Sergey Aleksandrovich Sergeev , known as the "Zaporizhia Maniac", was a Sovietspree killer who killed four people in Zaporizhia and Yalta in 1987–1988.
Biography
Sergeev was born on June 21, 1964. He studied at Zaporozhye Boarding School No. 2. While still a minor, he was sentenced to a year in prison for hooliganism. After his release, he worked as a photographer at the Zaporozhia mining company. He often clashed with his mother, who once wrote a statement to the police about him, and Sergey was detained at the Zhovtevy ROVD. He was diagnosed with a psychoneurological disorder. According to different versions, he either fled from there, or managed to convince the staff that he was not insane.
Murders
He committed his first murder on June 27, 1987 in Yalta. He met a student named, Tatyana Novik, from Leningrad, and asked for marriage only a few days later. When she refused, Sergeev strangled her in a fit of rage and then fled, leaving a note on the corpse: Sergeev often left notes on the places of his crimes, and once even left an audio cassette containing various threats and bullying directed at the officers: On the site of another murder, he left a note drenched in the victim's blood saying: "People are dying like flies." On June 29, Sergeev he broke into a factory on Dzerzhinsky Street in Zaporozhia, stole several ushankas and gold ornaments, and then killed a cleaning woman, Natalia Yurchenko. On the same day, Sergeev broke into his ex-girlfriend's apartment and stabbed her new boyfriend several times with a knife. Sergeev then moved to Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. He wounded a farm manager in the Synelnykove Raion and stole 650 rubles from the farm's collective fund, then hid out in the steppe and local villages. On July 9, 1987, Sergeev returned to Zaporozhia, bursting into an apartment on Paramanov Street, and inflicting heavy wounds on nine-year-old, Lena Novikova. On July 10 he broke into an apartment on Gorky Street and killed 84-year-old, Alla Boyko. On July 12, he attacked two teenagers with a knife while they were bathing in a pond near a village in the Prymorsk Raion, but both of them survived.
Arrest
Residents of Zaporizhia began to panic. To catch the killer, servicemen, troops, fire brigade workers, aviation crews, and volunteers were organized in the 587 settlements of Zaporizhia Oblast. The head of the search operations was Alexander Polyak, who would later become mayor of Zaporizhia. On July 17, 1987, Sergeev was found near the state-run farm Mokryanka, and was finally detained near the village of Krinichka. The killer attempted to resist arrest by throwing a knife at police officers, but an officer wounded him in the leg and he was taken into custody.
