Slaying victim had misgivings about move to Boston

At about noon on Friday, Galina Kotik called her former husband from her apartment in Boston's Back Bay and told him she was not sure she had made the right decision when she moved to the city a few months earlier.

''She said, 'Maybe I made big mistake,' " Boris Kotik said yesterday in broken English, as he leaned and cried next to a window in his apartment in Pawtucket, R.I. ''Her daughter is here. Her granddaughter is here. She's worried how they going to live without [her]."

About three hours after that conversation on Friday, police say, Stevie Walker, 42, of Quincy, allegedly attacked the 65-year-old woman in her apartment in a high-rise building near Symphony Hall, fatally stabbing her several times in the neck. Walker was charged with the killing yesterday. Robbery may have been the motive, a police source said.

Police officers said they had found Walker standing outside a police station on Harrison Avenue at about 5 a.m. His clothes appeared to have been splattered with blood, police said.

''The officers recognized him as someone they were interested in," said Officer Michael McCarthy, a police spokesman.

''They immediately called homicide investigators," he added.

McCarthy said he could not discuss the motive for the killing, or whether Walker knew Galina Kotik. But a police officer briefed on the investigation, and speaking on the condition of anonymity, has said robbery is being considered as a reason, based partly on evidence that the assailant had broken into the apartment.

David Procopio, a spokesman for Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley, said yesterday there is evidence suggesting that Walker was in Kotik's apartment before the attack.

''Whether he was rummaging through that apartment and was surprised by her is still under investigation," he said.

Walker will be arraigned in Boston Municipal Court today.

The killing was the city's 59th homicide, compared with 57 at this time last year, McCarthy said. Kotik was the third woman older than 65 to die in the city this year after an attack. On Oct. 13, Jean Lampron, 68, suffered a heart attack and died after she was mugged on a South Boston street. In May, Gerda Bissett, 97, was beaten to death in her Jamaica Plain home. Both cases are unsolved.

Yesterday, Boris Kotik, 68, tried to make sense of his former wife's death, and to gather the composure to make her funeral arrangements.

He said he plans to go to her Boston apartment on Wednesday to pick up her belongings, including her cat, Tiger, who is now in the care of a neighbor.

''I don't understand," he said. ''Security in the building 24 hours. How [is] it possible?"

The couple had been together for more than 40 years, but they divorced a few years after they emigrated from Minsk, the capital of Belarus, to Rhode Island in 1996. Boris Kotik attributed the collapse of the marriage to the hardships of constantly being together with little to do. Both were limited by health problems and could not work. Boris, who had run a construction company in Belarus, and Galina, who had worked as an ear and throat physician, became frustrated and the marriage began to fall apart.

''In Belarus, it was different," he said. ''I was working 20 hours a day without vacations. In America, I'm not working. All day together, all day without work, it's so difficult."

''Because of it, there was . . . clash between us," he said.

But the divorce was amicable. They remained close friends and lived in the same Pawtucket apartment building. Galina lived on the sixth floor; Boris on the third.

''Divorce is only break in a relationship of man and wife," he said.

They often visited their 33-year-old daughter and 12-year-old granddaughter, who live nearby. Family photographs are scattered throughout Boris Kotik's apartment.

Galina Kotik, however, was tired of her Goff Avenue neighborhood, where brick, industrial buildings stand vacant, and shopping and entertainment opportunities are limited.

She wanted to live in a bustling city, her former husband said. She also wanted to lay down roots in Boston for her granddaughter, an honors student who was determined to attend Harvard University.

''She was looking for good," Boris Kotik said, adding that his former wife's exuberance belied her age.

Galina Kotik moved to Boston three or four months ago, but the couple still saw each other often.

''She visited every week or I visited her," he said.

At 3:05 p.m. on Friday afternoon, police received a call about an attack on the sixth floor of the apartment building for elderly and disabled residents, at the intersection of Massachusetts and Huntington avenues.

A neighbor in the building said she had heard Kotik sobbing, then heard her scream, ''Help me! Help me!"

When neighbors went into the hallway, they saw Kotik's door ajar, and blood splattered on the floor, witnesses said.

As Kotik was wheeled out of her building, witnesses said they saw gauze around her throat, which appeared to have been slashed. She was pronounced dead at Boston Medical Center.

Boris Kotik said his former wife also left another daughter, Irina, 44, who lives in Belarus, and two grandchildren, a 21-year-old man and a 13-year-old girl.

She probably will be buried in Rhode Island, where her family can visit her grave, he said.

Galina Kotik was a cultured, attractive woman who loved museums and spoke English beautifully, Kotik said.

''She knew English probably much better than [American] teachers," he added.

Neighbors in her former Pawtucket apartment building remembered her as an intelligent woman who enjoyed reading and greeted everyone she saw in the hallway.

''She's a nice lady," said Sunni Ali, 65, who lived on the sixth floor. Ali, who once gave Galina Kotik one of the many banana trees that he grows in his apartment, added: ''It's hard to find people to say hello."

He recalled Kotik's excitement when she told him that she was moving to the city, where she planned to take her granddaughter sightseeing.

''I don't know why she moved to Boston," he said, and he then shook his head.

Maria Cramer can be reached at mcramer@globe.com. Globe correspondent Emma Stickgold contributed to this report.