The court has found the evidence gathered by the North Caucasus Federal District Main Investigations Directorate of the Russia’s Investigative Committee enough to convict Sergey Tsapok, Nikolai Tsapok, Vyacheslav Tsepovyaz, Vladimir Zaporozhets, Vladimir Alekseyev and Igor Chernykh. They were found guilty of crimes under articles 209, 105, 162, 127, 167, 131, 222 of the RF Penal Code (banditry, murder, attempted murder, robbery, illegal deprivation of freedom, deliberate destruction and damage of another’s property, rape and illegal storage of firearms). Two of the gang members Sergey Karpenko and Vitaly Ivanov have killed themselves, and two more Andrey Bykov and Vyacheslav Ryabtsev have already been sentenced to 20 years in prison each.
The investigators have found that it was Sergey Tsapok, who headed the gang acting in the village of Kushchevskaya, Krasnodar Territory over 10 years. In all, over the years while Tsapok’s gang acted in the village of Kushchevskaya - between 1998 and 2010 – its members killed 19 people and two more murders were not finished as in one case the victim had received timely medical aid and in the second the victim had managed to escape.
The Tsapok’s gang are cynical, cruel and savage people, who have more savage instincts rather that human ones. This is never better confirmed by a distinctive fragment from the files of the case. During the questioning one of the accused could not recall certain details of a massacre in the Ametov’s house seriously explaining it by the fact that they were drunk with the smell of blood. Obviously such a behavior is characteristic of animals that smell blood.
At the same time the investigators have found that the gang members prepared their crimes and concealed them in the most careful way. This concerns not only the mass murder of 12 people, but all other crimes they had committed before it. And there are no less than 40 of them. As a rule they would use one weapon for one crime and got rid of it, then they would buy another weapon for the next crime. When the investigators found a special cache of the gang hidden in the woods, they seized from there a large number of firearms, including a submachine gun, pistols and hunting rifles. These were laid in store for a new crime.
Thanks to the investigators alone, who in rather a short time identified all the members of the gang and provided proves of their guilt, it was possible not only to restore peace and quiet in the village of Kushchevskaya, but to save lives and health of the people in neighboring villages, where the gang was already starting extending their influence.
Investigators have done a large amount of work in Krasnodar Territory, the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania and other subjects of the Russian Federation. They have conducted over 2,000 questionings, over 50 examinations of crime scenes and areas, over 80 on-site checks of testimonies, over 600 forensic expert examinations, examined over 8,000 objects and documents, taken 70 samples for comparative analyses, made over 250 orders to inquiry bodies. There are 477 volumes in the criminal case.
The court sentenced Sergey Tsapok, Vladimir Alekseyev and Igor Chernykh to imprisonment for life, Vyacheslav Tsepovyaz and Nikolai Tsapok to 20 years in prison, Vladimir Zaporozhets to 19 years in prison.
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