Between February and May 2005, four people who knew Nicola Boner died in Haifa, in northern Israel. One was a woman who had invited him into her home. The other three were homeless men he drank with. At first police did not see a connection: the woman's death was taken for an accident, and in some of the other cases investigators initially ruled out foul play. Post-mortem examinations showed the victims had been killed. A fifth man, a homeless acquaintance, was attacked and got away, and his account brought police to Boner.
Boner, then 32, was an immigrant from Moldova. He confessed to police and walked investigators through the scenes, then later told the court he had killed no one. In November 2006 the Haifa District Court convicted him of four murders and of rape, arson and other offenses, and in May 2007 it sentenced him to four consecutive life terms, a sentence Ynet described as the heaviest that court had handed down. Ynet later wrote that he was the first person in Israel to be called a serial killer.
Little is known of Boner's early life. Ynet's English edition reported at his arrest that he lived in Haifa and had moved to Israel from Moldova five years earlier. Hebrew-language coverage gave his name as ניקולאי בונר and, in some reports, as ניקולא בונר; Ynet's English edition printed it as Nicola Boner.
In a 2016 review of Israel's first serial murder cases, Ynet wrote that Boner had settled in Haifa after emigrating, and that after his wife died he became homeless and dependent on alcohol and spent his time among the city's homeless people. Ynet's 2007 report said the three men had hosted him while they drank together.
When a plea agreement was put to him in court in June 2006, a translator was called to put it into Russian for him, and his lawyer later argued that his weak Hebrew meant he had not understood the confession he first signed.
The indictment against Boner, as reported by Ynet in July 2005, named the four dead and gave their ages.
ריטה וולמן (Rita Walman, as Ynet's English edition spelled her name) was 51. She lived in Haifa and knew Boner. She was killed on February 9, 2005, according to the indictment; her death was the first of the four. At first police believed it had been an accident. Only later was it treated as a killing. The indictment charged that he raped and murdered her. Ynet ran her photograph with its coverage of the sentencing in 2007.
אלכסנדר לבנט was 36. He had known Boner before March 11, 2005, when, according to the indictment, the two quarreled and he was killed.
ולרי סצ'נוב was 42. He had known Boner for several months. Toward the end of April, the indictment said, the two men argued and he was killed. (Ynet's July 2005 report printed the year of his death as 2004, a slip in a report that otherwise placed all the killings in 2005; a photo caption in the same report spelled his name ולרי סוצנוב.)
אלכסנדר קרס was 39 and also knew Boner. On May 1, 2005, the indictment said, the two argued over money and over an insult to Boner's mother. He was killed that day.
NEWSru.co.il, a Russian-language Israeli news site, described three of the four victims as homeless immigrants from the former Soviet Union and reported that Boner had been seen with the three men several times before they died. Its spellings and ages for the dead differ from those in the indictment as Ynet reported it; which version is correct has never been settled.
For months the deaths were handled as separate cases. Ynet reported in July 2005 that police had not at first realized that one person was responsible, and that suspicion grew because of a common feature in three of the cases, one that later formed the basis of the arson charges. In some cases, Ynet's English edition reported at the time of the arrest, investigators had first ruled out foul play before post-mortem examinations showed that the victims had been killed.
An investigator told Ynet on the morning the case was made public that the four cases were linked by similar features. "We realized there was a regular pattern repeating itself," he said, adding that intelligence information and investigative work had led police to the suspect. Investigators concluded that all four had been beaten to death.
In its 2016 review, Ynet wrote that police did not recognize the pattern until after the third killing, and that they identified Boner only after the fourth.
The break came from a fifth man. According to the indictment, Boner attacked a homeless man he had known for about two years. The man survived, and his testimony led police to Boner. Ynet's 2007 report said he had escaped and that he later helped solve the crimes.
Boner was detained at the end of May 2005, after what a police representative, Meir Levi, told the court had been a long investigation. On May 30, 2005, the Haifa Magistrate's Court cleared the case for publication. Levi told the court that Boner had confessed to the killings and had reenacted them for investigators.
