In the autumn of 1977 five babies were taken from their prams, or from the arms of the adults minding them, in Moscow and in the town of Chekhov, in the Moscow Region. None of them lived. The man arrested for the killings in October of that year was Anatoly Biryukov, a fitter at a Moscow construction administration, a married man whose colleagues regarded him as a model worker, and the only son of Nikolai Biryukov, a lieutenant general and Hero of the Soviet Union.
He confessed to the five killings, was examined by forensic psychiatrists and found legally sane, and was sentenced to death. He was shot in February 1979. Lenta.ru, in a 2019 account of the case, gives the date as February 24, 1979.
Nothing about the killings appeared in the Soviet press at the time. The interior minister ordered the case kept secret, and its materials became public only in the late 1990s, according to a 2014 report by the Moscow city broadcaster Moscow 24. The story was told later by investigators who had worked on it, in two television documentaries and in Russian news accounts written decades afterward, and those tellings agree on the outline while differing on many details.
Anatoly Biryukov was born on February 18, 1939, in Chekhov, in the Moscow Region, according to Lenta.ru. Moscow 24 also gives Chekhov as his birthplace. News.ru, in a 2025 account, gives his birth year as 1939.
His father, Nikolai Biryukov, was a career officer who fought in the Civil War and in the Second World War, News.ru reported, and rose to lieutenant general. Life.ru, in a 2021 account, wrote that he commanded a division at Stalingrad and later a corps, and led a composite regiment in the Victory Parade in Moscow in June 1945. Life.ru listed his decorations as the Gold Star of a Hero of the Soviet Union, two Orders of Lenin, two Orders of Suvorov and four Orders of the Red Banner, along with the American Legion of Merit and honorary citizenship of several Soviet cities. Lenta.ru described him as a strict father and Anatoly as his only son.
As a boy Anatoly was badly scarred. The accounts give two explanations. Lenta.ru wrote that at about eight he took a cartridge from his father's ammunition box and tried to saw it open to get at the powder, and that it went off in his face; he later told people he had been scalded by a pot of boiling water. Life.ru and News.ru give both versions without choosing between them. News.ru says the burns reached his face, hands and body. Life.ru describes a scar on his left cheek.
Neighborhood children mocked his face, Lenta.ru wrote, and he withdrew from them. He did well at school, and his teachers liked him. News.ru describes a withdrawn and fearful boy with no friends, who was bullied at school after he came out of the hospital.
He did not follow his father into the army. He trained as a fitter (слесарь) and went to work for a construction enterprise in Moscow, where he was valued, according to Lenta.ru. Moscow 24 placed him at a construction administration and said his colleagues described him as a model worker with a good reputation. Life.ru wrote that co-workers knew him as quiet, modest and devoted to his family, and News.ru that acquaintances found him polite and kind.
He married and had children. Lenta.ru and Moscow 24 say two daughters; News.ru reports that other accounts give him a son instead.
Biryukov had come to police attention years before the killings, according to Lenta.ru, Life.ru and News.ru. In 1971, outside a children's clinic, he began to wheel away a pram with a baby inside while the mother was indoors for a moment. She raised the alarm, people nearby held him, and the police were called. He told them it had been a joke, meant to teach a careless mother a lesson. He was fined and released. News.ru says the fine was for petty hooliganism.
In 1972 he was caught again trying to take a baby from a pram. This time, Lenta.ru wrote, investigators accepted his explanation that he had wanted the pram, which was hard to buy at the time, and had not seen the child. What followed is disputed. One version is that he was sentenced to three years, or three and a half, for theft. Another is that he avoided a prison term, and Life.ru reports that some sources say he had no criminal record at all when he was arrested in 1977. News.ru attributes the 1971 and 1972 episodes to the authors of a Russian book on serial killers, Fenomen rossiiskikh man'yakov.
Lenta.ru wrote that his wife divorced him, deciding she would not tie her life to a man in trouble with the law. Moscow 24 gives a different picture: in its account he was a married man at the time of his arrest, and his wife was at home when the police came.
