Neighbor confesses to schoolgirl's murder after 19 years

In May 2007, a schoolgirl named Lyuba disappeared in the settlement of Otradny near Nizhny Tagil. 19 years have passed since then, but local residents still remember this story.

The curly-haired girl often walked alone and was well-known to the neighbors. She lived with her mother Vera in a family that those around described as troubled. According to a neighbor, Lyuba«s behavior corresponded to that of an 8-year-old, as if her development had stopped at that point.

After the child«s disappearance, various rumors spread through the settlement. »They said that Gypsies took her, or her mother sold her somewhere. Vera beat her all the time, she was a girl nobody needed,« one resident recounted. Many for some reason believed that the girl remained alive.

Suspicion for the crime fell on 44-year-old neighbor Sergey Berezovich. Even before Lyuba«s disappearance, a criminal case was opened against him for lewd acts towards the same schoolgirl, and he was convicted.

In 2014, Berezovich sold his house in Otradny and moved to another region. Several years later, while in a penal colony for the corruption of another child, he unexpectedly confessed to Lyuba«s murder, committed many years earlier.

According to him, the girl threatened to report him to the police again. During an argument, he strangled her in the cabin of his car, then took the body to the forest, doused it with gasoline, and set it on fire.

The prosecutor«s office of Sverdlovsk Oblast provided details: »The unburned remains of the corpse the accused brought to his home and continued burning in a bathhouse stove for another 4–5 hours, breaking the bones with a poker. The next morning, he collected the ashes of the murdered girl in a bucket and took them away, scattering them near the Chusovaya River.«

For Lyuba«s murder, Berezovich faces up to 23 years of imprisonment. The state prosecutor requested precisely such a term, considering that the defendant is already serving a sentence for another crime.

The girl«s mother did not live to see the trial of her murderer. Neighbors note that after her daughter»s disappearance, the woman began abusing alcohol, her legs failed, and she soon died. Lyuba has no grave because her remains were completely destroyed.

Key evidence of guilt was DNA traces preserved since 1995 on the seat covers of the Volga car in which the strangulation occurred. Berezovich did not sell this car, which allowed investigators years later to conduct the necessary examinations.

Assistant prosecutor of the Prigorodny District of Sverdlovsk Oblast Dmitry Trofimov explained: «The solving of the crime was facilitated by the improvement of forensic techniques, which allowed for examinations to be conducted after a long period of time, including molecular-genetic ones.»

Earlier, Berezovich appealed to the court with a request not to bring him to criminal responsibility for the murder, claiming that the statute of limitations for this crime had expired.