The judge extended Boner's detention by 15 days and ordered a psychiatric evaluation during that time. His lawyer had asked for an examination of his mental state to determine whether he was fit to stand trial. The evaluation lasted more than a month, Ynet reported, and after it the Haifa District Attorney's Office decided to bring charges.
At the remand hearing, Boner told the court that the victims had not treated him well, but he said he regretted killing them. About the woman, he said that he had only beaten her and had not known she would die. He could not explain parts of what he had done, and he said he had been drunk at the time of the killings.
NEWSru.co.il reported similar remarks from another early detention hearing. "I know I did something wrong," Boner told reporters, according to NEWSru.co.il. He said the three men had wanted to beat him and had done bad things to him, that he was sorry for what had happened, and that he had killed four people while drunk.
On July 7, 2005, the Haifa District Attorney's Office filed an indictment against Boner at the Haifa District Court. It was written by the prosecutor ענת נשר. It charged him with four murders, the assault of a fifth person, rape, sodomy and arson, and it listed more than 100 prosecution witnesses. The rape charge was made public only when the indictment was filed, Ynet reported.
Ynet said the Haifa District Police had uncovered the case about six weeks earlier after a long investigation. Its July report said the four had died between February and April; the indictment's own account, as Ynet summarized it, placed the last death on May 1. NEWSru.co.il, describing the same indictment a year later, gave the period as January to May 2005.
The case was heard in the Haifa District Court before three judges: מנחם נאמן, deputy president of the court, מנחם פינקלשטיין and כמאל סעב. Boner was represented throughout by the lawyer עופר כהן. Many prosecution witnesses testified during the first year, and Cohen worked toward ending the case with a plea agreement.
The agreement came before the court on June 12, 2006. Under it, Boner would admit the acts he was charged with. Ynet reported that it had been understood to mean two consecutive life sentences. Before the hearing, the prosecutor asked for two more life sentences to run concurrently, and for the judges to decide the sentences for the other offenses, among them rape, arson and assault. NEWSru.co.il summarized the deal as two life terms to be served consecutively and two concurrently, and listed the admitted offenses as four murders, rape, robbery and burglary with aggravating circumstances.
Before the hearing began, Boner told reporters in the courtroom that he had killed no one. He said he had confessed because he feared that the police and the victims' families would harm his daughter and his family. At first he told his lawyer he would not accept the deal, then appeared to change his mind. When a translator put the agreement into Russian for him, he became angry, told the three judges that he would not admit the charges or sign anything, tore up the document and threw the pieces on the courtroom floor. "I didn't kill anyone, I was drunk during the interrogation, and I'm not confessing to anything," he said, as NEWSru.co.il reported it. According to that report, he said the police had told him that if he signed, he would be allowed to go home.
Ynet reported that he also told the court he wanted a new lawyer. The judges ordered the trial to continue as scheduled and set further hearings for evidence. Cohen said he would go on representing him. He said Boner had originally agreed to the terms and blamed the prosecution for a last-minute change. The Justice Ministry answered that the document the prosecution had presented accurately reflected the understandings reached earlier with the defense, and that there were records to show it.
At trial Boner maintained that he was innocent. He said he had confessed only under pressure from the police and out of fear for his daughter and his girlfriend. Cohen argued that Boner's Hebrew was too poor for him to have understood the confession document he first signed.
The defense also raised his mental state. Cohen brought expert opinions that diagnosed Boner with chronic paranoid psychosis. Other experts found a personality disorder but no mental illness. Most of the experts agreed that heavy drinking had probably affected his behavior and his state of mind.
The three judges had his statements to the police and the video recordings in which he reenacted the killings. They rejected his claims about how the confessions had been obtained, and in November 2006 they convicted him. In their ruling they wrote that he had led police to each of the scenes and reenacted the murders, and that the details he gave matched the evidence of how each victim died.
On the question of his sanity, which the court debated at length, the judges accepted the opinions that he had a personality disorder and was not mentally ill.
