Their mission was to to build a Christian community for Bulgarians who had settled in Chicago. Nikolai Vasilev was the pastor and his wife, Tonya, was the Sunday school teacher. Together they nurtured an evangelical community in the northwest suburbs od Chicago and created their own family. They had three children and survived the death of one of them in a 2000 fire.
Wednesday night, Nikolai came home to find his two remaining children, a 9-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter, stabbed to death -- some 500 times -- and his wife bathed in blood. Tonya Vasilev, 34, has given statements to police and is expected to be charged in the murders.
Investigators believe 3-year-old Gracie was attacked first and then her mother brought her to the second floor, where her older brother, Christian, was watching television. The mother then attacked the boy. The boy runs from her, flees to the first floor, where she catches up with him, and she then alternates between attacking the boy and the girl. It was not clear what set off the stabbing, but added that the mother had been treated for mental illness for "some years.''
Nikolai, 36, had recently decided to leave the Des Plaines church to start his own congregation, said Stan Tanev, pastor of the Des Plaines church. The split was amicable and because of a difference in styles, including that Nikolai was going to preach in English, Tanev said. Investigators were looking at this as a possible motive in the attacks, the source said.
Tanev said the couple came to Chicago in 1995. They met while attending a Bible college in the South and married in 1994. Tanev said Nikolai left his native land in the early 1990s after the fall of communism and came to the United States, where he knew he could study theology and fulfill his dream of being a minister.
Now he faces the loss of his children and his wife.
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