Biography[]
Early life[]
Little is known about Vladimir Kabanets' childhood and youth, aside from the fact that he was born in 1977 in Tambov, Tambov Oblast. He attended and successfully graduated from the Tambov State University, where he would meet and befriend his future accomplices: Igor Korovnikov, Pavel Popov and Denis Erbes. In 1996, at around the same time he received a suspended sentence for rape, Korovnikov formed a gang consisting of his former classmates and an another acquaintance named Oleg Chernetsov, leading them under the nickname "Gosha".
Murders[]
Between January 1997 and November 1998, Korovnikov and his cronies raped and murdered seven young girls. Their modus operandi consisted of raping and then killing them either via severe beatings or strangulation, after which they would dump the bodies in the forests outside Tambov. Several victims were treated as missing persons until their burial sites were revealed by the gang members after their arrests. Kabanets participated in seven of the murders, as he was considered Korovnikov's main accomplice.
On October 13, 1998, Korovnikov and Kabanets were driving around Tambov in a BMW-320 when, at around ten o'clock in the evening, they came across 17-year-old Lyudmila Gerovkyan, who was just sending off her friend Svetlana Khamatdinova. The two men approached them and invited the two girls to spend some time with them in the nearby forest, to which Gevorkyan and Khamatdinova agreed. After they got into the car, Korovnikov and Kabanets drove to a deserted area, where they convinced the girls to have sex with them. Khamatdinova went with Kabanets, but Gerovkyan refused to have sex with Korovnikov, who proceeded to rape her. The two men then started beating and kicking both girls for some time, until Korovnikov took out two pieces of telephone wire, with which he and Kabanets strangled the girls. The two killers then stripped them naked, robbed them of their jewelry and money, and then placed their bodies in shallow graves, which they covered up with garbage.
On October 17, Korovnikov and Kabanets were searching for another victim at around midnight when they came across 13-year-old Natalya Troshina, who was standing at the side of a road on Sovetskaya Street. The two men lured her to a nearby forest, where she was intoxicated, raped, beaten and strangled with a telephone wire. On October 30, Korovnikov decided to kill Chernetsov, as he owed him a debt of 20,000 rubles. Unwilling to give that money up, he convinced his fellow gang members to participate, and at approximately 8 PM, they lured him to a forest outside Tambov. There, Korovnikov choked him out, and then struck him with a rubber baton and plunged a screw driver into Chernetsov's ear, killing him instantly. His body was then buried in the forest. Despite being present at the crime scene, Kabanets himself did not participate in the killing.
On November 1, Korovnikov and Kabanets met two girls, Maria Osipova and Natalya Kulagina, again on Sovetskaya Street. They were invited to hang out at Korovnikov's apartment, to which they both agreed. After drinking some alcohol, the two men asked to have sex with them - when both of the girls refused, they were raped and strangled with a wire from a heater and and a clothes iron. Their bodies were mutilated post-mortem and abandoned in the forest, where they were found two days later.
In November 1998, Korovnikov and the others traveled to Moscow twice to hold negotiations with Tambov businessmen Sergei Gorin and Alexei Peshkun at the Paveletsky railway station. During these talks, the two businessmen suggested to them that they should kidnap and beat up the former adviser of to the mayor of Moscow, Olga Kostina. Korovnikov and his gang accepted, after which they tracked the woman for some time, but were unable to find an opportunity to abduct her. Instead, they decided to blow up what they thought was her apartment on Fergana Street, unaware that it was actually occupied by Kostina's parents while she lived in a neighboring house. At two o'clock in the morning of November 28, 1998, the gang used an improvised explosive device to blow up the door of the apartment, but it failed to cause any notable damage due to the bomb's poor quality, damaging only the stairwell and door. It is unclear what the gang intended with this attack, but since they did not kill Kostina, Korovnikov was not paid for this attack.
