Trio indicted in roomie attack

Trio indicted in roomie attack

Home News Tribune Online 11/2/06

By KEN SERRANO
STAFF WRITER
kserrano@thnt.com

MIDDLESEX COUNTY — The exotic dancer charged with keeping a severed human hand in a jar in her home has been indicted along with two housemates in connection with an alleged attack against another roommate in April.

The dancer, Linda E. Kay, 31, Sean F. McDonough, 30, and Polina V. Nikulina, 26, all of the home on Diana Drive in South Plainfield where the hand was found in July, were charged in indictments returned Oct. 19. The charges against all three — criminal restraint, making terroristic threats and weapons offenses — were not released until yesterday.

McDonough, as part of a six-count indictment, was additionally charged with aggravated assault and two counts of possession of a prohibited weapon: a switchblade and a sawed-off shotgun.

According to the victim, Andrea Leipow, and court records, Kay, Nikulina and McDonough attacked Leipow at the end of April, holding her against her will for five hours and threatening to slit her throat. McDonough pointed an empty shotgun at her forehead and pulled the trigger, according to a complaint signed against him by police.

If convicted, McDonough faces up to 10 years in prison on the worst offense, a second-degree weapons charge. Kay and Nikulina face up to five years in prison if convicted of just one of the third-degree charges they are accused of.

McDonough's attorney, Bradford Bury of Mountainside, said his client is "absolutely innocent" of the allegations in the indictment.

"This is a 100 percent retaliatory, retributive act by Andrea Leipow as the result of her being asked to leave the home after she overstayed her welcome," Bury said.

Donald DiGioia of Mountainside, Kay's attorney, has also maintained that his client is innocent. He did not return calls last night.

The name of Nikulina's attorney could not be confirmed last night. She is listed in court documents as being represented by First Assistant Deputy Public Defender Richard "Red" Barker, but Bury said he believes she has hired a private attorney. Barker did not return a call.

Leipow worked as an exotic dancer with Kay and Nikulina at Hott22 in Union. The April attack came to light after Kay was charged with desecration of human remains, a third-degree offense.

Police went to her house at 28 Diana Drive in the borough on July 21 in response to a report of a man trying to commit suicide with a hammer. The man was not there, but the officers found the hand preserved in a foot-tall Mason jar of formaldehyde on a basement table.

In September, a medical student, Ahmed Rashed, 26, now of Los Angeles, was charged with second-degree theft for allegedly severing and taking the left hand from a cadaver at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in 2002 and giving it to Kay.

Leipow told the Home News Tribune in July that the April assault was the culmination of bizarre goings-on in the house that included satanism. She described the roommates as a cult, with McDonough as its leader.

A relative of McDonough's called those allegations "absolute nonsense," saying Leipow was McDonough's spurned lover who was seeking revenge.

Of the allegations of satanism, Assistant Middlesex County Prosecutor Thomas Carver, who is handling the case, said, "We're not offering that as a motive for what happened that night."

Leipow, who knew Nikulina from Millburn High School, first moved into the home on Feb. 28.

At first, her roommates seemed like ordinary people, aside from Kay and Nikulina's jobs as exotic dancers, Leipow said.

But books on black magic, the severed hand nicknamed Freddy, six human skulls in a bedroom and the medieval weapons, such as a mace, made her feel increasingly uncomfortable, she said. Unclothed mannequins wearing wigs were in several rooms, she said. One of the three housemates read a satanic text in the language Enochian. And her roommates would listen to tapes by the now-dead founder of the Church of Satan, Anton LeVay.

A tattoo-artist friend of the group came by one night and tattooed the three women with upside down 3s on the back of each of their necks.

Leipow, who got the tattoo as a lark, asked them what it meant.

"They said it meant freedom," she recalled. "Now, I'm afraid of what it means."

On April 29, she said she accompanied McDonough, Nikulina and Kay to a neighbor's house, then came back home. The three were drinking heavily, Leipow said.

An argument broke out, and McDonough ordered the two women to strip Leipow and throw her into the street, she said. They forced her to drink alcohol so police wouldn't believe her if she called them, Leipow said.

The situation grew even more violent, she said.

"Linda had a knife to my throat," she said. McDonough knelt on her to restrain her, she said. "I really thought he was going to kill me."

Eventually all three drank themselves into stupors, Leipow said.

"I ended up leaving without any shoes on," she said.