Mikhail ChernyaevStefan JeremiahA Brooklyn man was convicted Thursday in the murder of a romantic rival, whose body he threw off a cliff before using the dead man’s phone to rekindle a broken relationship with his ex.
It took jurors three days to find Mikhail Chernyaev guilty of second-degree murder for the killing of Charles Butler.
Neither Chernyaev nor Butler’s family were present for the verdict.
The Brighton Beach man stabbed and strangled Butler in Sept. 2012 after he saw him cavorting with his ex and baby mama, Anna Lioznov, according to trial testimony.
Anna LioznovNatan DvirChernyaev then used the businessman’s phone to break up with Lioznov— and to ghoulishly text Butler’s own daughter — as he drove the corpse to Hawk’s Nest Scenic lookout, and shoved him over the edge.
The remains were found a month later, and were so badly decomposed that Butler wasn’t identified until May of the following year.
In the meantime, Chernyaev consoled his heart-broken ex— sleeping with her just a day after he murdered her new boyfriend, prosecutor Melissa Carvajal told jurors.
The contractor first went on trial in April 2015, but copped to a 20-year plea deal in the middle of the trial. He then chickened out at his sentencing, and backed out of the deal, claiming he didn’t understand English and sending Judge Neil Firetog into a rage.
Chernyaev could get up to 25 years to life in prison when he again faces sentencing on Oct. 28.



