Anatoly Slivko spent about twenty years as one of the most admired men in Nevinnomyssk, an industrial town in Stavropol Krai in southern Russia. He worked at the town's chemical plant, led a children's tourist club that took boys on hikes through Stavropol Krai, and was rewarded by the Soviet state for it: he was named an Honored Teacher of the Russian republic, elected a deputy of the city council and written up in the national children's press. During those same years boys from the town disappeared. In 1986 a Soviet court found that he had killed seven of them, between 1964 and 1985, and sentenced him to death. He was shot in September 1989.
The case came to light only because an assistant city prosecutor, Tamara Langueva, took over the file on a missing 13-year-old in the summer of 1985 and noticed what earlier investigators had not: that nearly all the boys who had gone missing in Nevinnomyssk over the previous years had belonged to the same club. Slivko was arrested on December 28, 1985, his 47th birthday.
Much of what is known about the case in print comes from Russian journalism written decades later, drawing on former club members, investigators and a former military prosecutor who studied the case file. The accounts agree on the outline and differ on a number of details, including how many boys he killed, who the first was and in what order the killings came.
Slivko was born on December 28, 1938, in Izberbash, a town in what was then the Dagestan ASSR, according to Lenta.ru. Novaya Gazeta Europe gives his patronymic as Yemelianovich (Емельянович) and his birth year as 1938. Both outlets describe a difficult start. Novaya Gazeta Europe reports that a hard birth left him with headaches for the rest of his life and that he was a frail child who slept badly, ate little and was shy and awkward; Lenta.ru says his parents argued constantly and that he grew up quiet, sickly and withdrawn, with few friends. NEWS.ru, writing in 2025, reports the same lifelong headaches.
His parents bred rabbits, according to Novaya Gazeta Europe, and in the 1950s the family moved to Nevinnomyssk in Stavropol Krai. Novaya Gazeta Europe reports that his favorite childhood game was "partisans," in which he played the part of a young Pioneer hero executed by the enemy, a theme that would return in his later crimes.
In 1959 he was called up, and he served in the Pacific Fleet, Novaya Gazeta Europe says; Lenta.ru describes his service more generally as army service in the Soviet Far East. He joined his parents in Nevinnomyssk after his discharge.
Slivko later dated the start of his compulsion to a road accident he witnessed in 1961. The accounts agree on the core of the story: a motorcyclist drove into a group of Pioneers, and one boy was killed. Novaya Gazeta Europe and Lenta.ru both place the accident in the Far East, while he was still in service, shortly before his demobilization; Lenta.ru gives his age at the time as 23. NEWS.ru describes the boy who died as a 13-year-old schoolboy. Novaya Gazeta Europe attributes the account of its effect on him to Sergei Afanasyev, a lawyer and former military prosecutor who studied the case file: by Slivko's own later description, the scene stayed with him for the rest of his life and had awakened a sexual compulsion in him.
Before he left the service, his commanders gave him a Kvarts movie camera as a reward, according to Novaya Gazeta Europe. The paper traces his lasting interest in filming to that gift. Lenta.ru also says he filmed with a camera he had received in the army.
Back in Nevinnomyssk he studied at a chemical technology college and went to work as an operator at the town's nitrogen fertilizer plant, Azot, where Novaya Gazeta Europe says he was considered an exemplary worker. NEWS.ru adds that he held the Soviet title of shock worker of communist labor. He never obtained a higher education.
Alongside his job he took up work with children. From 1963, according to Lenta.ru, he led informal school nature groups and then hiking trips as a Pioneer leader. Novaya Gazeta Europe says he began as a volunteer Pioneer leader at a school and then ran a tourist club, Romantik, without pay. In 1966, Lenta.ru reports, the city gave Romantik a small building of its own.
The club's first home burned. Lenta.ru dates the fire to 1968 and says the club then moved to new premises and took a new name; Novaya Gazeta Europe places the fire and the move to a better building, provided by the city, in 1966. Either way, the club that emerged was called Chergid, an acronym for the Russian words for "through rivers, mountains and valleys."
