From “Capercaillie” to “series”
In 2002, the police of the city of Krasnoufimsk, Sverdlovsk region received information about the murder of a pensioner. In a house on Ukhtomsky Street, an elderly woman was beaten to death with a hammer and robbed in her own apartment. The amount stolen was scant and the fingerprints found on the filing cabinet at the crime scene did not “light up”. Also, there were no clues and clues. Therefore, the case was quietly covered up, first transferring it to the category of “chicken”, and then completely forgetting about it.
This crime was the beginning of a series of murders that could not be solved for 8 years. Although in 2003 the police had a detailed outline of the attacker.
The criminal, whom his victim then described as a young woman with a height of 160-165 cm, slender and with blond hair, did not finish his work while trying to commit his third murder.
The maniac, pretending to be a social security worker, rang his victim’s bell, the naive pensioner opened the door without question. The criminal began to hit his head with a hammer on the threshold of the apartment of a house on Sovetskaya Street. The pensioner screamed, his neighbor rushed to the noise, forcing the attacker to retreat. So the old woman escaped and was able to describe in detail the criminal, whose identity leaflets were affixed to the whole city.
The portrait of the murderer was even hung in front of his own house, and the neighbors and relatives of the “Krasnoufimskaya she-wolf” – that’s what the police called her – joked that the murderer was very similar to her. She expressed surprising composure and simply laughed at such assumptions.
Police officers in the city interrogated almost all the blond residents of Krasnoufimsk and identified them with their fingerprints, identified women who looked like an identikit even from the passport office. They were found at the registration address and fingerprinted. But this check did not help find the killer. But later the detectives found out that the criminal has already changed his hair color, which he later did more than once, and the passport does not have a Krasnoufimsk record, like himself – he left it to someone as a hostage where he lived. before – in Nyagan.
“Tour” and a fake trail
Meanwhile, the murders did not stop. To confuse the investigation, the series began “wandering” in the area. He committed his crimes in the villages of Yekaterinburg, Serov, Nizhny Tagil, Shirokaya Rechka, Druzhinino and Achit. The second time, he was almost caught.
Then, the retiree who took the criminal home was able to call the district police while he was still alive. When he got there, the old woman had already been killed, and the “Krasnoufimskaya female wolf” hid in the house until the police left, because no one opened the door for her.
Later, the maniac, who lost his attention at the ninth crime scene, left a hammer with traces of the blood of several victims at once – some of them lived in different cities of the Sverdlovsk region. This helped ensure that the same person committed a series of retirement murders.
However, the work of the operators was inconclusive, until in 2008 the mother of the deputy head of the Nizhny Tagil police department became the victim of a murderer. Comparing this case with the TV series, investigators concluded that it was the work of the same killer. The entire police force of the city was thrown in the search.
A month later, on March 31, the little swindler Maria Valeeva was detained at the Nizhny Tagil railway station, she was about the same age as the maniac and looked very much like an identity. In addition, he immediately confessed to the murders. He explained his actions by the fact that he allegedly began to hate older women after a gang rape was committed against him in the apartment of a certain pensioner, who mocked the tortured Maria and laughed at what had happened.
When the police received a new message about the murder in a similar handwriting, it turned out that officers of the Nizhny Tagil police department obtained Valeeva’s statement using physical force and psychological pressure.
During the interrogations, they frightened and tortured Valeeva: they strangled her with a plastic bag, starved her, threatened with a baseball bat and raped her. Under pressure, he admitted. Three operators were later sentenced to prison terms, while two received suspended sentences.
In the case of the murderer of pensioners, investigators had to start all over again.
Passion and hatred for profit for the elderly
In May 2010, the murderer returned to the scene, whose first crime was Ukhtomskaya Street. There, the 81-year-old retired “Krasnoufimskaya wolf” struck 18 blows to the head with a hammer and then strangled her in the bathroom to make sure she was dead. Neighbors, worried about the cries of the cat at the door of the deceased, called the police.
After questioning the victim’s acquaintances, it turned out that an elderly woman recently hired Irina Gaydamachuk, a painter at a railroad warehouse, to whitewash ceilings.
Investigators who found the painter realized that the woman in the identikit was himself. The fingerprint showed that the fingerprints were identical to those left by the “Krasnoufimsk she-wolf”. An examination of a lock of hair that one of the victims had pulled from his killer also confirmed that the perpetrator was Gaydamachuk. The suspect was sent to prison.
During the interrogations, it was revealed that Gaidamachuk committed the first murder spontaneously. A pensioner living on Ukhtomskaya Street hired him to study painting. At some point, Irina Gaidamachuk, who periodically began to drink hard, decided to rob her employer for drinking alcohol – Gaidamachuk’s husband, knowing his wife’s addiction, took money from her to protect her from alcohol. This drove him to commit crimes. But all was not well with a robbery: While searching for money and valuables, an old woman entered the room and started screaming.
The first thing the painter encountered was a hammer, which the old woman struck on the head several times. Coolly receiving money from the pensioner, Irina went for vodka.
According to the main version, for profit, Gaidamachuk committed all his murders. According to another, a possible reason was that he also killed because of his hatred of the elderly.
Also, during the interrogations, it was known that the “Krasnoufimskaya she-wolf” committed all the murders according to one scenario: a few days before the murder, she followed the victim, found out about her social circle and close family, what time it was. and how often he leaves home when he returns. The choice of a maniac most often fell on single women.
Then Gaidamachuk knocked on retirees’ doors and introduced himself as a social worker, a fire safety officer, a gas service officer or a housing office lawyer. Then, trusting the victims, the murderer entered their apartment and at the appropriate time approached the elderly women from behind and hit them on the head with a hammer.
Irina Gaydamachuk managed to earn from older women from 1 to 16 thousand rubles at a time. Even in those days, it was a small amount of money.
Abandoned children and passion for alcohol
Irina Gaydamachuk – nee Mashkina – was born in 1972 in Karpinsk, Sverdlovsk region and from an early age began to abuse alcohol. Even at a young age, her parents were deprived of parental rights, because the girl was left on her own. Later, when Irina gave birth to her first child, she herself was deprived of parental rights.
In the late 1990s, the woman moved to Krasnoufimsk, where she met her future husband, Gaidamachuk. She also gave birth to a daughter, temporarily stifling her passion for alcohol, but this did not last long. Soon, Irina started drinking again and got into debt.
Therefore, Irina, who was unemployed at that time, had to look for part-time jobs. Gaidamachuk, who began whitewashing walls and knitting clothes to order, soon paid off his debts, but still had little money. By the way, scandals with her husband due to alcohol did not stop. She left the family in 2010. He told his relatives that he was going to his mother-in-law to pay off his debts, and he himself began to live with a neighbor, after which he exchanged his lover for another.
However, after the arrest, Gaidamachuk hoped that his relatives would help him and confirm his alibi, but they refused to lie to the investigators.
At the same time, the examination showed that Gaydamachuk, although he had slight mental deviations, could not be considered insane.
In June 2012, the “Krasnoufimskaya female wolf” was sentenced to 20 years in a penal colony, since women in Russia are not given life sentences.