Roman Burtsev was arrested in 1996 in Kamensk-Shakhtinsky, a town in Russia's Rostov region, and confessed to killing children there over the previous three years. Russian reports put the number of children at six, aged between 7 and 12, and date the killings from 1993 to 1996. In 1997 a court in the region sentenced him to death. Russia had stopped carrying out executions, and in 1999 the sentence was replaced with life imprisonment. He served it in the White Swan colony for life prisoners in Solikamsk, in the Perm region, and died there of cancer in December 2023, although the death became public only in October 2024.
The case came a few years after the conviction of Andrei Chikatilo, the Rostov region's best known killer, and Russian newspapers attached his name to Burtsev as a nickname, calling him the "Kamensk Chikatilo" (Каменский Чикатило).
Burtsev grew up in Kamensk-Shakhtinsky and worked at a plant there, BFM.ru reported in 2024. Rossiyskaya Gazeta, writing in 2003, said he committed his crimes in the Kamensk district, where he lived. Few other details of his early life are known. Snob reported in 2024 that he was already on the police register as a teenager, after an incident involving a girl of his own age. NEWS.ru, in a 2025 feature, dated that incident to 1984, when he was 13, and said the girl was not harmed.
When his trial approached in January 1997, The Moscow Times, citing the newspaper Izvestia, described him as 25, divorced and the father of a 10-month-old son.
The first killings were of a brother and sister. Rossiyskaya Gazeta named them as children of the Чурилов family and called this first crime the most widely known of the series. NEWS.ru gives the girl's first name as Олеся. Both children died, and their bodies were hidden. Rossiyskaya Gazeta placed these deaths at the start of 1993; NEWS.ru dates them to September 1993.
About a year later, according to NEWS.ru, Марина, 12, was killed.
In 1995, NEWS.ru reported, he killed a nine-year-old girl named Аня.
In the summer of 1996 a nine-year-old girl named Ира became his victim, NEWS.ru wrote, without saying more about what happened to her. About two weeks later he killed Наташа, 12. Hers was the case that led to his arrest.
Little is known of the children as people. Their ages, from 7 to 12, are given in Snob's 2024 report and in a December 2025 feature on 360.ru, which said that by official figures six children had been killed. The Moscow Times wrote in 1997 that he had donated 5,000 rubles, then worth about 90 cents, toward the funeral of one of the victims, a 12-year-old girl.
The investigator Амурхан Яндиев, who in 2003 headed the special-cases unit of the regional prosecutor's office, according to Rossiyskaya Gazeta, described the pattern to 360.ru: Burtsev found the children in town and led them away from it.
The case broke after the last killing. NEWS.ru reported that he borrowed a shovel from a pensioner, a stranger to him, and threw it away instead of bringing it back. When the missing girl was reported, the pensioner remembered the young man who had borrowed it and described him to police in detail.
Rossiyskaya Gazeta gave a second thread: a schoolgirl whom he had tried and failed to take into a tree belt outside town helped to expose him. NEWS.ru also says that a girl who had escaped him later identified him. NEWS.ru gives both the pensioner's description and the girl's identification.
BFM.ru said police tracked him down in 1996 and arrested him. In January 1997 The Moscow Times, citing Izvestia, said he had been arrested the previous July.
Burtsev confessed. The Moscow Times reported in 1997, citing Izvestia, that he had given investigators a detailed description of the killings, that he told police he often felt remorse, and that he said he had killed out of fear of being punished. The donation toward a victim's funeral was reported in the same article.
The case went to the regional court in Rostov-on-Don early in 1997. The Moscow Times wrote on January 22, 1997, that the court was preparing to open hearings and that he was accused of killing at least six children. It called the case the third recent serial murder case in the region. Days earlier another Rostov region man, Vladimir Mukhankin, had been sentenced to death for murdering eight women.
In 1997 the court sentenced Burtsev to death, according to Snob and 360.ru. The date of the verdict and the number of killings proved at trial have not been reported. All the victims were children, and the conviction stands as murder, with other charges.
Russia had placed a moratorium on executions. Rossiyskaya Gazeta linked the moratorium to Russia's entry into the Council of Europe and said it had spared the Rostov region's later killers the fate of Chikatilo, who was executed. In 1999, 360.ru reported, Burtsev's death sentence was replaced with life imprisonment, as were those of Mukhankin and of the Taganrog killer Юрий Цюман.
Burtsev served his life term in the special-regime colony in Solikamsk, in the Perm region, known as the White Swan (Белый лебедь), which holds prisoners serving life sentences. Snob said he spent more than 25 years in custody.
He died there in December 2023. Snob, citing TASS and a law-enforcement source, reported the death on October 28, 2024. The cause was cancer, which doctors found while he was in prison, according to the Rostov outlet DonDay, as cited by Snob. BFM.ru, citing Ura.ru, reported the same day that he had died at 52 of an oncological illness. He was buried in a local cemetery in Solikamsk, and no relatives attended, Snob and NEWS.ru reported.
Burtsev's case was one of many that gave the Rostov region its reputation in Russia. In 2003 Rossiyskaya Gazeta reported that more than 30 serial killers had been caught in the region over the previous ten years, and asked whether the region was simply more prone to them. A police officer who had served on the task force formed for the Chikatilo case, Анатолий Евсеев, told the paper that it was not: in his view the Rostov region had no more such killers than anywhere else, and the difference was that its police had learned to recognize series and record them as such.
The psychiatrist and forensic expert Александр Бухановский made a similar argument. In his account, cited by 360.ru in 2025, 34 serial killers were identified in the region between 1987 and 1997, and the high count reflected the rate of detection and the skill of local investigators rather than anything about the land or the people.
Proven by the 1997 judgment: murder of children, with other charges. Russian reports give the number of children as six and say the court sentenced him to death; the text of the verdict and the counts on which he was convicted have not been published.
Details that vary between sources: the date of the first killings (early 1993 in Rossiyskaya Gazeta; September 1993 in NEWS.ru); the year of his death (December 2023 in Snob, BFM.ru and NEWS.ru; 2024 in the 2025 feature on 360.ru); and his family situation, which The Moscow Times in 1997 gave as divorced with an infant son. NEWS.ru credits his arrest mainly to the pensioner who lent the shovel; Rossiyskaya Gazeta credited a schoolgirl who escaped him.
1984: aged 13, he is placed on the police register after an incident involving a girl his own age (Snob; NEWS.ru gives the year).
1993: a brother and sister of the Чурилов family are killed in the Kamensk district, the first deaths in the series.
About 1994: Марина, 12, is killed.
1995: Аня, 9, is killed.
Summer 1996: Ира, 9, is killed; about two weeks later Наташа, 12, is killed.
1996: a pensioner's description and a schoolgirl's account lead police to him; he is arrested and confesses.
January 22, 1997: The Moscow Times reports that his trial is about to open in Rostov-on-Don.
1997: sentenced to death.
1999: the death sentence is replaced with life imprisonment; he is held in the White Swan colony, Solikamsk.
December 2023: dies of cancer in the colony, aged 52; buried in Solikamsk.
October 28, 2024: his death is reported.