Andrey Yezhov was a 53-year-old plumber in Kashira, in Moscow Oblast, when investigators detained him in June 2020. Within days he had admitted to a series of killings of women in Kashira and the neighboring Stupino district stretching back to 2010, according to the Moscow regional directorate of the Investigative Committee of Russia and the press reports that followed. Investigators linked him by DNA to several of the cases, and two girls who had survived attacks earlier that year were among the people whose cases were tied to him. He was remanded in custody and cooperated with investigators. On the morning of July 6, 2020, less than four weeks after his arrest, he was found dead in his cell at a pretrial detention center in Noginsk. No court heard the evidence against him, and none of the killings has been the subject of a verdict.
The Russian press called him the Kashira maniac. The reports of June and July 2020 give dates, ages and totals for the killings attributed to him that often disagree.
Moskovsky Komsomolets, the Moscow daily, published a portrait of his early life in July 2020, after his death. According to that report, Yezhov was born in the village of Sloboda in the Smolensk region. His mother worked as a milkmaid and his father as a tractor driver; both had died several years before 2020. He had an older brother, who also later moved to the Moscow region, and the paper wrote that the brothers had not been mistreated as children. Yezhov finished eight grades of school and went on to a vocational school, where he qualified as a fitter and tractor driver. He did his military service in the Strategic Missile Forces.
After the army he worked as a boiler operator at a dairy plant and then as a driver on a state farm. With his first partner, a slightly older woman who worked on the farm, he moved to the Kashira district of Moscow Oblast, where he again worked as a driver. He later left her for a woman he met at a family celebration, a friend of his brother's wife, and lived with her as his wife. Moskovsky Komsomolets reported that the couple divorced in 2017 because of his drinking and because he hid his wages, but went on sharing an apartment as strangers, in separate rooms. Other reports, published in June 2020, described the marriage differently. Izvestia wrote that he had been married for more than 30 years, and the 360 channel described him as a father and grandfather. Life.ru reported that he had married at 22 and that his wife worked as a psychologist at a children's center.
At the time of the 2013 cases attributed to him, Moskovsky Komsomolets wrote, he was working as a driver at Domodedovo airport; the television channel Tsargrad also reported that he had once worked at an airport. By 2020 he worked as a plumber at a local housing maintenance office, according to the Investigative Committee's regional directorate as reported by Moskva 24; Life.ru said he worked in an emergency repair crew that also took night calls. The 360 channel's news site reported that colleagues described him as quiet and calm, and that neighbors and acquaintances saw him as a model family man and a good neighbor, while Tsargrad found neighbors who called him withdrawn and unfriendly but otherwise unremarkable. At work, according to Moskovsky Komsomolets, colleagues called him "Yozhik", the hedgehog, a joke on his surname.
He had no criminal record. Investigators told the press that his fingerprints were not in police files and that he had never been prosecuted. Stanislav Garkavy, the major of justice who led the investigating team, told Moskovsky Komsomolets that Yezhov had not been fingerprinted during his army service, so there was nothing on file to match.
Investigators described a pattern rather than a signature. Izvestia, in a long report in late June 2020 that the Investigative Committee reposted on its own website, quoted investigators as saying the man had no fixed method: he went out at night, got into homes where women were asleep, and strangled them. He did not use his job to get into homes and did not attack in daylight, the paper reported. In his own statements, quoted by Life.ru and the 360 channel, he said he chose the women at random and that the urge to kill came over him periodically, "once every six months, once a year."
No court tested any of the dates and details reported in June and July 2020.
February 2010, Kashira. Investigators treated the killing of a 79-year-old pensioner in Kashira as the first in the series. Izvestia put it in 2010, and Moskovsky Komsomolets dated it to February 2010. According to Moskovsky Komsomolets, the police had no witnesses and no camera footage, and a tracking dog lost the trail. Traces left at the scene went into the national DNA database, but they matched no one on file.
April 2013, Kashira and Stupino. The reports disagree most about 2013. Moskovsky Komsomolets wrote that in April 2013 he killed a 95-year-old woman and took six medals that had belonged to her late husband, and that on the same night he attacked a woman of about 60 in the Stupino district; the paper did not say plainly whether she survived. Izvestia reported that in 2013 an elderly woman survived his attack but died in the hospital three weeks later, and that he took a decoration that had belonged to her late husband. Life.ru also described a 2013 case in which an elderly woman died about two weeks after the attack, of heart failure. Tsargrad reported that he kept a medal that had belonged to one victim's late husband.
2015, Kashira district. Moskovsky Komsomolets put the killing of a woman aged between 35 and 40 in the autumn of 2015. Tsargrad also dated it to 2015, gave her age as about 40, and wrote that the killing followed her refusal of him.
Investigators told Izvestia that no crimes were known from 2015 until 2019. Moskovsky Komsomolets attributed the gaps to fear of being caught, followed by a sense that he would not be punished.
