Paul Edward Tatum (April 2, 1955 – November 3, 1996) was an American expatriate businessman assassinated in a
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...
metro station close to his hotel.
Tatum was operating a Hotel Joint Venture with a Chechen businessman named
Umar Dzhabrailov
Umar Aliyevich Dzhabrailov (; born 28 June 1958, Grozny, USSR) is a Russian politician and advisor to Sergei Prikhodko, the Assistant to the President of Russia,Edmond, Oklahoma
Edmond is a city in Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, United States, and a part of the Oklahoma City metropolitan area in the central part of the state. The population was 94,428 according to the 2020 United States Census, making it the fifth largest ci ...
and travelled to
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...
in 1985, involving himself in various business activities. He reportedly knew
President Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and again ...
, who was a regular guest of his hotel while visiting Russia on state visits. During the attempted coup in Russia in the summer of 1991, Tatum had supplied president
Boris Yeltsin
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin ( rus, Борис Николаевич Ельцин, p=bɐˈrʲis nʲɪkɐˈla(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ ˈjelʲtsɨn, a=Ru-Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin.ogg; 1 February 1931 – 23 April 2007) was a Soviet and Russian politician wh ...
's only link to the outside world by giving him satellite linkage from a government building in Moscow, which was surrounded by army units trying to overthrow his fledgling democratic government.
Tatum had numerous disputes with his hotel partner
Umar Dzhabrailov
Umar Aliyevich Dzhabrailov (; born 28 June 1958, Grozny, USSR) is a Russian politician and advisor to Sergei Prikhodko, the Assistant to the President of Russia,blackmailing Tatum and trying to force him out of the hotel joint venture. A few weeks later he was gunned down and shot 11 times in the head and neck. Shortly after Tatum's death, Dzhabrailov and the Moscow city government quickly took over complete control of the hotel joint venture.
Carol Williams investigated the Tatum murder for the ''
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the U ...
'' and after concluding it had likely been a contract killing, she got a call from someone who told her it was "unhealthy to pursue certain avenues of inquiry".
Tatum was interred in
Kuntsevo Cemetery
The Kuntsevo Cemetery (russian: Ку́нцевское кла́дбище, kúntsevkoye kládbishche) is a cemetery servicing Kuntsevo, Moscow. It is located on the bank of the Setun River, to the south of the Mozhaisk Highway (the continuation ...
, Moscow.Imaging Russia 2000: film and facts By Anna M. Lawto p. 105 at
Google Books
Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...