Chergid became one of the most successful children's organizations in the region. Novaya Gazeta Europe says Slivko's multi-day hikes through Stavropol Krai drew about a thousand people a year at the height of the Soviet tourism boom, and that former members still remember them fondly; parents saw him as someone who kept boys off the streets and away from crime. Lenta.ru says the club grew to more than 200 members, ran military-patriotic programs and hikes, took trips abroad to Bulgaria and Japan, and was well funded by the local authorities. Members earned points under a reward system, and they called their leader by the affectionate short form Tolik.
He also made films with club members. Lenta.ru says he filmed them with his army camera, and that parents trusted him and encouraged their sons to take part. NEWS.ru describes him as a master of sport in mountain tourism and says the Soviet press treated his clubs as model institutions.
The honors followed. Novaya Gazeta Europe reports that in 1977, despite having no teaching qualifications, he was named an Honored Teacher of the RSFSR for his work with children outside school, that he was elected a deputy of the Nevinnomyssk city council, and that Pionerskaya Pravda and national radio covered his work. He was a member of the Communist Party (NEWS.ru). Lenta.ru reports that he received the Honored Teacher title with the support of the town's party secretary.
Slivko married a woman who worked at the same chemical plant, according to Lenta.ru. Novaya Gazeta Europe dates the marriage to 1967 and says their two sons were born in 1971 and 1975. Lenta.ru describes the marriage as one in which he treated his wife with respect but in which there was little physical intimacy; in time he moved into a separate room. Novaya Gazeta Europe, again citing Afanasyev, says he had hoped marriage would make him "like everyone else," and that it did not.
According to Novaya Gazeta Europe, Slivko attended a seminar in Rostov-on-Don in 1962 at which a lecturer spoke about memory loss after trauma, and afterward he began to stage what he called experiments with boys, filming them. At least 40 teenagers went through such sessions, the paper says. Lenta.ru gives the number of boys who survived them as 43. NEWS.ru reports estimates ranging from more than 40 to about 100, and says the boys were told they were taking part in filming or in "endurance tests," that some signed statements saying they had taken part willingly, and that they were paid 25 rubles.
The sessions were presented as film work. NEWS.ru says boys were offered parts in films about Pioneers and fairy-tale characters; Novaya Gazeta Europe says Slivko told the boys he chose that they had been selected for a secret experiment, and that loyalty to him kept them silent. Survivors remembered little, or were afraid to tell adults, NEWS.ru reports, and those who did speak were often not believed. Lenta.ru describes one boy whose family was told that an insect bite explained a mark he came home with, and a friend whose parents did not believe her when she told them what she had heard.
He kept a record. Investigators later found that he had filmed and photographed his crimes and had kept a diary and notebooks for years, according to NEWS.ru.
Novaya Gazeta Europe reports that the boys he chose were usually from troubled or poor homes, boys no one would miss quickly. It also says that the police in those years avoided alarming the public and that most disappearances of children were kept quiet.
A Soviet court found in 1986 that Slivko had killed seven boys. The published accounts do not agree on all their names, on the order in which they died, or on who was first. Novaya Gazeta Europe names none of the boys in full; Lenta.ru names five; NEWS.ru lists seven by date and age without names. Because the lists come from different sources and do not always match, a dated, unnamed boy in one list cannot be safely paired with a named boy in another.
Lenta.ru, in 2019, tells it this way. The first boy investigators counted was Kolya Dobryshev, 15, who disappeared in Nevinnomyssk in 1964; his family was in difficulty, and the search for him found nothing. Lenta.ru says Slivko invited him to the first of his "experiments" and that the boy died during it. When Slivko first confessed, he did not mention Dobryshev and named another boy as his first victim.
In 1973, Lenta.ru continues, Sasha Nesmeyanov, 15, a member of Chergid, left home after a quarrel and was never seen again. His mother spent several years searching for him herself and traveled to several cities, and his photograph was shown on national television. A prison inmate confessed falsely, Lenta.ru says. Slivko himself gave investigators a photograph of the boy and said he knew nothing.
In 1975 Andrei Pogosyan, 11, disappeared on his way to what he had told his family was a film shoot. His parents had not asked who the "director" was, Lenta.ru says. The case was closed.