Autumn 2019, Kashira. Two elderly women were killed a short time apart in Kashira in the autumn of 2019. He admitted these two cases on June 26, 2020, after his first confessions. Rambler News, reporting the Investigative Committee's statement that day, gave their ages as 69 and 79. Izvestia reported that the two cases dated from September and October 2019 and that the women were born in 1940 and 1950. Moskovsky Komsomolets gave them as a 70-year-old woman killed in November and a 75-year-old killed in December, both living on the same street.
January 3, 2020, Kashira district. On the night of January 2 to 3, 2020, a 10-year-old girl survived an attack in the Kashira district, according to Life.ru and Tsargrad. Suspicion fell at first on men she knew until DNA tests cleared them, Tsargrad reported. Investigators later matched genetic material from this case to Yezhov.
February 2020. A 14-year-old girl survived an attack, and no one was caught at the time, the 360 channel reported, citing Lenta.ru.
June 8, 2020, Kashira. The last case was the killing of an 88-year-old woman in Kashira on the night of June 8, 2020. According to Moskovsky Komsomolets and Life.ru, he took her savings books and other papers and tried to carry off an old television, which was too heavy, so he left it behind.
The women whose deaths were attributed to Yezhov were not named in the reports. What is known about them is their age, their town and, for some, the season in which they died. Most were pensioners. One was a widow whose husband's medals were among the things taken from her home. Another, the woman of about 40, was younger than the others and, by the reports, had met him by chance.
Investigators said the ages of the people he attacked ran from 10 to 88; Tsargrad gave the upper figure as 89, and Moskovsky Komsomolets reported a victim of 95. The press often stressed the range itself. Izvestia wrote that he attacked a 10-year-old girl and women in their eighties alike, which made the series hard to see as one man's work.
For a decade the cases sat in separate files. Investigators had DNA from several of the scenes, and Moskovsky Komsomolets reported that the profiles were stored in the federal genomic database and occasionally matched one another, but without a name they led nowhere. Stanislav Garkavy told the paper that the area had no surveillance cameras in the early years and that no fingerprints were on file. Investigators checked railway workers who had done repair work in the area between 2010 and 2020 and found no match. About 50 men gave mouth swabs for comparison, and, according to Moskovsky Komsomolets, investigators had been preparing to check all the men of the Kashira district before the arrest.
The 2020 attacks on the two girls renewed the search. The Moscow regional directorate of the Investigative Committee said, as reported by Moskva 24 on June 12, 2020, that investigators and police had worked through a large circle of people, studied a large volume of video, and carried out technical analysis of phones and other devices.
The killing of June 8 broke the case. Police reviewing camera footage from near the woman's home saw a man throw papers into the grass and into a trash container. The papers turned out to be the dead woman's documents and savings book. An employee of the management company recognized the man in the footage, Moskovsky Komsomolets reported, and said: "This is our Yozhik." Life.ru reported that the police identified Yezhov on June 10, 2020.
Moskva 24 reported the detention on June 12, and Mediazona wrote that he had been detained the day before his court hearing on June 13.
When his DNA was compared with the stored profiles, it matched genetic material from other cases. Moskva 24 and Mediazona, citing the regional directorate, reported that he was first detained on suspicion of three killings of women, in 2013, 2015 and 2020, and of the January 2020 attack on the 10-year-old girl. Life.ru reported DNA matches at four scenes.
Yezhov confessed during questioning, Moskva 24 reported, citing the regional directorate. By June 13, Mediazona reported, he had confessed to seven killings. Life.ru reported that the Investigative Committee published a video of his statements, and described his manner in it as calm and without emotion.
On June 13, 2020, a court in Moscow Oblast ordered him held in pretrial detention, Mediazona reported.
He went on talking. Izvestia reported that he was cooperating and confessing in stages, which investigators believed was a way of drawing out the inquiry and of being taken out of the detention center for investigative trips. On June 26 the regional directorate announced that he had admitted two more killings, of the two elderly women in Kashira in the autumn of 2019. According to Rambler News, which reported the directorate's statement, investigators had ordered forensic, genetic, biological, trace and ballistic examinations, were checking him against other unsolved cases, and planned to send him for a combined psychological, sexological and psychiatric examination.
By late July, Moskovsky Komsomolets wrote, investigators counted nine episodes in all.
Izvestia reported that he faced life imprisonment if convicted, and that if he were found legally insane, he would be sent instead for compulsory treatment in a special hospital.
Yezhov's own explanations come from his statements to investigators as reported by the press. Life.ru quoted him as saying that he killed to satisfy a desire that arose periodically, "once every six months, once a year." Moskovsky Komsomolets quoted him as saying he had come to like it and reported that he felt no remorse. Moskovsky Komsomolets also wrote that he had sexual insecurities and that his marriage had cooled.
