Gennady Mikhasevich | Serial Killer
Gennady Mikhasevich
Born: 04-07-1947
Executed by Firing Squad
Soviet Serial Killer
Crime Spree: 1971 – 1985
Death: 11-25-1987
Gennady Mikhasevich was a Soviet serial killer. He murdered 36 women during the period from 1971 to 1985 in Vitebsk, Polotsk and the rural areas in the nearby regions of the Byelorussian SSR.
Life of Gennady Mikhasevich
Gennady Mikhasevich was born in the village of Ist (Vitebsk Oblast) in 1947, and served in the army. He committed his first murder on May 14th in 1971. He himself later explained that the killing spree started after he had returned from the army only to find out that his girlfriend had left him and become married in the meantime. On the night of May 14th, 1971, he was on his way from Vitebsk to Polotsk. It was late so he could not catch a bus to Polotsk where his parents lived. Gennady Mikhasevich reported he was feeling desolate because of the breakup with his girlfriend and had prepared a loop to hang himself. However, he accidentally met a young woman on the road. He decided to kill her, venting his anger on her.
He murdered again in October, 1971, and strangled 2 other women in 1972, near Vitebsk. Mikhasevich graduated from a technical school in Vitebsk in 1973 and returned to Ist, starting to work in a sovkhoz. He married in 1976. In the meantime, the murders went on.
Many of his murders coincided with rape. Gennady Mikhasevich either strangled or smothered his victims, either assaulting them in solitary locations or (during later years) after having allured them (e.g. hitchhikers) into his own car (he possessed a red Zaporozhets) or the machines of his workplace (he later had a job in machine repair service). He did not carry weapons or other instruments of murder with him, instead, he used improvised means, sometimes rather ‘exotic’ ones, e.g. a cord made of rye. Besides killing, he robbed his victims of money and valuable items (that he would sometimes give to his wife as a gift), and sometimes even of household items like scissors.
The Investigation
In outward appearance, Gennady Mikhasevich was a good family man, had two children and was a conscientious worker. He was also member of the Communist Party and of Voluntary People’s Druzhina.
The investigation started to advance in the 1980’s, as the young investigator Nikolay Ignatovich firmly stood up for the idea, that all the killings of females near motorways in the region are committed by one person, a serial killer, not separate murderers, as the investigators had conveniently presumed.
The Militsiya also detected that the serial killer was using a red Zaporozhets; as they started checking all the people of the oblast, who possessed such a car, Mikhasevich as a druzhinnik participated in these actions, in a way searching for himself. This also enabled him to learn of the steps the investigators were taking beforehand. The year 1985 was especially ‘prolific’ for the murderer: he killed 12 females in this year alone.
Eventually Gennady Mikhasevich, who was now getting concerned, made a fatal mistake: in order to derail the investigation, he sent an anonymous letter to the local newspaper on behalf of an imaginary underground organization ‘Patriots of Vitebsk’, supposedly calling his fellow militants to intensify their struggle of killing communists and lewd women.
When he left a similar hand-written note next to his new victim, again signed on behalf of ‘Patriots of Vitebsk’, the investigators started to ascertain the hand writings of the male residents of the oblast. Having checked 556 thousand samples, the experts detected that the sample with the handwriting of Gennady Mikhasevich had striking resemblance with the handwriting on the murderers’ notes. Further investigation revealed other evidence convincing them of Mikhasevich’s guilt.
Gennady Mikhasevich Confesses
Gennady Mikhasevich was finally arrested in 1985. He confessed after his initial denial and was sentenced to death. He was executed in 1987. His case became notorious in the USSR (“The Vitebsk Case” (“Витебское дело”)), as it revealed both the incapability of the militsiya and the corruption of the law enforcement agencies: by the time Mikhasevich was finally arrested, 14 people had already been convicted for the crimes Mikhasevich committed, the suspects had been often forced to confess by torture, and a couple of them had been sentenced to death and executed for the crimes they did not commit.
source: murderpedia | wikipedia
This site contains affiliate links. We may, at no cost to you, receive a commission for purchases made through these links
