A court has recognized the evidence collected by the Vladimir Region Office of the Investigative Committee sufficient to convict a member of an organized armed criminal group (gang), a resident of the town of Noginsk, Viktor Smirnov, 26.
He was found guilty of murder of two or more people with aggravating factors under Part 2, items “a”, “d”, “e”, “g”, “h”, “j” of Article 105, banditry under part 2 of Article 209, illegal circulation of firearms and ammunition under Part 3 of Article 222, deliberate destruction of another’s property under Part 1 of Article 167 and a break-in Part 2 of Article 139 of the RF Penal Code.
High level of professionalism of a major cases investigator and psychologically correct tactics of the investigation made the accused take a cooperation deal. While investigating the murder of a family on 12 June 2015, investigators solved two more murders committed by Smirnov and other gangsters in previous years in Noginsk.
The case against Smirnov was tried under a special procedure. The court and investigators found out that in 2011 Smirnov joined the gang set up by an ex-con Anatoly Mazur. According to investigators, Mazur received an order of a contract murder from Galina Bobrova who was cross with her husband whom she was being divorced with. She provided Mazur with necessary information on the victim and promised to pay 1 million rubles for the murder of her husband after she had inherited his flat in the city of Vladimir and sold it.
Following the order of the gang leader, Smirnov and another gangster arrived in the city of Vladimir on the night of 11 June 2015 to make reconnaissance and then to commit the murder for the promised share of the reward and then went back to Noginsk. The next morning he arrived to a house in Nizhnyaya Dubrova Street in Vladimir with other gangsters armed with a 9mm gun with a silencer and a knife.
Then, acting under orders of the gang leader, Smirnov broke into the flat where lived the man, his wife and her teenage son. He stabbed to death the 36-year-old pregnant woman while the gang leader shot and killed the 42-year-old man and the 16-year-old boy.
To make it look like it was a domestic murder they stole a laptop computer and a phone which they then threw in a pond on their way to Noginsk. On arrival there they let Bobrova know about the murder of her husband and others who were in the flat.
In addition, the investigators have irrefutable evidence that Smirnov was involved in the murder of an elderly man committed in Noginsk in October 2011 and a 33-year-old resident of Noginsk committed in 2013 by suffocating him with a plastic bag and by causing him a neck injury, after which the body was buried on a cemetery in another’s grave.
The Vladimir Region Court took into account Smirnov’s plea and cooperation deal and has sentenced him to 18 years in prison.
The cases against other accomplices, the gang leader 49-year-old Anatoly Mazur, 38-year-old Maksim Meshchankin, 26-year-old Alexander Raldugin and 47-year-old Galina Bobrova are being tried.
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