Man who stabbed ex-wife 72 times receives 26 1/2 year sentence | Polak murdered Nataliya Vabishchevich inside Bellevue condo

Published 11:16 am Monday, May 4, 2015

A man who murdered his ex-wife by stabbing her 72 times in her Bellevue condo and briefly fled the state two years ago was sentenced to 26 1/2 years in prison in King County Superior Court on Friday.

The King County Prosecutor’s Office had been seeking a 25-year sentence for Aleksandr Polak, but even the extended prison time ordered by Superior Court Judge John Chun was reportedly not long enough for the family of murder victim Nataliya Vabishchevich.

Vabishchevich was found stabbed to death in her condo on the 12700 block of Northeast 10th Place just before noon on June 17, 2013, with stab wounds to her head, neck, chest and arms. Polak was interviewed by police soon after the murder, and was seen later that day purchasing a bus ticket in Seattle. Police followed him to Los Angeles, where he was arrested on June 21, allegedly en route to Mexico, court documents state. He was found with $5,000 hidden in his baseball cap.

The couple had divorced in 2007, however, Polak spent the next six years traveling to Bellevue from his home country of Latvia on-and-off in an effort to reconcile with his ex-wife, according to court documents. Polak moved to Edmonds in May 2013, a little more than a month before the murder.

Vabishchevich had lived with her son at the time of her murder, the then 14-year-old telling police his mother had been alive when he headed off to school on the morning of June 17, 2013. She was working for Pure Chiropractic of Bellevue and Eastside Life Chiropractic of Redmond at the time of her death, both holding fundraisers for Vabishchevich’s son following the murder.