'Nizhny Novgorod Chikatilo' who preyed on children
The «Nizhny Novgorod Chikatilo» operated in the early 2000s
When people talk about serial killers, they usually recall Chikatilo or the Angarsk Maniac. The Nizhny Novgorod Region had its own monster. A man his neighbors knew as a model family man turned out to be a killer whose atrocities shocked even seasoned investigators. Over eight years he committed dozens of crimes whose victims were small children. How the maniac managed to go unnoticed for years — in this NN.RU report.
Vladimir Zhukov shows investigators the crime scene
A quiet, straight-A sadist
The maniac lured children into apartment building entrances
Vladimir Zhukov was born in 1972 in Yaroslavl. At school he was a quiet, withdrawn child whom no one wanted to befriend. But not only because of his reserve — he was periodically noticed having fits of rage. The schoolboy could suddenly start shouting, stamping his feet and swinging his fists. A tantrum could strike the child even if someone merely sat down at his desk.
The pervert abused one of his victims almost in front of her mother
Zhukov, however, was a straight-A student and a teachers« favorite. He had no trouble getting into university and earned a degree as a radio engineering engineer. After graduating he worked at a branch of a telecommunications operator and often went on business trips.
The maniac remained at large for eight years
He had a common-law wife and an adopted school-age son. Colleagues and neighbors described him as a quiet, calm and very polite man. No one suspected that a monster was hiding behind the mask of a model family man.
Investigators were able to prove only three murders
Hunting children
The maniac received a life sentence
Zhukov ambushed his first victim near an apartment building entrance. Threatening her with a knife, he led the girl into the elevator and demanded she take him home. The child warned that her mother was at home, but that did not stop the maniac. Entering the apartment, he tied up the woman, locked her in the bathroom and made her listen to her daughter«s screams.
Zhukov acted with sophistication and cold blood. He always carried plastic zip ties and elastic bandages in his car to bind his victims. The pervert«s victims were children aged 7 to 12. He tracked victims near schools or apartment buildings, followed them to the entrance, went in after them and committed his crimes. In 2003, arriving on a business trip to Novosibirsk, he immediately began looking for a school whose students he would attack. Three girls were raped then.
Sadistic methods
The criminal was soon dubbed the «Nizhny Novgorod Chikatilo.» Over time Zhukov developed a taste for it and began acting ever more elaborately. Some girls he tortured with a stun gun, pricked them with pins and burned them with the paraffin of lit candles.
Later, law enforcement officers would say that the pervert took pleasure in watching his victims suffer.
At first he left his victims alive, but one day he saw his own police sketch on local television — one of the girls had remembered him well enough for a police artist to draw his portrait. Fearing capture, Zhukov turned from a pedophile into a brutal murderer.
How he was caught
The sadist managed to go unnoticed and commit crimes for eight years. Because his job involved constant travel, he simply never came to the attention of law enforcement. Zhukov was detained only in August 2007. By then he had spent three days abusing an 11-year-old girl in his city apartment while his wife and son were on vacation.
He kidnapped the child in the Krasnobakovsky District, and on the way a traffic police inspector even pulled him over. The pervert had managed to make the child undress and hide in a potato sack. As the surviving schoolgirl later recounted, she hoped the inspector would decide to search the car interior and save her, but that never happened.
After long torment and torture, the maniac left the girl near a hospital building. A few days later, having somewhat recovered from the shock, the girl was able to describe what the rapist looked like and the view from the window of the apartment where she was held. The schoolgirl had seen a red building and a pile-driving machine. There was only one such building in the area.
The detained man cooperated immediately. He asked for a map and himself pointed out where and how he had found his victims. These «memoirs,» with the smallest details, shocked the investigators. During searches, archives of child pornography were found on Zhukov«s hard drive.
Three proven murders
Zhukov«s victims numbered at least 17 schoolchildren; only three murders were proven. In 2006 he kidnapped a 9-year-old girl who was riding a bicycle in the village of Voskresenskoye. She was found on the outskirts of Nizhny Novgorod a day after her disappearance — with 27 stab wounds. Zhukov had taken her from the village and brutally killed her.
In August 2004 he killed another 9-year-old girl and her 11-year-old brother. They left their home in the village of Novinki in the Bogorodsky District and vanished. Zhukov kidnapped them in his car and took them to a forest area in the Dalnekonsantinovsky District. Before killing them he molested the children. Their bodies were found only a year later in another district of the region.
While serving his life sentence at the «White Swan» colony in the Perm Territory, Zhukov continued to give confessions. In 2010 he told of another child«s murder — in 2002 he had picked up an unfamiliar girl aged 8–10 in Gorodets, driven her to a forest near Kovernino, raped and killed her.
The verdict
In September 2008 the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Court sentenced Vladimir Zhukov to life imprisonment for crimes against 14 children.
A forensic psychiatric examination found that he had a mental disorder, but despite this Zhukov was declared sane.
At trial the maniac admitted his guilt and asked his victims for forgiveness. He also asked the court to show «humanism and the ability to forgive.» In addition, the court ordered Zhukov to pay 2.8 million rubles ($30,700 at current rates) in compensation for moral damages to the victims.
In 2009 the Novosibirsk Regional Court added another 11 years to his sentence for the rape of three children during business trips to Novosibirsk.
Previously we also told the story of an elusive gang of Nizhny Novgorod residents. They robbed cash-in-transit services, took millions from banks and pawnshops, and during an attack on another vehicle fired at a traffic police crew that spotted them. You can learn their story in our previous article.