On September 16, 1977, in the Shchukino district of Moscow, a mother left her three-month-old daughter asleep in her pram for a couple of minutes, Life.ru wrote. When she came back, the pram was gone. The baby was found soon afterward. She had been killed.
The police did not at first see a stranger's crime. Moscow 24 reported that investigators suspected the girl's own parents, thinking they might have been drinking, until, within hours, the mother came to the police to report that her daughter had been taken from her pram in the street. Lenta.ru wrote that the investigators also noted the child had been well cared for and dressed in new clothes.
After his arrest, Biryukov told investigators that he had panicked when he heard a door bang somewhere nearby, according to Life.ru. Lenta.ru wrote that he said he had killed the girl out of fear that she would identify him, and that only later, back on the street, did he understand that a baby of three months could never have been a witness against him.
The Soviet interior minister, Nikolai Shchelokov, took personal charge of the case. Moscow 24 reported that he called an emergency meeting and ordered that nothing about the crimes reach the press. Vladimir Kalinichenko, an investigator with the USSR Prosecutor General's Office, told Moscow 24 that the aim was to avoid panic. News.ru wrote that the case was classified and was under Shchelokov's control. Life.ru reported that the minister also reported on the case to Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet leader, who followed it.
Lenta.ru argued in 2019 that the secrecy had a cost. Because nothing was published, Muscovites went on leaving prams with their babies unattended outside shops and clinics. News.ru, by contrast, wrote that rumors of a killer spread through the city and that the police warned residents not to leave prams and small children alone.
Three days after the first killing, on September 19, a mother went into a children's department store in Moscow and left her three-month-old daughter sleeping in a pram outside, according to Lenta.ru and Moscow 24. The baby was taken. News.ru wrote that the empty pram was found several metro stops away.
For weeks the family hoped. The girl was found dead about a month later, Lenta.ru wrote; Moscow 24 says about a month and a half. Life.ru dates the discovery to early October.
The third killing in Moscow is told in slightly different ways. In Lenta.ru's account, in October a mother left her six-month-old son for a moment in the arms of an elderly neighbor outside their building; a man snatched the boy and was gone before anyone could stop him. The child was found dead a few days later. Moscow 24 places this abduction in another district of the city, about a week after the first killing, and describes the woman holding the boy as his grandmother. News.ru dates it to early October and also calls her his grandmother. Life.ru describes infants of three to six months, boys and girls, taken in late September and early October, without separating the cases.
The investigators soon decided that one man was responsible. They assumed he would be someone with a history: a previous conviction for crimes against children, or a record of psychiatric illness. Moscow 24 reported that hundreds of men with past convictions or psychiatric problems were questioned. Lenta.ru wrote that the detectives went through the archives and questioned many suspects without finding the man they wanted, and that the whole Moscow police force was looking for him. Moscow 24 quoted the later judgment of psychologists that the assumption had been a fatal mistake: investigators were looking for a hardened criminal, not a respected worker with a family.
Investigators worked for two days at a stretch, Moscow 24 reported, and later counted the case among the largest in the history of the Moscow criminal investigation department. Armed patrols and volunteer squads were sent out across the city. Leonid Kanevsky said on the documentary series Sledstvie veli that thousands of plainclothes officers patrolled the streets and that police stopped anyone who looked suspicious, especially people carrying suitcases or large bags, according to News.ru.
Lenta.ru wrote that police officers and volunteer patrolmen began to check every man in Moscow who was seen walking with a pram or carrying a baby. Witnesses could say little about the man they wanted. He always pulled his cap down over his eyes, Lenta.ru wrote. The description Moscow 24 cites was of a man of about 30, in crumpled gray trousers, a checked shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a cap. News.ru reported that a composite portrait had been made after the first crimes but that witnesses had not been able to describe him in detail.