In the winter of 1999, Korovnikov conspired to rob the apartment of businessman Leonid Goldberg, a former businessman friend of his with whom he had a falling out after his rape conviction, intending to kill both him and his wife Eva Zilberman and steal any money or jewelry he could find. He enlisted the help of Kabanets, Popov and Erbes, and on February 7, 1999, the gang kidnapped Goldberg and Zilberman. They brought them to an abandoned dacha outside Moscow, where Leonid had his hands tied up before he was strangled with a belt and bludgeoned on the head with a brick and an axe. Zilberman was first beaten, then raped and forced to record a tape in which she asked her son to open the apartment door. Immediately after the recording was finished, she was strangled to death.
After killing the spouses, the criminals went back to the apartment, called the intercom and played the recording of Zilberman's voice. The door was opened 12-year-old Semyon Goldberg, who was alone with his friend Andrei Redin. The gang members beat up both boys and stabbed them approximately 40 times with a screwdriver and a shiv, aiming for their necks and heads. Miraculously, both boys survived, but fell unconscious due to the severity of their injuries. Thinking that they were dead, the gang members ransacked and stole all valuables from the apartment and promptly fled. Some time later, the heavily injured Semyon awoke, managed to get up and call an ambulance, which immediately rushed to the scene and transported both him and Redin to the emergency unit.
Arrest, trial and imprisonment[]
Despite the severity of their injuries, both boys survived and managed to provide testimony. Not long after, the bodies of Goldberg and Zilberman were found in the nearby village, with interviewed locals claiming that they had seen a suspicious car with four men inside parked near the Goldberg residence on the day of their murders. Some of the witnesses remembered the entire license plate, which eventually led to the car being identified as belonging to Korovnikov. An investigative unit was soon formed to apprehended the gang members, but instead of detaining him outright, they decided to instead get rid of his accomplices first. After learning their identities, investigators initially detained Kabanets, who quickly admitted not only to the most recent crimes, but also to the murders of teenage girls, for which none of the men had been considered suspects.
In April, the remainder of the gang members were also caught, with Korovnikov himself being detained in Tambov. During interrogations, he admitted fully responsibility for all the crimes and even aided police in locating the burial sites, but claimed that Kabanets was the main killer. This was proven false, as the investigation established that while Kabanets was his most active accomplice, it was Korovnikov who killed most of the victims.
After four months of investigation, the gang members' trial began on June 28, 2000. In the end, Korovnikov was sentenced to life imprisonment; Kabanets to 22 years imprisonment; Erbes to 17 years imprisonment, and Popov to 14 years imprisonment. Kabanets' sentence expired circa 2021, and he was presumably released - his current status is unknown.
Victims[]
Murder victims[]
| Name | Age | Body Found | Cause of Death |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lyudmila Gevorkyan | 17 | October 13, 1998 | Strangulation |
| Svetlana Khamatdinova | "teenage" | October 13, 1998 | Strangulation |
| Natalya Troshina | 13 | October 17, 1998 | Strangulation |
| Natalya Kulagina | "teenage" | November 3, 1998 | Strangulation |
| Marina Osipova | "teenage" | November 3, 1998 | Strangulation |
| Leonid Goldberg | February 7, 1999 | Strangulation/Bludgeoning | |
| Eva Zilberman | February 7, 1999 | Strangulation |
Survivors[]
| Name | Age | Date of Attack |
|---|---|---|
| Semyon Goldberg | 12 | February 7, 1999 |
| Andrei Redin | February 7, 1999 |
Timeline[]
Bibliography[]
Literature[]
Articles[]
Documentaries[]
Television[]
YouTube Documentaries[]
Podcasts[]
In popular culture[]
Film adaptation[]
Related Articles[]
See also[]
Links[]
- Коровников, Игорь Олегович at Wikipedia (in Russian)
- DACTYLOSCOPIC AND DERMATOGLYPHIC STUDY OF PAPILLARY PATTERNS OF SERIAL KILLERS (in Russian)
Notes[]
- ↑ Sentence expired in 2021, and he was presumably released.
References[]