News

The Volgograd Region Office of the Investigative Committee has finished criminal proceedings against 35-year-old Denis Zubov charged with crimes under Part 2, item “a” and “h” of Article 105 (murder of more than 2 people) and Part 4, item “c” of Article 162 of the RF Penal Code (robbery).

According to investigators, in July 2014, Zubov came to his ex-girlfriend living in Olkhovka District, Volgograd Region and asked the woman to return to him. When he saw that she was adamant and was not going to give him second chance he decided to kill her. He strangled the woman and hid the body in a forest. The woman’s relatives soon reported her missing. The investigators suspected ex-boyfriend Zubov at once as the victim had not come back after meeting him.

At the first interrogation the man confessed that he had killed the woman and hidden the body in the forest not far from the settlement of Zenzevatka, Olkhovka District. The same day he wrote that he had turned himself in and showed the place the body was hidden in.

The investigators managed to discover that Zubov had been involved two other massacres committed in 2013. Bodies of a man and woman with multiple wounds and amputated limbs had been found in Krasnoarmeisky and Svetly Yar Districts three days apart. The body of a 62-year-old man found in Krasnoarmeisky district on 2 September 2013, in Udmurtskaya Street had been castrated, while the body of a 73-year-old woman killed three days later in a country house in the settlement of Raigorod had had both breasts cut off.

The DNA samples taken from Zubov after he had been detained were checked in a special database and matched the biological evidence left by the killer on the elderly woman’s clothes. When the investigators showed him the results of the inquiry, the man did not deny his involvement and said that in September 2013, he was riding a bus to Svetly Yar District. He had got off on the same stop as the 73-year-old woman and decided to rob her. He had walked the woman to her property, attacked, beaten and stabbed her. He had taken 2,000 rubles and her wrist watch and fled the scene.

Thanks to a psychological contact the investigator had with Zubov, he also said that three days earlier, on 2 September 2013, he had met an acquaintance of his in Krasnoarmeisky District, of whose interest in his girlfriend he had been jealous. He had grabbed the man on his head and had started beating him on asphalt. When the victim’s scull cracked the killer slashed him with a knife and fled.

The investigators have enough evidence, so the criminal case with the signed indictment has been referred to court. Zubov pled guilty during the preliminary investigation.