotnikov was in her final year at Temple University School of Pharmacology at the time of her murder.

Two days before Christmas, Zlotnikov’s 32-year-old boyfriend returned to his Delaware home after work to find her beaten and bleeding. When emergency workers responded she was already dead from multiple head injuries, police said.

Temple University officials were “extremely saddened” by the murder of a student, said Eryn Jelesiewicz, a spokeswoman for Temple University Health Sciences Center. “Our thoughts and prayers are with her family and friends.”

The friends of Malinovskaya, the accused murderer, were in “complete shock,” according to a male friend who would not give his name.

“Irina is one of the nicest people I’ve known,” said the friend, who met Malinovskaya when he was a student at Penn and, like the victim and the suspect, is of Russian descent. “I do not think she did it.”

At Wharton, Malinovskaya studied finance and management and was active in the Russian community at Penn, her friend said. Malinovskaya is listed as the contact person for the Russian Cultural Association at Penn.

Phyllis Holtzman, a spokeswoman for Penn, said that Malinovskaya had been slated to graduate in December, but she could not confirm whether Malinovskaya would be awarded a degree from the university because the final list of December graduates has not been released.

Corporal Trinidad Navarro, a spokesman for the New Castle County Police Department, estimated that the murder occurred between 6 a.m. and noon on Dec. 23.

Police initially interviewed Malinovskaya on Christmas Day, but she claimed not to have been in Delaware and was not considered a suspect at the time, Navarro said.

Malinovskaya became a suspect in the case when a witness reported seeing a car in front of the home of Malinovskaya’s ex-boyfriend. The witness said the car was occupied by a white female “watching” the home, according to police reports.

The New Castle County police traced the car back to a Philadelphia rental agency. Malinovskaya rented the car on Dec. 21 and returned it on the day of the murder, two days later.

Malinovskaya is currently being held at the Baylor Women’s Correctional Institution in New Castle, where she awaits a preliminary hearing within the week, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Navarro said that Malinovskaya is currently the only suspect in the murder. While he declined to comment on the motive for the crime, he noted that Zlotnikov was dating Malinovskaya’s ex-boyfriend.

—Staff writer Sarah E. F.Milov can be reached at milov@fas.harvard.edu.