Sergei Golovkin killed 11 boys in the countryside west and north of Moscow between April 1986 and September 1992. The youngest was 10 and the oldest 16. He was a graduate of the Timiryazev Agricultural Academy in Moscow and a livestock specialist at Moscow Horse Plant No. 1, a stud farm for Orlov trotters in the Odintsovo district, where colleagues knew him as withdrawn and awkward and where he had received a silver medal from the national exhibition of economic achievements for his work.
For six years investigators chased a figure called "Fisher," a name that came from a story told by a teenager and that turned out to be invented. They checked tens of thousands of people and solved thousands of unrelated crimes along the way. Golovkin was identified only in the autumn of 1992, after three boys disappeared on the same day and a friend of theirs told investigators who had been giving them rides. He was arrested on October 19, 1992, confessed to 11 killings, and was sentenced to death on October 19, 1994. He was shot at Butyrka prison in Moscow in 1996. Most Russian outlets describe his execution as the last carried out in Russia before the country stopped executing prisoners; some reporting places one more execution, of a man who has not been named, a month later.
Golovkin was born in Moscow in 1959, the 360 television channel reported in a long account of the case in 2025, and he was the elder child of the family. The same account describes his father as a heavy drinker who beat and humiliated him and his mother as quiet and cowed. Life.ru, in a 2022 article, reported that his parents divorced when he was a teenager. His mother and his sister appear in later accounts as the family he went home to on holidays; he remained registered at an address in Moscow's Leningradsky district even while he worked out of town, Moskvich Mag reported.
At school he did well. He finished with a silver medal, according to 360, and sat for about ten years in the same class as Armen Grigoryan, who went on to found the rock band Krematorium. Grigoryan was questioned by investigators as a former classmate after the arrest. He later told reporters that Golovkin had been a good student and a little withdrawn, Moskvich Mag reported in 2023. Another member of the band, Alexander Sevostyanov, was also a classmate, 360 reported.
Investigators who later reconstructed his life described cruelty to animals in his early teens. The investigator Yevgeny Karchevsky, interviewed on a Russian documentary channel and quoted by 360 in January 2025, said Golovkin had been bullied as a boy and that he later chose victims who resembled the boys who had tormented him. Golovkin himself gave investigators an account of a beating by a group of teenagers while he was a student; Moskvich Mag's writer, Alexei Baykov, treated that explanation as self-serving, noting that the behavior it was meant to explain had started earlier.
Golovkin studied at the Timiryazev Agricultural Academy in Moscow, where he joined the academy's riding school and trained to become a zootechnician, a specialist in livestock breeding. Life.ru gives 1982 as the year he graduated. During military training as a student he received the rank of reserve lieutenant, later raised to senior lieutenant, 360 reported.
After graduating he worked briefly at the Moscow hippodrome and was then assigned to Moscow Horse Plant No. 1 at Gorki-10 in the Odintsovo district, beginning as an assistant rider. He rose to the grade of first-category breeding zootechnician. In 1984 he was offered a post at the all-union trust that ran the country's stud farms and racecourses but went back to the plant, Moskvich Mag reported. He was regarded as a valuable employee: the farm gave him an apartment at Gorki-10, near the stables, and in 1989 he received a silver medal of the USSR Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy, known as VDNKh.
Colleagues described him as untidy, solitary and odd in his habits. Local teenagers, drawn by the horses, gathered around him, Moskvich Mag reported. He bought a car and a garage.
Reporting on the case links Golovkin to attacks on boys who survived, years before the first killing. Moskvich Mag and Pravo.ru both describe an attack in 1982, when Golovkin was on military training near Kalinin, now Tver; the boy got away and described his attacker. Moskvich Mag also describes a second attack in the same forest two weeks later, which another boy survived.
On June 21, 1984, a boy of 13 or 14 from a children's summer camp near Golitsyno, in the Odintsovo district, was attacked and survived. Police arrested another man for that attack. He had a psychiatric history and an earlier conviction, and he killed himself before any charge was brought; the case was closed. Both Moskvich Mag and 360 say the arrest of the wrong man allowed the real attacker to stay free. None of these attacks was among the crimes for which Golovkin was sentenced.
Andrei Pavlov was the first boy Golovkin killed. Moskvich Mag gives his age as 15, 360 as 16. He disappeared on April 19, 1986, north of Moscow, and was found the next morning. Golovkin was 27.
Andrei Gulyaev, 14, was staying at a children's summer camp in the Odintsovo district. He was found on July 10, 1986, Moskvich Mag reported. Life.ru dated his death about three months after Pavlov's, and 360 about two months. Gulyaev's death started the legend of "Fisher."
Sergei Strochkin, 10, was reported missing in the Odintsovo district on September 23, 1989. He was found on July 26, 1990.
