Soviet maniacs. History and modernity. The most terrible killer of the 20th century

According to mythology Swampman- This is the evil spirit master of the swamp. In the Russian North they usually talked about feminine spirit swamps, to its owner - the swamp woman. Appearance the swampman was described in different ways: it was either a dirty, fat, eyeless creature sitting motionless at the bottom of the swamp, or a shaggy man with long arms and a tail; the swamp woman presented herself as a girl or an old woman. It was generally believed that the swamper treats people aggressively and seeks to lure them into a quagmire and drown them. Information about swamp dwellers and swamp dwellers is scarce; their images were mixed with images of forest and water characters and so on. evil spirits. Meanwhile, in the ideas of the Slavs, the swamp was the habitat of numerous evil spirits, primarily devils.

A story from life with a meeting with a maniac swamper.

This terrible maniac operated in the CIS in the mid-20th century. During rural holidays, when girls went into the forest to collect a wreath, the pervert tracked down the lost victim and grabbed her. Then he undressed him and killed him with a large stake.

I've been used to hiking since childhood. It doesn't matter whether you're going on a picnic for a couple of hours or going on a free trail with serious equipment for a few days - I've always thought that this is the best way to spend your time. You never get bored, something is happening all the time, you don’t sit still - that’s the most pleasant thing about such trips. Yes, and you learn little by little to understand completely different things - how to light a fire, and how to set up a tent, and how to walk correctly, so as not to exhaust yourself, and not to circle around the forest, but to go back to your start. In general, there are solid advantages and a feeling of pleasant fatigue at the end of the hike, thanks to which plopping down on the sofa after a bath turns into unearthly pleasure and serves as almost the highest reward. Every year, from the moment of the thaw until late autumn, I get out into nature as best I can - either alone or with friends, but I definitely go to the forest.

This was in 2007, at the beginning of July. We agreed to gather at our favorite place - a small clearing with oak trees, fortunately, the train ride was only about forty minutes, and it was close - seven or eight kilometers. The gathering was timed to coincide with Ivan Kupala, all one for the same - and a reason to meet to sit around the fire, and to celebrate the holiday and go for a walk, and almost anyone can go on the route - whoever likes what is more.

In order not to waste time, we decided: whoever was free should leave in advance, put the clearing in order, prepare for the arrival of the rest of the people, prepare firewood, put up tents. It seems like you need a little time, but one thing is for sure - the day flew by unnoticed. It was getting dark. We decided to make a last run through the forest, around the camp - and collect dry wood for the fire and remove snags from under our feet at the same time. By the way, we were also waiting for out-of-town guys we knew, we expected to gather about 40 people then, but we didn’t specifically discuss who, when and from where to get to the camp: it was something like a competition - who would be better suited unnoticed, or they will still greet you on the approaches. One case was considered the highest chic - a huntsman nicknamed Leshy managed to set up a tent in the middle of the camp before he was noticed and identified; so we tried, now repeat it
This “feat” is all in a row...

I confess honestly - I really love blueberries, but here, as if to order - either one bush with berries filled with juice, or several at once in a chain... So I wandered, picking the bushes, enjoying life. Everything inside me was already ringing with happiness, no thoughts about work, no worries - babble! True, this did not last long until it completely got dark. It was only then that I discovered that there was no flashlight in my pockets, as well as a mobile phone. It’s not fatal, but with my “night blindness” it’s very unpleasant and irritating to poke around the vague outlines of trees, bushes and paths... I didn’t poke around for long, but from the subsidence of the moss I guessed that I was no longer in the forest, but in the swampy part of it. I tried to find at least some positive moment in this idiotic situation - I found it! I was glad for my equipment and foresight, but immediately fell into black melancholy about the same foresight - I took the flashlight, but left it in my backpack - WHY did I take it then?!

By the reflection of the lights I knew where to go and went. I didn’t go far, because almost immediately I fell into some hole, flooded almost to my waist, which did not lift my spirits at all. Cursing and somehow shaking off the fallen leaves mixed with who knows what, he moved on. Exactly until the next hole! Nature has finally lost all its charm in my eyes, and I have lost the feeling of dryness and warmth, for I managed to practically “dive” into this stagnant “font”. About twenty minutes later, the roar of a brutal “homo sapiens” was ready to burst out of my throat; I just wanted to break something, or better yet, kill someone! It was as if my legs themselves “found” the roots and slippery gnarled sticks, the stick-staff, as if alive, stuck into the “strong” hummocks and could only withstand pressure, but not my weight, but the reflections of the lights, which I was guided by, as if they had begun a round dance to drive around me - so often I lost sight of them... I was silent only from a sharp feeling of shame and fear of “famous” - I passed so many years in a camp manner, and here - on you! - I got lost in the swamp near the camp!

Gritting my teeth, through which an irritated growl still sounded, I moved on, and then... Miracle! A miracle has happened! A friend saved a friend! One of the out-of-town guys was standing in front of me. It seems like they usually go out into nature, some in armor, some in their costumes - role players. And now some role player in the form of a monk - his cassock goes into the water and holds a staff in his hands. I tried to turn my grin into at least some semblance of a smile - it’s dark, what if it doesn’t look scary? And with the air of a “cunning partisan” he asked:

So, did you decide to cut it too?

The answer just killed me:

No, I came to your splashing, follow me - I’ll take you out.

And he went, my good bastard guide, without even looking back! And I’m almost starting to see steam coming out of my ears from anger. Well, I think it’s okay for you, we ourselves are not born with bast!

You go, and I’ll get there myself, tea is no small thing, I won’t get lost!

It got through, I see, he turned around.

Don’t rush, just follow me, I see a path, but judging by your appearance, you’re diving looking for it!

It became a shame - a man helps out a dunce, but he spits in his helping hand.

Excuse me, I just can’t see very well in the dark, I almost walk by touch...

I see... Let's go already.

Let's move. Only somehow we moved strangely - the “monk” walks easily, as if on the sidewalk, and not along a swamp, but my legs go up to my ankles! Although, maybe he’s not wearing combat boots like me, but what kind of moccasins does he wear? And you can’t tell by his appearance, maybe it’s just that his cassock hangs on him like a bag-robe, and he himself is as thin as a roach?

Listen, I say. - I have a request for you: don’t tell our people that I got lost in the swamp, okay?

Don't worry, I won't tell anyone.

And then I just failed. Yes, it happened so suddenly, as if I had jumped from the tower straight into this swamp! I’m trying to swim out, but my legs are still pulling me down. I panicked, of course, I tried to scream, but musty water and duckweed were crawling into my mouth, I didn’t see anything, I didn’t understand anymore, neither where I was, nor where I needed to move, and my heart was beating such a rhythm like a crazy chaser - as soon as it didn’t jump out of my chest! I’m floundering, waving my arms in all directions, kicking my legs like crazy, and above me a voice sounds so calm:

Amanita has eaten too much, or what?

Look, I’m not in some kind of barrel, I’m not drowning in a swamp, but I’m sitting in a deep puddle and splashing it with my hands, and I’ve stuck my feet in a hole with rotten leaves. And the “monk” stands and looks at me in that characteristic way, with a narrowed eye.

I feel the blood rushing to my face - it seemed to me that I began to glow in the dark.

Let's go... Again the “monk” is like walking along the sidewalk, and I’m doing the swims. And here I realize that I don’t recognize my “guide” at all. We don't have such guys. And we are going, as I notice, not towards the fires, but somewhere to the side... He twisted the cookie in his pocket and poked the guy in the back:

What's your name, Susanin the hero?

They call it a swamp...

And that’s when I got really scared. Instead of a guy, there is a guy in front of me, overgrown like a partisan and puffy like an alcoholic homeless person. And he turns and stares at me:

Why are you, he says, turning all green?

Look at yourself,” I mutter. - My beard is already overgrown with mud...

And it’s scary to look, and it’s impossible not to look, I’m crawling like a lobster, I don’t even think about the swamp... And then Bolotnik exhaled sharply... and burst! Yes, I exhaled as if the whole swamp was stirring at once - the stench is suffocating, my eyes are watering, I can’t see anything, and from lack of air my head is already buzzing, as if from a concussion... And in my stomach, a piece of ice just formed, and I can feel my legs, they began to give way... That’s when I screamed. I ran so fast that it didn’t matter to me anymore whether it was a swamp, a forest, a sidewalk, or an abstract nothing at all - I had never run like this, either before or after...

