Investigator Details Starozhilovo Cannibal's Capture
In the 1990s, during the peak of banditry, disappearances didn«t surprise residents of Ryazan or larger towns in the region much. But when in the small settlement of Starozhilovo, previously unknown young people started vanishing one after another without a trace, law enforcement suspected something was wrong. Especially since this place was so peaceful that it didn»t even need an investigator.
As it later turned out, a serial killer and cannibal was operating in Starozhilovo, known as Chunya or the Monster from Starozhilovo. The latter nickname was given to Sergei Sopkin in «Criminal Russia» (TV series, 16+).
The case of the Starozhilovo maniac-cannibal was handled by Dmitry Plotkin — a legend of Soviet and Russian investigation. A journalist from YA62.RU spoke with the investigator, and 32 years later, he recalled the gruesome case in detail.
How did it all start?
March 1993. The working settlement was uneasy — 20-year-old Sergei Vorobyov disappeared, and over the next six months, Svetlana Kapotova (19 years), Igor Khudoteplov (20 years), and Elena Markina (16 years) vanished without a trace. For Starozhilovo, this was something very unusual and eerie.
Dmitry Plotkin, then head of the group investigating non-obvious murders, remembers the day the case was handed to him as if it were today.
«A colleague Nikolai Mikhailovich approached me and said: »Listen, there«s something strange going on in Starozhilovo — people are disappearing.» Of course, we were surprised, but we went — there had never been anything like that there before,« Plotkin stated.
Almost immediately, Dmitry Plotkin and his team went to the Starozhilovo district. The disappearance cases were combined into one, and first, the investigator went to Sergei Vorobyov«s mother: he learned that the young man worked on a subsidiary farm, and before his abduction, he had spent a week in jail for petty hooliganism — swearing in public.
After his release, Sergei Vorobyov decided to celebrate and, with a bottle of moonshine, went to his future killer. Moreover, he gave his testimony and said, like, his friend wanted to leave due to constant police attention. A mutual acquaintance, Marina Kokorina, confirmed these words.
On the day of her disappearance, September 4, 1993, Svetlana Kapotova went dancing with her friends. But she didn«t return home with them: she thought it was too early to leave and stayed at the bar until closing. Witnesses said how at midnight the girl left the House of Culture with two young men.
On the day of his disappearance, Igor Khudoteplov was constantly in sight. He went to a dance, then walked a girl home, and she, by the way, told him about a feeling of being followed. But the young man mocked his friend, and they went on. The Ryazan resident never returned home.
And Elena Markina simply went out in the evening to repair a tape recorder and never returned.
How did Sopkin lure victims into the basement and kill them?
The maniac lured his friend Sergei Vorobyov into the basement of a stable house under the pretext of showing stolen televisions, and killed him there. The cannibal noticed Svetlana Kapotova by chance: she was walking home tired from the House of Culture in the early morning, and he offered her a ride. The sleepy girl didn«t think long and got into the car, where, besides the killer, there were also his friends — Andrei Sibikin and Sergei Kosisyn.
The guys drove into the fields and raped Svetlana.
«She took and said that she would tell her father everything and go to the police. Then a shot rang out, as Sibikin said, they doused Sveta with gasoline and burned her. They buried her somewhere in plowed fields, the body hasn»t been found to this day. But the rule «no body — no case» didn«t work, and the jury came to the conclusion that Sopkin was guilty,» Dmitry Plotkin recounted.
And Igor Khudoteplov was essentially killed by the hands of visiting student Maxim Tarasov, but Sopkin provoked the 31 stab wounds. He took advantage of the hostile relations between the guys and convinced his friend from Ryazan that the deceased had allegedly reported to the police about the return to Starozhilovo of a mutual acquaintance, Andrei Sibikin. And he was accused of thefts.
In the end, Tarasov stabbed Khudoteplov to death. Sergei Sopkin helped bury the corpse in a plowed field.
And Elena Markina became a victim of circumstances — her tape recorder broke, and she knew that a certain Sopkin did repairs, so she went to him.
«So Lena brought this tape recorder, knowing it could be repaired. And when she came to pick it up, Maxim was visiting Sopkin, she saw a half-rusted pistol there, got scared, and they decided to rape her. Lena started crying, and the guys were afraid she would tell about the pistol.