Pavel, 15, came from the village of Perkhushkovo. Moskvich Mag gives his first name and age but not the date of his death.
On November 6, 1990, two boys, Sasha, 14, and Kolya, 11, were killed together in the area of Bolshiye Vyazyomy, Moskvich Mag reported.
Nikita Bogdanov, 13, was killed in August 1991 near Gorki-10.
A 16-year-old named Sergei was killed on April 22, 1992.
On September 15, 1992, three boys died together: Yuri Sidyakin, 12, Vadim Sharikov, 13, and Denis Efremov, 12. Their disappearance alarmed the villages around the horse farm and led directly to Golovkin's arrest.
Little was published about the boys' lives beyond their names, their ages and the villages they came from. Their families followed the case to the end: at the trial, relatives of the boys tried to reach the defendant in the courtroom, Moskvich Mag reported.
The investigation in the Odintsovo district was slowed for years by a false lead. After Gulyaev's death a teenager who said he was the dead boy's friend told police about a man with a tattoo of a dagger wrapped in a snake and the word "Fisher." Police searched for the tattooed man for years; it later emerged that the boy had invented him, 360 reported. Moskvich Mag traced the name itself to the 1972 world chess championship between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky, and wrote that rumor, a witness description and a parody song spread it among local children. Golovkin later used the name himself.
In the first years the killings were not treated as one series. Moskvich Mag's 2026 account says the crimes were alike but were not linked for a long time, and that officials were reluctant to accept that a serial killer was at work near the government dachas around Nikolina Gora. Investigators also wondered whether Andrei Chikatilo, then still at large in the Rostov region, could be responsible; Pravo.ru wrote that the two series were at one point thought to be the work of one man, and Moskvich Mag wrote that the methods differed. Chikatilo was sentenced to death by the Rostov Regional Court four days before Golovkin's arrest.
The search was vast. Moskvich Mag reported that in two years investigators checked 5,799 psychiatric patients, 1,628 people with criminal records and 443 others from police registers, about 50,000 people in all, and that more than 2,000 other crimes were solved in the process. Life.ru listed the groups checked: men recently released from prison, residents of Zvenigorod and the surrounding villages, morgue and anatomy workers, people who worked with animals, and people who rented garages and sheds. Staff at the horse farm were among those checked, without result.
Golovkin was also suspected, wrongly, in the disappearance of Vitaly Zaikov, 16, in January 1989. He had an alibi, and in 1993 it emerged that Zaikov had been killed by another serial killer in the region, Sergei Ryakhovsky, 360 reported.
In the spring of 1992 the case was taken over by Yevgeny Bakin, a senior investigator for especially important cases in the Prosecutor General's office who had worked on the Chikatilo case. Working with him were Vladimir Tskhai, a senior operative of the Interior Ministry's main criminal investigation directorate, and V. Kostarev of the Prosecutor General's office. Vladimir Kolesnikov, head of that directorate and later a deputy prosecutor general, oversaw the operational side, Pravo.ru reported.
Forensic work began to point toward a man who worked with livestock. Forensic evidence, including traces of a salt used in horse feed, pointed toward someone who worked with livestock, Moskvich Mag, Life.ru and 360 reported. The investigator Karchevsky told the 360 channel that the feed additive was what first drew suspicion toward the horse farm. Because Golovkin was registered as a Moscow resident and not as a local, he did not appear in the district's lists, Moskvich Mag wrote.
Bakin later called the events of September 15, 1992, "the moment of truth," Pravo.ru reported. Three boys from the villages near the farm disappeared that day. A fourth boy from their group, who had not gone with them, told investigators that a man from the horse farm had been driving them around in his car. The reports give the fourth boy's name differently; he was a key witness and, by Moskvich Mag's account, refused at first to talk.
From the beginning of October 1992 Golovkin was kept under covert surveillance, Moskvich Mag reported. The investigators still lacked direct evidence against him. The three boys were found in the Odintsovo district later that autumn.
On October 19, 1992, a junior traffic-police sergeant who knew whom he was stopping halted Golovkin's car, Moskvich Mag reported. Life.ru and 360 place the arrest at Zhavoronki in the Odintsovo district; 360 wrote that he was trying to get away toward Belarus and that the arrest involved a collision with an operative's car and a scuffle. Pravo.ru records that he was detained under Article 90 of the RSFSR Code of Criminal Procedure, which allowed detention before a formal charge.
He was taken to the Odintsovo police station and questioned. He denied everything, and the investigators had no direct evidence. Accounts differ over what happened next. Moskvich Mag's 2026 article says Nikolai Chekmazov, head of the criminal investigation directorate of the Moscow Oblast police, took responsibility for holding him. 360 wrote that he was to be released and that a duty officer, Yevgeny Dorokhov, disobeyed the order and put him in a single cell for the night. That night he tried to kill himself and was revived, according to Moskvich Mag, Life.ru and the investigator Karchevsky. In the morning he asked to be questioned.
