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I was just researching Mathias Rust since he was mentioned in the Cessna 172 article[0] trending on HN right now. Wikipedia says he stabbed a nurse shortly aft
by rl3 10y ago
I was just researching Mathias Rust since he was mentioned in the Cessna 172 article[0] trending on HN right now.
Wikipedia says he stabbed a nurse shortly after his return, but was lacking details. A quick search turned up a couple news articles.[1][2] Notable excerpts include:
"According to police, Rust pulled an 18-year-old student nurse into a hospital changing room and, after locking the door behind them, attempted to kiss her.
When she resisted, she was stabbed twice in the stomach, police said."
He received only two and a half years in prison for that. The woman he stabbed nearly died. What the fuck.
"Mr. Rust had testified that he might have been drugged throughout his captivity in the Soviet Union, where he had been jailed for more than a year after landing a borrowed plane in Red Square in May 1987."
Having just read an article on the U.S.'s psychochemical warfare program[3] in the 1950s and 60s, and considering the Soviets had similar programs, I suppose it's possible he was drugged in a manner that had long-term effects. It'd make sense for the Soviets to render him violent in an attempt to destroy what amounted to a Western folk hero at the time.
That said, he was already out of his mind to attempt penetrating Soviet airspace in a Cessna 172, so an incident involving spontaneous violence isn't exactly surprising.
Either way, I found the whole thing extremely bizarre.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13792309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13792309
[1] http://articles.latimes.com/1989-11-24/news/mn-176_1_moscow-s-red-square http://articles.latimes.com/1989-11-24/news/mn-176_1_moscow-...
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/20/world/red-square-pilot-convicted-of-stabbing-a-student-nurse.html http://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/20/world/red-square-pilot-con...
[3] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/12/17/operation-delirium http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/12/17/operation-delir...
- ralfd 10y agoRust was an introverted nerd, thats why he flew naively to Russia. It was just luck that he wasn't shot down. Strangely, his journey was though beneficial for Perestroika, as Gorbachev used the embarrassing incident to clean house and retire opponents in the military. > He received only two and a half years in prison for that. The woman he stabbed nearly died. What the fuck. I looked it up: At that time public opinion pivoted against him. His parents had sold his story to a magazine for a larger sum, which was seen as greedy and improper journalism, and he himself made very naive/weird statements in interviews (e.g. his claim about the russians drugging him). The media wanted him to be a hero and an attractive daredevil pilot, but he turned out to just be a boring weirdo. A socially inept and awkward 20 year old. Regarding the knife attack he claimed that the girl rebuked his advances by calling him (I am paraphrasing the German here) "a loser, that he never will succeed and will ever be a loser, and the russia thing was just a stunt to make himself important". Rust said something snapped in him. A psychological examination saw this as triggering his neurosis. The court followed this and I guess judged the media stress as mitigating factor for his affect action. (The girl denied saying that to him and indeed only survived because the stabbing was in a hospital.) After prison Rust had an odd life. He was in Asia and abroad, he had two failed marriages there, he claimed to have been a professional Poker player and having won a small fortune with poker, which allowed him to be financially independent, but then he was caught trying to steal an expensive cashmere pullover in a store, something about check fraud, something about a Yoga school he wanted to open... http://www.spiegel.de/einestages/kreml-flieger-mathias-rust-a-947580.html http://www.spiegel.de/einestages/kreml-flieger-mathias-rust-...