I ran to the camp in a deranged state, where they fed me tea and tincture for another couple of hours... At Kupala I went home, I had absolutely no strength or desire to stay... The guys at first thought that I was trying to intimidate them before the night festivities , but when I just collected my things and walked along the path to the village, and not directly through the forest to the station, they tried to hold me back, but I couldn’t stay - I’d never had such anxiety, I felt like I could just fall apart at any moment , if I stay here a little longer.

Upon arrival home, I started looking for information on Bolotnik and this is what I found:

“The Swampman is one of the atypical representatives of the evil spirits that live in the swamp. In the description appearance There are some disagreements regarding the swamp, which is mainly due to the sedentary lifestyle of this creature in extremely inaccessible places. According to some sources, this is a sedentary bottom creature, a gloomy and eyeless fat man with matted hair, a body covered with a thick layer of dirt, fish scales, snails and the like. According to other descriptions, he is an old man with gray fur, long arms and an equally long curled tail with a wide yellowish face (the color of swamp slurry) and goose (according to other descriptions - toad) paws instead of legs. The swampman always has large bulging eyes, an equally large belly and a huge, tangled, tangled beard.

An important fact is that, unlike most other representatives of evil spirits, the swamper does NOT know how to change his appearance, but he knows how to create magnificent mischief, and often an unlucky lover of swamp walks sees either a monk or a lonely traveler. However, most often it is a black man with a lantern in his hands, moving along the edge of the swamp.”

Already in August, I went hiking again, as I continued to do so in the future, but now, before going into the forest or swamp, I pray and check that the amulet and cross are in place.

Last Friday on NTV at 19.30 Moscow time there was another program from the series “The investigation was carried out... with Leonid Kanevsky.” The next issue talked about another sexual maniac Soviet years. For a long time now, and quite regularly, I have come across data on this problem that paints a very gloomy picture. Which I decided to introduce to our dear readers. I’ll say right away that the notorious Chikatilo was far not the only and, perhaps, not even the most colorful of the villains, whose actions can be found below. The post is specific, “I will ask pregnant women, children and women to leave,” but also about this side Soviet life need to know.

First of all, about the release - it was called “Kungur Monster”. Kungur is a city in the Perm region, and in it 1982 There was a series of attacks on women: robberies, rapes, murders. The attacker, inspired by the film “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” made a luminous mask and in the late evenings went out “hunting” and attacked lonely women. For some reason they did not name the exact number of victims: there was definitely one murder with rape, they talked about four episodes of attacks, but even after them the attacks continued. Panic began in the city, masses of women refused to leave the house, skipped work... They tied up one suspicious person - a private security worker - but it turned out that he himself, on his own initiative, was hunting for the maniac. Dressed in women's clothing policemen so that they would attract the villain.

It is interesting that street thieves attacked the “girls” who were walking and tried to snatch their purses from their hands. This goes to the thesis that walking in the evenings Soviet times it was absolutely safe. It seems that if the chance of being killed and raped remained relatively small, then you could lose your purse in no time.

They caught the “monster” by pure chance: a policeman noticed a mushroom picker with field binoculars and decided to be curious about what the heck, actually, and he went off. But they caught the bastard anyway, it turned out to be a loader Nikolay Gridyagin. Standard story: an exemplary family man, completely positive characteristics from work. In general, he started raping girls earlier, presumably since 1980 - they didn’t specify in the program. At first I wanted to pretend to be a photographer, I even lured one fool and abused him, but overall things somehow didn’t work out until with the said film about Comrade. I did not get acquainted with Holmes. By the way, to the question of the influence of television on the brains of citizens.

In general, the bound man was tried and sentenced to 15 years as a stricter, but in Supreme Court There was a stream of indignant letters, the case was reconsidered and they gave the “tower”.

But Comrade Gridyagin is only one, far from the first and by far the most interesting of a whole series of monsters of the Soviet era. They appeared almost simultaneously with the beginning of that time, but they really began to appear en masse starting in the 1960s. Usually the enumeration starts with Vladimir Ionesyan, known as “Mosgaz” (because he pretended to be an employee of this glorious organization). Twice convicted, he moved from Orenburg to Moscow in the fall 1963 with his partner and in December began to rob apartments in the capital and the city of Ivanovo in order to earn a livelihood. Before his arrest at the end of January 1964, he killed six people, mostly women and children; raped one girl before murder. The court sentenced him to death, his cohabitant received 15 years in prison (she served eight).

Around the same period, he began a series of attacks on people Boris Gusakov, who worked as a photographer in the children's reception center of the Moscow City Executive Committee. His victims were mainly girls (schoolgirls, applicants and students), whom he lured to a secluded place, stunned with a blow from a blunt object, undressed, raped and killed. He has 10 attempts and 5 murders. The last two victims of the maniac managed to escape and turned to the police, and in the spring of 1968 Gusakov was arrested. The court found him sane and sentenced him to death.

In the “prosperous” era of glorious “stagnation”, women who were displaced on the basis of sexual problems began to appear throughout the country of Soviets. IN 1965 V Stavropol region Perhaps the most titled of the Soviet maniacs began his “activity” - Anatoly Slivko. He was a member of the CPSU, in 1977 he received the title of “Honored Teacher of the RSFSR”, was listed as a “drummer of communist labor”, was elected as a deputy of the Nevinnomyssk City Council, and was generally a local celebrity. And he found his victims among the members of the children’s and youth tourist club “Chergid”, which he led. He conducted “scientific experiments” on children - boys: he tied them to trees by their arms and necks, and pulled the rope tied to their legs towards themselves; hung him in a noose until he lost consciousness, etc. I shot all this on film. Over the course of 20 years, 42 children went through “experiments”, he killed 7 more boys, and sophisticatedly mocked the corpses. Arrested at the end of December 1985, convicted and executed in Novocherkassk prison in 1989.

TO 1967 refers to the first criminal episode Boris Serebryakov from Kuibyshev: he tried to rape the dispatcher on duty at the control station. Since 1969, he began to carry out systematic attacks: he killed 9 people, of which two entire families, and attacked a woman and her daughter. Mothers - killed or stunned - were raped. Captured in 1970, at trial recognized as a psychopathic person with perverted sexual desires, but mentally healthy and sane, sentenced to death (1971).

IN 1968 a maniac rapist committed a series of attacks in Perm Vladimir Sulima, previously convicted of rape (13 counts), truck driver. After serving half of the appointed eight years, he returned to Perm, where within a year he killed three women(after the rape he hit them on the head with a hammer) and seriously injured seven more. One of those whom he unsuccessfully attacked was identified at a city clinic and arrested. The court sentenced him to death (1969).

And in the Ulyanovsk and Penza regions the driver began operating Anatoly Utkin. His “career” lasted with a break until the spring of 1973. He beat girls and young women: sometimes he robbed, sometimes he raped. The victims of the first stage of his “activity” were 5; another girl managed to fight off the attack. In 1969-72, Utkin, to divert suspicion from himself, was imprisoned for robbery, but after being freed, he returned to his old ways: the first attack on a woman failed, but then he killed a man and another girl. He got burned during the robbery of the cash register of an Ulyanovsk enterprise: he killed the cashier, but could not open the safe and set fire to the building in order to cover his tracks, but in a hurry he forgot the bucket with his name in which he brought diesel fuel. Based on the totality of all crimes, he was sentenced to VMN and executed in 1975.

IN 1969 in the vicinity of the village of Shostki, Sumy region, Ukrainian SSR, a maniac acted Pavel Danilov, who came from the Moldavian SSR through the organizational recruitment of Khimstroi. In the six months before the summer of 1970, he committed six attacks (one murder and five rapes with attempted murder). Having been caught, he was declared insane by a psychiatric examination, and in 1971 he was sentenced to 10 years in a mental hospital. After his release he left for Moldova, his further fate is unknown.

IN 1970 maniac, soldier Zaven Almazyan, originated in Lugansk, Ukraine. He attacked single women returning home from work in the evenings, threatened them with a knife, took money and personal belongings, strangled them, and raped them. Over six months, he attacked 10 women, killing two of them, but in October he was caught and sentenced to death.

IN 1971 committed his first crime Gennady Mikhasevich. He operated in Belarus, in the area between the cities of Vitebsk and Polotsk, which is why he was called the “Vitebsk Strangler” (the “Investigation Conducted...” talked about him a week earlier). Over 12 years, he killed 36 women, with the peak of murders occurring in the last year, 1984: as many as 12 cases. He strangled all the victims, either with a scarf, or a scarf, or a bunch of grass. At the same time, he worked as a manager of repair shops, had a family, and was a member of the military! As in the case of Chikatilo (see below), the valiant Soviet police screwed up in full: 14 innocent people were convicted of murder charges, “extorting” confessions through torture. One of these 14 was shot, another tried to commit suicide, the third served 10 years, the fourth went blind after a 6-year sentence... According to a court verdict, Mikhasevich was shot in 1987.

