A bad reaction to a drug trial sparks an investigation into Houston's Fabre Clinic and its founder

Vladimir Yuri Zhirakarov first appeared on the streets of Houston around 1997, when he joined the faceless ranks of the city's burgeoning homeless population. He fell in quickly with the Impact Church of Christ just north of downtown near White Oak Bayou. He took irregular showers at the shelter. He took meals there, too. And he camped out on a wooded lot nearby.

But he didn't wander the way many of the others did. He stayed busy with odd jobs, routinely doing volunteer work at the church's food-and-clothing distribution center. When there was no work, he lifted weights.

He was likable, but secretive and prone to binge drinking. His English was hindered by heavySlavic inflections, though he refused to speak what he said was his native language. He claimed to be a Russian political exile and warned that discovery would mean big trouble back in the mother country, where his father held a lofty political appointment.

Doug Boehm

Doug Boehm

While this could have explained his stash of identification papers unearthed by campmates after he died in 2002, it didn't. He was wanted, but not by the former Soviet state. The man who passed himself off as a Russian on the run was finally exposed by a horrific death equally as strange as his life.

He had been born Garry Allen Polsgrove in Campbell, Missouri.

Zhirakarov/Polsgrove died in an experimental drug trial in a private clinic near the Texas Medical Center.

His death ended a 30-year investigation