In late March 2000, 49-year-old jet-fuel magnate Borys Kiejliches disappeared from his Staten Island home. He lived on Todt Hill with his wife, Elena, and their two young children. Elena initially told authorities he might have walked out on the marriage and took the children to Disney World before reporting him missing.

On April 25, 2000, a decomposed body identified as Borys was recovered in a cardboard barrel floating in a marsh near the Belt Parkway on the Brooklyn-Queens border. The autopsy found a single close-range 9mm gunshot wound to the back of the head and a fracture to the back of the skull.

Investigators shifted focus to the couple’s domestic life after learning Elena was having an affair with Messiah Justice, then 26, who sometimes stayed at the house. Justice later admitted helping dispose of the body and testified that Elena called him the night of March 24, 2000, saying she had killed her husband in the basement. Elena was arrested in May 2000, convicted in June 2002 of second-degree murder and tampering with evidence, and sentenced to 22 years to life; Justice pleaded guilty to evidence tampering and hindering prosecution and was sentenced to one and one-third to three years.