News

The Novosibirsk Region Office of the Investigative Committee has charged a local resident with a series of murders under Part 2, item “a” of Article 105 of the RF Penal Code.

According to investigators, from autumn 1998 to July 2005, the accused met young women and offered them to spent time together. If they agreed, he took them to a desolate place in his car and killed them. To conceal the crimes and make it impossible to pin the crimes on him he dismembered the bodies and scattered the parts around the city and in the neighborhood. His victims were between 18 and 31 years of age.

For a long time the investigators and criminalists in cooperation with policemen of the Novosibirsk Region Directorate of the Interior Ministry worked every day to identify the murderer. More than 5 thousand men were checked, more than 8 thousand witnesses were questioned and more than 300 forensic examinations run to find the serial killer.

Thanks to advanced DNA matching techniques used by the investigator, DNA of the presumed serial killer was found on items seized from the sites where body parts were discovered. The DNA lab of the Novosibirsk Region Office of the Investigative Committee the DNA was matched to biological samples of men checked for involvement in the crimes. In 2016, the DNA was finally matched to the biological sample of a man who had been earlier checked by the police on having been involved in a violent crime.

The man was detained on 23 April 2016 and placed in custody pending trial.

Later on the investigators worked to check if the accused had been involved in each crime of the series. They carried out 12 searches in the places the accused lived in and frequented; 21 on-site checks of testimonies were conducted in the presence of the accused; 200 witnesses were questioned; a number of complex forensic examinations were run. The evidence gathered allowed pressing the charges. The man, however, denied all the charges, though before that he had confessed of all the crimes. The circumstances surrounding the murders and the way the murderer used to hide them raised doubts about his sanity, so the accused underwent psychiatric examination. According to experts the accused did not suffer and is not suffering of any kind of permanent or chronic mental disorder and was fully capable of appreciating his actions.

The accused and his lawyer are going to start reading all 60 of the case files. Once they have been finished, the case will be forwarded for the indictment to be signed and then will be referred to court.