He began by admitting one killing and calling it self-defense, 360 reported. On October 21, 1992, investigators obtained a warrant to search his garage, and the search produced the evidence that ended his denials. On October 30, 1992, he was formally charged under Article 102 of the RSFSR Criminal Code, which covered murder with aggravating circumstances, Pravo.ru and Moskvich Mag reported. He was moved to the Matrosskaya Tishina detention center in Moscow.
He then confessed to 11 killings between 1986 and 1992. Pravo.ru reported that he helped investigators find the last three boys and one other. Moskvich Mag wrote that he talked readily and at times mocked the investigators, and Life.ru reported that he described the killings as moments when he lost control of himself.
Investigators believed he might be connected to more cases. About 40 children, girls among them, disappeared in the Odintsovo area during the years of the killings, Moskvich Mag reported, and Pravo.ru wrote that investigators suspected a link to about 40 disappearances of boys in the Moscow region. Only the 11 killings could be proven.
A forensic psychiatric examination found Golovkin sane, though with features of schizoid psychopathy, 360 reported. The finding meant he could stand trial and be held responsible for the killings.
The case file ran to 95 volumes, 360 reported. The trial opened on August 22, 1994, according to Pravo.ru, and lasted until October 19, 1994. The first hearings were open to the public; the court then closed them after relatives of the boys tried to attack the defendant in the courtroom, Moskvich Mag reported. Pravo.ru describes the hearing as closed.
His lawyer, M. A. Pashkov, asked for leniency, pointing to Golovkin's good work record, his VDNKh medal and his cooperation with the investigation. At one of the final sessions Golovkin himself asked the court for the death penalty, Moskvich Mag reported.
On October 19, 1994, the court found him guilty of the murders of 11 boys, with other charges, and sentenced him to death by shooting.
In Russia at the time, a death sentence could not be carried out until the president had rejected the prisoner's plea for clemency, Pravo.ru noted. Golovkin's plea was refused by Boris Yeltsin. Business Online, in a 2021 report, dated the refusal to late November 1995, and Moskvich Mag wrote that Golovkin received the refusal signed by Yeltsin on November 26. Pravo.ru gave a different account: Yeltsin had put off the petitions of condemned prisoners, then in April 1996, as Russia prepared to sign the European protocol abolishing the death penalty, ordered them reviewed quickly; of several hundred petitions, 60 were rejected, Golovkin's among them.
A story spread that Yeltsin refused clemency because Golovkin's garage stood about 500 meters from the president's dacha. 360 repeated the distance. Moskvich Mag's 2023 account rejected the story, noting that Yeltsin also refused clemency to other condemned men with no link to the area, among them Valery Asratyan, and argued that the real reasons were the local anger at Golovkin and a decision to clear death row before executions stopped. Moskvich Mag's 2026 article named the anger of local residents, who were ready to riot if the sentence were softened, as the likelier reason.
Golovkin was shot at Butyrka prison in Moscow. Vedomosti, Moskvich Mag's 2026 article and Life.ru give the date as August 2, 1996, and Novaya Gazeta Europe places the execution on the night of August 1 to 2. Pravo.ru and 360 give August 1996 without a day.
On death row, according to a former cellmate quoted by Moskvich Mag, he was calm, ate well and slept, and said he believed in God. Two other condemned men who had been waiting for execution alongside him had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment, Moskvich Mag reported in 2026.
Golovkin's execution came in the middle of Russia's move away from the death penalty. On May 16, 1996, Yeltsin signed a decree on the gradual reduction of the use of the death penalty, as Russia prepared to join the Council of Europe, Vedomosti reported. On April 16, 1997, Russia signed Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention on Human Rights, which abolishes the death penalty in peacetime; the State Duma did not ratify it. Russian reports date the moratorium on executions from April 16, 1997.
Courts could still pass death sentences for a time. On February 2, 1999, the Constitutional Court ruled that no one could be sentenced to death until jury trials were available in every region, and on November 19, 2009, shortly before jury trials reached Chechnya, the last region without them, it ruled that the death penalty could not be imposed even then, Vedomosti and Novaya Gazeta Europe reported. The moratorium stayed in place after Russia left the Council of Europe in 2022. Vedomosti reported that courts passed 159 death sentences in 1992, 157 in 1993, 160 in 1994 and 141 in 1995.
Novaya Gazeta Europe, Vedomosti, Life.ru and Moskvich Mag describe Golovkin as the last person executed in Russia. Other reporting is less certain.
