Sweat Odor Traps Killer of 12-Year-Old Girl After Eight Years
In April 2011, a bulletin began circulating in Tambov Oblast: 12-year-old Tanya K. had gone missing. On April 8, the girl left school in the small town of Zherdevka and disappeared. She was found only five days later—dead. Her body had been thoroughly washed, even her nails trimmed. And there were no witnesses who could say what happened to the girl.
The mystery of Tanya«s death would only be fully solved 11 years later. Even participants of the show »Battle of the Psychics« (16+) would search for the killer. And it turned out that the guilty party had been close to the victim»s family all along. Our colleagues from Voronezh1.ru tell the horrific story that troubled residents of the small district center for years.
‘This Never Happened Here Before’
Zherdevka is a district center in Tambov Oblast, on the border with Voronezh Oblast. In the early 2010s, slightly over 15,000 people lived there. For a small town, the disappearance of a child, and then murder, was a shock.
The bulletin on Tanya after her disappearance stated: slender, brown eyes, light brown hair, with a small mole above her upper lip. She went to school in black pants, a white nylon jacket, and a white cap. Relatives said that Tanya was a straight-A student, helped her grandmother with housework, and loved to draw.
When Tanya didn«t return home on that terrible April day, her grandmother raised the alarm. She immediately called the girl»s mother, Nina, who lived and worked in Moscow. Nina came right away and went to the police. A search began, joined by what seemed like the entire town. Parks, abandoned buildings, dark streets—everything was searched. All of Zherdevka waited for good news to come any moment... But people waited in vain.
Tanya was found raped and dead 15 kilometers from Zherdevka. A tractor driver plowing a field noticed a bag with legs sticking out. On the cleanly washed body, law enforcement found no evidence.
The news of the murder horrified the town«s residents. Parents were afraid to let children go out alone, and teachers in schools didn»t know how to talk to children about what had happened.
«The case is unprecedented, of course, and horrific,» one of Tanya«s teachers said. »Such a thing never happened here in my memory.«
‘He Knew They Wouldn«t Find Him’
The investigation had almost no leads on who could have done such a thing to the girl. All local men previously involved in similar crimes were interviewed. Acquaintances of the murdered girl«s family also came under suspicion; even Tanya»s father was called in for questioning. But they couldn«t find the guilty one. Rumors spread that police officers themselves were involved in the murder and that»s why the investigation was taking so long.
By autumn, no suspect had emerged in the case. And Tanya«s desperate mother turned to the show »Battle of the Psychics«. She hoped for help not only from supernatural forces but also from basic publicity. However, neither helped much.
The psychics didn«t give the murdered girl»s mother a unified version of events. They repeated rumors that the criminal was a police officer. Participant of the show«s ninth season, Natalya Banteeva, especially insisted on this version.
«She got into the killer»s car herself,« the psychic was sure.
Another clairvoyant, Zuliya Radzhabova, insisted that the girl had been attempted to be used in child pornography filming. The psychic also believed that the killers wouldn«t be caught.
But the killer was eventually found. However, it took several more years.
Lie Detector
When the psychics left, investigators continued with the routine of the investigation. Among other things, they checked the friends and acquaintances of the girl«s family with a polygraph—a lie detector. And here, suddenly, luck: one of Tanya»s mother«s acquaintances had ambiguous answers. His name was Igor Skorokhodov.
45-year-old Skorokhodov was the lover of Nina«s best friend, Marina. He took the polygraph in 2013 and was detained for the first time then. But the evidence against him was only circumstantial. On the day of Tanya»s murder, he was home alone and didn«t answer calls—that»s all. Investigators suggested that the girl might have gone to Igor and Marina«s house to congratulate her mother»s friend on her birthday.
Marina immediately began defending her common-law husband.
«Two years passed, and local men kept being called to the police. Igor went too, on his own, at the first call,» the woman told journalists. «I don»t think the girl remembered my birthday and could have come to us. Moreover, there is evidence that Tanya passed by our house and was seen further down the street. But no one even considers these facts.«
The suspect himself also denied his guilt.
«Before detention, I was repeatedly called as a witness, without summons. They forced me to take the blame for Tanya»s murder, said everyone was against me, and after refusal, threatened to find a reason to arrest me. <...> When I was detained as a suspect, in the cell they again forced me to sign their script of the murder. Interrogations were conducted day and night. They beat me, and then accused me of slandering the investigative authorities and inflicting the beatings on myself,« Skorokhodov claimed.
In the end, his guilt couldn«t be proven in 2013—the court didn»t consider the circumstantial evidence gathered by investigators sufficient to keep the man in custody. Skorokhodov was released.
Perfect Crime
For the next few years, the investigation was at a standstill, and then the case was closed altogether. Perhaps the mystery of Tanya«s murder would have remained unsolved forever if not for the persistence of her mother Nina. In 2017, she, still not giving up, decided to appeal to the head of the Russian Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin. He ordered the investigation to be resumed.
A new collection of evidence and testimony led to an unexpected result: suddenly, new victims of Skorokhodov were identified. No, he didn«t kill anyone else, but several underage girls reported that he had molested them at different times. Skorokhodov was detained again, and an unusual examination was appointed—olfactory. It involves studying and comparing smells; it had only recently begun to be applied at that time. An expert studied the suspect»s sweat odor and the smell from the bag in which Tanya«s body was found—everything matched.
«There were no direct pieces of evidence. He got rid of everything, foresaw it all. A perfect crime. None of his biological materials, none of her clothes that could have traces, he threw it all on the city dump. Only the smell of sweat from his hands on the bag she lay in, and on her hair tie,» the girl«s mother said.
When Skorokhodov was asked how his smell could have ended up on one of the pieces of evidence, he gave up and confessed to everything. He showed where and how he killed the girl. It all indeed happened at his home, where Tanya came to congratulate her mother«s friend. Marina wasn»t home, but the girl couldn«t escape. At first, Skorokhodov didn»t plan to take the victim«s life, only to rape her. But, according to the killer, Tanya screamed too loudly—and he strangled her. Then he thoroughly washed her and, naked, in a bag, took her to a field outside Zherdevka.
Finishing the investigation and trials took several more years. The killer«s guilt was finally proven, and he was sentenced only in December 2022. Skorokhodov himself didn»t live to see the verdict—he died in a pre-trial detention center shortly before the court«s last session.
