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A court has recognized the evidence gathered by the Moscow Directorate of the Investigative Committee as sufficient to convict Vitaly Studenikin, Andrei Sizov and Valery Semyonov. They were found guilty of murder by a group of people in collusion for mercenary motives under Part 2, items “g” and “h” of Article 105 of the RF Criminal Code.

The court and investigators have revealed that not later than 2011 Sutdenikin and his acquaintances concluded with a number of elderly residents of Moscow life annuity contracts under which they got the ownership of their flats in exchange for life annuity. However, the accused had no intentions to meet their commitments and wanting to get quick money by selling the flats, Studenikin decided to kill former owners of the flat in 2014. To do that he set up an organized group involving ex-cons Sizov and Smyonov. The latter two were responsible for killing the victims by injecting them with a poison that decomposed quickly preventing specialists from finding out true cause of death.

The investigators have evidence that the members of the said criminal group were involved in an attempted murder by the abovementioned way of a 62-year-old man in his building Novaya Moskva which was not finished because the victim fought back and some passersby intervened. There is also evidence that accused were involved in an attack on Tamara Khokhryakova, 63, in block of flats in 4^th Sokolnicheskaya Street. The woman died in her flat of the poison injection, but had told her neighbor details of the attack.

A lot of investigative operations and different forensic examinations were carried out, including commission medical, DNA, handwriting, chemical and criminalistics ones confirming the guilt of the accused. The case had 21 files in it.

The court has sentenced Studenikin to 19 years in a maximum-security correctional facility, Sizov to 18 years in a maximum-security correctional facility and Semyonov to 18 years in a minimum-security correctional facility.