In 1980 Seryozha Fatnev, 13, was killed. His parents went to the club leader as soon as their son went missing, and Slivko spoke with them, Lenta.ru reports, while knowing that they would never see their son alive again.
Lenta.ru gives the last and seventh victim as Seryozha Pavlov, 13, who disappeared in July 1985. Two of the seven are not named in the account.
NEWS.ru, in 2025, lists the seven killings by date without naming the boys: a boy whose name is still unknown, in June 1964; a 15-year-old regarded as difficult, who often ran away from home and so was not searched for at once, a few months later; a schoolboy in May 1965; a 15-year-old who had recently left Chergid, in November 1973, whose mother wrote to many authorities and tried to reach the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, and whose case was shelved as unsolved, with Slivko taking part in the search; a 14-year-old in May 1975, whose mother told the police he had gone to a "shoot," a lead that was not followed; a 12-year-old in April 1980; and a 13-year-old in July 1985.
Novaya Gazeta Europe, in 2026, says the first boy Slivko killed, in 1964, was a 15-year-old homeless boy he had lured with talk of a scientific experiment; Slivko later claimed the death was an accident, and the boy's body was never found. For years afterward, the paper says, he waited in fear of a discovery that did not come. It also mentions a 15-year-old killed in 1973 and gives the last boy as Sergei P., 13.
The three accounts therefore differ on the first killing. Lenta.ru names Kolya Dobryshev, 15, as the first victim in 1964; NEWS.ru gives the first as an unnamed boy in June 1964 and counts a 15-year-old a few months later as a separate killing; Novaya Gazeta Europe describes the first as an unnamed 15-year-old homeless boy. They also differ on the ages of some boys, and NEWS.ru counts a killing in May 1965 that Lenta.ru does not describe. Lenta.ru gives Andrei Pogosyan's age as 11; NEWS.ru gives the boy who disappeared in May 1975 as 14.
Novaya Gazeta Europe adds that about 50 boys disappeared in the area between 1964 and the autumn of 1985, and that only seven murders were proven. Those other disappearances were never tried against Slivko, and no court found that he was responsible for them.
Sergei Pavlov was 13. He left home early on July 23, 1985, at seven in the morning, saying he was going fishing, according to Novaya Gazeta Europe, which identifies him as Sergei P. The day before, he had told a friend about an "experiment." Lenta.ru says he did not take his fishing rods that day.
His mother and sister reported him missing to the police, Lenta.ru says. At first the police suspected his mother and considered whether he had drowned. Then a neighbor told them that Sergei had said Slivko was going to photograph him for a magazine. NEWS.ru similarly reports that while his parents told investigators he had gone fishing, the boy had told a neighbor he was going to a shoot for the club's magazine.
When investigators went to Chergid, Lenta.ru says, Slivko was away, having taken club members to the sea. Lenta.ru also reports that he made an attempt on his own life during that trip.
The investigator handling Sergei Pavlov's disappearance went on leave and passed the case to an assistant prosecutor, Tamara Langueva, according to Lenta.ru. NEWS.ru gives her age at the time as 33 and her post as assistant prosecutor of Nevinnomyssk. It was thanks to her, Lenta.ru says, that the investigation finally moved.
With Slivko away, she began questioning the members of the club one by one. They were reluctant, Lenta.ru says, but they told her something about the films their leader made. Novaya Gazeta Europe describes the steps she took: she went back through the missing-persons files of recent years and found that most of the missing boys had attended Chergid; she questioned the teenagers carefully; and one boy told her he had been put through one of the staged experiments. Others gave similar accounts. NEWS.ru says some boys brought her others who had been through the same thing, five in all, and that she found that nearly all the children who had gone missing in the town over the previous decade had been members of the club. In a later television interview, NEWS.ru reports, she recalled that what the boys told her kept her asking questions.
The case was not easy to bring. Slivko was a city deputy and a decorated educator. Novaya Gazeta Europe says the evidence of the boys was enough for the city prosecutor to sign a warrant to search the club and Slivko's apartment.
Langueva did not speak publicly about the case for nearly thirty years. In October 2013 she appeared on the Channel One program Naedine so vsemi in what the broadcaster described as her first interview in 30 years.
