Yevgeny Chuplinsky

Yevgeny Alexandrovich Chuplinsky is a Russian serial killer who committed his crimes in Novosibirsk, Russia, having murdered 17 women between 1998 and 2006. The victims were sex workers, and Chuplinsky is dubbed the Maniac of Novosibirsk or the Novosibirsk Maniac (Russian: Новосибирский маньяк). Despite a large-scale investigation by police and several arrests, the perpetrator of the killings was arrested only in 2016, being sentenced to a term of life imprisonment on 6 March 2018.[2]

The Maniac of Novosibirsk
Novosibirsk Maniac
Details
Victims19+
Span of crimes
1998–2006[1]
Location(s)Novosibirsk, Russia

Murders

Beginning in 1998, beheaded and dismembered female corpses were discovered in or near the city of Novosibirsk, in the Siberia region of central Russia.[2] All of the murders took place in desolate areas in the outskirts of the city, such as landfills, windbreaks, and hard shoulders of roads, causing the police to view them as unrelated for many years. The corpses were found dismembered, and body parts were mutilated with symbols cut into their skin, and their heart had been removed. The mutilation was often extreme to the point that many of the victims were so badly disfigured that police were unable to identify them. The victims were all later found to be sex workers who worked in the Novosibirsk area.[3] In 2005, investigators concluded that the murders were committed by a single perpetrator, however no murders related to the case have been reported since 2006 and no charges were ever made.[4] Due to the sudden ending of the killings in 2006, the investigators believed that the unknown perpetrator may have been arrested, died, or fled Novosibirsk.

Victims

The Russian media under-reported the names of victims, or their backgrounds. Due to his propensity for amputation or decapitation, often all that was found of victims were isolated hands, feet, or their head. Below is the information known thus far:[5]

  • The first victim remains unidentified. Her relatives were never found, and despite a reconstruction of her face and genetic profile, no positive identification ever happened. In all documents, she is referred to as "woman #1." She is believed to be the first victim murdered. The killing took place one month after Chuplinsky got married, on 19 November 1998.
  • In 1999, the police found 19 years old Yevgenia S. She was a sex worker. Her exact date of death is unconfirmed, as is cause of death. It is suspected that she was suffocated to death. She was last seen on 2 January 1999, but some acquaintances still received SMS communications from her as late as 21 February 1999. her partial remains were found five days later. The rest of her body was found on 19 April 1999.
  • On 27 May 1999, the head of a third victim was found, and no cause of death was determined. The investigators presumed suffocation. She remains unidentified, and investigators referred to her as "woman #3."
  • On 18 October 1999, a decapitated body was discovered. She remains unidentified, and her cause of death is presumed to be suffocation. Nearby, a bonfire site was found to contain fragments of clothing belonging to a male and a female.
  • 28 year old Svetlana A. was found on 2 November 1999. She was a sex worker who suffered from drug addiction. A missing persons report was filed for her on 2 October 1999. Her cause of death is presumed to be suffocation, but the body also had signs of beating, broken bones, and several stab wounds. She was decapitated. She was sexually assaulted and the assailant left sperm on her body, which investigators collected as DNA evidence. With previous victims, the assailant left behind used condoms.
  • Two amputated hands were found on 1 April 2000. At that stage, investigators did not know about the discovery. On 21 April 2000, another individual found a female head. Both the head and the hands belonged to the same person. After they found the head, they identified the remains as those of Svetlana S. She was a sex worker. On 17 April 2000, pedestrians found her torso with her breasts removed.
  • On 27 May 2000, two schoolboys found a leg. The same boys from the second leg on 9 June 2000, and nothing else was ever recovered. Investigators identified her as "woman #7." Her true identity remains unknown to this day.
  • On 20 April 2000, a fifth grade schoolboy found the head of a woman in a landfill near the ELSIB factory. He initially thought it was a mannequin and tried to scare his friends with it, who identified it as a real human head. It belonged to 21 year old Svetlana S. She is not the same woman as the victim originally found on 1 April 2000. She had left technical college to become a sex worker. Her last known actions were a visit to a client on 19 January 2000, but four separate victims confirmed his alibi that she left his apartment alive.
  • Irina B. was listed as missing in late January 2001. She was 31 years old, and had a 12-year-old son. She died from suffocation and was found on 16 March 2001. Her limbs and head had been amputated, and only her torso was initially found. With this murder, Chuplinsky neatly wrapped portions of her body in newspaper and buried them. It took a month for detectives to reconstruct her face sufficiently for identification. Unlike many of his other victims, Irina B. was a deputy chief editor of a specialized accounting firm. She regularly went out in the evenings, but was a reliable employee.
  • Two teenagers found the severed head of an unidentified victim, "woman #10," on 7 April 2001. It was not possible to conclusively rule whether strangulation was the cause of death. While the victim was strangled, the coroner could not confirm whether it happened before or after death.
  • On 28 March 2002, three 10-year-old boys found the severed head of a woman wrapped in a man's shirt. She was posthumously decapitated. She was never identified, and investigators referred to her as "woman #11."
  • "Woman #12," who still remains unidentified, was discovered by two brothers on 19 April 2003. As the brothers searched for firewood, one brother picked up a bundle, out of which her severed head fell. Six days later, a garbage bag with a BMW emblem on it was found nearby. The contents included blood stained clothing which was genetically linked with the severed head found by the brothers.
  • The severed head of another Svetlana A. was found on 1 May 2003, but her other remains were never found. She had been missing since 15 April 2003. She worked for an escort agency.
  • Irina P. was found on 10 May 2004. Her remains were identifiable because her torso was wrapped in a sweater that her mother made her wear when she left the house on 28 November 2003. Despite indications of a stabbing, her cause of death was determined to be strangulation.
  • A man, wife, and daughter, went for a stroll on 3 July 2004. During their walk, he noticed a bundle, which he kicked. The kick dislodged the skull of "woman #15." The family returned to the city and reported their finding. Despite a reconstruction of the face, based off the skull, the victim was never identified.
  • Mariya Shumilova, known as Masha, was 31 years old, and was on crutches at the time of her death, due to a broken leg. On the night of 18 June 2004, she celebrated her birthday with a friend. She communicated with her mother at 10:50PM she communicated to her mother that she was on her way home, but was never heard from again. Her mother filed a missing persons report on 7 July 2004, after Masha's sister told her mother that Masha was a sex worker, and had been for months. Shumilova's body was never recovered, but her cellphone was found in Chuplinsky's car, and led to his first arrest. Chuplinsky claims that he threw her over the Dimitrov Bridge into the Ob River.
  • A mushroom picker found the remains of "woman #17" on 27 September 2004, near the Novosibirsk Reservoir. Her severed head was wrapped in a pair of jeans. She was aged between 23 and 25 years old.
  • 19 year old Anna E. was found on 2 October 2004. A young couple was making shish kebab in a local suburb of Novosibirsk, when the man went to explore a nearby forest. There he found a pair of jeans with the legs wrapped together with wire. He picked it up and found the severed head of "woman #18" inside. At that time, a Road Patrol Officer drove by, which the couple flagged down. "Woman #18" could not be identified for a long time. In 2009, the genetic profile of her mother was sampled, which helped to identify the victim as Anna E. She left her home in 2000, and became a sex worker. She was reported missing in the fall of 2004.
  • The final known victim was found on 11 June 2006. Two young men found a cellphone back in thickets that they were trying to cut down. The men had been in the area only 7 days before, and had not seen the cellphone bag at that time. The bag contained a skull. 6 separate vertebrae, a clavicle bone, 15 ribs, and a long bone were all found in the area after investigators conducted a search of the area. The remains all shared the same genetic make-up and the victim was identified as being somewhere between 27 and 32 years old. Her identity remains anonymous, though Chuplinsky claims that he killed her either in the winter of 2002 or 2003.

