Woman claims innocence in 25-year-old Ryazan murder case

Lyubov Vizenkina says she was forced to confess to a murder she did not commit 25 years ago. She alleges her former partner was the real killer and threatened to kill her sister.

Apr 20, 2026

In 2000, life for Lyubov Vizenkina from the Ryazan region was divided into before and after. She was sentenced to 10 years for the murder of fellow villager Viktor Svetushkin, but she claims she was framed. The crime, she says, could have been committed by her former live-in partner, Viktor Pchelkin.

Lyubov Vizenkina first met Viktor Pchelkin when she was 18 and working as a milkmaid, after he showed up at her door with a plaid bag.

Источник:

Nikita Yegorov / Gorodskiye Media

Lyubov told YA62.RU that on the morning of the murder, she met Svetushkin on the street. He complained that Pchelkin was allegedly stealing meat from him and taking it to a moonshiner«s house at the other end of the village of Sekirino.

In the evening, Lyubov Vizenkina demanded an explanation from her partner, but he left to «sort things out» with Viktor Svetushkin.

A couple of minutes later, Lyubov heard the door of her neighbor«s house slam. In the yard, she saw Viktor Pchelkin: according to her account, he was standing with a Finnish knife in his hand and blood-stained money.

«He said: »Take the blame for all of this, you have a small child, nothing will happen to you for this. Otherwise, the first person I«ll kill is your sister, I»ll twist her head off«,» Lyubov recalls of that day.

Lyubov Vizenkina was sentenced to 10 years in a penal colony, but she was released on parole after 7.5 years. All this time she wrote petitions asking for the case to be reviewed and tried to prove her innocence, but it was all in vain. The resident of the Skopinsky District repeated these attempts after her release but quickly stopped: the police told her that Viktor Pchelkin was dead.