November 13th, 2011 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
We recently reported on the Solomon Metalwala/Julia Biryukova divorce/child abduction case. Police now say that Biryukova’s story is “falling apart”– see Sky Metalawala Missing: Dad Thinks Boy’s Mother, Julia Biryukova, May Be Involved in Disappearance (ABC News, 11/11/11).
As you’ll recall, Metalwala and Biryukova are embroiled in nasty divorce and custody case. They have two children, Maile, 4 and Sky, 2. They went to mediation and hammered out an agreement in which Biryukova would have primary custody and Metalwala visitation.
But two days after they agreed, Biryukova contacted her attorney wanting to back out claiming she’d felt pressured to make a deal.
Then, Biryukova claims she was driving in her car with the two kids, taking Sky to the hospital. She says the car ran out of gas, so she and Maile walked a mile to a gas station, got gas and called a friend to take them back to the car. When they arrived, Sky was gone.
But police have been investigating her story, and no part of it matches reality. For example, she says she needed gas, but she didn’t buy any. Indeed, she seems to have simply wandered around a neighborhood near the gas station before calling her friend. When police arrived, there was no gas can and the car started right up with no trouble.
Into the bargain, none of the places she went to prior to stopping her car has security camera footage with Sky in it. That’s disturbing, but not as disturbing as the fact that Metalwala hasn’t set eyes on his son in many weeks. And neither apparently, has anyone else.
Biryukova has been diagnosed with severe obsessive/compulsive disorder that doesn’t rise to the level of psychosis, but is still disturbing. She apparently can clean house for 10 hours straight, all the while ignoring the children entirely, including failing to feed them.
Weirdly, police are now pointing to a television show that may have given Biryukova the idea for abducting, or even killing her son.
Investigators have serious questions about Biryukova’s story. They say her account doesn’t add up, and also say it’s remarkably similar to an episode of the TV series “Law and Order.”
The episode, which police say is “strikingly similar in nature” to Biryukova’s story, centered on a mother who tries to cover up the death of her child by saying he was taken from her car.
That detail also alarms Solomon Metalwala.
“‘Law and Order’ was Julia’s favorite show and the similarities are pretty similar and if she got that idea in her head that ‘I can make this happen,’ she’s not going to fear the consequences, because she doesn’t fear consequences,” he said.
Metalwala has agreed to take a polygraph test suggested by police, but Biryukova has refused to do likewise.
It’s time for CPS to place Maile in Metalwala’s care. And it’s time for Julia Biryukova to come clean about Sky’s whereabouts.