walked away for a minute
During a sweltering stretch of summer in 1974, a resident of Togliatti took his seven-year-old son and his mother to the bus station for a quick breath of air before heading out of town. The station buzzed with buses arriving and departing every minute, a hive of activity that painted a perfect backdrop for a moment of vigilance.
In a heartbeat, the boy vanished. His mother and grandmother scrambled to locate him, but the crowded scene made a solo search impossible. They alerted the duty police, hoping for swift help.
The little boy’s body was found sixty meters from the station, tucked among dense bushes. He lay face down on the grass, his head and neck bearing bruises and abrasions, his jeans and swim trunks pushed down to his knees. The scene stunned onlookers and shattered the family’s sense of safety.
Initial police reports floated a theory that the child had wandered into the restroom, slipped, and struck his head. An inexperienced criminologist echoed this possibility. Yet the morgue examination told a harsher truth: the child had been strangled to death.
Early on, suspicion circled the boy’s mother, but investigators quickly dismissed that path. The father, who had left the family and stopped paying alimony for a year, became a suspect. His new wife and his mother vouched for his alibi, complicating the case and delaying a clear verdict.
Chief investigator Gronid Simakov directed officers to question habitual drinkers who gathered near the station, colloquially known as the wine glass crowd. One informant described strange men exchanging gestures with each other, crossing their arms over their groins and moving their hips in a distinctive way. The clue suggested a coded communication style, but the facts remained elusive as another urgent development arrived.
A report from Kuibyshev (now Samara) arrived about a new disappearance, this time a five-year-old boy. The clock had already started ticking again, and the investigation shifted focus toward unraveling a possible serial pattern.
New chapter
The Kuibyshev incident began with a boy playing in the garden while his mother watched from a window. Like the earlier victim, the child briefly left to fetch something from the refrigerator and vanished when returning to the stove. The mother waited, then searched, and after five minutes ventured to the Volga embankment to call out her child’s name.
The young boy’s body was found two weeks later. He had been raped and killed, a brutal blow to the head delivered after a terrible act. Investigators uncovered a second wave of violence as the perpetrator stabbed the body multiple times. The most shocking detail was the removal of the child’s genitals.
The crime scenes led investigators to the conclusion that a single offender was behind both heinous acts. Suspects ranged from alcohol-dependent men who lingered near the station to people who used the gestures observed earlier and those with a history of offenses against children.
first suspect
Simakov pressed forward with a theory centered on the gesturing group near the station. He tailed the men and, when a chance arose, mirrored the gestures to test their authenticity. The exercise revealed a clandestine group of individuals whose conduct suggested a hidden subculture. In a time when exposing nonconformity carried legal risk, a sodomy law complicated the investigative landscape.
From these efforts emerged Pyotr Popov, a physics teacher who occasionally let his attention drift during lessons. Records showed that he often interrupted classroom work, even on the day the second victim was killed, raising questions about his involvement.
Despite mounting concern, there was little hard evidence, and Popov was kept in custody. He attempted suicide twice while detained, and then unexpectedly confessed to the crimes.
Simakov suspected another layer to the confession, believing Popov might be misled or coerced. The detective pressed for a deeper look, and Popov’s claim unraveled under scrutiny. The case shifted gears as officials investigated the possibility that Popov was wrongly implicated due to social stigma surrounding his sexual orientation.
With new information, the city police chief took charge. Yet a report had already been sent to Moscow, and Simakov faced pressure that threatened his position for defending Popov. The investigation paused as authorities weighed the new testimony and its credibility.
As the inquiry continued, the team experimented with the suspect’s claimed method against a mannequin, hoping to replicate the sequence of events. The test revealed serious inconsistencies, and Popov was released after a review of the evidence cast doubt on the initial confession.
The maniac was hidden for 10 months
The trail led to a second wave of killings near Kuibyshev. Two children exploring a World War II bunker disappeared after getting separated from their parents. One returned home and described the unsettling encounter, prompting a rapid police response. The missing boy’s body was found soon after; he had been strangled and mutilated, a shadow of the earlier offenses.
After this grim incident, the offender vanished for nearly ten months. In April 1975 another boy went missing from a park. A young man approached the children, inviting them to follow him to a nearby apartment, using a toy as lure. One child obeyed, the other fled. A separate attack followed when another boy was lured by a similar ruse into the woods, where investigators discovered a boy barely breathing before neighbors could intervene. The assailant escaped as the crowd closed in.
Witness accounts aided the effort to identify the suspect. A friend of the missing boy supplied a portrait of the offender, though the children’s memories diverged in several details. One consistent element stood out: the ears. An elderly witness later recalled a man carrying a child into the woods—a key identifying feature that helped narrow the search.
mysterious voices
Eyewitness summaries suggested the offender was a young man, unlikely to be older than 18. The portrait went to all district departments. One day, Vasily Spirin, a senior inspector, encountered a young man while driving with a companion. The suspect accepted a ride after being shown a lead, and the exchange raised serious questions about his involvement.
During a tense moment, the suspect offered a peculiar brooch as payment and asked about the investigation. He denied any wrongdoing, but his behavior raised alarms, and the police brought him in for questioning. The man identified in the drawing, Vladimir Usov, turned out to be the key figure in the serial offenses, arrested at age 18.
Usov’s early years showed a troubling pattern. By age 14 he drifted from schooling and spent long hours in parks and forests, often watching others. He reported hearing voices inside his head that urged him toward a singular mission and a sense of personal destiny. Family and medical professionals noted signs of mental distress, culminating in a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia in 1971. The voices and thoughts helped shape his later violent acts.
Crazy and untrial
Initial interviews with Usov included candid admissions of how the crimes were carried out, and he mentioned additional thefts. In June 1974 he broke into a savings bank, taking only items left unattended. Weeks later he entered a cafe and opened several jars of juice, an unsettling juxtaposition with his prior actions. He took minor items, a cupcake, cookies, a cigarette, and a can opener.
Following these disclosures, Usov underwent psychiatric evaluation at the Serbsky Institute in Moscow through 1976. The assessment declared him insane and beyond the jurisdiction of normal criminal punishment, and he was transferred to a specialized mental hospital in Kazan. There he remained for 18 years, initially exploiting other patients before settling into the routine of treatment and medication.
By 1996 hospital staff concluded he no longer posed a threat and moved him to a private boarding facility in Samara, where his mother visited. An incident involving a visitor snatching a bag behind the fence prompted Usov to attempt an escape, aided by the confusion around transport schedules. He fled only to be recaptured when investigators cornered him near the hospital grounds.
In the ensuing search, police found pornographic material during a room inspection. Usov later stated he did not regret the acts themselves but regretted not completing more victims. He was readmitted to Kazan for dangerous mental patients. Usov died in 2006 while still under care.