In the same year in Kaunas (Lithuanian SSR) he began to operate Augustinas Dustars(?), electrician at a house-building plant, an exemplary husband and father. In broad daylight, wearing a black mask, he attacked lonely women in a forest, threatening them with a knife, taking money and valuables, and raping them. During 1971-75 he committed more than 20 rapes and robberies.

In the fall of the same year, the “Vnukovo maniac” was active in Moscow. Yuri Raevsky, the youngest criminal of this kind at that time (19 years old), a classic serial killer. He hunted girls in miniskirts, choosing a victim in a deserted place, attacking, sophisticatedly raping, strangling, and then taking away valuables. So three women were killed, after which the killer left for Kharkov, where he raped and killed the fourth woman, and tried to sell her demi-season coat at the market, where he was detained. During the investigation, it turned out that in the summer of 1971 Raevsky fled from the colony (where he ended up, having been convicted a year earlier for beating and attempting to rape a woman), raped a woman in Mordovia (the victim survived and testified), raped and killed two more women (in the Caucasus and in the Baltic states), and only after that he came to Moscow. In 1973 he was convicted and executed.

IN 1972 , again in Moscow, committed several maniac attacks Alexander Stolyarov- Posing as an employee of Technical Supervision, he entered the apartments of pensioners, robbed and killed them. As a result, before his arrest, he managed to kill three women. Sentenced to death.

IN 1973 first acts recorded Andrei Chikatilo: While working as a teacher at a boarding school in Novoshakhtinsk, Rostov region, he began to molest his students. These cases reached the director of the boarding school, who fired the depraved teacher. In 1978, Chikatilo and his family moved to the city of Shakhty, Rostov region, where he got a job as a teacher at the State Technical University, and in December he began committing murders of teenagers of both sexes. Over 12 years throughout the region, as well as on business trips (Tashkent, Leningrad, Moscow, Zaporozhye), he killed 53 people (the most in 1984 - 15), although the investigation could not prove three more cases of murder. As a rule, he lured teenagers into a forest belt, where he attacked with a knife, inflicted numerous wounds, mocked the corpses, and ate body parts. Among his victims were many prostitutes, tramps, alcoholics and the mentally retarded. To catch the maniac, Operation Forest Belt was organized, in which Chikatilo himself, who was in good standing, participated in the role of a vigilante and was on duty at train stations. Several people were arrested on suspicion of committing crimes, one of whom, under pressure from the investigation, confessed to the murder and was shot by court verdict. In November 1990, Chikatilo was arrested, sentenced to death in 1992, and executed in February 1994.

IN 1974 a new maniac appears in Moscow - Andrey Evseev, who attacked single women in the city and region in the evenings. The criminal's style remained unchanged: he tracked down a well-dressed woman, followed her to the entrance and brutally killed her, having previously taken away everything valuable. Over three years, Evseev committed 32 armed crimes in Moscow and the region. He brutally killed 9 people, while he raped two dying women. 18 victims miraculously survived, some of them became disabled. The criminal acted consciously and deliberately in order to complicate the search and throw off the trail, but was still detained and sentenced to capital punishment.

IN 1975 The adventures of a sexual maniac and murderer began Anatoly Nagiyeva: in the village of Ivnitsy, Kursk region, he raped a laboratory assistant at the local SGPTU, then two more girls became his victims, but he was soon captured and sentenced to five years in prison. In 1979, for good behavior, he was transferred to a free settlement, from where he began to travel to the city of Pechora (Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic), where he committed 2 murders due to robbery and rape, which the police were unable to solve. In November he was released and went to Moscow to “hunt” Alla Pugacheva (unsuccessfully). Nagiyev committed his last and most terrible (in a certain sense unprecedented) crime on the night of July 3-4, 1980 on train No. 129 Kharkov-Moscow. An hour after the train departed, he broke into the conductor's compartment, severely beat her, raped her and strangled her. 20 minutes later he repeated the same thing with the conductor in the next carriage. Less than half an hour later, the third train conductor died at his hands, and an hour later, the fourth. Nagiyev raped all the women in a perverted form, and got rid of the corpses by throwing them out the window. The mutilated bodies of murdered women were found on the railway track in different places the next day. Hot on the trail, the operatives managed to solve the crime; in 1981, Nagiyev was brought to trial, found guilty of 6 murders and 10 rapes, and sentenced to death.

At the same time, a unique case took place in the Moscow region - a duo of maniacs “worked”: Andrey Shuvalov and Nikolay Shestakov. Throughout 1975-76 they attacked young women, robbed and raped them, and then killed them. Having started in the Lyubertsy region, they soon began to appear in other areas of the Moscow region. In total, 20 people were attacked, of which 14 were killed. As a result, the captured criminals were tried, Shestakov was sentenced to death, and the minor Shuvalov was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

TO 1976 first offense applies Zinovia Stetsika from the city of Rohatyn, Ivano-Frankivsk region of the Ukrainian SSR: then he raped an 8-year-old neighbor girl, but was caught red-handed and imprisoned. Having been freed, he moved to the village of Kamenka, Ochakovsky district, Nikolaev region, where in 1984 he raped first a neighbor’s girl, and then his adopted daughter, after which he was imprisoned for 12 years. In the late 1990s, already in the Cherkasy region, he raped two girls, but was caught and sentenced to life imprisonment, died in 2000 from a massive stroke.

That same year, the path of another maniac began in Moscow - Vladimir Churlyaev. After serving time for robbery, he got a job at the Yasnogorsk fire department, and in his free time he went “on fishing” to the capital. Late in the evenings, he tracked down lonely women returning home, attacked them in the hallways and robbed them. Then he started robbing store cash registers. He was detained in 1978, given large number the robber's victims, his insolence and danger to society, the court sentenced him to death.

And again, from “Investigations Conducted...” we know about a taxi driver from Moscow Egor Kukovkina(?). Being sick with schizophrenia, he attacked girls: he robbed, raped, and then strangled them with improvised means. They talked about three episodes. Quite quickly the killer was identified and arrested.

WITH 1977 murder was committed by a necrophiliac Mikhail Novoselov, has been previously convicted several times. On the territory of Russia, he committed 22 murders with subsequent violations of the corpses of the victims (among which there were both children of both sexes and adult women). In the south of Tajikistan, where Novoselov was hiding from the all-Russian manhunt, in 1995 the maniac committed four murders and nine attempts to rape minor girls. Possessing a broad outlook, he introduced himself to the victims as a professional photographer, artist, painter, geologist, etc., gained trust, and then killed in a secluded place (with a blow to the head, the back of the head with something heavy, strangulation, stabbing). The criminal was detained while trying to sell an air rifle. Recently he worked in a mental hospital on the outskirts of Dushanbe.

The art of the “baby hunter” dates back to the same year. Anatoly Biryukova(an exemplary family man, father of two daughters), who over the course of two months in Moscow raped and killed (!) five babies under the age of six months: four girls and a boy. Children were stolen from strollers left by unlucky mothers near stores. In October, having attempted to commit another kidnapping in the town of Chekhov near Moscow, he was spotted and, although he managed to escape that time, he was soon arrested in Moscow. A psychiatric examination did not reveal any abnormalities, and in 1979 the pedophile was shot.

Officially, a series of crimes begins in March 1977 Sergei Grigoriev, a previously convicted truck driver. Unlike most maniacs, he did not kill his victims (schoolgirls), although he cynically raped them. Under the guise of a UGRO employee, Grigoriev entered the victim’s apartment during the daytime and, if there were no adults at home, raped her, and also took money and gold jewelry from the apartment. The series began in Leningrad, but after the Central Internal Affairs Directorate contacted colleagues in other cities and regions of the USSR, it turned out that similar crimes had been committed in Orel, Moscow, Penza, Vitebsk, Krasnoyarsk, and Zelenograd near Moscow. A check of motor transport workers began and in the spring of 1983 Grigoriev was detained. The investigation did not dare to “dig” the rapist’s past too deeply, from the moment of his release in 1972, and only investigated episodes from 1977 - however, even with this, there were about 40 proven episodes! In 1984, he was sentenced as a particularly dangerous repeat offender to 15 years in prison, which he served in full and returned to St. Petersburg, where he died under unclear circumstances in 2000.

