You lost at the cards
In the spring of 1970, Voroshilovgrad, the entire administrative center of the Lugansk region, woke to fear. Within a few weeks in March and April, more than ten women were attacked by a single assailant.
During that time, every street and even market stall in Voroshilovgrad was under tight police scrutiny, and reinforced patrols swept the city. Yet the attacks persisted. The criminal shifted his operations from parks and alleys to small, deserted streets and courtyards.
The pattern was unpredictable. One survivor recalled that the offender trailed her along a quiet street or park when she returned home late, then pounced, pressing a knife to her throat and whispering, “You lost on the cards.” He demanded an enormous ransom of 5 thousand rubles in exchange for her life, promising rape and murder if paid or refused.
Other witnesses described a “steel-fingered” killer who chased victims by grabbing them by the throat, beating them, stripping them, raping them, and stealing belongings as trophies.
Despite ongoing operational searches across the city, progress was elusive. No solid evidence emerged at any new crime scene to tie a suspect to the murders with certainty.
Wrong track and unsuccessful tracking
On April 14, 1970, investigators found the body of a murdered girl in a transformer box near the Gorky Park area. She had been strangled, her mouth gagged with a waffle towel, and her wrists bound with a braid. The 17-year-old Svetlana Mazurina had been raped and killed; traces of her hair braid remained on her wrists, and fibers from a woolen scarf clung to her clothing. Nearby, an earring left by the killer was discovered, with a second earring missing from the victim.
Despite these clues, the case did not lead to a breakthrough, even after multiple investigations. An anonymous letter arrived, claiming to have information about the latest murder. It described the killer forcefully forcing a woman to rape a lifeless body, and it claimed the writer disobeyed the attacker, who responded, “This is impossible.” The sender signed with a name and residence: Yuryev. While the letter was cryptic, it prompted investigators to consider Yuryev as a possible suspect due to prior rape and theft convictions. This lead, however, proved unsubstantiated, and the author remained unknown.
Meanwhile, patrol cars continued to circle parks and gardens while undercover officers watched from the shadows, baiting the killer. One day the plan paid off. Lieutenant Demyanenko, a junior inspector in the criminal investigation department, and his colleague Valentina Udovichenko found themselves tailed by a suspicious man in a beige raincoat. Fearing the suspect would close in, Demyanenko intervened and began to bolt, thwarting the pursuit and ending the attempted capture at that moment.
Greetings from Badger
A week after the misfire, near one tram stop, the same man—now apparently armed with an identity card and moving with a new confidence—attacked 20-year-old Nina Zotova. He followed the familiar script, speaking of losing at cards and instructing her to deliver a message to a specific address, asking her to say hello from Badger to the stewardess Lida. He warned that he would verify the message upon her return home.
Zotova promptly alerted the police when she reached her building. Officers set up surveillance near the entrance and waited for the attacker to return, hoping to catch him in the act. Their vigilance paid off when they detained a suspect based on a visual reconstruction from the victim’s testimony. The man turned out to be 30-year-old Vitaly Vlasov, a driver who soon confessed to 22 attacks. Several rape and murder cases were discovered at his residence, but not all aligned with his confessions or the evidence at the crime scenes.
For instance, in the murder of Svetlana Mazurina, Vlasov denied involvement, and the microscopic fibers from Mazurina’s scarf did not match his. Some survivors also stated they had no relation to the person who attacked them. The investigators faced a contradiction: multiple confessions and a substantial evidentiary trail, yet not enough to convict beyond a reasonable doubt for all incidents. The authorities still had to confront the possibility of another killer in the city. After confronting the evidence, Vlasov was tried and sentenced to 15 years for the confirmed assaults, but the hunt for the other perpetrator continued.
Military unit calls and the red jacket
The elusive perpetrator continued to prey on girls, week after week. Hundreds of patrols detained dozens of people each evening, including those who merely spoke to a woman in the dark. For months, the region saw a concerning spike in activity, but the true culprit remained at large. Even family members of police officers were drawn into the effort as decoys and informants, yet the victims kept appearing.
One new attack targeted Lyubov Grigoryeva. The man strangled her and disappeared after raping her, but Grigoryeva managed to reach a friend nearby and call for help. The area was sealed off, and investigators found a fragment of sheet used as a gag. A mark reading 9 and 6 was stamped on the fabric, a clue unique to a handful of local institutions. Among them was a military unit identified as 96444. Investigators turned the area upside down, only to discover that many local laundry sheets were shared across multiple establishments, complicating the trail and widening the suspect pool. The investigation continued with the circle of potential suspects expanding.
On that same day, another assault occurred, and the assailant killed and robbed again, soon after in another episode featuring a red knitted sweater later identified as belonging to 20-year-old Larisa Rogova. The sweater’s recovery became a turning point in the case, revealing how the killer intertwined violence with personal trophies and symbolic garments.
Fugitive drowned and found in a pigsty
The next sequence unfolded on a festive evening in Voroshilovgrad when fear gripped the city once more. Two men dragged a young woman in the May Day Park area, triggering a rapid police response. A detachment of officers cordoned off the block and stopped suspects one after another to determine who fit the pattern. Among the detainees was Zaven Almazyan, a deserter found in civilian clothes hiding in a nearby pigsty on a side farm associated with a military unit. The unit number surfaced in the investigation as 61436, though the numbers had become blurred and uncertain.
The team pushed forward, pressing witnesses for more detail and inspecting the pigsty’s hiding places. A torn wall sheet, a watch, a manicure set, a powder box, and another earring found at the site pointed to the likelihood of a serial offender who stored trophies from victims. A red women’s jacket collected earlier from Larisa Rogova formed a crucial link in the case when Almazyan confessed to engaging in an array of crimes. He claimed that a lack of love for women and his background as a wrestler fueled his violence. He admitted several murders and thirty-something violent acts, ultimately resulting in a death sentence handed down by the Kyiv military district court after a seven-month spree of three murders and twelve rapes.