Killing of Three Bashkir Students in Gai
In the autumn four years ago, Bashkiria (Republic of Bashkortostan) was shaken by news of the horrific deaths of three students — the young women were slashed with a knife and their apartment was set on fire, and the suspect turned out to be Aleksandr Lazarev, recently released from a correctional colony. The parents of the dead demanded the harshest possible punishment for him. UFA1.RU compiled the details of the investigation.
The tragedy occurred in the town of Gai (Orenburg Region, Russia), where students from Bashkortostan — Zulfiya, Adilya and Aigiza — were studying at a medical college. The young women were 17–19 years old. They rented an apartment together and studied in exemplary groups — they were, according to others, “quiet and good”. They died on 30 September.
In the morning, local rescue workers received a report of a fire in the courtyard of the building where the young women lived. When they arrived, firefighters extinguished the blaze and found two bodies, bludgeoned with an axe. Another body was found not far from the house.
Witnesses came forward saying that the previous evening they had seen a man idly wandering in the courtyard. While he was being sought, a preliminary picture of the crime emerged: the young women lived on the first floor, the killer entered through a window and tried to rape them, and when he failed, he stabbed them to death. One of the young women managed to get out of the apartment, but still could not be saved, because the killer had already inflicted a fatal wound on her as well.
The suspect was identified as Aleksandr Lazarev, who had been released from prison three months earlier. He had landed behind bars at age 20 after a bar fight in which he stabbed the establishment’s manager to death. Lazarev spent nine years in prison and there married a woman he had met through correspondence.
After his release, Lazarev got a job as an auto mechanic and moved in with his wife on the same street where Zulfiya, Adilya and Aigiza lived. His neighbor said that on the evening before the tragedy he had seen Aleksandr, who said he was going out “for a beer”.
«We have a small town; everything is in view of one another. I knew he had done time. Well, what can you say — people make mistakes when young; you shouldn’t brand a person. He behaved normally, worked, tried for his family. He was selling his car to do repairs, then got a job at a car wash,» recalled a friend of Lazarev in a conversation with UFA1.RU.
Many of his other acquaintances, despite Aleksandr’s past, were also stunned when they learned what he was suspected of this time. He fled, stealing a car beforehand, but five days later he was found and detained. During interrogation, Lazarev confessed to everything right away, almost completely confirming the investigators’ preliminary version.
Investigators established that in the evening Lazarev climbed through a window onto the balcony and waited four hours until the apartment’s occupants fell asleep. Then, armed with a knife, he attacked the young women and, as stated in a release by the Sledstvenny Komitet Rossii — Investigative Committee of Russia (SKR), “suppressing the victims’ will to resist, committed crimes against their sexual inviolability.” After that he began killing them. One of the victims, despite her cuts, ran out of the apartment into the street, but Lazarev caught up with her there too, inflicting several more knife wounds.
«What else can you do with such a person? — we need to bring back the death penalty,» the father of one of the murdered lamented after the funeral.
Lazarev denied only the fact of rape. Later, the victims’ parents also said that the forensic examination did not find evidence of it. Nevertheless, Aleksandr was charged with sexual offenses, murder, arson and vehicle theft. In March 2023 he was sentenced to life imprisonment in a special-regime correctional colony. In addition, Lazarev was ordered to pay two million rubles (about $20,000 at current rates) to the family of each murdered young woman.
It is worth noting that neither during the investigation nor at trial did Aleksandr Lazarev even attempt to apologize. In any case, the victims’ parents were unlikely to forgive him. After the tragedy, UFA1.RU also spoke with the mother of one of Lazarev’s victims. The woman admitted that even after being notified by law enforcement, she could not believe her daughter was gone. The day before, she had called and talked about her plans.
«She was a smart girl, had wanted to be a medical worker since childhood, was studying to be a nurse — already in her third year — she had many friends, she was loved and respected. The girls she lived with were good too. In the summer, they would come together to visit us,» the murdered young woman’s mother recalled.
That same year, another horrific story happened in Bashkortostan. A 15-year-old schoolgirl went to a friend’s birthday party and disappeared. She was later found dead in a pit by the house where the “party” had taken place, and two of the birthday girl’s friends fell under suspicion. Read about this case in UFA1.RU’s article.
