Needham in shock over grim find
Engineer, 81, dead in home
The suspicious death of an 81-year-old former Russian engineer in Needham rattled the quiet neighborhood as police tracked the woman’s stolen red car to Dorchester and hunted for answers about her death from what officials called “sharp trauma.”
Laura Shifrina, identified by friends as a former engineer at the Moscow Aviation Institute who was active in a local Russian science group, was found dead in her Needham apartment yesterday by her daughter, according to Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey.
Morrissey, declining to label the death a homicide, said the massive presence of state and local police was “a pretty good indication that’s where we are heading.” He also declined to say whether anything was missing from the apartment where Shifrina had lived since 2001.
Investigators believe “some sharp trauma was involved from a device that will have to be identified,” Morrissey said, adding that the medical examiner would determine the time and cause of death.
Police hunted for Shifrina’s missing red Ford Fiesta, hoping the stolen vehicle could help investigators close in on a “critical clue in the turn of events of what happened,” Morrissey said. The car was tracked to Dorchester yesterday afternoon. No arrests were made in the case.
Before coming to the U.S., Shifrina was an engineer who worked for the Moscow Aviation Institute, according to Alexandr Yufa, president of the Massachusetts Club of Russian Speaking Scientists who remembered Shifrina as a “wonderful woman” and a “prominent member” in the club.
Shifrina edited the club’s bulletin called “Intellect,” and her absence from a meeting Wednesday worried some colleagues, said Natasha Dubrovinskaya, a member of the bulletin’s editorial board.
“It was not a very important session,” Dubrovinskaya told the Herald. “I first was not very worried. I thought she just wanted to stay home, but other colleagues who decided to meet after the session, they began to worry. They kept calling, and she wasn’t answering.”
Dubrovinskaya said Shifrina was “not a really open person” but she had a daughter and two grandsons.
“It is a shock to everybody,” Dubrovinskaya said.
Shifrina’s friend, Zinaida Ivchenko, wept as she left the apartment complex yesterday, telling the Herald she knew Shifrina since she moved in six years ago.
“She’s like a sister to me,” Ivchenko said. “I am crying, what a terrible thing, she was killed because of the car, it was because of the car that someone killed her.”
The death rattled the peaceful neighbor in Needham, a town that has not seen a murder in over a decade.
“It’s very scary,” said neighbor Jennifer Riley said. “You see this on the news all the time but you never expect it to happen literally in your backyard.”