Bio

Vitaly Konstantinovich Kaloyev was born on January 15, 1956, in Ordzhonikidze, now Vladikavkaz, in North Ossetia, Russia. He trained and worked as an architect. Before the murder, he had been working in Barcelona, Spain, and was waiting there for his wife and children to arrive for a visit.

On July 1, 2002, Kaloyev’s wife, Svetlana Kaloyeva, and their two children, 10-year-old Konstantin and 4-year-old Diana, were killed aboard Bashkirian Airlines Flight 2937. The aircraft collided with a DHL cargo plane over southern Germany. Most of the passengers killed were Russian schoolchildren traveling to Spain.

Kaloyev went to the crash site and took part in the search for his family. Reports state that he found his daughter Diana’s body and a broken pearl necklace that belonged to her. After returning to North Ossetia, he spent long periods at his family’s graves and built a shrine to them in his home.

Kaloyev held Peter Nielsen personally responsible for the crash. Investigations found wider systemic failures at Skyguide, but Kaloyev focused his anger on Nielsen, who had been the controller handling the traffic that night. After failing to obtain a personal meeting or apology, Kaloyev hired a private investigator to find Nielsen’s address in Switzerland.

Murder Story

On February 24, 2004, Vitaly Kaloyev went to Kloten, Switzerland, where Peter Nielsen lived with his wife and children. Kaloyev had traveled there after obtaining Nielsen’s home address. A neighbor saw him outside Nielsen’s home holding a paper with Nielsen’s name on it.

Nielsen came outside to speak with him. A short confrontation followed. Kaloyev later said he showed Nielsen photographs of his dead children and wanted an apology. According to Kaloyev’s later account, he became enraged after Nielsen struck or pushed away the hand holding the photographs. Kaloyev said he did not clearly remember what happened afterward.

Nielsen was stabbed several times and died outside his home. His wife and children were nearby when the attack happened. Police later found Kaloyev in a hotel room in Kloten. He was arrested and placed under psychiatric evaluation.

At trial, Kaloyev described the emotional collapse that followed the death of his family. He told the court that the crash had ended his life and said he had spent nearly two years living emotionally at the cemetery beside his family’s graves.

On October 26, 2005, a Swiss court convicted Kaloyev of premeditated homicide and sentenced him to 8 years in prison. In 2007, a regional court reduced the sentence to 5 years and 3 months, ruling that he had acted with diminished responsibility because of the deaths of his wife and children. Switzerland’s highest court rejected prosecutors’ appeal, clearing the way for his release.

Kaloyev was released in November 2007 and returned to Russia. In January 2008, he was appointed to a senior government post in North Ossetia, becoming deputy minister of construction. This appointment caused international controversy because he had recently been released after killing Nielsen. He later retired from that government position in 2016.