2015 Ivanov arrest

In October 2015, a taxi driver named Alexei Ivanov was arrested by investigators who suspected him of being the Maniac of Novosibirsk. While Ivanov later confessed to several unrelated murders, he was ultimately cleared from those attributed to the Maniac of Novosibirsk.

Chuplinsky arrest and background

The police believed that, due to the horrific nature of the killings, that they were looking for a satanist. The police suspected Yevgeny Chuplinsky because of his previous profession as a border guard for the KGB and then on the police force. Chuplinsky was a KGB officer and served in the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Police, in the 1990s. Because of their suspicion that a Satanist was responsible for the killings, Chuplinsky purposely framed the crime scenes with Satanic imagery, to confirm the suspicions of investigators while derailing suspicion against himself.[6] He had a wife and two children. After he retired in the 1990s, he worked as a taxi driver, and supported the United Party, led by Vladimir Putin.[7] However, at the time of the 2004 murders, he was already retired and working as a taxi driver. They initially suspected him because they found the phone of Maria Shumilova, who was reported missing, in his car. He claimed that a passenger left the phone in his vehicle and the police did not further investigate. In 2006, the police renewed their interest in Chuplinsky, in relation to another string of murders, but once more they could not find sufficient evidence to tie him to the crimes. Their interest in Chuplinsky would cease for the subsequent decade. Only in 2016 did they renew their investigation of his involvement in the murders, at which point they requested a DNA sample from him. At that time, it matched a DNA sample found on the clothing of one of the victims.[6]

On 28 April 2016, Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation reported that a suspect had been arrested, later identified as 51-year-old former policeman Yevgeniy Chuplinsky. During the trial the court heard from more than eight thousand witnesses, regarding the case.[2] Chuplinsky was sentenced to life imprisonment on 6 March 2018 by the Novosibirsk Regional Court.[7]

Chuplinsky sentence

On 12 September 2018, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation overturned his life-sentence, and returned the case to trial. They claimed that his previous trial suspended consideration of the statute of limitations for some of his crimes.[8] The decision of the jury that Chuplinsky is guilty remains in place, and in the meantime Chuplinsky has pled guilty to the murder of additional sex workers. He believed that sex workers were a detriment to the society. He has since retracted his plea, and his claims will not go to trial due to lack of evidence and the prosecution's inability to locate the victims' bodies.[9]

References
  1. ТОП-5 Маньяков на свободе (на территории бывшего СССР) (in Russian)
  2. Stewart, Will (1 March 2018). "Policeman exposed as 'Russian Jack the Ripper' who killed and mutilated 19 women". mirror. Retrieved 12 September 2018.
  3. В деле новосибирского маньяка-сатаниста опознаны 6 жертв из 17 (in Russian)
  4. Новосибирская серия (1998 – 2006 гг.) (in Russian)
  5. "Кровавый маршрут". Retrieved 12 September 2018.
  6. правды», Вадим АЛЕКСЕЕВ (14 April 2017). "Экс-милиционер, арестованный за убийство 19 проституток: Я не Винни-Пух, конечно, но и до вурдалака мне очень далеко". KP.RU - сайт «Комсомольской правды» (in Russian). Retrieved 12 September 2018.
  7. "Former Russian Police Officer Jailed For Life For Killing 19 Women". RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty. Retrieved 12 September 2018.
  8. "Верховный суд отменил пожизненный приговор серийному убийце из Новосибирска". Retrieved 12 September 2018.
  9. Inc., TV Rain. "Бывшему милиционеру, убившему 19 женщин, отменили пожизненный приговор". Retrieved 12 September 2018.
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