One day the police checked a young father who was waiting at a bus stop with his baby. He had nothing to do with the case. According to Lenta.ru, Biryukov saw the check, concluded that the city had become too dangerous for him, and moved to Chekhov.
Two more children died in Chekhov, girls who were both under a year old, according to Lenta.ru and News.ru. The accounts give no names, exact dates or circumstances for these two cases. Vladimir Kalinichenko, the former prosecutor's investigator, said the killer seems to have decided to change his ground, but that in the end he was committing his crimes close to where he lived, News.ru reported.
All five children were under six months old, Moscow 24 reported. Lenta.ru wrote that none of them had reached a year.
On October 21, 1977, outside a grocery store in Chekhov, a man looked around, saw no adult near a pram, and lifted out a sleeping four-month-old girl, according to Lenta.ru. Her mother had been watching the pram through the shop window. She ran out shouting for help, and several passers-by chased him. He dropped the baby and ran. She was unhurt. Moscow 24 gives the same date, the same age and the same outcome.
He got away into the woods, Lenta.ru wrote, but he had lost his cap in the chase, and this time his pursuers had seen his face. They described deep-set eyes, dark blond hair around a receding hairline, and scars. Life.ru wrote that several witnesses described a scar. News.ru reported that witnesses described a heavy-set man of about 40 with burn scars on his face, and that those scars helped lead to his arrest.
A detailed composite portrait was made the same day, Lenta.ru wrote, and it reached the construction enterprise where Biryukov worked. His colleagues recognized him, and he was arrested at home that day. Life.ru dates his identification as the fitter Anatoly Biryukov to October 24, 1977. Moscow 24 described the arrest as taking place when he came home from work, and wrote that an officer brought along the cap lost in Chekhov, which his wife identified as his.
News.ru gives the man arrested as a 38-year-old fitter at a local construction administration and reports that accounts of the arrest differ: one has him detained near the same shop in Chekhov, another at his workplace.
Lenta.ru wrote that for months his relatives and friends refused to believe that he had done what he was accused of.
Biryukov did not deny the killings. He described them to investigators in detail, Lenta.ru wrote, and said he had killed five babies in a month. Several witnesses identified him, News.ru reported.
He gave investigators an explanation once. Moscow 24 reported that he blamed a lack of warmth and affection in his marriage, and noted that this was the only time he spoke of a motive. Life.ru and News.ru wrote that he told investigators he had chosen infants because they could neither resist nor tell anyone what had happened.
Boris Shekhtman, a former criminal investigation inspector who took part in the search in 1977, was more doubtful about the total. "No one can say now how many killings of small children were on his conscience," he said, as quoted by News.ru.
Before trial Biryukov was sent for forensic psychiatric examination. Specialists at the Serbsky Institute in Moscow found him legally sane, Lenta.ru wrote, although they diagnosed a psychiatric disorder. Moscow 24 reported that a commission spent months studying his motives and that the forensic psychiatrists declared him sane. Life.ru and News.ru also report that he was found sane.
Nikolai Biryukov at first refused to believe that his only son could have done it, Lenta.ru wrote. He hired one of the best and most experienced defense lawyers available. After several court sessions in which the prosecution set out its evidence, the general could no longer bear it and publicly disowned his son. Moscow 24 reported that he renounced him in court. Lenta.ru wrote that he died two years later.
The trial was long. Moscow 24 reported that it lasted more than a year. Leonid Kanevsky said on Sledstvie veli that the proceedings were very hard and that ambulance crews were kept on duty outside the courthouse because parents of the children were taken ill during the hearings, according to News.ru.
The sentence was death. Lenta.ru wrote that the verdict was expected and that the defense lawyer could do nothing to change it. The name of the court, the precise charges and the date of the verdict have not been reported.
After sentencing Biryukov tried to kill himself, several times according to Lenta.ru. When that failed, he began writing petitions for clemency to every authority he could, up to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. All of them were rejected, Lenta.ru wrote.
