Behind The Veil

Another Mysterious Disappearance????

March 6, 2003
Days After Woman Vanished, Clues Remain Scarce
By N. R. KLEINFIELD

She went out to walk the dog. Excellent neighborhood. Broad daylight. People everywhere. In a city of infinite prescribed routines, it doesn't get any more unexceptional than that. And then she never came back. There was nothing particularly conspicuous about Svetlana Aronov when she set out Monday afternoon to walk Bim, her father's 1-year-old cocker
spaniel. She wasn't dressed up. That wasn't her. She might have been smiling, because she was quick to smile. Just that morning she had had a mole that displeased her stricken from her cheek, a vanity thing, but something she was happy about. She couldn't have gone far, because she had a busy day. And then the threads run out. And so three days later, her family and the police are devoid of clues or plausible theories. There has been no ransom demand. Her husband,
Alexander, said he could not name a single enemy who would want to harm her. By now, he has heard every conceivable plot whispered on the television news, down to, could it be the Russian mob? "Nothing makes
sense," he said yesterday at their apartment on York Avenue, between East 63rd and 64th Streets. "It's as good an idea that she was taken by a U.F.O."
Polina, the older of their two daughters, said, "She like fell off the planet."

In a city where bizarre is almost without meaning, the case of Ms. Aronov, 44, ranks among New York's most improbable vanishings, with echoes of Judge Crater and Etan Patz. A police bloodhound traced the scent of the dog to 68th Street and York Avenue, where it ended. That's about as congested a corner as Manhattan offers. Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center occupies one side of the street. Rockefeller University and New York Weill Cornell Center are across the
way. If she was abducted, how could no one have seen anything suspicious? Why would anyone risk such a chancy crime? And why take the cocker spaniel?
"The fact that she left her apartment, leaving behind money and jewelry, and apparently took her dog for a walk in broad daylight and did not return," said Chief Michael Collins, a Police Department spokesman,
"was highly unusual." Investigators confirmed that her husband, an internist and hematologist, was in his Brooklyn office when his wife disappeared around 2:30 p.m. While the police always look first to the husband or wife, one investigator said, "There is nothing to move him to the top of the pile." Dr. Aronov said he did not realize anything was wrong for nearly eight hours, because his wife had scheduled one of those impossible but all too familiar New York days. It involved cosmetic surgery, a child who had to be picked up by her husband's stepmother, keys to be left with a doorman, a trip to the airport to get her father and drive him to Southampton. And, of course, the dog.
Alexander Aronov and Svetlana Byzov were childhood sweethearts. They grew up in St. Petersburg, Russia, fell in love and were married there almost 25 years ago. He called her Sveta. She called him Sasha. They
moved to Canada, where he went to medical school, then finished his studies in Italy. He moved to New York for his residency in 1989, and she followed a year later. Dr. Aronov, 45, has offices in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Ms. Aronov helps him with the books and has her own part-time business, dealing in the
specialized world of avant-garde Russian books from 1910 through the 1930's. She also collects porcelain plates. Last April, her parents, Anatoly and Lilia Byzov moved here from St. Petersburg, and settled into the couple's country house in Southampton, on Long Island. Friends described her as warm-hearted, highly cultured, athletic. She and her husband are avid skiers. "She is interested in everything the city could offer," said Olga Dolgicer, one of her best friends. "She
would not hesitate to help a stranger. Her house is always full of friends." Dr. Aronov said she was not troubled and he could not imagine her deliberately vanishing. "It sounds sentimental, mawkish," he said. "But our life was like an American dream." Tomorrow, they were to leave on a 10-day ski trip to Italy. On Monday, the priority was getting her father. Her parents had been visiting friends in Russia, and he was returning to Kennedy Airport at 5 p.m. Her mother was staying longer. The Aronovs were minding their dog. Over the weekend, they left it with friends while they took their 9-year-old daughter, Veronica, skiing in Vermont. Polina, 22, who works in the fashion industry and lives with them, was in Los Angeles. On Monday morning, according to her husband, Ms. Aronov drove Veronica to school in their Jeep Cherokee, then retrieved the dog. She pulled up in front of her apartment building, and her husband took the dog up,
because she had another appointment. He asked her to drop him off at the subway. He was on his way to his Brooklyn office. At the station, she mentioned that she was going to the doctor to have the mole removed. This was news to him. They had discussed it before, and he frowned on the idea, thinking it was an act of needless vanity. But she decided to go ahead. Around noon, the mole gone, she phoned her husband from the apartment. He said she reminded him not to go to the gym after work but to get home by 8 to relieve his stepmother, who was going to pick up Veronica from
school. Ms. Aronov was supposed to leave keys with the doorman so his stepmother, who lives in Forest Hills, Queens, could get in. A doorman saw Ms. Aronov go out with the dog around 2:30. He said she was wearing a brown coat, a white beret, pants, winter boots. She is about 5-feet-4, with brown eyes and short blond hair. That was the last reported sighting. When her father's plane arrived, she wasn't there. He tried calling her. No answer. He didn't have Dr. Aronov's office number, so he waited. And waited. Meanwhile, when Dr. Aronov's stepmother got to the apartment with
Veronica, the doorman had no keys. She called his office. He tried his wife's cellphone and got her voice mail. He assumed she had simply forgotten about the keys. So his stepmother took Veronica to Forest
Hills. Dr. Aronov told her that he would get her after work. He said he left his office around 7:30 and continued to call his wife on her cellphone and in Southampton. He said he assumed they were somewhere in the thicket of New York commuting traffic. He stayed awhile in Forest Hills. He got to his apartment lobby around 10 p.m. Her father was sitting
there. Now, Dr. Aronov said, he knew something was terribly wrong: thinking there had been an accident, he hurriedly checked to see if the car was there. It was. Then he called the police. In the apartment, he found her wallet. There was a glass of apple juice on the kitchen counter. And there was some chicken she had cooked for his dinner, still sitting out. She had not come back to put it in the refrigerator.

The Police Department Crime Stopper vans crawled up and down York Avenue yesterday, trumpeting word of her disappearance, trolling for tips. The sidewalks were busy. A lot of people were walking their dogs.

The New York Times Company http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/05/nyregion/05MISS.html

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