Is Hollywood having a negative effect on our everyday lives? You be the judge.
The Tel Aviv District Attorney’s Office on Sunday indicted Barak Nagar, 31, a volleyball judge, who attempted to murder his friend over getting picked to judge an international tournament in his place. According to the indictment, Nagar invited his friend, whom he has known from their work for the Israeli Volleyball Association, to his Tel Aviv apartment after the friend had won the job of judging an international European competition which Barak had lost. Nagar decided to hang his friend to death from a seesaw hook in his living room ceiling. After the hanging, Nagar planned to cut up his friend’s body and dispose of the parts.
According to the indictment, the defendant acquired a rope, sleeping pills, garbage bags, a saw, two Japanese knives and a tape. He also killed a dog and a cat from the neighborhood and practiced his plan on their bodies.
Once he felt ready for the mission, Nagar invited his friend over to his apartment, and when he arrived he talked him into drinking liquor, saying he had a house rule of having to do a shot every 15 minutes. He mixed some 29 Klonopin and one Nocturno sleeping pills with his friend’s drinks to get him drowsy. Finally, the friend became sleepy and lied down on a bed. Nagar spread garbage bags on the apartment floor, for his friend’s body. He then stripped his friend naked. His friend woke up now and then and observed what was being done to him, but was unable to resist.
When Nagar realized his friend was not fully sedated, he decided to kill him by cutting his throat rather than by hanging him. He tied his friend’s legs together with the rope, took one of the Japanese knives and sat down on his friend’s stomach. When the friend asked what he was doing, Nagar threw the knife beyond the bed and said he wanted to kiss his friend, but his friend refused. The friend then fell asleep again and Nagar stabbed him several times in the left side of his neck with the knife and strangled him with both hands.
The strangling woke his friend from his slumber and he started fighting back. He asked Nagar to stop, but Nagar continued to strangle him, fought him, smacked his head against the floor and smacked him in the face with his fists. Eventually the friend managed to hit Nagar in the head and escaped from the apartment, naked and hemorrhaging from his neck. Pedestrians downstairs alerted the rescue teams.
Nagar is also accused of interfering with the investigation, when he wiped off his victim’s blood from the floor with a mop and washed his hands. He also hid evidence, by taking his friend’s wallet, cellphone and car keys — and left the apartment. Nagar then dumped the phone and the keys in the sea and threw the wallet in a sewer.
Was this a case of too many Hollywood movies? Probably — and not the smooth ones, but the hectic, Coen Brothers kind, where much blood is spilled over much ineptness and shoddy planning.