On December 28, 1985, his birthday, police searched Chergid while Slivko was holding a session there, according to Novaya Gazeta Europe. He went pale but kept his composure. Behind a door in the club's electrical room, officers found hundreds of meters of film. NEWS.ru says investigators also found shoes belonging to missing boys, photographs, and a diary he had kept for years. Lenta.ru reports that the material seized was so extensive that it filled a truck, and that it included the belongings of victims.
He was arrested the same day. Lenta.ru says he protested that he was a city council deputy and a master of sport, threatened the officers with his political connections and told them they would regret it.
Rumors spread through the town that he had been killing for about 21 years, Novaya Gazeta Europe reports.
At first, according to Lenta.ru, Slivko said almost nothing. Then he began to talk. He named Sasha Nesmeyanov as his first victim and left out Kolya Dobryshev. When Langueva asked him how many there had been, he admitted that there had been many.
In February 1986, NEWS.ru reports, he confessed to all the killings and showed investigators the places connected with them. Novaya Gazeta Europe says he confessed to seven murders and showed investigators where the bodies were buried.
Novaya Gazeta Europe reports Afanasyev's view that Slivko admitted only the killings of boys who could be identified from his films, so the full number may never be known. According to Afanasyev, investigators did not press further because their superiors wanted quick results and seven proven murders were enough for a death sentence.
Lenta.ru reports that Slivko twice tried to take his own life in custody and failed both times. In a letter written from jail, he claimed his condition was congenital.
A forensic psychiatric examination found him sane, according to NEWS.ru and Lenta.ru. Lenta.ru says the experts also found several serious disorders.
The trial began in June 1986, according to Lenta.ru. Novaya Gazeta Europe says it was held behind closed doors and that the films were shown in court; several relatives of the victims fainted. NEWS.ru reports that some of the judges fainted during the proceedings and that ambulances waited outside the courthouse. Lenta.ru says that before the films were shown, Slivko asked that as few people as possible be made to watch them, saying, in its account, that he was afraid of what it would mean for those who saw them.
He was found guilty of the seven murders and sentenced to death by shooting. Novaya Gazeta Europe says the verdict came about six months after the arrest; NEWS.ru dates it to July 1986. BFM.ru gives the year of the sentence as 1986. The name of the court and the full list of charges were not reported.
After the verdict he lived for three more years, Lenta.ru says.
Issa Kostoyev, a senior investigator for especially important cases who also worked on the case of Andrei Chikatilo, went to see Slivko before his execution. NEWS.ru reports that he presented himself as a psychiatrist in order to learn how Slivko thought and behaved, and that Slivko, believing he was talking to a doctor and that cooperation might help him, talked openly and wrote out an account of his tendencies in a notebook. Novaya Gazeta Europe says Kostoyev visited him only hours before the execution, hoping for insight into the mind of such a killer, and that nothing useful came of it. Slivko read the file and said, in the paper's account, that such a person was impossible to pin down, and that he knew it from his own experience.
Lenta.ru says that Slivko advised investigators in the Chikatilo case.
Slivko was executed by shooting in September 1989. NEWS.ru, Life.ru and BFM.ru give the place as the prison in Novocherkassk, in Rostov Oblast, and NEWS.ru and Life.ru give the date as September 16, 1989.
His wife left the town after his first interrogation. Lenta.ru says police, fearing reprisals from local people, took her and their sons away by night train. Novaya Gazeta Europe also reports that the family was moved out because residents wanted revenge. From jail, according to Lenta.ru, Slivko wrote his wife a farewell letter in which he asked her to watch their sons closely as they grew up.
The town party secretary who had supported him and pressed for his Honored Teacher title took her own life after the verdict, according to Novaya Gazeta Europe and Lenta.ru. Novaya Gazeta Europe says the town's police chief was dismissed for failing to act on the disappearances of children.
Chergid did not survive. Novaya Gazeta Europe reports that angry residents set fire to the club and everything in it, while police nearby did nothing to stop them. Lenta.ru says the club ceased to exist after his arrest and that its building now houses a municipal center for children's and youth tourism.
