Quote from ssss:
Alexander Astashkevich - Research, Medallion Fund, committed suicide in Feb, 2006
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_Technologies_Corp
<i>NEW HOME FOR TRAGEDY BOY
A RUSSIAN BOY orphaned by the murder-suicide of his parents gained a little solace yesterday when Suffolk authorities placed him with a couple who have a child his age. Arthur Astashkevich, 6, had faced the prospect of returning to Russia and living with kin he hardly knew. Instead, child advocates and authorities meeting behind closed doors in Suffolk Family Court said they had agreed to give temporary custody of the boy to another Russian couple. The husband had worked with Arthur's father. Dorothy Courten, an attorney representing the couple, noted they have a child who knows Arthur from private school, play dates and tennis lessons. "They were close friends of the family," Courten said. In accordance with the couple's wishes, the Daily News is withholding their names. The boy was home Monday when his father, Alexander Astashkevich, 37 - a renowned mathematician who left his professor's job in California to take a high-paying corporate job on Long Island - shot his estranged wife, Olga Sadikova, 31, to death in her Port Jefferson home. After calling 911, he turned the shotgun on himself. Before killing himself, he left the phone on a table and the boy picked it up and spoke with the 911 dispatcher, The child hid in the bathroom talking on the cell phone with the dispatcher until Suffolk cops arrived. Yesterday, the dispatcher, Joseph Wixted, 39, described how the excited father called and said he was going to kill himself. "He told me he had shot his wife three times," Wixted recalled. "I tried to keep him on the line, and he said he was going to kill himself." Moments later, little Arthur got on the phone and said he couldn't leave the house because his mother's body was blocking the door. "He had seen the actual shooting, and at that point I just told him to go to the bathroom and lock the door," said Wixted, a probie just four months on the job who has two young children of his own. "He said he was 6 1/2, and right then and there I knew I had to get his mind off it. He knew Mommy had been shot." For 25 to 30 minutes, Wixted sought to reassure the frightened child. "I asked what PlayStation games he liked, what subjects he liked in school," Wixted said. "He said he liked math." Not that the conversation always flowed easily. "You have already asked me that question," the boy snapped when a subject was brought up a second time. Finally, Wixted could hear cops smashing in the bathroom door and rescuing the child.
Astashkevichâs boss, hedge-fund mogul Jim Simons, said his employee âwas quite well offâ but added, âI think money was an issue between them.
âHe was estranged from his wife, and obviously under some kind of terrible strain,â said Simons, the head of Renaissance Technologies, where Astashkevich worked as a researcher.
âHe seemed like a good father ⦠He seemed like a loving parent. But obviously, something terrible happened.â
Simons said Astashkevich received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Astashkevich lived in a one-bedroom, luxury pad near his family so that he could still see his son, one neighbor said.
âHe was a very friendly guy. He didnât seem like he had any problems,â the neighbor said. </i>
