In the autumn of 2003 two students in Perm, a city in the Urals, went missing a day apart. Лилия Тарутина was 18 and Олеся Дануца was 20. They had been friends since childhood, and on the last day each was seen, she had gone out with the same man, a 25-year-old acquaintance who then disappeared himself. He was Александр Валерьевич Киселев. Police caught him in December 2003; he admitted killing both young women, and in June 2004 a Perm district court sentenced him to 22 years.
He did not serve all of it. In 2020 a court let him finish his term under forced labour at a correctional center, and in August 2022 that was replaced in turn with restricted freedom. On November 13, 2022, in the town of Chusovoy, he killed a woman with whom he had been in a relationship. In 2023 he was sentenced to 13 and a half years for murder and theft. The independent Russian outlet Kholod, which retold the case in May 2026, reported that he is due to be released in 2036, when he will be 57. The press called him the necktie maniac.
The two young women grew up almost as sisters. Their mothers had been friends in Perm before both families moved north to Kogalym, a town in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, and the girls were raised there. After school they came back to Perm to study. They lived with their grandmothers, in the same building, and both enrolled at the Perm branch of the St. Petersburg Institute of Foreign Economic Relations, Economics and Law. In 2003 Лилия was in her second year of law. Олеся, two years older, was finishing her degree in economics.
They went home to Kogalym when they could, a train journey of more than a day. Late in the summer of 2003, Kholod reported, they met a young man of about 25 who introduced himself as Александр.
He became a friend. Their mothers later recalled that the young women described him as very good, kind and rich, and believed he would look after them. Not everyone was convinced. Олеся's grandmother disliked him and asked her why she kept seeing him. He brought Олеся roses and told her he loved her. She was flattered, Kholod wrote, but could not return his feelings: she was engaged to a young man back in Kogalym.
On October 29, 2003, Лилия did not come home. The next day, October 30, Олеся also went missing. Both had spent their last day out with Александр. Their grandmothers went to the police and told officers who he was, or who they thought he was.
The friends knew him by the surname Кудинов. To the Perm police the name meant something. A criminal known as Кудин, a close associate of the Perm crime boss Николай Зыков, known as Якутенок, had been killed in 1998. The grandmothers said the young man had told the students that his father was a senior figure in the criminal world.
Евгений Комаров, head of the criminal investigation unit of the Kirov district police in Perm, told television reporters that the man they were looking for did not belong to that world at all. He described him as a lone wolf. Officers worked through some 40 men named Александр with a range of surnames before settling on one: Александр Валерьевич Киселев, 25, with short hair and pale eyes. The grandmothers recognized him from his passport photograph.
The story he had told the students was invented. Киселев came from an ordinary family. His father worked for the prison administration, then known as ГУИН, and his mother worked at a fire station. He had finished nine grades of school and had no job. He lived alone in a ground-floor apartment in a two-story building that belonged to his parents. According to television accounts that Kholod drew on, his relationship with his strict father was distant, and his mother gave him money without the father knowing.
By the time police identified him, he had disappeared too, at about the same time as the young women.
Police searched his apartment. Forensic evidence linked the two students to the apartment. Officers tapped the telephones of his parents and his acquaintances without result. They learned that he was moving between dachas outside Perm.
Investigators then went to a young woman he had been seeing. Once she understood that she might have become a third victim, she agreed to help. Киселев called her from a pay phone and arranged to meet her, and the police were waiting. Комаров later described the arrest: Киселев arrived in a private car, got out, and the officers had him before he could do anything. He did not resist.
He confessed to killing both students, who had been missing for about a month.
Under questioning he gave more than one reason. He said he had wanted their gold, to sell. In a television interview that Kholod cited, the figure given for the gold was about 4,000 rubles at 2003 prices; one of the detectives later said he had got only 200 to 300 rubles for it. He also told investigators that something each young woman had said to him had offended him. Kholod noted that it is not clear which account, if either, is true.
A forensic psychiatric examination, which journalists familiar with the case file said they had seen, found no chronic mental illness, no delusions and no clouding of consciousness. The experts did find a mixed personality disorder. Doctors described him as pretentious, demanding, dishonest and self-centered.
On June 16, 2004, the Kirov District Court of Perm found Киселев guilty on every count of the indictment and sentenced him to 22 years. As he was led from the courtroom, Лилия's stepfather shouted after him that he should rot behind bars and never come out. Some years later a higher court amended the sentence and cut it by about two years. The text of that ruling was not published, and its reasons are not known.
Киселев was tried for two separate murders, not for an aggravated double murder. Kholod set out why that mattered. Article 105 of the Russian Criminal Code covers murder. Simple murder, under its first part, carries up to 15 years. Murder with aggravating circumstances carries 8 to 20 years or life imprisonment. Two counts of simple murder could not lead to a life term.
Before December 2003, the code listed both "repeated" murder and the murder of two or more people as aggravating circumstances. The Supreme Court read the second to mean killings carried out with a single intent at about the same time. In December 2003, the month of his arrest, the code was reformed: "repeated" murder was removed as an aggravating feature, and the killing of two or more people still required proof of a single intent, which the prosecution in his case apparently did not establish. In April 2008 the Supreme Court dropped the single-intent requirement from its reading of the law. Kholod noted that, had that change come earlier, the killings could have been charged as one aggravated crime and a life sentence would have been possible.
