Over four years Urals gang killed 30 women
Pastor Dale Morgan
Over four years Urals gang killed 30 women*
For four years girls and young women disappeared from their homes in the
Russian town of Nizhny Tagil.
Tom Parfitt in Moscow
Sunday February 11, 2007
The Observer
For four years girls and young women disappeared from their homes in the
drab industrial Russian town of Nizhny Tagil. Their parents called the
police and pasted up posters. But in the end it was a stray dog that
tracked them down. The decomposing bodies of 30 females aged from 13 to
25 were found in a mass grave in woodland near the village of Levikha,
40 miles away.
The discovery sent a ripple of horror through a country inured to brutal
tales. Prosecutors in the town on the eastern flank of the Urals, the
crinkle of mountains separating the European and Asian parts of Russia,
have now charged eight men aged between 25 and 46 with murder. But it
has revealed a catalogue of errors on the part of Nizhny Tagil police
who failed to link a string of missing persons reports from 2002 to 2005.
It is thought a gang led by two brothers used a handsome young man to
lure the girls to a flat where they were raped and beaten. Those who
refused to become prostitutes at the gang's massage parlour ended up in
the Levikha grave. The scale of the horror has reminded rich Muscovites
of the brutal life out in the provinces where low pay and lack of work
can drive ordinary people to shocking crimes. 'In four years in Nizhny
Tagila, a city of 400,000, girls were going missing left, right and
centre and nobody raised the alarm,' one newspaper commented. 'Tens of
girls and young women missing? And nobody gave a damn?'
Mark Kustovsky, the factory worker who acted as the bait, wooed the
women with presents and visits to cafes. His wife said the ringleaders
forced him to put bodies in the grave, telling him: 'If you don't bury
them, you'll be lying there yourself.' But the police say he was a
willing gang member.
'The girls who didn't agree to work in the brothel were taken to the
forest and there killed and buried,' prosecutor Nail Rizvanov said. The
gang told the girls they were going for a picnic, feeding them kebabs
before they were murdered. It is not clear how they were killed, but
some had crushed skulls.
So far, 15 bodies have been identified in a process complicated by wild
animals disturbing the remains. One of the girls is thought to be Yelena
Chudinova, 15, daughter of one of the gang leaders.
The grave was close to a bus stop and dachas. Towards the end of their
spree the gang gave up burying the bodies, just throwing branches over
them instead.