Biryukov was shot in February 1979. Lenta.ru gives the date as February 24, 1979, and wrote that he had only just marked his 40th birthday in the detention facility. Moscow 24 and Life.ru also give February 1979. Moscow 24 gave his age at execution as 35. News.ru, in its 2025 account, dates the execution to February 1978.
The Soviet press carried nothing about the killings. Moscow 24 noted in 2014 that the press of the time, under state control, did not report crimes of this kind at all, and that the word for a serial offender was not in official use. The materials of the case were made public in the late 1990s, Moscow 24 reported.
The case later became the subject of two television documentaries. Moscow 24 reported that the channel Moskva Doverie made a film about it for its series Bez sroka davnosti, and Leonid Kanevsky told the story in an episode of Sledstvie veli.
The names of the five children have not been made public.
The case was kept out of the press at the time, and the later accounts disagree on several points.
The number of victims. Every account gives five children killed, three in Moscow and two in Chekhov, and that is the number he confessed to. Boris Shekhtman, who took part in the search, said in later years that no one can say how many children he killed, according to News.ru. No other killings have been publicly attributed to him.
His age and birthplace. Lenta.ru gives his birth date as February 18, 1939, and says he had just turned 40 when he was shot; News.ru describes him as 38 at his arrest. Moscow 24 gave his age at execution as 35.
The execution date. Lenta.ru gives February 24, 1979; Moscow 24 and Life.ru give February 1979. News.ru's date of February 1978 falls before the end of a trial that, by Moscow 24's account, lasted more than a year.
The earlier episodes. The accounts agree that he was caught trying to take a pram with a baby in 1971 and fined, and caught again in 1972. They disagree on whether the second episode brought a prison sentence of three or three and a half years, or no conviction at all.
His family. Lenta.ru and Moscow 24 give him two daughters; other accounts cited by News.ru give a son. Lenta.ru says his wife divorced him; Moscow 24 has her at home at his arrest, identifying his cap.
The arrest. Lenta.ru says he was arrested at home on the day the composite portrait reached his workplace; Moscow 24 says officers came when he returned from work; News.ru reports a version in which he was detained in Chekhov. Life.ru dates his identification to October 24, 1977.
The third Moscow abduction. Lenta.ru dates it to October and describes the woman holding the boy as a neighbor; Moscow 24 places it about a week after the first killing and calls her his grandmother.
The secrecy. Lenta.ru says Muscovites were never warned; News.ru says the police warned residents not to leave prams unattended.
February 18, 1939: Anatoly Biryukov is born in Chekhov, Moscow Region (Lenta.ru).
June 1945: his father, Nikolai Biryukov, leads a composite regiment in the Victory Parade in Moscow (Life.ru).
Childhood: he is scarred in an accident at home, at about eight by Lenta.ru's account.
1971: caught trying to wheel away a pram with a baby inside outside a children's clinic; fined and released.
1972: caught a second time; the outcome is disputed.
September 16, 1977: a three-month-old girl is taken from her pram in the Shchukino district of Moscow and killed.
September 19, 1977: a three-month-old girl is taken from her pram outside a children's store in Moscow; she is found dead weeks later.
September to October 1977: a six-month-old boy is snatched in Moscow from the elderly woman holding him and is found dead days later.
October 1977: two baby girls are taken and killed in Chekhov.
October 21, 1977: a four-month-old girl is taken from her pram outside a grocery store in Chekhov; her mother raises the alarm, the man drops her unhurt and escapes, losing his cap.
October 1977: Biryukov is identified from a composite portrait and arrested; Life.ru dates his identification to October 24.
Before and during the trial: forensic psychiatrists at the Serbsky Institute find him sane; his father disowns him in court.
After the verdict: he is sentenced to death, attempts suicide, and petitions for clemency; all petitions are rejected.
February 24, 1979: executed by shooting (Lenta.ru).
Late 1990s: the case materials are made public (Moscow 24).
April 11, 2014: Moscow 24 publishes its account of the case.
October 21, 2019: Lenta.ru publishes its account.