Thread by @RealLoriSpencer

On this 70th anniversary Soviet leader Josef #Stalin’s death, this documentary attempts to answer the question we’ve been asking since 1953:

Who Killed Stalin? 🤔

The most likely suspect was Lavrentiy Beria, longtime chief of #Stalin’s secret police.

After Stalin’s death, his eventual successor Nikita #Khrushchev did not charge Beria with the murder; rather, of being a traitor and spy in the pay of British intelligence! 🤨

Beria was convicted and executed in Dec. 1953.

At Beria's trial, it became known that he had committed numerous brutal rapes during the years he was NKVD chief.

Beria’s reputation as a serial rapist evidently became known to Stalin, who was increasingly distrustful of him.

In one instance, when Stalin learned that his then-teenage daughter, Svetlana, was alone with Beria at his house, he telephoned her and told her to leave immediately!

Before and during the war, Beria directed Sarkisov to keep a list of the names and phone numbers of the women that he had sex with.

Eventually, he ordered Sarkisov to destroy the list as a security risk, but Sarkisov retained a secret copy. 😯

When Beria's fall from power began, Sarkisov passed the list to Viktor Abakumov, the former wartime head of SMERSH and now chief of the MGB – the successor to the NKVD.

Abakumov was already aggressively building a case against Beria.

Stalin, who was also seeking to undermine Beria, was thrilled by the detailed records kept by Sarkisov, demanding: "Send me everything this asshole writes down!"

In 2003, the Russian government acknowledged Sarkisov's handwritten list of Beria's victims, which reportedly contains hundreds of names. (!!)

The victims' names were at last released to the public in 2003.

Evidence suggests that Beria also murdered some of these women.

In 1993, construction workers installing streetlights unearthed human bones near Beria's Moscow villa (now the Tunisian embassy).

Skulls, pelvises and leg bones were found.

In 1998, the skeletal remains of five young women were discovered during work carried out on the water pipes in the garden of the same villa formerly occupied by Beria.

In 2011, building workers digging a ditch in Moscow unearthed a common grave near the same residence containing a pile of human bones, including two children's skulls covered with lime or chlorine.

The condition of the remains indicate that these bodies were buried naked.

According to Martin Sixsmith, in a BBC documentary, "Beria spent his nights having teenagers abducted from the streets and brought here for him to rape. Those who resisted were strangled and buried in his wife's rose garden."

Vladimir Zharov, head of the Dept of Forensic Medicine at Moscow's State University of Medicine and Dentistry and head of the criminal forensics bureau, said a torture chamber was in the basement of Beria's villa and that there was probably an underground passage to burial sites.

If Beria was not only a serial rapist but a brutal serial killer (and the evidence seems overwhelming that he was), this monster was capable of anything — killing #Stalin would have been in character for him.

Beria had the motive, means, and opportunity to murder Josef Stalin.

After 70 years, isn’t it time for a real investigation into the mysterious death of #Stalin?

All these years we have been told that Stalin died of “natural causes.” That was the party line.

Although Beria and Stalin are both long dead now, history should record the truth.