Son of top businessman detained on suspicion of killing his 16 year old former girlfriend

Tycoon Igor Konkov claimed his son Mark, 16, and dead teenager Karina Zalesova had made a suicide pact, and that the boy was rescued from hanging himself at the last minute. 

However, Mark Konkov was taken into custody on Wednesday after an outcry in Novosibirsk over an earlier court decision to hold him under house arrest. The public expressed concerns that the businessman's influence could lead to an abuse of justice in the case. 

Zalesova's body was found on 28 August in Igor Konkov's mansion. Her father Yury Zalesov alleged that the tycoon's son had previously threatened to stab her in text messages and on social networks, and that after she died he had used her phone to boast to a friend over the killing. 

'Her phone could only be unlocked using her own fingerprints, so he must have pressed the button with her finger after she was already dead,' he claimed. 

Friends of the dead girl said that she went to the party because he had threatened to commit suicide if she did not come. It is believed she hid this from her father who did not know where she planned to go. 

Her parents called her but she didn't answer and then the phone was switched off. They revealed that she had four stab wounds to her throat and also four cuts on her hands, as well as bruises, indicating she had tried to protect herself from her attacker, so casting doubt on the suicide pact theory.

State investigators appealed against house arrest, and the alleged killer is now in custody pending further investigations. Konkov, a construction tycoon, has six children with his wife Natalia, a psychologist. 

At Wednesday's court hearing she cast doubt on her youngest child's sanity, adding that he needed to be 'isolated'.