In December of the same year, a railway lineman committed his first crime. Vladimir Tretyakov. A shock worker of communist labor, a member of a voluntary people's squad, he decided to fight female drunkenness and started with his own partner: he strangled her, and the corpse was dismembered and scattered in a vacant lot. In the same way, he further killed 6 more girls and women. Panic began in the city; there were rumors that the maniac was selling the meat of the victims he had killed at the market. Tretyakov was detained in the spring of 1978, found sane in court and executed a year later.

IN 1979 in the city of Uzunagach, Alma-Ata region of the Kazakh SSR, a rapist, murderer and cannibal appeared - a fireman Nikolay Dzhumagaliev, known by the nickname "Iron Fang". Over two years, he killed eight women: he brought random acquaintances to his home, raped them in a perverted form and killed them (sometimes this happened in the reverse order - Dzhumagaliev was also a necrophiliac), then drank fresh blood and ate their brains. He dismembered the bodies of the dead with an ax, made dumplings out of them, and kept the meat in his refrigerator. I received particular pleasure from watching the next victim eat dumplings from the meat of his predecessor. In addition, in 1979 he accidentally killed his work colleague with a gun while drinking, for which he was sentenced to 4.5 years in prison, but was released in 1980. The killer was declared insane (the usual diagnosis in such cases is schizophrenia) and was placed in the Tashkent closed psychiatric hospital. Released in 1994, he returned to Uzunagach, but due to persecution by local residents, he fled and disappeared in an unknown direction. He is currently being held in a special hospital for criminals declared insane in the village of Aktas near Alma-Ata.

In the same year, a maniac rapist appears in Odessa Vladimir Chernega, a twice-convicted unemployed and homeless individual who, from late 1979 to late 1980, committed 11 rapes accompanied by robbery. Attacked lonely girls at night, often stunning them with a blow iron pipe on the head (one case ended in the death of the victim). The efforts of the police to capture the criminal did not yield results, but Chernega himself turned himself in - which did not save him from being sentenced to death (1981).

WITH 1980 “operated” on one of the most “long-lasting” maniacs in the territory of the former USSR - the “Pavlograd maniac” Sergei Tkach. He began a series of murders in Ukraine, in Simferopol, and since 1982 he has lived permanently in Ukraine. He killed until 2005 the territories of Crimea, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye and Kharkov regions. The victims were girls and young women aged from 9 to 17 years old: he tracked victims near highways and railways, in the adjacent forest belts, pounced, killed, squeezing the carotid artery, then raped. All things on which his fingerprints could remain were removed from the victim’s corpse and taken away. He left the scene of the murder along the sleepers so that the service dogs could not pick up the trail. Over 25 years, Tkach committed dozens of murders: he himself took on at least a hundred, but less than 50 were fully proven. In his cases during this period, at least a dozen people were innocently convicted, one of whom served 10 years, two others received 15, and Vladimir Svetlichny, detained for the “murder” of his daughter, hanged himself in a cell in the Dnepropetrovsk pre-trial detention center. Tkach himself was sentenced to life imprisonment.

At the same time, a serial killer went on a bloody path in Smolensk and the region Vladimir Storozhenko, previously convicted several times. He worked as a truck driver and used it to commit crimes: usually, having noticed a victim in the dark, he caught up on foot or put him in a car. He robbed the dead. In total, he committed 20 attacks on schoolgirls, girls, and women, killing 12 of them (including nine in 1980). In 1981 he was caught and sentenced to death (1984).

The start of the series of the bloodiest maniac in Soviet Latvia dates back to the same year. Stanislav Rogolev. He had already been convicted four times before, and once on charges of rape. After serving his sentence, he began working as an informant for the criminal investigation department, which helped him a lot later - he received information from the management of the criminal investigation about the progress of the investigation. He committed crimes in the vicinity of railway stations and in cities at night throughout the republic (which led to panic among the population): he robbed, raped and killed. Not all attacks ended in success, sometimes the victims managed to fight off, yet the statistics are impressive: during 1980-81, alone or together with an accomplice, Latvian Aldis Svare, attacked 22 people (girls, women and, once, a boy), killing 7 of them The police accused three other men of one of the murders (one of them was sentenced to death), only after Rogolev’s confession were they acquitted. The maniac was captured at the end of 1981, declared sane and shot in 1984.

WITH 1981 a cannibal acted in Tataria Alexey Sukletin, native of Kazan. Since 1979, he was engaged in extortion, and since 1981, living in the house of the caretaker of the Kaenlyk gardening partnership near the village of Vasilyevo together with his partner Madina Shakirova, who actively helped him, he began to kill and in four years managed to tear to pieces and eat seven women. The cannibal's youngest victim was only 11 years old. The lovers together cut up the bodies of the murdered with a kitchen knife, used the meat for cutlets and stews, and drank their blood. However, they got burned by extortion, for which they were detained. During the search, the police discovered the belongings of the missing women and bones buried in the garden of the house. Sukletin was sentenced to death (the sentence was carried out in 1994), Shakirova - to 15 years in prison.

That year marked the beginning of the “career” of a rapist Valery Asratyan, known under the nickname "Director". He began to commit depraved acts against young girls, for which he was sentenced to two years in prison in 1982 and 1985. Since 1988, having found a job as a teacher in a boarding school in Moscow, he committed crimes and brought in his 40-year-old partner and her 14-year-old daughter, with whom he lived in a civil marriage. He acted according to the following scheme: he met a girl, introducing himself as a film director, brought her to his home, where he pumped her full of tranquilizers, raped her (often for several days), after which, after robbing her and drugging her again, she took her out of the house. Thus, 17 rapes and three murders were committed (with a knife, through poisoning or drowning). Ultimately, one of the victims identified the area and street where the maniac lived; in 1990, he was tracked down and arrested, and sentenced to death at trial.

IN 1982 The “Irkutsk monster”, an ambulance doctor, began his journey Vasily Kulik. He started out as an ordinary sexual maniac, and specialized exclusively in young girls, whom he raped but did not kill. Since the end of 1984, Kulik changed his “orientation” and switched to older women, usually over 70 years old, who called an ambulance. Over four years, Kulik was responsible for 27 rapes and 13 murders. Six girls and boys and seven elderly women died at his hands: the youngest victim was 2 years 7 months old, the oldest was 75 years old. The maniac was caught by chance, on his birthday, while attempting to commit another rape. During the investigation, he tried to imitate insanity, but with the help of examinations he was exposed. The court sentenced him to death, carried out in 1988.

At the same time, the printer of the Ural Worker printing house, the “Upper Iset Strangler,” began committing murders. Nikolay Fefilov, an exemplary family man. He acted with strange seasonality: he usually committed a crime once a year, in April-May. He almost always lay in wait for the victims in the city park of Sverdlovsk, ambushed them, strangled them, dragged them into the bushes, and raped the dead. Then he took things, jewelry and left. He has at least six rapes and murders to his name. Investigative authorities brought to justice two innocent people for the murders, one of whom was sentenced to capital punishment in 1984, and the other a year later died from beatings from fellow inmates in a prison hospital. For this, the head of the pre-trial detention center was removed, but two crimes were “closed.” Fefilov was captured after another murder, but he did not live to see the trial, having been strangled by a cellmate in a pre-trial detention center in August 1988.

The first attacks of a sexual maniac and murderer date back to the same year. Sergei Ryakhovsky from Balashikha, Moscow region: for older women. He was soon arrested and sentenced to four years in prison. Since 1987, he resumed committing crimes on the territory of Moscow, and began to rape, maim and kill his victims. Among them were elderly women, teenage children, and old people. A total of 19 intentional murders, most of which were committed with extreme cruelty, and five miraculously surviving victims who received injuries and injuries. The maniac was detained in the spring of 1993 and sentenced to death.

In Minsk, in the summer, an unusual killer was active - the poisoner Valery Nekhaev, a stage worker at the Minsk Opera and Ballet Theater. Outraged by the neglect of his own person, he began to poison alcoholic drinks with highly toxic substances, from which three died and several more people were hospitalized. Having been detained by the police, he immediately confessed to everything and was sentenced to death (his brother, who purchased chemical reagents, received 5 years).

IN 1983 appeared in Yaroslavl Alexander Lukashov. In 1974, he was convicted of raping a minor, but was released from prison several years later with a fatal diagnosis of “advanced spinal cord tuberculosis.” Nevertheless, he managed to recover and began, armed with a hammer, to attack women: he stunned them, robbed them (he took jewelry and personal belongings). Five women were his victims. In addition, he raped little girls. At the end of the year he was captured, feigned madness in prison, and tried to escape. Convicted and executed in 1984.

