For the first time, the common name of Sonya Zolotoy Knob was recognized by law-abiding citizens of the city of Odessa in 1913 from a newspaper article in the daily "Odessa Mail" of the author under the pseudonym Rotmir. The newspaper was snapped up in a matter of minutes, and even had to increase its circulation. Notes about the clever pickpocket and the swindler Sonya began to appear every day and the public, hungry for sensations, was looking forward to each next issue with the continuation of detective stories with the incendiary participation of the Golden Pen. A total of forty such articles were published about the brilliant scams of the elusive Sonya. Why is the heroine of these publications so famous?
The success of the detective stories was overwhelming. The notes were perceived by readers as an adventure novel with adventures, however, the author assured that the heroine of the stories has a real prototype and the stories are based on the real events of the gangster life of Sofia Ivanovna Bluestein (maiden name Solomoniak). Based on these publications in 1914 in the joint-stock company A. Drankov, directors Vladimir Kasyanov and Yuri Yuryevsky even shot a silent black-and-white movie of an adventure-adventure genre in eight episodes called "Sonya - the Golden Pen".
At the same time, the former chief of the detective police in Odessa, Vitaly Vladimirovich von Lange, published a brochure in which the truth of the detective stories described in the newspaper about the successful activities of a thief and a swindler was hotly refuted. With the help of his own version, in his publication "The Truth About the Golden Handle," the Russian detective defended the honor of the police uniform from the obvious irony of adventurous stories aimed at the sluggishness of the law enforcement officers.
Luckiness and the ability to cleverly get out of all difficult situations, leaving law enforcement officers with a "nose", popular rumor explained that most likely Sonya was in the service of the police as an informant who had infiltrated the gangs of the gangster world. However, there is no information in any documents from the secret archives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs confirming the version that the Golden Pen was an embedded secret agent.
According to the surviving fragments from Sonya's biography, she was born in 1846 in the town of Powonzki, Warsaw province of the Kingdom of Poland, then part of the Russian Empire. At birth she was named Sheindlya-Sura Leibovna Solomoniak. Sonya came from a family of hereditary smugglers and resellers of stolen goods, so literally from the cradle she touched the thieves' world and was brought up in an atmosphere of lies and fraud.
Soon after her birth, the family moved to Odessa, at that time the fourth largest and most developed port city in Russia, where smugglers could turn around and act to the fullest extent of their criminal capabilities. Sonya received a very good education, knew how to play music and knew six foreign languages. The music teacher often praised young Sonya and said that she had golden hands, maybe from here Sonya took her future criminal name. By nature, she was very capable, talented and very artistic, she knew how to quickly transform and enter the right role.
It is not surprising that, having matured, the girl decided to continue the thieves' dynasty. An unsuccessful first marriage strongly strengthened her in this decision. Its own invented method of robbing the rich guests of the Guten Morgen hotels in the thieves' world began to be called "Sony's branded". The idea of such a robbery was simple and at the same time brilliant. In the early morning, when the rich guests had the deepest sleep, the half-naked Sonya opened the doors with a master key and quietly cleaned the inhabitants of the hotel rooms. In a situation where the inhabitants woke up unexpectedly, the artistic thief pretended to be very sleepy, giving the appearance that she was going to go to bed. When the discouraged owners of the room approached her with a question, she portrayed great embarrassment, apologized for the mistake in the number and retreated, quietly taking the stolen goods.
On this idea, later in St. Petersburg, a more crude version of hotel thefts and stealing of regulars of restaurants and clubs, the so-called hipes, was based. While an attractive accomplice pleases a wealthy client, the partner robs him and takes all valuable things from the room. Sonya was a highly professional hippie and in the thieves' environment she was called a lucky maraviher, which means a lucky pickpocket.
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Another ingenious way to steal from jewelry stores, invented by the Golden Pen, was to wear clever shoes, in the soles of which special indentations were made, filled with resin. Once in a jewelry salon, she pretended to be a spoiled wealthy lady and began to sort out and twist the most expensive jewelry in her hands. At some point, she "accidentally" dropped one of them and stepped imperceptibly with her shoes, the jewelry stuck to the resin. While the clerk was looking for the dropped jewelry on the floor, Sonya calmly left the salon with a carefree look, got into the waiting horse carriage and disappeared.
In August 1885, according to a new scheme, the Khlebnikov jewelry house, located in the very center of Moscow on Petrovka, right under the nose of the gendarmerie, took place. Sonya hired a dummy family on the thieves' Khitrovka. Disguised as a rich lady with a family and a small baby in the arms of her accompanying nanny, she visited the richest salon, collected jewelry for twenty-two thousand and, leaving the dummy family as collateral, left, ostensibly for money, taking jewelry. The brilliant criminal case was the latest in the criminal activities of Sonya Golden Hand. This was followed by the arrest of the famous swindler and exile to hard labor on Sakhalin. According to the materials of the criminal case, during a search in the apartment of the great machinator, literally placers of diamonds were found.
In a criminal society, Sonya is considered the initiator of the thieves 'common fund, that it was she who came up with the idea of creating it to financially support the unification of thieves' gangs into a single gangster structure. Sheindlya-Sura magically acted on her victims, easily rubbed into trust, despite her nondescript appearance. In some hypnotic way, she made people believe in her most incredible tales and inventions. The genius of the queen of the thieves' world has remained unsurpassed to this day.