Marker.
- Ok, ready?
- Yes.
I'm ready.
[bell dings]
Sergei was a cruiserweight, at 195 pounds.
- Undefeated with a record of 15 and 0, sergei kobozev.
- This is a guy that was just like a machine.
Brighton beach in the early '90s was called little odessa,
From the ukraine.
This is where the russian mob is really gobbling up territory.
You had underground bare-knuckle brawl fights.
You had gambling joints, speakeasies, you name it.
Sergei was an amazing fighter and had a great reputation
In the russian community.
He was a tough guy.
He didn't realize that he really stepped
On a violent, dangerous, wily monster of a human being.
And he says, I don't care what you do to him.
Bury him in the backyard, for all I care.
As we are driving on a dark highway in the middle
Of the night, he looks at me, smiles, and says,
Then in russian, I bet you you you
Want to know about the boxer.
It hit me like a thunderbolt.
It's a fallacy that you think, oh, there's a body buried.
Let's just go dig it up.
[tense music]
- Livingston, new jersey, is a typical--
What I call typical--
New jersey middle-class town.
And the only reason we came over to that area from new york city
Is because we had a pretty good lead on where a body was.
That house, it's owned by some citizen, a mother and father
And a couple of kids.
We went over, and we knocked on the door.
A woman answered the door.
We dropped our creds on them.
Her husband comes down, and then we tell them,
We believe there is a body buried in your backyard.
[sinister music]
So the next morning, the word gets out that we're
Going to dig in this yard.
We had news helicopters flying overhead.
There was a crowd of people.
And our evidence response team go to work.
- We aerated the soil.
We brought in cadaver-smelling dogs.
We brought ground-penetrating radar.
It was a very stressful number of days.
On the fourth day, we had an excavator taking earth away.
I was standing in the pit, and I saw something.
- That's a bone.
- A forensic anthropologist jumped down in that hole.
She was brushing away the dirt.
And then you could see the ribs and the rest
Of the body showing up.
[dark music]
The body was laying face up.
But the arms, the head, all that stuff, was all there.
Everything has to be labeled, and then they reassembled it.
- Skeletal measurements indicate that the john doe is male,
25 to 35 years old, 6' 1", and about 200 pounds.
- They determined his neck was broken.
- We needed to find out what happened to this man.
[water sloshing]
- Brighton beach is located right next to coney island.
It's the last part of brooklyn.
- Brighton beach in the '90s was like a russian neighborhood.
You almost felt like you were in russia.
- It was called little odessa for a reason, because--
- On the boardwalk, you would see all of these card tables
Set up in the summer, with the brass samovars on them
And people drinking hot tea.
It was its own little bubble.
- A favorite pastime in the community is boxing.
And in the early '90s, the sport is experiencing
A russian invasion.
- I went to russia and brought back the first russian world
Champions in 1989 and '90.
- When these excellent exotic fighters--
- So, of course, being a kid of russian descent,
It was very exciting for me to be able to know
About these boxers.
- In 1995, the star of the show is the latest
Addition to the team--
31-year-old sergei kobozev.
- Sergei was a cruiserweight, 195 pounds.
This is a guy that was just like a machine.
- He was an unusual individual for a boxer.
He was very well-educated.
- He was here because he knew that he
Could make it in america.
He knew he was using boxing to improve himself
And to be just about anything he wanted.
And he was dedicated.
There was no question about that.
Sergei wanted to be somebody.
- At home, sergei is inseparable from his girlfriend,
25-year-old yelena cherskikh.
- I was about two years old when I came here to america
From the soviet union.
My mother was a single mother.
Sergei started dating my mom in '95.
They probably been together two years.
Sergei and my mom were very happy together.
And he was a great dad to me.
Sergei taught me how to throw my first punch.
He always told me not to use it for the wrong reasons.
My mom would go with him to his fights,
And I'd be sitting watching it on tv.
Me and my cousin, we'd, like, hold our fists for good luck
For him to win, and you would hear the announcers
Say it, sergei, the russian bear.
- And a straight right hand.
Wilson goes flat on his back.
- Sergei kobozev from russia, unbeaten.
[camera shutter clicks]
- On November 8, 1995, sergei heads
To bring his car to a mechanic.
- I remember I jumped on his back.
He went down a few flights of stairs,
And he stopped maybe two flights down and said, hey,
You should go back and stay with your mother.
She's going to be by herself, and I'll be right back.
It was maybe three hours later, and he didn't show up.
