Yelena Bulchenko, 20, was killed on February 11, 2011, in the Sheepshead Bay area of Brooklyn, after a violent chain of events that unfolded across the city and left multiple victims in its wake. Police said the day’s terror began earlier that morning with an attack inside Maksim Gelman’s own family home, and then spilled outward—fast, deliberate, and seemingly fixated—until it reached the Bulchenko residence.
Investigators said Gelman went to the Bulchenko home later that morning, where Anna Bulchenko was inside. According to police accounts carried by multiple outlets, Anna was stabbed to death, and Gelman then waited for hours, remaining in or near the home as if anticipating Yelena’s return. Friends later described Yelena as having a steady boyfriend, and said that if Gelman believed there was a relationship between them, it existed only in his mind—an obsession that others around her did not recognize as mutual.
By the afternoon, Yelena arrived home at about 4 p.m. and discovered her mother’s body. Police said she called 911, but Gelman was still there or returned at that moment, and the scene turned into a desperate flight. Authorities reported that he chased her outside and stabbed her 11 times, killing her near the home. In the days afterward, mourners gathered to grieve the mother and daughter together, their names quickly becoming inseparable in the retelling of what happened on that block.
After Yelena’s killing, police said the violence continued through additional attacks and carjackings, expanding the case from a neighborhood tragedy into a citywide manhunt. The spree ended the next morning in Manhattan, when Gelman attacked a subway rider; reports said passengers recognized him from widely circulated photos and alerted authorities, and police tackled and arrested him moments after the assault. During the arrest, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Gelman made incoherent remarks, including “she had to die,” though officials said it was unclear whom he meant.
Gelman was quickly brought into court, held without bail, and formally prosecuted in multiple jurisdictions because the attacks crossed borough lines. He was indicted by a Brooklyn grand jury on numerous counts, and later pleaded guilty to charges tied to the killings and assaults from the spree. In January 2012, he was sentenced in Brooklyn to 200 years in prison for the murders and related crimes; the Manhattan subway attack was handled separately, and he later received an additional 25-year prison term for that final stabbing, to run after the Brooklyn sentence.
