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Tatarstan Court Sentences Radik Tagirov, the 'Volga Maniac,' to Life for 31 Murders of Elderly Women

Russia's Investigative Committee said the Kazan man posed as a utility worker to get into the homes of elderly women living alone in 15 cities in 2011 and 2012.

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Illustration: an empty metal-and-glass defendant's cage in a Russian courtroom

Between March 2011 and October 2012, a man who said he had come from the utilities got into the apartments of elderly women who lived alone in cities across Russia. Investigators say he beat and strangled them inside their homes and left with their money. On Thursday, March 21, 2024, the Supreme Court of the Republic of Tatarstan sentenced Radik Tagirov, a resident of Kazan, to life in prison for those crimes. He is the man widely known in Russia as the "Volga Maniac."

Russia's Investigative Committee, which built the case, announced the verdict the same day. The court found its evidence sufficient to convict Tagirov of 31 murders, three attempted murders and 33 robbery assaults on elderly women, all committed between March 2011 and October 2012. The Committee counted 34 victims in 15 cities: Kazan, Nizhnekamsk, Volzhsk, Izhevsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Cheboksary, Ufa, Perm, Yekaterinburg, Saratov, Ivanovo, Kirov, Samara, Chelyabinsk and Moscow.

According to the Committee, he worked the same way every time. He found women who lived on their own, got into their apartments by presenting himself as a utility worker, and once inside struck and strangled them before taking their money. Reuters, citing law enforcement, reported that he sometimes posed as a social worker, an electrician or a plumber, and described him as a locksmith who had already served prison time for petty theft.

The killings went unsolved for years. Investigators had the killer's genetic profile and worked through one theory after another, checking more than 10,000 people and carrying out more than 5,000 expert examinations before Tagirov was identified and detained in 2020. Under questioning, the Committee said, he confessed and showed investigators at the scenes how the crimes had been carried out.

In court he denied every charge. His lawyer, Marat Ashirov, said on the day of the verdict that he would appeal, according to the state news agency TASS as reported by The Moscow Times.

The figures above are the Investigative Committee's: 31 murders, three attempted murders and 33 robbery counts, with 34 victims in all. Some English-language reports described the robbery counts as attacks on further women (The Moscow Times wrote of assaults on another 33, Reuters, citing TASS, of 34 more); the Committee's statement lists 34 victims in total. None of the women was named in the Committee's statement or in the reports cited here.

Sources