My mom knew something was wrong.
[ominous music]
It just wasn't his character.
- Yelena called around the community to everyone she knew,
Asking if they knew anything.
No one had heard from him.
- As a kid, it's hard to understand the seriousness
Of a situation like that.
I saw my mother crying.
I didn't really know why.
- Desperate for answers, yelena decides to call the police.
- It was absolutely something serious for my mother
To call law enforcement because people in the community
Did not trust law enforcement.
[ominous music]
- At first, the police told her that it had to be 48 hours.
She was hysterical, and she called again.
And, finally, they started looking into it.
- Officers went to sergei's house.
- --That sergei was going out to have his car repaired.
That was the last that she heard from him.
She said--
- Investigators visit the nearby garage
To speak to the mechanic.
- The officers were told, yep, he was here.
- I was proud to have such a big celebrity come to my shop,
And he left a happy man.
It was a dead end in terms of leads.
- The cops talked to me, said, we can't find sergei.
I said, what are you talking about?
I was shocked.
- Sergei's girlfriend told the police at the time
That he also did some freelancing on the weekend.
He was a bouncer at a club in a nearby part of brooklyn.
- They spoke to people there, but they
Got no useful information.
- The police department checked hospitals and the morgue.
- There was a lot of pressure on the police from the community.
People were really, really--
Wanted to know what happened to this guy.
He was very, very beloved in the community.
- Then the nypd was going out there, and--
- All that activity, all that walking the beat
And talking to people, all led to dead ends.
But you have to remember--
- Everything on the beach was controlled by organized crime.
It was just woven into every part of the fabric
Of the community back then.
- This is all starting to look like something much
More than a missing person.
[dramatic music]
- My first thought when I heard they found the car
Was, was he in the trunk?
- In the russian criminal dialect--
- You had underground bare-knuckle brawl fights that
People would bet on, gambling joints,
Speakeasies, you name it.
- The russian organized crime task force
Was a combination of fbi agents and new
York city police detectives.
Our squad got involved in the kobozev case early on.
Detectives contacted us to see if we
Knew anything about this boxer or if we had any information.
- The news that kobozev was missing really
Resonated with me because--
- Korotaev, he was a very famous boxer,
But in the early '90s, he decided to come
Over to the other side--
- Oleg korotaev ran afoul--
- --In front of the arbat nightclub.
[gunshot]
- There were hundreds of people there at night,
But no one saw anything, anything at all, that night.
And that case was unsolved.
The russian mob continued to flourish.
- Of course, you'd want to know, other than boxing,
Was sergei mixed up in something else?
So you start going to all the people in your precinct,
Your informants on the street.
Does anybody know anything?
- The feds, they had a lot of eyes on that neighborhood,
So they just wanted to see if there was any chatter.
- These people in the russian community--
- In fact, I've never received one word of
Negative information about him.
- He was very calm and relaxed, composed.
To know such a guy that's in the ring getting so aggressive
With people that, to be so calm, I just always wanted to be
Like that myself afterwards.
- Sergei, he had no enemies.
He didn't piss anyone off.
- Although there's no evidence that sergei was involved
In organized crime, there's no doubt that he crossed
Paths with those who were.
- Social life in brighton beach revolved
Around these big nightclubs.
- And sergei was employed, was a greeter, bouncer, at this club.
The paradise club had a reputation
In the russian community.
You, as a regular customer walking off the street,
If you can get a table there, you could be rubbing elbows
Also organized criminals.
- But if the mob is to blame for sergei's disappearance,
Proving it will not be easy.
- People are still living with the culture
From the old country--
[gentle music]
- My mother, after he went missing, took it very hard.
I remember I would ask, is daddy coming home or not?
And she just-- she didn't have an answer for me.
She was just crying and--
- When you have a missing persons case of this kind--
- And we realized that there had been a major event in his life.
- Two weeks before sergei disappeared,
He'd had his first international fight in paris and that he had
Entered it 23-0 in the win column
And had his first defeat there.
- You start theorizing.
Perhaps that loss led him--
- Detectives spoke to other people
He boxed with, coworkers, people at the gym
Who he was close with.
- He was excited about what was happening next.
He said, get me a rematch.
- So that theory ultimately fell on its face.
- Now, almost a week into the case,
A call comes in from a local diner.
- The owner of the diner realized
There's a car that's been sitting in the same spot
For five or six days.
He calls the police.
The responding unit runs a tag, and it gets a hit on the bolo.
They found sergei kobozev's vehicle.
