either "I would never marry that monkey" or "I would rather be hanged than marry such a girl" (both quotes were reported), humiliating Furtseva, a minister close to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Streltsov became secretly engaged to Alla Demenko before leaving for the Olympics, and the couple married on 25 February 1957, halfway through preparations for the Soviet season. The Department of Soviet Football criticised both the player and his club over the timing of the ceremony. The Communist Party also seemed to distrust him, considering him a possible defector after he attracted the interest of French and Swedish clubs during tours overseas with Torpedo. His file in the party archives included the comment: "[a]ccording to a verified source, Streltsov said to his friends in 1957 that he was always sorry to return to the USSR after trips abroad." After he was sent off during a game in Odessa in April 1957, the official government sports newspaper Sovetsky Sport published an article about him titled "This is not a hero" as well as letters purportedly written by members of the proletariat, which described Streltsov as an "example of the evils of western imperialism". A week after appearing against England in a warm-up match in Moscow for the 1958 World Cup, Streltsov was invited to a party by a Soviet military officer, Eduard Karakhanov, to be held on 25 May. Streltsov and the rest of the Soviet squad were on a pre-World Cup training camp at Tarasovka, just outside Moscow, but the team had been given the day as holiday. At the end of such days, the players had to report to the authorities at Dynamo Stadium at 4:30 pm, but Streltsov and two team-mates, Spartak players Mikhail Ogonkov and Boris Tatushin, ignored this rule and went to the party anyway. Held at Karakhanov's dacha, it was also attended by a 20-year-old woman named Marina Lebedeva, whom Streltsov had never met. The following morning, Streltsov, Ogonkov and Tatushin were all arrested and charged with raping her. Journalist Kevin O'Flynn writes that since heavy drinking had taken place at the party, the evidence against Streltsov was "confused and contradictory", even from Lebedeva herself. But the Soviet team coach, Gavriil Kachalin, claimed shortly before Streltsov's death that influence from high up in the Communist Party dictated that the player could not be helped; Kachalin said that police told him of Khrushchev's personal involvement,