Skinhead expert gunned down in Russia

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia, June 22 (UPI) -- Russian police in St. Petersburg said they had no leads in the weekend shooting death of a prominent expert on skinheads, the Moscow Times reported.

Nikolai Girenko, 64, was killed when he went to answer the doorbell in his apartment Saturday morning. He was killed by a rifle shot through the unopened door.

Deputy Prosecutor Andrei Zhukov said investigators believe Girenko was killed because of his work as a researcher and expert witness in a number of trials involving extremism.

Over the past two years, he carried out about two dozen studies of neo-Nazi and skinhead groups for Moscow and St. Petersburg authorities. The work has helped lead to several convictions.

Girenko's colleagues and human rights advocates said they have no doubts that extremists were behind the attack.

"I simply do not see any other possible reason," said Girenko's boss, Yury Chistov, director of the St. Petersburg Museum of Ethnography and Anthropology, where Girenko had worked since 1970.

Police have little to work with except for neighbors who said they saw two suspicious looking men on the staircase of Girenko's building.