- My first thought when I heard they found the car
Was, was he in the trunk?
- Sergei kobozev has been missing for five days.
Now his car has been found abandoned at a local diner.
- We opened the car, but sergei was not inside the vehicle.
- The squad detective had the car
Towed back to a nypd garage.
[soft music]
- My mother tried to protect me from all this.
But I first started to get the sense that something was really
Wrong after his car was found.
She really tried to keep me away from thinking about it,
And she kept me busy.
Why would he leave his car and just
Disappear like that, you know?
- Detectives started now putting this out publicly.
- There were russian-language posters up with his picture.
- Sergei kobozev, he was a big deal in the russian community.
So when someone like that went missing--
- I wanted to know what happened to him.
It was part of my job to find out.
[dramatic music]
There's so much work to be done when you find
A vehicle that's abandoned somewhere, especially
In an urban environment.
You interview the regulars.
You interview people come to pick up the garbage.
- So it was very frustrating.
[tense music]
- The nypd evidence team went over the car
Looking for fingerprints, blood samples.
- There was no blood, nothing of that nature.
- When the vehicle was found, there was additional theories
Flying around in the community.
- --Because the community was controlled by the russian mob,
Various brigades that operated there.
- We're starting to look at different people,
And one of the individuals, who was probably the best-known
Russian organized crime boss that came from russia, was
A guy named vyacheslav ivankov.
My squad received information the paradise
Was a place that the ivankov team frequented.
[tense music]
- Investigators visited the paradise club.
Again--
- But when they asked about the mob--
- My mom was desperate.
She wanted answers from anybody.
- People didn't want to get involved.
The only ones who cared and talked about it
Was the other fighters, the other russian fighters.
They were a part of his family.
It was a sad time.
- When you get a case like this, you never
Say to yourself, this is over.
It'll never be solved.
We still were looking at the ivankov criminal group.
- We were developing informants, figuring out all the locations
And all the players involved in the russian mafia that were
Operating in the brooklyn area.
As the weeks passed--
- --At the paradise club between sergei and a bunch
Of rough criminal types.
- And they're walking away from serge--
- --It's not over yet.
- They said--
- He didn't want to go to prison for life.
- He says, I don't care what you do to him.
- It's been a number of weeks since sergei went missing.
Informants started bringing in pieces of information that--
- We start to prod and push.
- --Between some other people at the nightclub
And the house band.
- There were three individuals, and kobozev tries to throw them
Out, because that's his job, from the disturbance
That they caused at the club.
- Detectives interviewed the musician.
He said, nobody hit me.
- It was a nonsensical statement.
[tense music]
- If people are not willing to cooperate--
- We were in a very frustrating, difficult spot.
[gentle music]
- It is so devastating to have to tell the remaining family
Members that you just don't have anything, you can't get there.
It's just terrible.
But you just keep trying.
So you work your cases.
You keep your feelers out on the street all the time.
- Fast forward, months turned into years of sergei
Being missing.
It's a very difficult thing to have to live with.
- I remember my mother not giving up hope.
I remember hoping that I would see him again.
And sometimes believing it, sometimes not.
- Now we're looking at 1999.
It's been four years since sergei went missing.
- I'm doing something completely I thought was unrelated.
[dark music]
- Our mission was to attack organized crime
And to disintegrate it if we could.
We do rico investigations, and that is we're
Looking to put people together in the group
And then attack the entire group and take the group out.
- At this point--
- Home invasion, hostage-holding,
Torturing people.
- Our task force eventually arrested five or six people.
- One of the people that we were able to arrest
Was a man by the name of alexander spitchenko.
- And he led this bratva brigade.
[tense music]
- When we started seeing what we had
Against the bratva brigade--
- He didn't want to go to prison for life.
- After months in prison, alexander spitchenko agrees
To become a federal witness.
- And he advises that he has no intention
Of going forward until--
- And I said to him, oh, it's no problem.
We'll take your girlfriend--
- He says to me, no, I mean, I want
My entire extended family--
Then come the helicopter.
We were able to get his family whisked out of russia--
- --The entire extended family--
Kids and pets.
- The next step is alexander spitchenko
Needs to be taken out of prison and needs to be hidden.
I showed up in prison, and they said, guess what--
- We put him in the back of a darkened out black suv.
I sit in the back seat with him.
- And as we are driving in the middle
Of the night on a dark highway, spitchenko looks at me,
Smiles, and says--
- Felt like a thunderbolt.