Truth beats fiction

You can't make this stuff up. Well, you could, but this actually happened.

Not incidentally, the story benefits from a great cutline (as we know, many people read cutlines first):

In television newscasts, a photo of Kermen Basangova, the supposed murder victim, was juxtaposed with images of the State Polar Academy in St. Petersburg where she worked. There was confusion the next morning when she came to work.