In 2017, thirteen years after the verdict, Киселев applied for conditional early release, citing his good behavior. Court material described by Kholod listed 18 commendations for conscientious work and six reprimands, five of them between July 2005 and October 2006. A prison character reference said he was employed, worked conscientiously, carried out one-off tasks around his unit, regularly attended educational and psychological events, and was making deductions toward the civil claims against him. The court refused to release him.
Олеся's mother was asked to attend a court hearing on his application. She told television reporters later that he behaved as he had at his trial in 2004, looking down and glaring from under his brows. She had told the court that he should not be let out, because he would do the same thing again. It was not about the years left on his sentence, she said, or the unpaid compensation for moral damage.
In 2020 Киселев asked a court to replace the rest of his sentence, about three years, with forced labour. The judge found that he did not need to serve the remaining term in custody and granted the request. He was 42 and had spent 16 and a half years behind bars.
He was sent to a correctional center in Gremyachinsk, a town of about 9,000 people some 176 kilometers from Perm. Under the terms of forced labour he lived in a dormitory, worked at a local woodworking plant, and paid a fifth of his wages to the state, according to the Perm television channel Vetta, as cited by Kholod.
In August 2022 his sentence was softened again: a court replaced the forced labour with restricted freedom. He moved to Chusovoy, a town of about 50,000 in Perm Krai, to be near a woman named Наталья, with whom he was in a relationship. Her surname has not been published. In October 2022 her long-term partner, the father of her children, proposed to her, and they married. Her relationship with Киселев continued.
NTV, reporting in September 2023, described his release differently, as forced labour followed by conditional early release, and said the new killing came about two months after he was freed.
On November 13, 2022, Киселев killed Наталья in Chusovoy. He took her money and a gold ring, according to his testimony as described by Kholod.
He hid in rented apartments, and police found him about a week after the killing. He did not deny that he had killed her or that he had taken her money and ring. He told investigators that he had acted out of jealousy and resentment. A forensic psychiatric examination again found him sane.
Денис Дерябин, an investigator, told television reporters that the motive seemed to lie in some kind of satisfaction Киселев drew from violence. Nearly 20 years in custody, he said, had not corrected him; he had apparently been waiting for a chance to do it again.
The charges were murder and theft. Kholod explained that a killing out of jealousy is normally treated in Russian law as simple murder, with a maximum of 15 years, while a killing without apparent motive can bring 20 years or life. In court Киселев admitted his guilt, said he repented, and was credited with helping to solve the crime.
He was sentenced to 13 and a half years for murder and theft, a term that included the unserved part of his earlier sentence, to be served in a special-regime colony. On release he will face a further 18 months of restricted freedom, during which he may not change his place of residence or leave his district without the penal inspectorate's permission. NTV reported in September 2023 that a life sentence was not available because the article under which he was convicted carried a maximum of 15 years. It also reported that during a reconstruction of the crime with investigators he said almost nothing, though he remembered the details well.
Наталья's family was unhappy with the sentence and contested it, without success. Her mother wanted a life term. "Let them give him life," she said, adding that otherwise he would come out again.
Олеся's mother said she was stunned by the news of the new killing. She had warned the court years earlier that he would do it again, and, she said, that is how it turned out.
Kholod reported in May 2026 that Киселев is due to be released in 2036, when he will be 57, after which the 18 months of restricted freedom will follow.
The motive in 2003. He gave investigators more than one reason, and the value of the gold differs between accounts: about 4,000 rubles in one television account, 200 to 300 rubles in a detective's later recollection.
His release in 2022. Kholod describes a court replacing forced labour with restricted freedom in August 2022; NTV described the same period as conditional early release.
The arrest in 2003. Kholod's narrative says he was in a taxi on his way to the meeting; the detective it quotes describes him arriving with a private driver.
Summer 2003: Лилия Тарутина and Олеся Дануца meet Александр Киселев at Perm-2 station on their return from Kogalym.
October 29, 2003: Лилия Тарутина does not come home.
October 30, 2003: Олеся Дануца goes missing.
December 2003: Киселев is arrested in Perm and confesses, about a month after the disappearances.
December 2003: Russia's Criminal Code is amended; "repeated" murder is removed as an aggravating feature.
June 16, 2004: The Kirov District Court of Perm convicts him and sentences him to 22 years; a higher court later reduces the term by about two years.
July 2005 to October 2006: Five of his six prison reprimands.
April 2008: The Supreme Court changes its reading of murder of two or more people.
2017: His application for conditional early release is refused.
2020: The remaining term of about three years is replaced with forced labour; he is sent to a correctional center in Gremyachinsk.
August 2022: Forced labour is replaced with restricted freedom; he moves to Chusovoy.
October 2022: Наталья marries her long-term partner.
November 13, 2022: Киселев kills Наталья in Chusovoy.
About a week later: He is found and arrested.
2023: He is sentenced to 13 and a half years in a special-regime colony for murder and theft, followed by 18 months of restricted freedom; the victim's family contests the sentence without success.
May 2026: Kholod reports he is due for release in 2036.