WITH 1984 in the Moscow region, teenagers were attacked by an employee of a stud farm (located not far from the government dacha zone) Sergei Golovkin, known by the nicknames "Boa" and "Fisher". Over 8 years, he killed 11 boys aged 12 to 15 years. First he attacked teenagers in the forest: he blindfolded the victims, and then he raped and killed, and mocked the corpses. In 1988, he bought a car, set up a torture room in the basement of the garage and changed his “handwriting”: he offered the teenagers a ride, drove them to his garage, and, threatening with a knife, took them into the basement, where he abused the victims for several hours. The dismembered corpses were buried in the forest. Golovkin was arrested in 1992; he is also notable for the fact that he became the last person executed by court verdict at the time of the introduction of a moratorium on the death penalty in Russia (1996).

IN 1985 A rapist and murderer appeared in the Leningrad region Igor Chernat, driver of an infantry fighting vehicle of one of military units. In six months (from November 1985 to May 1986), he killed four women, one of whom was pregnant. The women were relatives of the soldiers of the military unit, which made it easier to carry out atrocities: Chernat took the women into the forest area, where he raped and killed, and disguised the corpses. Having been interrogated during the investigation, he went on the run and reached Odessa, but soon, left without money, he confessed. Sentenced to death by a military tribunal (1987).

At the same time, he began to “operate” in the fall Sergey Kashintsev, released from prison where he was serving a 10-year sentence for the murder of a woman. He began to wander, traveling around the country (Chelyabinsk, Ufa, Izhevsk, Kirov, Tyumen, Tambov region), meeting women (alcoholics, beggars), inviting them to drink alcohol in basements, attics of houses, in the forest, in vacant lots. After getting drunk, he raped and strangled. He also killed single women who let him stay. From Kashintsev’s initial testimony it followed that he had visited more than 150 cities and populated areas country where he committed the murders of 58 women (detained while drunk next to another victim in the spring of 1987). Subsequently, he stated that he had incriminated himself and confirmed only a little more than 10 episodes. He was declared sane and sentenced to death.

IN 1986 serial killer - Mikhail Makarov(“Executioner”) - appeared in Leningrad. He committed four attacks: three on children (the boy survived, but two girls were killed) and one on a pensioner. He stole inexpensive items and money from apartments. He was caught trying to sell a stolen book to a used bookstore, during the investigation he immediately confessed to everything, was convicted and executed in 1988.

At the end 1987 a serial killer from Crimea began to carry out attacks Alexander Varlagin. Driving around the island, he attacked taxi drivers, killed with firearms and robbed. He has four episodes to his name, three of which ended in murder. Arrested by police in mid-1988 and sentenced to death.

In the second half of the 1980s, in parallel with Chikatilo, the “Bataysky killer” “worked” in the Rostov region Konstantin Cheremukhin, previously convicted twice. He drove around the neighborhood in a Zhiguli car, chose a victim, offered a ride home or a ride, drove him to a desert area, strangled and raped him, after which he mocked the corpse. His victims were four girls aged 9-14 years. Arrested in 1989 in the city of his residence Bataysk, executed by court verdict.

IN 1988 there was a serial killer on the territory of Leningrad Andrey Sibiryakov, twice convicted unemployed. Under the guise of a Lenenergo controller, he entered previously scouted apartments, which he selected on the basis of the absence of a man in the house, and robbed them. He killed the women in the apartment with a knife, but did not rape them. In total he carried out five attacks, during which he killed five people. Having learned about the search operation that had begun, he tried to blackmail the Central Internal Affairs Directorate, with whom he came into contact through the TV program “600 Seconds.” He introduced himself as “an acquaintance of the real killer” and demanded 50 thousand rubles for his “exposure” (in the end they managed to bring the price down to 15 thousand). During the transfer of a bag with counterfeit money, he was detained by a capture group and sentenced to death.

WITH 1989 operated by one of the most bloodthirsty maniacs of the former Soviet Union, the “Ukrainian Satan” Anatoly Onoprienko. Working in fire department Zaporozhye, had access to small arms, and with his partner Rogozin, he hunted for the murder of motorists parked on the side of the roads. During 1989, he killed nine people, after which, until the end of 1995, he traveled around Europe illegally, without a visa, and from December 1995 he again took up murders and took the lives of 43 people, incl. several entire families. In 1999 he was sentenced to death, in connection with the moratorium on the death penalty introduced in Ukraine, which was replaced by life imprisonment.

Then another maniac acted - Fedor Kozlov, on whose account there were 10 attacks on women, he killed five of them, and two young girls were among those killed.

In the same year, Magnitogorsk was kept in fear for several months by a certain Gridin, student of the Mining and Metallurgical Institute, Komsomol activist. He received the nickname “Elevator”: he lay in wait for his victims - girls and young women - at the entrances, entered the elevator with them, attacked and dragged them into the attic or basement, where he strangled them. However, he did not rape the victims. As it turned out later, he received satisfaction from contemplating the naked body of a bound, gagged girl and from her death agony. In total, Gridin committed four murders and several more attacks until he was neutralized as a result of an operation, for the organization of which a team of investigators had to be sent from Moscow. He tried to explain his wild actions by quarrels with his wife, who “deprived him of affection for a long time.” The court sentenced him to death, commuted to life imprisonment.

Since 1990, in his hometown of Svetlogorsk (Belarus), he attacked children Igor Mirenkov. Being a homosexual, he attacked boys aged 9-14, raped and killed. Over the next four years he killed 6 children, with the bulk of the victims occurring in 1993, which caused panic and unrest among city residents. Having been arrested on charges of gasoline theft and fraud, he was exposed as a pedophile maniac. The investigation was carried out in the strictest secrecy, its materials were declassified only in 2007. Mirenkov himself was executed in 1996.

Perhaps the last person to show his criminal inclinations in the formal Soviet period was Oleg Kuznetsov. He committed his first crimes - the murder and rape of girls - in his native Balashikha (Moscow region), then went to Kiev, where he committed 4 murders, after which he moved to Moscow and there, in the area of ​​Izmailovsky Park, he killed 5 more girls and women. Arrested in March 1992, confessed to all the murders and was sentenced to VMN, but they did not have time to shoot him, he is serving a life sentence.

I'm sure this is far from full list serial killers of the Soviet Union, however, it seems to me, quite clearly demonstrates that the “advanced socialist system” practically did not lag behind the “decaying capitalist West” in terms of crime.

But last time we were talking about the most famous criminals. Besides them, in the history of Russia there were many other bloodthirsty killers that you may not have even heard of. They will be discussed below.

Vasily Komarov

Vasily Ivanovich Komarov was born in 1877 and is the first Soviet serial killer. The maniac operated in Moscow from 1921 to 1923. He committed all his crimes according to one scenario: he met people who wanted to buy this or that product, after which he brought them to his home and gave them vodka. When the victim was drunk, he killed him with a hammer, and sometimes strangled him. The bodies were packed in a bag and hidden. Already in 1921, he committed no less than seventeen murders, and over the next two years twelve more. Although Komarov later claimed that he was responsible for killing 33 people. Most of the first serial killer's victims were discovered only after he was caught. In the winter of 1922, his wife Sophia found out about the murders, but did not denounce her husband, but rather began to take part in the murders. The court sentenced Komarov and his wife to capital punishment - execution. The sentence was carried out in 1923.

Valery Asratyan (“Director”)

Valery Georgievich Asratyan was born in 1958. He committed his first murder in 1982 by raping a minor girl. But almost immediately he was caught and sentenced to two years. After his release, he commits rape again and again falls into the hands of law enforcement agencies. After serving his second term behind bars, his wife leaves him, but he almost immediately finds another woman (who had a minor daughter). With the help of threats, the pedophile induces his stepdaughter to have intimacy and forces her and her mother to participate in his crimes. In 1988 he comes up with new scheme luring victims. To do this, he introduces himself as a famous film director and invites girls to his home to audition for the role. In his apartment, he added drugs to drinks, after which he beat and raped his victims for several days. When he got tired of the new “toy”, he let it go. Later, fearing that he would be caught, he began to kill. To confuse the police, the “director” killed women in different ways, which is why law enforcement agencies For a long time it was believed that murders were the work of different people. In the process of investigating a series of murders and rapes, the police were able to trace the maniac and arrest him in 1990. Fearing reprisals in the colony at the hands of other prisoners, the “director” asked the court for capital punishment. His request was granted and in 1992 the maniac was shot by court.

