The Queens woman accused of hiring a relative to rub out her husband said today that she “was never involved” in his brutal murder – and that detectives fingered her as the killer just hours after the slaying.
Mazoltuv Borukhova shockingly took the witness stand – a last-minute decision by the defense – and recounted the moment her husband, Daniel Malakov, 34, was killed.
“He twitched in pain. He was holding his chest,” Borukhova recalled during her emotional testimony. “Between [his] hands, I could see blood.”
A medical examiner said Malakov, a dentist, had a wound on the left side of his back just below one of his gunshot entry wounds – suggesting he was hit with the makeshift plastic silencer found on the ground inside a Forest Hills playground.
Mikhail Mallayev’s fingerprints were found on the makeshift silencer authorities claim he used in the Oct. 28, 2007, murder.
Borukhova is charged with paying Mallayev $20,000 for the hit in order to regain custody of their 4-year-old daughter.
The little girl was in the park when Malakov was killed.
The couple had separated in 2003.
Once hit, Malakov was shot again in the left chest – filling his lungs with blood and killing him within seconds.
“I took a few steps and fell down,” Borukhova said, watching in horror as she saw him die.
But Borukhova proclaimed her innocence in front of a jury and packed courtroom in Queens Supreme Court – even saying she tried to revive Malakov, but was unable to.
Within hours of the shooting, Borukhova testified that her husband’s relatives and cops immediately blamed her.
“I said, ‘I’m not involved. I don’t know anything,’ ” she said.