How a Teenage Maniac Terrorized Soviet Kuzbass

On an early winter morning in 1970, 18-year-old student Yulia Bazarova was running from the bus to her dormitory through a square on Suvorov Street. The smiling girl was last seen alive at the city bus station. Soon, a passerby found her by a construction site fence, lying in a pool of her own blood, with a fractured skull, an eye nearly gouged out, and half-undressed, but alive.

The medics who rushed to the scene delivered a grim verdict on the spot — if Yulia survived, she would be disabled for life. And while doctors at the hospital clung to the chance of saving the patient, investigators took up the hunt for the monster who had assaulted her.

There was a small clue — a fire hose nozzle found next to the student. The attacker had beaten Bazarova with it with such fury that it bent. However, the hope of tracing the perpetrator through the weapon quickly vanished. It became clear from a nearby dump that the torturer had picked up the piece of metal by chance.

The sadist left no more evidence for investigators. The only witness in the case — the passerby who found the maimed city girl — also disappeared. After waiting for the ambulance, he left the crime scene. Desperate law enforcement published pleas in the newspapers «Kuznetsky Rabochiy» and «Metallurg» for the man to come forward, but to no avail.

Then the operatives changed tactics and began to find out details from the victim«s life. Yulia Bazarova turned out to be a native of Leninsk-Kuznetsky, from where she had arrived that fateful morning, an honors student at the Novokuznetsk institute, and an athlete in track and field and wrestling.

In search of leads, the authorities checked the girl«s friends, young hooligans from whom she had protected a schoolgirl two weeks before the attack, and recently released prisoners, as well as commuter train passengers. But all those who aroused suspicion either lacked a motive or had an ironclad alibi.

The investigation stalled until employees looked at the crime reports for the last month. Shortly before the incident, a similar attack on a woman occurred in another district of Novokuznetsk, but she remained unharmed only thanks to her cunning.

The victim, 30-year-old Ekaterina Gromova, encountered the rapist in the middle of the day on her way home. As she later testified to the police, he threatened her with a knife and dragged her behind an outbuilding.

«She tricked him. When he was raping her, she said, »This is uncomfortable for me, let me take off my outer clothing.« He agreed, the woman began unbuttoning her coat, pushed him, and ran,» recounted Aleksey Mukharev, a judge of the Kemerovo Regional Court, on the show «Sledstviye Velí» (Investigation Led).

The criminal«s modus operandi was somewhat similar, but something else surprised the investigators. Ekaterina said the thug looked to be only 16 years old — he was skinny, of short stature, wearing a gray coat and an ushanka hat. This description matched exactly the missing witness in the case of the first victim, Yulia Bazarova.

Everything finally fell into place when a third victim was found on the streets of Novokuznetsk — a young girl again beaten half to death and raped. But her fate turned out to be more tragic — she died from her severe injuries in the ambulance.

The atrocity again occurred in a crowded place — not far from the institute dormitory on Professionalnaya Street. The caretaker who called the police stated that a young guy in a coat and ushanka had told her about the victim. After making sure the woman had called the authorities, he ran away.

«He hoped the girl would be saved and that would bring relief; his conscience was supposedly eating at him. [In his mind] he got satisfaction, and then the doctors would somehow manage,» noted an inspector from the Leninsk-Kuznetsky Criminal Investigation Department in the program.

The deceased was Vera Lungina, who studied at the same metallurgical institute as the maniac«s first victim — Yulia. At first, rumors of a maniac spread through the educational institution, and soon the whole city was talking about it. Families began forbidding their daughters from evening walks, and the girls themselves were afraid to go out alone.

«They warned us for a reason — don»t go out late. If I had known earlier, I would never have left the house,« recalled Lyudmila Tkach, who studied at the metallurgical institute.

While rumors agitated the public, the maniac continued to attack girls in different districts of Novokuznetsk. Some managed to break free from the sadist«s hands, but with serious injuries. As it later turned out, the rapist didn»t just hit victims with his fist; he placed a metal plate in his glove, which earned him the nickname «Lead Hand.»

In the end, ordinary townspeople helped catch the Novokuznetsk torturer. One evening, residents of a house on Tolbukhin Street heard screams, ran out, noticed a beaten neighbor and a guy rushing into an alley.

While some called the police, others ran after him and began questioning passersby. They pointed to an abandoned building where the townspeople caught the unresisting maniac.

The violence-obsessed perpetrator was 24-year-old local resident Andrey Golubkin, who resembled a teenager. During his first interrogation, he confessed to everything, claiming the crimes were a consequence of his alleged radiation exposure during army service. The truth of his words was never confirmed.

«I have felt sexual weakness for a long time, but at first it was better. And then I found it difficult to perform sexual acts with my wife,» the man told investigators.

Golubkin never touched his wife, saying he «sincerely loved her» and wanted to build a normal family. The maniac worked as a fitter-installer at a local mine, and colleagues and loved ones described him as a quiet and closed-off person.

How many women actually fell victim to the «modest miner» is unknown — he only spoke of several attacks. A forensic psychiatric examination found that the Novokuznetsk resident was sane at the time of the crimes.

For the death of young Vera and the ruined lives of several other girls, he was sentenced to death by firing squad.

Earlier we reported on two other Kuzbass maniacs you«ve likely never heard of.

The NGS42.RU editorial team also managed to study the case files of the Novokuznetsk psychopath Spesivtsev, and published the full testimony of the only surviving victim of a maniac (18+).