Man accused of serial killings of at least six women in Buguruslan

The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for Orenburg Region has completed the investigation of a criminal case against 59-year-old Sergey Karpuk, a resident of Saratov Region, who faces the «highest measure» (implying life imprisonment): law enforcement believes he is a serial killer, responsible for at least six murders of women in the same Buguruslan district. We provide the details.

Has a Maniac Emerged in Buguruslan?

On August 14, 2008, in Buguruslan district, in a forest belt near the Buguruslan – Starokutlumbetyevo highway, shocked local residents discovered two female bodies at once. They were lying 30 meters apart. The deceased residents of the district center and district were 30 and 41 years old, and the nature of death clearly indicated that they were killed. Moreover, biological material was found on the clothing of one of the victims, but at that time it did not help the investigators.

A year earlier, another 28-year-old resident of Buguruslan district went missing (still wanted), and two months after the discovery of the women«s bodies, another 31-year-old man from Buguruslan disappeared without a trace, leading locals and law enforcement to think that a maniac might be operating in the region.

And to this day, according to police databases, there are more than a dozen men and women who disappeared specifically in Buguruslan district at that time. Bulletin boards, store walls, and poles in those years were filled with the names of village women who vanished into thin air — Olga Danilova, Galina Ignatyeva, Diana Galieva, Marina Vaskina, Albina Galimova, Elvira Gabdrakhmanova — all these women went missing. And all were last seen near the road — they needed to go somewhere.

At one point, even the version was considered that the women might have been killed by the infamous serial killer Valery Andreyev, but after all, the modus operandi of the Orsk maniac was different. And the district wasn«t his.

For a long time, law enforcement put forward various versions of who could have killed the women: they selected and checked over 2,000 biological samples, conducted genetic examinations, interrogated more than 200 people, but couldn«t trace the killer. Mostly residents of Buguruslan and Buguruslan district were checked, but as it turned out, the criminal was no longer in Orenburg Region.

He Offered Rides, Then Raped and Killed

Only after 17 years, investigators and criminologists from the Investigative Committee and the Ministry of Internal Affairs found a match between the genotype extracted from the victims« clothing and the analyses of 59-year-old Sergey Karpuk — a resident of Saratov Region, who previously lived in Buguruslan. The detention was a complete surprise for the man — in the summer of 2025, he was literally taken from the handlebars of a scooter right near his home.

The suspect was taken to Buguruslan, where under the weight of evidence, he fully confessed to everything. The man said that he committed the first murder in June 2008, when he was 42 years old. He was driving his car when he noticed a «hitchhiking» woman and offered her a ride.

The trusting village woman got into the car, but the ride became her last: the man took her to a forest belt, brutally raped her, and beat her with a hammer. Feeling impunity, Karpuk two months later committed a second murder under absolutely the same circumstances.

The investigation charged him with the murder of two or more persons combined with rape. The Buguruslan District Court placed the man in custody. Realizing that he faces long-term deprivation of liberty, up to life imprisonment, Karpuk started talking.

And he confessed to four more murders of women, which he committed under absolutely similar circumstances, and he started doing this back in 2005. The Buguruslan resident buried three more bodies in a forest belt, and threw the fourth into the Mochegay River.

And that«s not all: one of the maniac»s victims managed to survive: he raped her, but then she somehow misled him and was able to escape. But she didn«t go to the law enforcement, afraid that Karpuk would still find her.

Now the criminal case with the indictment has been sent to court. The article now reads — the murder of six persons combined with rape (points «a» and «k» of part 2 of article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).

As we already said, with a high degree of probability, Sergey Karpuk will go to a colony for the rest of his days.