Afanasyev, the former military prosecutor, later wrote a dissertation built largely on the case, according to Novaya Gazeta Europe. He had access to classified material, and the dissertation was defended behind closed doors and stamped for official use only. He argues that the Soviet authorities concealed crimes of this kind and lacked the theory and methods to investigate them, and that this may have contributed to wrongful convictions.
Russian media gave Slivko nicknames that are still used: Lenta.ru and Life.ru report that he was called the "Honored Tormentor," a play on his Honored Teacher title, and the "Pioneer leader ripper." Novaya Gazeta Europe says his name is still remembered in Nevinnomyssk.
The case returned to the news in November 2025, when police in Yekaterinburg detained a music teacher who, according to BFM.ru, citing the local site E1.ru, had identified himself with Slivko and used his name online. BFM.ru reported that a criminal case had been opened against the teacher for involving minors in actions dangerous to their lives; Life.ru reported that he faced up to three years. He is accused, not convicted.
The number of victims. The court found seven murders proven. Novaya Gazeta Europe reports that about 50 boys disappeared in the area over two decades and, citing Afanasyev, that Slivko admitted only those killings that could be proven from his films. Those other cases were never tried, and no court attributed them to him.
The first killing. Lenta.ru names Kolya Dobryshev, 15, in 1964; NEWS.ru lists an unnamed boy in June 1964 and a separate 15-year-old a few months later; Novaya Gazeta Europe describes the first as an unnamed 15-year-old homeless boy. Slivko himself, in his first statements, named Sasha Nesmeyanov as the first (Lenta.ru).
The order and names of the seven. Only five of the boys have been named in the reports. NEWS.ru counts a killing in May 1965 that Lenta.ru does not describe. Ages differ between accounts for some boys.
The founding of Chergid. Lenta.ru dates the fire that ended Romantik to 1968; Novaya Gazeta Europe dates the fire and the move to 1966.
The date of the verdict. Lenta.ru dates the start of the trial to June 1986; NEWS.ru dates the verdict to July 1986; Novaya Gazeta Europe says only that it came about six months after the arrest.
The fate of the club building. Novaya Gazeta Europe says residents burned it; Lenta.ru says its building now houses a tourism center for children. Both may be true of different moments or different premises; the reports do not say.
December 28, 1938: born in Izberbash, Dagestan ASSR.
1950s: family moves to Nevinnomyssk, Stavropol Krai.
1959: called up; serves in the Pacific Fleet (Novaya Gazeta Europe).
1961: witnesses a road accident in which a Pioneer is killed.
1962: attends a seminar in Rostov-on-Don (Novaya Gazeta Europe).
1963: begins leading school groups and hikes; first staged "experiment" with a boy (Novaya Gazeta Europe).
1964: first killing; Lenta.ru names Kolya Dobryshev, 15.
1966: Romantik is given its own building (Lenta.ru); fire and move dated 1966 (Novaya Gazeta Europe) or 1968 (Lenta.ru); the club becomes Chergid.
1967: marries (Novaya Gazeta Europe).
1971 and 1975: his sons are born.
1973: Sasha Nesmeyanov, 15, disappears (Lenta.ru).
1975: Andrei Pogosyan, 11, disappears (Lenta.ru).
1977: named Honored Teacher of the RSFSR; elected a deputy of the city council.
1980: Seryozha Fatnev, 13, is killed (Lenta.ru).
July 23, 1985: Sergei Pavlov, 13, leaves home and does not return.
Summer and autumn 1985: Tamara Langueva takes over the case and links the disappearances to Chergid.
December 28, 1985: club searched; Slivko arrested on his 47th birthday.
February 1986: confesses and shows investigators the places connected with the killings (NEWS.ru).
June 1986: trial begins (Lenta.ru), behind closed doors.
Mid-1986: sentenced to death by shooting (July 1986, per NEWS.ru).
1989: interviewed by Issa Kostoyev.
September 16, 1989: executed at Novocherkassk prison (NEWS.ru, Life.ru).
October 29, 2013: Tamara Langueva gives her first interview in 30 years, on Channel One.
November 2025: a Yekaterinburg teacher who identified with Slivko is detained.