Alexander Bychkov was born in 1988. His father and mother abused alcohol, and because of this, his father hanged himself at the age of forty. From a young age, Alexander’s mother forced him to do hard work, forcing him to earn money for her alcohol. Perhaps that is why in the future he will hate drunkards and homeless people so much that he will begin to kill them. The serial killer killed his first victim on September 17, 2009. It was Evgeny Zhidkov, who came to the Belinsky district to get documents to apply for a pension. Bychkov met him in a drink shop, after which he invited him to his apartment, and when Zhidkov fell asleep, he killed him. He killed the rest of his victims according to a similar scenario. Subsequently, he came up with the nickname “Rambo” and carefully recorded each murder in a journal, which he called “the bloody hunt of a predator born in the year of the dragon.” In order to ward off suspicion, he committed all the murders from May to September. It was then that workers from other republics came to his city to work. On January 21, 2012, Bychkov stole material assets and money for total amount 10,000 rubles. The theft was quickly discovered and Alexander was arrested. During the investigation, he confessed to the earlier murders. During interrogation, the killer admitted that he cut out internal organs from his victims and ate them. No evidence of this was found. On March 22, 2013, the Penza Regional Court sentenced the serial killer to life imprisonment, to be served in a special regime colony.

Anatoly Slivko was born on December 28, 1938. In 1961, he witnessed a terrible accident in which a motorcyclist crashed into a column of pioneers, fatally injuring one child. Subsequently, Slivko claimed that at that moment he experienced strong sexual arousal and the sight of a suffering child haunted him all his life. After he organized the children's tourist club "Chergid" (through rivers, mountains and valleys) he began to use his position to recreate that terrible accident. Having good knowledge of child psychology, he used threats and bribery to involve them in the filming of films with simulated violence. Dressing the children in pioneer uniforms, he hung them on a tree or stretched them with ropes, watching with pleasure their torment. After which he resuscitated the children. The surviving victims either did not remember what happened or were simply afraid to tell adults about it. Still, there were children who told about terrible experiments, but no one believed them. He filmed all his abuses and murders of children and wrote them down in his diary. In total, the murders of seven children under the age of sixteen were subsequently proven in court. Despite the disappearance of children from the tourist club and stories from students about strange filming, Slivko committed his terrible atrocities for ten years. He was arrested only on December 28, 1985. Within a year after this, he confessed to all the murders and in June 1986 was sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out in 1989 in Novocherkassk prison. A few hours before his death, the serial killer managed to consult investigator Issa Kostoev on the Chikatilo case.

Sergei Golovkin was born on November 26, 1958. At school I was a quiet and inconspicuous child who practically did not communicate with anyone or make friends. No one imagined then that a few years later he would become a serial killer known as “Fisher.” As a child, Sergei suffered from enuresis and was constantly afraid that others would smell his urine. When masturbating, he imagined himself torturing and killing his classmates. At the age of 13, he first showed his sadistic tendencies by killing and cutting off the head of a cat. He committed his first murder in April 1986, when in a forest area near the Katur station he met 15-year-old Andrei Pavlov, whom he led into the forest with threats, where he raped and killed. Three months later, he rapes and kills another child near the Zvezdny pioneer camp. After the murder, the maniac cut off the victim’s genitals and head, ripped open the abdominal cavity and pulled out the internal organs. Four days after this brutal murder, the dismembered corpse of a sixteen-year-old teenager was discovered in the Odintsovo district. Later, Fischer does not admit to this murder, and the investigation will never prove his guilt. During the investigation, an acquaintance of one of Golovkin’s victims will tell that he met a man who introduced himself to him as Fischer, but it later turns out that this was just a child’s fantasy. However, the nickname “Fisher” will firmly stick to the maniac. Rumors about a maniac near Moscow began to quickly spread throughout the region, forcing Golovkin to stop killing for a while. In 1988, he buys a VAZ 2103 car and with its help in 1989 he commits his third crime. In 1990, Fischer dug a cellar in his garage, planning to use it as a workshop, but the idea of ​​using the cellar to commit his terrible crimes came into his sick head. And already in August 1991, while driving past a bus stop in his car, Fischer met a child, whom he fraudulently brought to his garage, where he committed violent acts against the child. After which he hangs the child and skins him, and dismembers the corpse. The maniac fried the soft organs of the child on blowtorch and ate it. He took the body parts (except for the head, which he kept as a souvenir) to the nearest forest and buried them. In 1992, a serial killer lures and kills three boys at once. Moreover, he told the children who and in what order he would kill. He rapes the last victim for twelve hours, after which he kills and calmly goes to work. On October 5, 1992, random mushroom pickers discover the corpses of these children in the forest. Having established the identity of the dead, investigators went to the school where they studied. One of his classmates, during interrogation, spoke about Sergei Golovkin, who gave him a lift along with the murdered schoolchildren on September 14, 1992 from the Zhavoronki station, offering to participate in the theft of a store along the way. The next day, the witness was unable to go with his friends to Moscow for the robbery. They organized surveillance of Fischer and detained him on October 19, 1992. During the investigation, the pedophile maniac confessed to the murder of 11 children. On October 19, 1994, the court sentenced him to capital punishment - execution. The sentence was carried out on August 2, 1996. According to some reports, Sergei Golovkin was the last person executed in Russia.

Sergey Kashfulgayanovich Martynov was born on June 2, 1962. In 1991, in the city of Abakan, he raped and killed a girl, for which he was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. In 2004 he was released early. After which he began to travel around the country in search of his new victims. In the city of Kemerovo in 2005, he attempted to rape a girl by stabbing her with a knife. Two years later, in June 2007, in the city of Glazov, a killer kills a woman and cuts out her organs. A month later, the maniac rapes a child in the village of Vyazovka. A year later, in Vladimir, he kills a man and commits a theft in the Konstantin-Elinsky Church. In the same year, in August, Martynov commits the murder of a woman in the Novgorod region. And this time he cuts out organs from his victim. Three months later, another victim. This time he kills his partner in the village of Znamenko. In 2010, the maniac again continues his murders. Now his victim has become a seventy-year-old woman in Bashkortostan. That same year, in the Voronezh region, Martynov stabbed a woman to death. This is not a complete list of victims of the Bashkir killer. In total, the investigation assumed that the serial killer had at least 10 victims, but only eight episodes were proven. The maniac was detained on the night of November 18-19, 2010 in the Voronezh region in a cafe where he worked and spent the night. Already in November 2012, he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Nikita Lytkin was born on March 24, 1993, his accomplice Artem Anufriev on October 4, 1992. Artem and Nikita were participants in the skinhead movement. From December 2010 to April 2011, they killed approximately eight people. If you believe Anufriev, then the idea to kill came to Lytkin. In search of a victim, they walked along the same route from the State University stop to Akademgorodok, every day from six to ten in the evening. At the same time, they could pass by dozens of people in search of exactly the victim who, in their opinion, was suitable for them. They used knives, baseball bats, hammers and mallets as murder weapons. They attacked their victims from behind, hitting them on the head, which is why the surviving victims of the academic maniacs could not tell the investigators the signs of the criminals. They were able to catch the milkmen from Irkutsk after sketches of the criminals were distributed at the Institute of Organic Chemistry, where Lytkina’s grandmother worked. Nikita Lytkin’s grandmother and her son Vladislav noticed that the identikit looked like their relative. Vladislav went home to Lytkin to talk to him. But I didn’t find him at home, but I found a video camera in which the killers accidentally forgot a flash drive with footage of the murder of one of their victims. Having seen the recording, Vladislav took it to the police. Within an hour and a half, the academic maniacs were detained. On April 2, 2013, the Irkutsk Regional Court sentenced Lytkin to 24 years in prison, and Anufriev to life imprisonment.

Vladimir Anatolyevich Mukhankin was born on April 22, 1960. From the age of thirteen, Mukhankin began committing robbery and theft, stunning his victims with a metal pipe. For which he was convicted several times. In 1995, a serial killer begins killing people and commits eight murders in two months, while performing various manipulations with dead bodies. In addition to murders, he also committed fourteen more crimes, mostly thefts and attacks on people. The criminal was caught by accident when he attacked a woman and her daughter. The woman was killed, but the daughter survived and was able to identify the killer. The court found him guilty of twenty-two crimes, including eight murders, and sentenced him to capital punishment - execution. Subsequently, the penalty was changed to life imprisonment. On at the moment he is kept in the Black Dolphin colony.

