“The Acting Test”
From 1988 to 1990 in Moscow, a wave of assaults against young people, including minors, began, followed by brutal killings. Investigators concluded that a serial offender was at work, with the only known detail at the time being that the attacker introduced himself as a director and allegedly selected girls to participate in so‑called screen tests.
The first victim, a boy traveling from Noginsk to central Moscow for errands, was approached near the Detsky Mir store by a man who claimed to be the director. He presented credentials stating that he worked at Mosfilm.
Initially, the girl doubted her interest in a film project described as a joint venture with a French studio. The attacker, however, managed to persuade her by detailing a proposed shoot set in Paris.
The only concerns she voiced related to a few intimate scenes. The man suggested an audition at the apartment where the crew reportedly stayed and agreed to go. He led her to the entrance and, after a request to demonstrate acting, removed his shirt.
The new acquaintance handed the victim two pills, supposedly necessary to drink champagne on set and to counteract alcohol effects. Upon arriving at the apartment, the supposed director offered strong coffee. Its taste was bitter and faintly medicinal. He explained that this was genuine Brazilian coffee.
Afterward, the victim’s memory became hazy. Later, the man explained to the crew that the woman was in a subdued state. He removed his swimsuit, undressed, started the camera, and engaged in sexual activity with her in a casual and coercive manner.
Once finished, the victim was dressed in old foreign garments, taken to the area near the Podolsk railway station, and abandoned there. Police recovered the victim after a search, but she could not provide a detailed description of the attacker, complicating the pursuit of the suspect.
“Forced me to eat my stool and drink my urine”
Meanwhile, the director continued to lure and assault minors, holding several victims in captivity for multiple days. Before releasing them, he administered potent drugs that impaired memory of the events.
One survivor described days of confinement, during which she was restrained, subjected to repeated assaults, and coerced to consume excrement and urine. She recalled being forced to drink blood from a vein at one point.
With each new victim, the predator grew more nervous about leaving traces of his identity. He decided to stop keeping the girls alive, shifting from rapist to murderer, and varied his methods to keep police from linking the cases as a single pattern.
The first murder involved a knife, while the second was drowned in a bathroom. A third girl, strangled in a dressing gown belt and left on the street, survived. Five others endured lethal drug doses yet survived due to timely medical care despite critical conditions.
During another incident, the perpetrator forced a barely conscious girl onto a suburban train to Tsaritsyno station, administering a lethal sleep‑inducing dose before boarding the car. He departed the vehicle, leaving the victim still unconscious on the ground. In other cases, victims did not receive fatal drug doses and were saved by prompt medical attention.
“So, director, are you here?”
By 1990, one survivor regained enough memory to identify the intruder and point out the street and house where she was brought for what was described as the dump. She also recalled spending several days in an apartment from which a bearded man statue could be seen outside the window, a clue suggesting a monument near the Akademicheskaya metro station could be involved.
Investigators lacked solid evidence to apprehend the assailant. A repeated motif in testimonies was the director of Mosfilm approaching girls with offers to participate in screen tests. Officers from the MUR examined thousands of Mosfilm employee records while canvassing central Moscow around Children’s World, Petrovsky Passage, Kuznetsky Most, Pushkinskaya Street, and Akademicheskaya Metro, where decoy operators previously failed to attract attention.
Abduction occurred by chance when another girl was convinced to approach him, and she entered a taxi that turned out to be a staged setup with an operator at the wheel. After the door shut, the operator asked the question: “So, manager, are you here?” The answer revealed a chilling truth: the serial rapist and killer, known to officials as the “Director of Death,” replied calmly, “Are you interested in the murders? Ready to tell.”
Humbert’s follower
During extensive questioning, the real name of the offender emerged: Valery Georgievich Asratyan, a man born into a wealthy family in Yerevan. Forensic psychiatrists noted several quirks in his youth. He preferred dolls and girls as playmates, his first sexual encounter involved a 13‑year‑old girl, and his later affairs tended to involve younger partners who were easily convinced to engage with him.
Asratyan’s early work in psychology and education led him to obtain a preschool psychology and pedagogy degree. He later served as a psychologist in a special school for children with disabilities and eventually moved to Moscow, where he married.
In 1982 he received a two‑year prison sentence for molesting a minor, followed by new harassment of another girl on a street, which resulted in a four‑year sentence. He was released in 1987 for exemplary behavior, but his wife refused to take him back.
Accomplices
Interrogations revealed that Asratyan’s former partner assisted in luring victims. After his release, he met Marina Agayeva, 40, from Moscow, and her 14‑year‑old daughter with mental illness. He then enlisted his mother and daughter to help, coercing them to participate in crimes and to cover up the operations with forged scripts and staged scenes as part of the pretended film crew.
They helped guide the victims to the fake set, assisted with toileting, and supplied food and drinks. Under the influence of drugs, some victims involuntarily urinated or drooled, requiring laundering of clothes and cleaning of the apartment. The accomplices helped procure drugs using prescriptions for Agayeva’s ill daughter, and Agayeva herself purchased the necessary supplies. The perpetrator spoke at length about his crimes to the operators, detailing how the killings were carried out.
The fake director also forced his partner and her daughter to participate in the sexual assaults, even watching and joining in on explicit scenes. One victim became pregnant as a result. The survivor kept the pregnancy secret and was eventually forced into a difficult delivery, which doctors deemed unsuitable for an abortion and allowed the birth of a child connected to the attacker.
Asked to be executed
During the preliminary investigation, Asratyan remained in a cell without neighbors, and he reached out to law enforcement with a full confession, fearing what other inmates might do to him due to the severity of his crimes against minors. He even requested the death penalty for himself at trial and was ultimately sentenced to death. He was found guilty of 17 rapes, including two linked to murder and six connected to attempted murder.
Six years elapsed from his arrest to execution. Throughout that period, he faced violence from other prisoners but showed no evidence of a mental disorder. When asked what he hoped to achieve, his response was to speed up the execution and be freed from the burden. After the trial, he did not appeal and was executed in 1996 at the Butyrka detention center. Marina Agayeva, who aided him, received a 10‑year prison sentence. His daughter’s involvement was not formally charged due to mental health concerns, though Hasratyan claimed she played a role as well.