By Ashley M. Casey
Staff Writer
In January 1999, Galina Messmer received an unsettling phone call from her estranged husband, Vasily Losev. The couple had split about six months before, and they had joint custody of their three sons, Alexi, 9, Alexander, 6, and Peter, 2.
Losev begged Messmer to come back to him.
“I told him I was not going to give him another chance until time showed that he’d really changed,” Messmer said.
But Losev told her, “No more time.”
“What do you mean, no more time?” Messmer recalled asking. “And he just changed the subject.”
Messmer had an uneasy feeling when she learned her sons had not been in school Jan. 22, 1999. She headed to Losev’s apartment to pick up the kids for the next week, and she was greeted with a mother’s worst nightmare.
“I saw this huge fire [that] came from his apartment,” she said. “My brother-in-law just grabbed me and held me there. It was so devastating. I can’t even describe the nightmare.”
Authorities informed Messmer that inside the apartment were the bodies of Alexi, Alexander and Peter. Losev had murdered the boys and then set his home ablaze. His body was found a few blocks from the building.
Messmer collapsed, screaming that she wanted to die.
Losing her sons was the latest tragedy in a life full of hardship for Messmer. She grew up in the former Soviet Union, where she attended church in secret to avoid scrutiny from the Communist government. After a broken engagement, Messmer moved to an area near the Black Sea. It was beautiful, she said, but she missed her family intensely.
Messmer’s friends and family urged her not to marry Vasily Losev. He was not a man of God, they warned. Losev was an alcoholic and became abusive, even after the family moved to the United States in 1997.
“He constantly told me, ‘If you’re going to leave me, I’m going to find you and I’m going to kill you,’” she remembered.
But Messmer hoped her husband would clean up his act. There were periods when Losev quit drinking and started going to church, but he always fell back into his pattern of abuse.
“I always thought he was going to be different, he was going to change. Children need Daddy,” Messmer said. “This circle of domestic violence and abuse … if you keep doing the same thing expecting a different result, it’s never going to happen.”
The grieving mother blamed herself for her children’s deaths.
“I asked God to take me home to my kids because there was no point in life without them,” Messmer said.
Then, she said, she “heard a voice in [her] heart.”
“I love you so much,” the voice said. “Your kids are so very happy and no one is ever going to hurt them again.”
While she grieved deeply for her children, Messmer’s world began to mend. Her sister said a man from her church had recently lost his wife, and he wanted to write to Messmer after hearing about her losses.
Galina and Peter Messmer conducted a whirlwind pen pal romance and were married March 25, 2000 — exactly one year after Peter sent his first letter.
The stars aligned for the Messmer family in an uncanny way. Elsie Hernandez Messmer passed away unexpectedly Jan. 17, 1999, only five days before Galina’s children were killed. Elsie and Peter had four children: a daughter, Eva, and three boys — Jesse, Joshua and Steven — who were about the same age as Galina’s boys, Alexander, Peter and Alexi.
“It’s like a puzzle,” she said. “God took missing pieces and put them together to make something special and wonderful.”
Messmer and her husband created a ministry called Galina’s Hope to help women trying to escape domestic violence. She wrote a book about her experiences called “Galina’s Hope: Beyond the Fire.”
Messmer said she misses her boys fiercely, but she believes her purpose now is to share her story of perseverance with others.
“With God’s grace you can go through anything,” she said.
Messmer will share her story at 9 a.m. Sunday, May 13, at The Gathering Place at North Syracuse Baptist Church, 420 S. Main St., North Syracuse.
