The Vladimir Region investigating bodies of the Russia’s Investigative Committee have finished investigation against former senior operative of the 4th department of intended killing interregional office of the Vladimir Region Office of the Ministry of the Interior Mikhail Ovechkin, 45. He is charged with crimes under paragraph “a’ of part 2 of article 126 of the RF Penal Code (abduction by a group of people) and part 1 of article 105 (murder).
Abduction and murder of a resident of the town of Gus-Khrustalny, 21-year-old Dmitry Ilyushin, were committed in May 1998, the period when Gus-Khrustalny District experienced a massive surge of crimes, the district was affected by the terror of criminal groups and gangs, businessmen and people lived in fear, lack of protection and distrust to the authority and police, some of whom patronized the shadow business, kingpins and gangsters openly.
The crime committed against the young men remained unsolved for almost 13 years, but in February 2011, in the period when the district was cleared of criminals by officials of the regional offices of the Investigative Committee, Ministry of the Interior and Federal Security Service, the complete picture of the crime was restored and the people involved in it were punished.
According to investigators, in February 1998, during counter operations Ilyushin several times was summoned to the police station, was illegally placed in a detention center, where Ovechkin and other police officers of the 4th department beat testimony from him so that he took a murder upon himself.
When Dmitry came home he told to this family that they had filed his teeth, cuffed his hands on the back and beat up, put a gas mask on him blocking the inflow of oxygen. The young man was afraid to go out and stopped meeting his friends. On 23 February 1998, he was once again placed in the detention center where fearing that he would be tortured again, he gnawed through the veins on his hand and was put in a specialized hospital for several days.
On 8 March 1998, the cowed young man finally appealed to the prosecutor’s office complaining about wrongdoings of the police officers. A criminal investigation was opened into abuse of power and it was revealed that the crime involved head of the 4th department of the crime detection police station No 1 of the regional office of the Ministry of the Interior Boris Avanesyan and operatives of the said department Mikhail Ovechkin, Anatoly Zhidkov and Sergey Tarlakov.
Since then the uncovered police officers started persecuting Ilyushin coercing him to change his position.
In the afternoon of 24 May 1998, the said officers tracked Dmitry down outside, forced to get into a car and took him to the bank of the local reservoir not far from the building of a yacht club, where they spent several hours trying to convince the young man to change his testimony.
Dmitry allegedly agreed to concession for a fee, which of course the police officers were not happy about.
Ovechkin offered Ilyushin to go swimming and when they were about 5 meters away from the bank, the accused grabbed the victim around his neck, plunged his head under water and held it there until the latter was dead.
When the crime was investigated into in 1998 it was evident that the witnesses of the victim’s abduction were intimidated as the drawings of gallows and an inscription “think about it” had appeared on the doors to their flats.
After Ilyushin’s abduction and murder was solved in modern conditions when people had again started trusting law-enforcement authorities, investigators gathered and consolidated the evidence, questioned over 30 witnesses and ran a number of important forensic examinations.
It is remarkable that in June 2011, Ovechkin fearing the punishment escaped from investigators and was wanted. On 16 July 2015, a court ruled to place him in custody pending trial after he had surrendered to the police.
The accused did not plead guilty referring to statute of limitation.
The criminal case with the approved indictment has been sent to court to be tried on the merits.
Cases against Avanesyan, Tarlakov and Zhidkov have been closed by statute of limitation, that is on non-rehabilitating bases.
PDF version 
DOC version