His garage burned down on the night of April 25 to 26, 1993, and local police did not investigate the fire as arson, Moskvich Mag reported in 2023. Its 2026 article put the burning of the garage and of Golovkin's car in the autumn of 1993 and attributed it to the boys' parents.
The case has stayed in the Russian press. In February 2023 the streaming services more.tv and Wink released "Fisher," an eight-episode drama series directed by Sergei Taramaev and Lyubov Lvova and written by Sergei Kalvarsky and Natalia Kapustina, starring Ivan Yankovsky, Alexandra Bortich and Alexander Yatsenko as investigators, Rossiyskaya Gazeta reported. The series is fiction built on the case and centers on the investigation, not on the killer. On the 30th anniversary of the execution, in August 2026, Vedomosti and Moskvich Mag published retrospectives on the end of capital punishment in Russia, both of them opening with Golovkin.
The execution date. Most reports give August 2, 1996. Moskvich Mag's 2023 article quoted the journalist and human rights advocate Eva Merkacheva as naming August 2 or September 2, 1996, as the two most likely dates, and noted that official records of executions in those years remain closed.
The last execution. Pravo.ru wrote that Golovkin was the last man executed at Butyrka but that the last execution in Russia took place on September 2, 1996, and that the name of the man shot that day was not public. The 360 channel's January 2025 report also put the last execution in September 1996, and a former death-row prisoner interviewed by Merkacheva for Snob in 2021 dated it to September 2. Business Online, reporting in 2021, called Golovkin one of the last people executed. Moskvich Mag's Baykov called the claim that he was the very last probably a legend, without ruling it out.
The clemency decision. Reports differ on whether Yeltsin refused clemency in late November 1995 or in a review in April 1996, and on why.
The number of victims. Golovkin was convicted of 11 murders. Investigators believed he might be connected with more of the roughly 40 disappearances of children in the area; none of those was proven against him.
Victims' ages and names. Pavlov's age is given as 15 and as 16, and the timing of Gulyaev's death differs between reports. Several boys are identified in the press only by first name.
1959: Sergei Golovkin is born in Moscow.
School years in Moscow: finishes with a silver medal; classmates include Armen Grigoryan.
1982: graduates from the Timiryazev Agricultural Academy (Life.ru); an attack on a boy near Kalinin is later linked to him in reporting.
After graduating: assigned to Moscow Horse Plant No. 1 at Gorki-10, Odintsovo district.
June 21, 1984: a boy is attacked near Golitsyno and survives; another man is arrested and dies by suicide before being charged.
April 19, 1986: Andrei Pavlov disappears north of Moscow; he is found the next morning.
July 10, 1986: Andrei Gulyaev, 14, is found in the Odintsovo district; the "Fisher" legend begins.
January 1989: Vitaly Zaikov, 16, disappears; Golovkin is suspected but has an alibi (in 1993 Zaikov's killing is tied to Sergei Ryakhovsky).
1989: Golovkin receives a silver VDNKh medal.
September 23, 1989: Sergei Strochkin, 10, is reported missing; he is found July 26, 1990.
November 6, 1990: two boys, 14 and 11, are killed.
August 1991: Nikita Bogdanov, 13, is killed.
Spring 1992: Yevgeny Bakin takes over the investigation.
April 22, 1992: a 16-year-old named Sergei is killed.
September 15, 1992: Yuri Sidyakin, 12, Vadim Sharikov, 13, and Denis Efremov, 12, disappear and are killed.
Early October 1992: covert surveillance of Golovkin begins.
October 1992: Andrei Chikatilo is sentenced to death by the Rostov Regional Court, four days before Golovkin's arrest.
October 19, 1992: Golovkin is detained near Zhavoronki; he attempts suicide overnight and confesses the next morning.
October 21, 1992: search warrant for his garage.
October 30, 1992: charged under Article 102 of the RSFSR Criminal Code.
April 25 to 26, 1993: his garage burns down.
August 22, 1994: trial opens.
October 19, 1994: sentenced to death for the murders of 11 boys, with other charges.
Late November 1995 or April 1996: Yeltsin refuses clemency (reports differ).
May 16, 1996: Yeltsin signs a decree on reducing the use of the death penalty.
August 2, 1996: Golovkin is shot at Butyrka prison, Moscow (the date in most reports).
September 2, 1996: the date some reports give for the last execution in Russia, of a man who has not been named.
April 16, 1997: Russia signs Protocol No. 6; the moratorium on executions dates from this day.
February 2, 1999, and November 19, 2009: Constitutional Court rulings bar death sentences.
February 8, 2023: the drama series "Fisher" premieres on more.tv and Wink.
August 2, 2026: Vedomosti and Moskvich Mag mark 30 years since the execution.