The psychiatrist Olga Bukhanovskaya, daughter of Alexander Bukhanovsky, who worked on the case of Andrei Chikatilo, told Tsargrad that seven or nine victims over ten years was probably an undercount, that the gaps between the known cases suggested information he was holding back, and that the 2010 start date in his testimony might be wrong. She expected him to disclose cases in installments. She also said the comparisons the press was making with Chikatilo were not accurate.
Izvestia wrote that his wife believed his nighttime absences were emergency calls for the repair crew. Moskovsky Komsomolets reported that at first she did not believe the police, and that after his death she tried to raise money for his funeral and was largely turned down.
In Kashira, reporters found residents who knew him as an ordinary man from the housing office. Much of the coverage turned on the contrast between that reputation and the accusations, from Izvestia's headline about an exemplary family man to the 360 channel's report on the "positive neighbor."
Yezhov was held at pretrial detention center No. 11 in Noginsk. Sergei Leonov, chairman of the Public Monitoring Commission of Moscow Oblast, told Moskovsky Komsomolets that Yezhov was kept alone in a cell built for four, which he described as standard practice, and that the cell had video surveillance. Members of the commission had visited him at the request of the regional prison service and the detention center, and had brought a priest; Yezhov was withdrawn and answered in single words. Leonov said the commission had noted in its report that he needed special attention and might attempt suicide, and that a psychologist had then worked with him.
He was found dead early on the morning of Monday, July 6, 2020. Leonov told Moskovsky Komsomolets it happened at about 4 a.m., that a guard saw it on the video monitor and raised the alarm, and that by the time staff reached the cell it was too late. Several notes were found near him asking that no one be blamed for his death. Mediazona, citing the regional directorate of the Investigative Committee, reported that preliminary findings pointed to mechanical asphyxia and that the directorate had begun a check into possible negligence by the detention center's staff.
Later in July, Moskovsky Komsomolets described the official version as suicide. It reported that in the days before his death he had told visiting rights advocates how much time he believed he had left.
Death ended the prospect of a trial in the ordinary way. Moskovsky Komsomolets reported in late July 2020 that investigators intended to complete the case and take it to court. The outcome of that case, and of the check into the detention center staff, was not reported.
No court tested any of the cases. Every killing in the series rests on investigators' statements, Yezhov's own admissions, and forensic work that was still under way when he died. Several points remain open in the reporting.
The number of killings. Reports in mid-June 2020 put the confessed total at seven. The two autumn 2019 killings admitted on June 26 raised the reported total, and Moskovsky Komsomolets later counted nine episodes. Olga Bukhanovskaya suggested there could be more.
The dates and ages. The 2013 cases appear in different forms: a 95-year-old and a woman of about 60 on one night (Moskovsky Komsomolets); an elderly woman who died weeks after the attack (Izvestia and Life.ru). The autumn 2019 victims are given as 69 and 79, as born in 1940 and 1950, and as 70 and 75.
The date of his detention. Life.ru reported that he was identified on June 10, 2020, and Moskva 24 reported the detention on June 12; the court remand was on June 13.
His marriage. Moskovsky Komsomolets reported a divorce in 2017; Izvestia wrote that he had been married for more than 30 years.
The cause of death. The preliminary finding was mechanical asphyxia and the official version suicide. The result of the check into the detention center staff was not reported.
The nickname. The press called him the Kashira maniac and, in some reports, compared him with Chikatilo; the psychiatrist quoted by Tsargrad rejected the comparison.
Birth (date not reported): Andrey Yezhov is born in the village of Sloboda, Smolensk region, according to Moskovsky Komsomolets; he later serves in the Strategic Missile Forces and moves to the Kashira district of Moscow Oblast.
February 2010: a 79-year-old woman is killed in Kashira; investigators later treat it as the first case in the series attributed to him.
April 2013: attacks on elderly women in Kashira and the Stupino district are attributed to him; reports differ on ages and outcomes.
2015: a woman of about 40 is killed in the Kashira district.
2017: divorce from his wife, according to Moskovsky Komsomolets.
Autumn 2019: two elderly women are killed in Kashira; he admits these cases on June 26, 2020.
January 3, 2020: a 10-year-old girl survives an attack in the Kashira district.
February 2020: a 14-year-old girl survives an attack.
June 8, 2020: an 88-year-old woman is killed in Kashira; camera footage shows a man discarding her papers.
June 10 to 12, 2020: Yezhov is identified and detained in Kashira.
June 13, 2020: a court remands him in custody; investigators say he has confessed to seven killings.
June 26, 2020: he admits two more killings from the autumn of 2019; forensic and psychiatric examinations are ordered.
July 6, 2020: he is found dead in his cell at pretrial detention center No. 11 in Noginsk.
July 2020: Moskovsky Komsomolets reports that the official version is suicide and that investigators intend to take the case to court.