Sopkin said: «Let»s go to the basement, there«s gold hidden there.» Lena believed. Downstairs was Vorobyov«s corpse. Of course, she got scared, begged to be let go, said she wouldn»t tell anyone anything,« Dmitry Matveyevich recalled.
It was the cannibal«s youngest victim, Elena Markina, that the investigator remembered most of all. She had her whole life ahead of her: she was waiting for her fiancé from the army and was living with his mother. The schoolgirl»s mother had died, and her father drank a lot.
«The mother had already taken in what was essentially her daughter-in-law. The guy said: »I«ll come back from the army and get married,»« Plotkin said sadly.
«Fried it with potatoes»
Many TV shows, even the most popular ones, only talk about the murders and briefly mention that Sergei Sopkin was a cannibal. Initially, the maniac had a plan: to get a dog, feed it human meat, so that in the future it could kill someone on the owner«s command.
At first, Sopkin fed the dog beef, but after Markina«s murder, something horrific happened.
«Sopkin decided to feed the dog Lena»s organs. But the dog refused to eat human meat, and he and Maxim took it and fried it with potatoes. They invited some visiting girls and said that mom had cooked pork,« the investigator recounted.
Moreover, the maniac, according to Dmitry Plotkin, had a very high opinion of himself.
«Sopkin fancied himself a »superman« — a trait found in many serial maniacs. He first tried his luck in Moscow, but everything went to hell, and he had to return to Ryazan Oblast, and he needed to live somewhere. In the stable, they made something like a one-room apartment out of two stalls for him, and gave him work — raking manure on a tractor. Can you imagine what that did to the »superman«,» Plotkin added.
Dmitry Plotkin, without naming names, mentioned another little-known fact — Sopkin, it turns out, was married at the time of the brutal murders. And his wife was pregnant and after the investigation moved to another region. Now they live a quiet life.
How did they track down Sopkin?
By the time the bodies were discovered, Sergei Kosisyn had already been detained for thefts and Maxim Tarasov for the pistol. The first one«s tongue loosened when Starozhilovo kids were running around the semi-abandoned stable house and stumbled upon corpses in the basement.
Finding common ground with Maxim Tarasov was even easier for Plotkin. Word by word, and the student himself confessed to the murders.
«You have to work intellectually. Without scaring, without scolding, but somehow leading the thought that there»s only one option — to confess. Although they (the suspects — Ed.) know that confessing is bad, they do it,« Plotkin noted.
The student from Ryazan quickly started giving confessional statements and declared the murder of two people — Igor and Lena. But Tarasov insisted: he killed not of his own will. At the next interrogation, Dmitry Plotkin received a call from the morgue, where they were already performing an autopsy on Lena«s body.
«They call me from the morgue and say: »We«re performing an autopsy on the girl»s body, and her internal organs are missing.« I was in shock. Maxim»s mother also didn«t believe her son was involved in the murder in any way. But back then, Maxim was lucky that the death penalty was abolished,» Dmitry Plotkin believes.
Maxim didn«t have much choice — only to help the investigation and maybe get lucky. He told Plotkin that Sergei Sopkin »bound him with blood,« meaning that if Tarasov refused to carry out the most brutal orders, the maniac would simply kill him.
So Maxim Tarasov became an accomplice.
«Bet on a jury trial»
Sergei Sopkin denied any involvement in the horrific crimes until the very end. He said that Maxim did everything, and hoped that the jury would support this. How the maniac miscalculated…
«Sopkin bet on a jury trial. He thought they would believe him, although a regular court without Sveta»s body found might indeed not convict. But the jury found him guilty, including in Kapotova«s murder,» Dmitry Plotkin recounts.
According to him, working with Sopkin was no harder than with other maniacs.
«In my practice, there have been tougher people,» Plotkin added.
Verdict and fates of the cannibals
The final hearing in the case of the «monster from Starozhilovo» took place on November 1, 1996. Sergei Sopkin was sentenced to death, which due to abolition was replaced with life imprisonment, Maxim Tarasov and Andrei Sibikin — to 15 years in a penal colony, and Sergei Kosisyn — to 2.5 years.
Now Sergei Sopkin is 57 years old — according to unofficial information as of 2021, he was serving his sentence in a Mordovian zone. Tarasov and Sibikin have already been released, but their fate is unknown.
The fate of Sergei Kosisyn remains unknown. Rumors say he committed suicide. However, this cannot be confirmed or refuted in any way.