Irina Gaydamachuk (Satan in a skirt)

Irina Viktorovna Gaidamachuk was born on September 26, 1972. WITH early years Irina began to abuse alcohol, for which she was deprived of parental rights in relation to her eldest daughter. At the end of 1990, she moved to Krasnoufimsk, where she met a man with whom she later gave birth to a daughter. Irina did not work anywhere, her new husband did not give her money, fearing that she would drink it away. Perhaps because of this she decided to kill. Under the guise of a social worker, Gaidamachuk visited elderly people, whom she killed with a blow to the head with a hammer, after which she took valuables and disappeared. Over eight years, Satan in a Skirt (as she was called) killed seventeen pensioners and committed eighteen robberies. The serial killer wearing a skirt was only apprehended in 2010. The court sentenced her to twenty years in prison.

Vasily Sergeevich Kulik was born on January 17, 1956. Already from childhood he showed sadistic tendencies, torturing and killing cats. At school, Kulik played sports and even became the Irkutsk boxing champion. While studying at the medical faculty of Irkutsk medical institute in 1980 he was beaten and robbed by teenagers. According to him, this event (and most likely a serious head injury) gave rise to his passion for children. In the same year, Kulik tries to seduce a fourth grade student. In 1981, Kulik got married, and a year later his children were born. In 1984, Kulik committed his first murder; the body of his nine-year-old victim was discovered a few days later in the basement of one of the houses in Irkutsk. Working as an emergency doctor, he easily and unhinderedly entered the apartments of his victims. During the two years of its bloody activity, the Irkutsk monster killed thirteen people (including seven pensioners and six children). During another attack on January 17, 1986, he was captured by random passers-by and taken to the police, where he confessed to his crimes. True, at the trial he retracted his words, saying that Chibis’s gang forced him to confess everything. But this lie did not help him avoid punishment for his crimes, and on August 11, 1988, the court sentenced him to capital punishment - execution. On June 26, 1989, the sentence was carried out in a pre-trial detention center in the city of Irkutsk.

Why do people kill each other? The reasons can be explainable from the point of view of natural selection or cruel necessity - when it comes to the struggle for resources or self-defense (ultimately, both are about survival). Another thing is that millennia of development of civilization have led humanity to the conclusion that killing is bad, immoral and destructive.

Why does the program sometimes break down and a person begins to kill for the sake of killing? Where do cruel people obsessed with death come from? Let's try to tell you about the ten most brutal maniacs in history.

John Wayne Gacy

This man is known as the “killer clown” (it was his story that prompted Stephen King to create one of the most terrible horror films - “It”). His life was, so to speak, quite typical for a maniac - Gacy experienced rape as a child, his father was an alcoholic who abused his family.

John Wayne Gacy first went to jail at age 26 for raping a teenage boy. Instead of 10 years, he served a year and a half: he was released for good behavior. The failure of the penitentiary system has cost America dearly. Once free, Gacy bought a Pogo the clown costume and began working part-time at city festivals in the suburbs of Chicago.


From 1972 to 1978, he raped and murdered more than 30 people. These were young guys whom Gacy brought to his home, tortured and killed. He was detained in 1978. The remains of 29 victims were found in the basement of his house. The jury sentenced John Wayne Gacy to 12 death sentences, the only one of which was carried out on May 10, 1994.

Jeffrey Dahmer

Cannibal and murderer Jeffrey Dahmer was also sexually abused and bullied as a child. However, for the time being he was an ordinary teenager - until he developed a strange habit of collecting animal corpses, which he placed in jars of formaldehyde.


Dahmer killed for the first time at the age of 18 - his victim was a young man, a casual acquaintance. The killer stunned him with dumbbells, strangled him, and then cut his body into pieces and buried them under the house. Life after that went on as usual, as if nothing had happened. Damer got married, studied, was expelled for drunkenness, served in the army, worked...


In 1987, he killed again and could no longer stop. Over four years, he raped and killed 17 people. One day he brought home another victim, but a young man named Tracy Edwards managed to get out and call the police. Later, during a search of Dahmer's house, photographs of corpses, the bodies themselves, and body parts with which the refrigerator was stuffed were discovered. There was a skeleton in the closet, and three male torsos in the barrel of acid.

Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced to fifteen life sentences, but lived in prison for only three years - in 1994, he was beaten to death by a fellow inmate.

Ted Bundy

Theodore Bundy showed great promise - he was smart and talented, an excellent student and was in good standing with his professors. It is unknown what went wrong. But in 1974, in the middle of the academic year at the university, Bundy began to skip classes and was soon expelled. Around the same time, women began disappearing without a trace on the West Coast.


The exact number of Ted Bundy's victims is unknown. During the investigation, he confessed to 30 murders of women, but there could be more. Bundy met young girls, smiled charmingly and asked for help - he often used the fake cast trick to make it look like he couldn't handle it on his own. The girl willingly helped him, for example, carry his suitcase to the car, got into it to continue the acquaintance - and after that she was already doomed.


Bundy was arrested in 1975 after attempting to kidnap Carol DaRonch. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Bundy managed to escape that time. He was unable to lead a normal life for long and in January 1978 - two weeks after the escape - he broke into a women's dormitory and there, in 20 minutes, killed two women and severely maimed another.


Ted Bundy was arrested almost by accident, but the police quickly realized that they were facing the most scary man in America. He was charged with the murders - the court sentenced Bundy to death. Over the next few years, he told the FBI more and more details about the brutal crimes he committed, hoping that the execution would be postponed for a while longer. He was eventually executed in 1989 by electric chair.

Gary Ridgway

It is noteworthy that Ted Bundy, having already been sentenced to death, in a conversation with an FBI agent, drew up a fairly clear psychological portrait of the alleged maniac who operated in the early 80s in the United States. The editors of the site note that according to this description it was possible to catch Ridgway even then, but Bundy did not listen, and Ridgway was free for another 17 years.


Gary Ridgway, nicknamed the “Green River Killer,” killed at least 70 women over two decades and is considered one of the bloodiest and most brutal maniacs in the world. He was arrested after one of the victims managed to break free and run. Ridgway began confessing to the murders and the number of his victims grew from 42 (who were known to the police) to 71. In 2003, he was sentenced to 48 life sentences without parole.

Andrey Chikatilo

An inconspicuous engineer named Chikatilo lived in the city of Shakhty and did not attract the attention of the police for years. It never occurred to anyone that this little man could be guilty of the brutal murders of young women and children. From 1978 to 1984, 32 people disappeared or were found brutally murdered in the Rostov region.

Chikatilo was arrested for the first time in 1984 - he molested young girls at a bus station in Rostov. At the same time, a completely different person was already executed for the murder of one of his victims, a certain Anatoly Kravchenko, who in 1983 incriminated himself under torture by the police.


The first arrest ended in nothing for Andrei Chikatilo - due to a mismatch of blood and sperm groups, there was no evidence against him. The maniac remained free for another six years and was arrested in 1990. On the tenth day, he began to confess and spoke about dozens of tortured victims. Chikatilo is responsible for at least 52 murders. He was shot on February 14, 1994.

Pedro Alonso Lopez - the most brutal maniac in history

This man has been “flaunting” in the Guinness Book of Records for several decades as the most cruel maniac in the world. The editors of uznayvsyo.rf sincerely hope that no one else will take this place.

It is believed that this man is responsible for more than three hundred murders that were committed in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Pedro Alonso Lopez, who is called the “monster of the Andes,” lived as a child with an over-aged pervert who sheltered him - after the boy was thrown out onto the street by his own mother, a prostitute.


At the age of 18, Lopez brutally took revenge on his “benefactor” by raping and killing him and a gang of friends. For this crime, Lopez received 8 years in prison. After his release, he went to Peru and began killing and raping there. His victims were mainly teenage girls. From 1975 to 1978, according to some sources, he killed at least a hundred people.


Police in poor countries Latin America doesn't have much influence. According to rumors, Lopez was ordered to leave the country by a Peruvian crime boss. The killer left the country but continued his atrocities in neighboring Ecuador. One day, the girl he grabbed broke free and ran away, and Lopez was detained. The authorities could not believe their ears when the maniac began to paint his crimes.


Psychopath and murderer Pedro Lopez decided to prove to the police that he really killed many people. He showed the burial place of his victims - an examination showed that there were the remains of at least fifty girls and women there. Lopez was sentenced to 20 years in prison, the maximum sentence in Ecuador. According to rumors, he was either transferred to compulsory treatment or even released.