On May 6, 2007, the Haifa District Court sentenced Boner to four consecutive life terms for the four murders, which Ynet put at 120 years in all. For the other offenses of which he was convicted, rape, wounding (חבלה), arson, destroying evidence and obstruction of justice, the court imposed 17 years, to run concurrently with the life terms. Ynet called it the heaviest sentence ever imposed by the Haifa District Court. The prosecutor at sentencing was ענת נשר of the Haifa District Attorney's Office.
The judges wrote that the severity of each murder, the cruel circumstances and the baseness of what he had done left no doubt that the sentences had to run one after another, to express society's revulsion at his acts. Judge נאמן read the indictment's account of the first killing aloud in court.
Cohen said after the sentencing that he would appeal both the four murder convictions and the sentence to the Supreme Court. He said the experts he had called were of the highest standing and that the court had not accepted their view that Boner was mentally ill when he committed the acts. For his client, he said, it made no practical difference whether the sentence was two consecutive life terms or ten, because Boner would not see daylight again. He also said he respected Boner's decision to turn down the plea agreement, because Boner still maintained that he was innocent. When the deal had been put to him, Ynet reported, Boner had flown into a rage in court.
Israeli media nicknamed Boner the "Haifa serial killer," NEWSru.co.il reported in 2006, and Hebrew-language reports called him "the killer of the homeless." In April 2016 Ynet looked back at the cases that had been described as serial murders in Israel. It defined a serial killer as a person who takes the lives of at least three people who have no connection to one another, and it wrote that Boner was the first Israeli to be called a serial killer, and the only one up to then.
The occasion for that review was the arrest of another Moldovan-born man in a separate series of deaths. Ynet pointed out the parallels: both men had been born in Moldova, and the police officer then leading the newer investigation had earlier led the unit that caught Boner.
Proven by the Haifa District Court's verdict of November 2006: four murders, those of ריטה וולמן, אלכסנדר לבנט, ולרי סצ'נוב and אלכסנדר קרס, and the offenses of rape, wounding, arson, destroying evidence and obstruction of justice. The indictment also charged sodomy; the sentencing report did not list it among the offenses for which he was sentenced.
Reported but uncertain: the ages of the victims and the spelling of their names. The indictment, as Ynet reported it in 2005 and 2007, gave 51, 36, 42 and 39. Ynet's English edition in 2005 spelled the first victim's name Rita Walman. NEWSru.co.il in 2006 gave the woman's age as 54 and different ages for two of the men, and said she had been killed after an attempted robbery, an account that does not match the indictment as Ynet reported it.
Dates: Ynet's July 2005 report placed all four deaths between February and April, while its summary of the indictment dated the last killing May 1; NEWSru.co.il gave January to May 2005. Ynet's 2007 sentencing report described Boner as 50, a figure that does not fit its own 2005 reports, which gave his age as 32.
Boner's own account changed. He confessed to police, expressed regret at early hearings and spoke of having beaten the woman without meaning to kill her; from June 2006 he told the court he had killed no one and had confessed under pressure. The court rejected that claim.
February 9, 2005: ריטה וולמן, 51, dies in Haifa; her death is first thought to be accidental.
March 11, 2005: אלכסנדר לבנט, 36, is killed in Haifa.
Late April 2005: ולרי סצ'נוב, 42, is killed in Haifa.
May 1, 2005: אלכסנדר קרס, 39, is killed in Haifa.
Spring 2005: a fifth man, a homeless friend, is attacked and escapes; his testimony leads police to Boner.
End of May 2005: Boner is detained in Haifa and confesses.
May 30, 2005: the Haifa Magistrate's Court clears the case for publication, extends his detention by 15 days and orders a psychiatric evaluation.
July 7, 2005: indictment filed at the Haifa District Court (four murders, assault of a fifth person, rape, sodomy, arson).
June 12, 2006: Boner rejects a plea agreement in court and tears up the document; the trial continues.
November 2006: convicted of four murders and further offenses.
May 6, 2007: sentenced to four consecutive life terms plus 17 concurrent years; his lawyer announces an appeal to the Supreme Court.
April 27, 2016: Ynet describes him as the first person in Israel to be called a serial killer.