Episode 77:
The Millionaire, His Young Lovers, and the Psycho in the Bedroom

Under the scorching Mediterranean sun, a woman sunbathes in a glamorous bikini. But the public doesn't see glamour — they see a killer's smile. Behind that smile is a romantic proposal at a Spanish villa, stained with three gunshots.

The moment British millionaire Andrew Bush and his fiancée Maria stepped into the villa, they found a woman's clothes and high heels strewn across the hallway. Upstairs, a woman lay on the bed in her lingerie, glaring at them with a murderous look — she had been waiting for this exact moment for two whole days.

Forty-four-year-old Andrew Bush was the UK's picture of a self-made man — a millionaire who built the jewelry chain Gold Trader from nothing, with a driveway of supercars and a gold Hummer that was the embodiment of his success. But more than any of it, what made him happiest was his family: an amicable ex-wife and his one and only daughter, Ellie.

From Hotel Maid to Millionaire's Lover

In 2012, that peaceful life began to unravel with the arrival of twenty-two-year-old Mika Kukacova. Once a promising Slovak model who'd graced magazine covers, Mika moved to the UK dreaming of a bigger stage, only to find her English too poor to land any job beyond cleaning hotel toilets. Desperate and disillusioned, she decided the only way out of poverty was to find a rich man — and walked into Andrew's jewelry store dressed in the most glamorous, revealing outfit from her modeling days, a deliberate departure from the sharp interview attire the job called for.

It worked instantly. Andrew, twenty-four years her senior, hired her on the spot and the two became lovers, flying across Europe on his private jet and showering her with diamonds. For Mika, Andrew wasn't just a boyfriend — he was her only ticket out of the poverty she was terrified of returning to, and she began watching his every move with extreme possessiveness, going through his phone, following him even to get coffee, and eventually replacing every family photo in the house with pictures of herself.

The Staged Robbery

In September 2013, Andrew came home to find the living room littered with broken glass and an eerie silence — and Mika in the bedroom, a pillowcase over her head and her hands cuffed, sobbing that armed robbers had broken in, overpowered her, and fled. Andrew, terrified for her, called the police immediately.

But the scene didn't add up: no forced entry, no unusual security footage anywhere in town, and despite a house full of valuable jewelry and cash, the only thing missing was Andrew's passport. Mika had staged the entire robbery herself — anxious that his frequent business trips to the Middle East might expose him to other women, she'd stolen his passport to keep him grounded and manufactured a trauma to cling to him even tighter. Once Andrew learned the truth, he ended things in October 2013.

A New Fiancée, an Old Obsession

Two months later, Andrew met twenty-year-old Russian college student Maria Korotaeva at a coffee shop. Unlike Mika, Maria felt stable and easy — they traveled together, threw parties, and Andrew even redecorated his Spanish villa to suit her taste. On April 4, 2014, the couple flew to Spain, where Andrew proposed with a diamond ring and Maria accepted.

The moment they returned to the villa and opened the door, their happiness shattered — Mika was sitting on the bed upstairs, disheveled and in lingerie. She had never accepted the breakup. She'd been stalking Andrew's social media daily and had secretly installed a tracking app on his phone before they split, monitoring his every move down to the details of this very trip. Maria fled screaming to the Hummer in the garden and locked the doors while Andrew went back inside to calm the situation and asked her to call the police.

Three Gunshots

Minutes later, three gunshots rang out from inside the house. Mika emerged alone, calm, and told Maria to get out of the car because Andrew wanted her to take it to the airport. Terrified, Maria complied, and Mika drove off into the darkness. Police arrived to find Andrew dead by the front door with two gunshot wounds to the head and one to the arm.

Mika fled with a boyfriend she'd been secretly seeing the entire time she was obsessing over Andrew, driving nearly 3,000 kilometers through Spain, Portugal, and France to reach her parents' home in Slovakia. Her parents, already aware of what she'd done, begged her to turn herself in, and on April 8 she walked into a police station. She first claimed she was six months pregnant with Andrew's child and had shot him in self-defense after he attacked her over the news — a story medical tests immediately disproved, since she showed no signs of pregnancy at all. She then switched her account to claim Andrew attacked her first and threatened her family, and that the shooting was a panicked accident she barely remembered.

Final Thoughts

Prosecutors dismissed both stories as calculated lies — the gunshots to Andrew's head and arm showed clear intent to kill, and Maria's testimony described a woman who'd arrived with a grudge and prepared her escape with total composure. In May 2016, a Spanish jury found Mika guilty of murder and breaking and entering, sentencing her to fifteen years and six months, later reduced to thirteen years and nine months on appeal for turning herself in. She was also ordered to pay roughly $233,000 to Andrew's family.

She served only eight years before being paroled in 2022, deemed no longer a threat. Since her release, Mika has built a following on Instagram and TikTok posting bikini photos and luxury outings — all while claiming she has no money to pay the compensation she owes, and reportedly demanding payment from journalists before agreeing to an interview.