If you like to tickle your nerves scary stories, we invite you to switch from real horrors to fictional ones: life is already full of horror and pain. Read about the scariest horror films.
Subscribe to our channel in Yandex.Zen

Reading time: 12 min.

As you know, in the Soviet Union many topics were taboo, and if something out of the ordinary happened, the authorities tried to hide it. But it was difficult to hide the bloody murders from the public, which horrified the entire country. This rating describes the most dangerous maniacs of the USSR and their sensational cases, which still make the blood run cold in the veins.

Vasily Kulik - “Irkutsk Monster”

As a child, Vasily was very sick, and the whole family looked after him and cared for him. Due to numerous illnesses, he was forgiven for every offense, so Vasily grew up to be a very cruel and evil person; already as a teenager he tortured and killed cats. As a young man, Kulik actively took up sports and matured significantly. After he was attacked and hit on the head in 1980, he began to notice a sexual desire for children.
Within a couple of years, Vasily commits his first rape, and in 1984 he kills a nine-year-old girl for the first time. In addition to minors, he was also interested in pensioners; the investigation later found a list of old women whom Kulik wanted to kill. In 1986, passers-by stopped Kulik during another crime. When he was taken to the police station, he confessed to everything, but at the trial he began to claim that he had been framed by a gang of a local authority. After an investigation and undeniable evidence of Kulik’s involvement in the murders, he was sentenced to death in 1989. In total, the “Irkutsk Monster” committed 13 kills.

Roman Burtsev's childhood was not at all easy. His parents suffered from alcoholism, which may have influenced his future fate. He committed his first murder in 1993, the victims were the Churilovs' brother and sister - he first beat a boy to death, and then abused his sister and killed her. After that, he threw the children's corpses into a garbage pit. Burtsev was a very careful maniac: he hid the bodies well, all of them were found only after Roman showed the crime scene to investigators. However, one time Burtsev lost his vigilance: after another crime, he borrowed a shovel from his neighbor, which he never returned to her. A neighbor suspected something was wrong and contacted the police; later law enforcement officers found Burtsev. In 1996, he was sentenced to death, but the sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. “Kamensky Chikatilo” sent 6 people to the next world, all the victims were children.

During the reign of Khrushchev, it was hard to even imagine that a criminal would get into your house, introducing himself as an employee of Mosgaz. Just so simple, but in an effective way used by Vladimir Ionesyan. The servants of the law became furious, and all resources were thrown into catching the bandit. As soon as they caught him, they immediately executed him. Most likely, Vladimir committed crimes for the purpose of robbery. According to another version, after divorcing his wife, out of love for the ballerina Alevtina Dmitrieva, Vladimir entered other people’s houses to steal something valuable for the woman he loved. According to another version, by killing Ionesyan he asserted himself. Mosgaz committed the very first crime in 1963 - having got into an apartment by deception, he cut to pieces a 12-year-old boy who was at home by himself and stole valuables. The last time he killed was in 1964, his victim was a 46-year-old woman, Vladimir was caught and he was executed. According to unconfirmed reports, Khrushchev personally talked with the criminal. In total, the killer sent five people to the next world, four of them were children.

Mukhankin grew up in a dysfunctional family, he was an unexpected child (his father left the family before his birth), and from his mother he received only slaps and constant insults. Mukhankin’s character underwent changes, he became angry and cruel, began to wander, steal, and abuse cats and dogs. At the age of 18, he got married and had a child, who died soon after. In 1995, Vladimir Mukhankin committed his first murder and in a couple of months he already had eight deaths. By mocking dying people, he made the very last seconds of their lives terrible. Mukhankin’s fetish was the victim’s internal organs; he even went to bed with them. After the criminal was caught, he declared that he was a follower of Chikatilo. Vladimir spoke with genuine pleasure about his atrocities, but in court he retracted everything he said. There are twenty-two crimes on it, eight of them murders. “Lenin” will live out his life in the Black Dolphin prison.

Sergei Tkach made his debut as a maniac in 1980; all his crimes had sexual overtones. He started committing crimes after he moved to Ukraine, the victims were girls from 9 to 17 years old. Sergei always hid evidence well; no traces of semen or any other evidence were found on the bodies of those killed. Only in 2005 was Tkach detained after the massacre of a nine-year-old girl. While the police were looking for the maniac, 14 people were unjustly convicted for all those atrocities authored by Tkach. The “Pavlograd maniac” will serve a life sentence in prison. During his entire career, he killed from 30 to 150 people.

Anatoly Utkin was born in 1942. After graduation, he worked as a driver. In 1968, on a warm spring day, his car was pulled over by a 14-year-old girl who was rushing to see her mother at the hospital. Utkin violated her and killed her, keeping valuable things as a souvenir. Both young girls and ladies of Balzac's age became victims of the Ulyanovsk maniac. The public was in awe when the corpses of missing girls were found over and over again: a dangerous maniac was walking around in quiet Ulyanovsk. Anatoly understood that sooner or later he could be caught, so he began to choose victims systematically. The year 1972 was marked by a change in the motives of the criminal: now he did not want to kill and rape, he was only interested in profit. In the same 1972, Utkin kills a man in order to rob him, and in 1973 he was arrested. After all the evidence was discovered, the servants of justice had no doubt about Utkin’s guilt. It was proven that he committed 9 murders and was shot in 1975. With all this, Anatoly Utkin was a respectable family man; his friends and relatives described him as an extremely pleasant person.

Sergei Golovkin looked like a young and handsome man; girls followed him in stacks, but they were of little interest to him. "Fisher" preferred teenage boys. The first damn thing, as we know, is always lumpy, and this happened with the first attempt at rape and murder, in 1984. The victim managed to escape and many years later, she identified the criminal to the police. The first successful murder was committed in 1984, Golovkin killed a 16-year-old boy: first he dragged him into a forest belt, raped him, killed him and repeatedly violated his body. The murders did not stop, and this stirred up public interest; Sergei, fearing exposure, went underground. In 1989, Fisher returned to business, but changed his approach. He dug a basement in own garage, where he killed teenagers. Due to the fact that the maniac lost his vigilance and carelessly buried the remains of the last victims, he was quickly found. In 1992, he ended up behind bars. The sentence is logical - the death penalty, which was carried out in 1996. During his entire career, he killed eleven children.

In 1996, when Onoprienok was detained, he had already killed 52 people. The exact number of those killed will remain unknown; the investigation assumed that there were many more victims. Onoprienko committed his first crime in 1989, together with Sergei Rogozin. Together they killed married couples, entered apartments and massacred entire families. Onoprienko sometimes shot random passers-by. The motives that guided Anatoly are still unknown. According to him, he had to kill people because a voice in his head ordered him to do it. While the police were looking for Onoprienko, during the investigation they detained an innocent man who died during torture. After legal proceedings, “citizen o” was sentenced to execution, but it was canceled because at that time the death penalty was abolished in Ukraine.

Alexey Sukletin did not work alone; Shakirova and Nikitin worked with him. They killed Ekaterina Osetrova first, in 1981. Alexey forced Shakirova to help him kill, butcher and cook the victims. Blinded by Shakirov’s love, she was ready to do everything that Sukletin ordered her, she began to cut and cook human meat. Their union did not last long - after they killed the little girl, Shakirova decided to leave Sukletin. Alexey almost immediately found an accomplice - his relative Anatoly Nikitin became him, and with him “Alligator” continued his brutal crimes. There were rumors in the village that Anatoly was selling good meat, and the bandits, meanwhile, began to engage in robbery, which is what they were caught doing. Four bags filled with human bones were found in the criminal's house. The maniac was shot in 1994, and his accomplices received 15 years in prison each. At least seven people were killed and eaten by the cannibals.

Anatoly Biryukov was considered an exemplary family man and a respectable citizen, not suspecting that he was living double life. Biryukov killed for the first time in 1977. He stole the child from the stroller, took him to a vacant lot and wanted to abuse him. But the frightened maniac was unable to carry out his dirty deed - passersby noticed him and had to finish off the baby with a knife. That same year, Anatoly kills and rapes several more children. Only during the attempt of the sixth crime were witnesses able to notice him. Eyewitnesses compiled an identikit, and the investigation began its search. After the arrest, doctors diagnosed Biryukov. Anatoly suffered from nepyophilia - sexual desire for children in infancy. Biryukov justified his crimes because his wife did not fulfill her marital duty for a long time. In 1979, Anatoly was sentenced to death, and the verdict was carried out that same year. During his entire career, five babies became his victims.