Sergei Ryakhovsky killed people in and around Moscow from June 1988 to April 1993. His victims were men and women from their teens to their seventies: pensioners, a postman, a World War II veteran gathering firewood, a woman out skiing, and two teenage boys. For years police did not connect the killings. They were spread across the city and the Moscow region, and investigators at first saw no pattern, MSK1.RU reported in 2026.
He was arrested on April 13, 1993, after a woman who had escaped from him gave a description that police turned into a composite sketch. He confessed, led investigators to the places where he had killed, and then withdrew his confessions. In July 1995 a court convicted him of 18 murders and two attempted murders and sentenced him to death. The sentence was never carried out. He spent his last years in a colony for life prisoners in Mordovia and died there of tuberculosis on November 12, 2007.
Ryakhovsky was born on December 29, 1962, in Balashikha, a town in the Moscow region, according to 360.ru, the news service of the Moscow region's 360 television channel. He grew up in a working-class family. News.ru, in a 2024 account drawing on Russian studies of serial offenders, said he came from a complete family whose parents were attentive to him and did not mistreat him.
His birth was difficult. The baby was very large, News.ru said, and the brain damage that doctors later linked to a hard delivery was cited by the psychiatrists who examined him after his arrest. He did not begin to speak until he was about three. 360.ru reported that a birth injury delayed his speech, that he developed bronchial asthma after a bout of pneumonia, and that at six months he already weighed 11 kilograms. He was often ill, and his mother walked him to school.
At school he was withdrawn and had no friends of his own age. Classmates bullied him, 360.ru wrote, and his grades were average at best; News.ru described his schoolwork as poor and said he preferred to be alone. He liked science fiction and books of documentary history, joined a radio club, and was fond of animals. MSK1.RU reported that he grieved hard when a kitten and a parrot he kept died, and that he did not show the cruelty to animals seen in the childhoods of some killers.
He finished eight grades and went to a vocational school, where he trained as an electrician. He worked for about a year as an electrician at an industrial plant, MSK1.RU said, and after that lived mostly on his parents' pension. 360.ru listed other jobs over the years: locksmith at a taxi depot, plant electrician, security guard and radio repairman. As an adult he was very large. MSK1.RU put him at 195 centimeters and 130 kilograms; Moskovsky Komsomolets, writing in 2002, gave about two meters and 126 kilograms. People who knew him called him rude, quick-tempered and aggressive, News.ru said. A young woman he courted broke off contact because of his outbursts at other passengers on suburban trains, according to MSK1.RU, and 360.ru wrote that a girlfriend left him because of his aggression.
At about the age of 20, between March and November 1982, Ryakhovsky carried out a series of attacks on elderly women in the Golyanovo district of Moscow. MSK1.RU and News.ru both put the number at about ten. He was arrested on November 24, 1982, and sentenced to four years for malicious hooliganism, News.ru reported, a sentence that covered ten episodes.
Both News.ru and MSK1.RU wrote that he was abused and humiliated by other inmates and was placed at the lowest level of the prison hierarchy. 360.ru reported that while in prison he began writing a science fiction story, which he never finished.
He was released in November 1986. By the accounts in News.ru and MSK1.RU, he left prison with two conclusions: that he should leave no one alive to identify him, and that there were whole groups of people he wanted to remove from society. In a confession he later wrote to the Prosecutor General's Office, quoted by MSK1.RU from the case materials, he claimed a "higher mission" to cleanse society of people he called "abnormal" and "second-class." He also wrote that he could not stop himself.
The first murder came in June 1988. News.ru dated it June 19, 1988. The victim was a 41-year-old man; MSK1.RU, drawing on the case file, identified him as a postman who had planned to visit his newborn grandson that evening. Ryakhovsky had met him the day before, MSK1.RU reported. He kept the man's radio, MSK1.RU wrote.
Around the same time he attacked two women who survived. 360.ru described a woman attacked in Moscow in the winter of 1988 who survived and, weeks later, a 20-year-old woman attacked in Moscow, who also lived. MSK1.RU placed one escape a few days before the first murder and a second attack, on a 20-year-old woman, two weeks later.
In early July 1988, near Podolsk he attacked a 70-year-old woman, who died in hospital the next day. News.ru reported that he took 45 rubles from her. In September 1988 a 62-year-old woman was killed in the Kuntsevo district of Moscow; 360.ru described her as another elderly woman killed in the same way as the woman near Podolsk.
In early 1989, MSK1.RU said January, a 16-year-old boy who was out skiing in Moscow was killed. That killing was first linked to a different serial killer who was active in the Moscow region at the time and was arrested in October 1992, but he had an alibi, both MSK1.RU and 360.ru reported, and the case stalled for months.
On March 11, 1989, MSK1.RU reported, Ryakhovsky killed a 42-year-old man he had met in the Izmailovo area of Moscow. In May 1989 a 58-year-old woman was killed in the Odintsovo district, and in June 1989 a 53-year-old woman was killed. 360.ru placed both of those killings, of women aged 53 and 58, in the Odintsovo district.
In July 1990 a 45-year-old Moscow woman was killed in the Izmailovo area. A month later, in August 1990, another woman was killed, News.ru and MSK1.RU reported; her body was found in September.
On February 22, 1991, a 48-year-old woman was killed while she was out skiing. News.ru placed her death in the Lyubertsy district; MSK1.RU wrote that she came from a family of academics. In August 1991 a 64-year-old pensioner was killed.
There was a gap in the reported killings until September 1992, when a 60-year-old man was killed in the Izmailovo area. News.ru counted him as the twelfth person Ryakhovsky killed.
Two more men were killed that autumn and winter. News.ru reported the killing of a 38-year-old man in the Izmailovo area in about October 1992, and of a 29-year-old man on December 16, 1992. MSK1.RU gave the date of the 29-year-old's death as December 19, 1992, and said Ryakhovsky had met him in the Izmailovo area.
Several people who were attacked in 1992 survived. On June 30, 1992, a 71-year-old woman was attacked, but a witness interrupted and she lived, MSK1.RU reported. In December 1992 another woman escaped from him. On December 25, 1992, he attacked a woman who was skiing. She fought back and got away. News.ru, which described her as a 57-year-old woman, and MSK1.RU both reported that her description of a large, sullen man was the basis of the first composite sketch. News.ru said the sketch was drawn up by the portrait identification laboratory of the Moscow police.
In January 1993, in the Moscow region, a 77-year-old World War II veteran who had gone out to gather dead wood was killed. MSK1.RU reported that his son went looking for him after finding a note at home that said he would be back soon.
In early March 1993, near Odintsovo, a 55-year-old woman was killed. News.ru dated her death March 11, 1993, and counted her as Ryakhovsky's sixteenth victim; MSK1.RU described her as a woman who worked in the arts. On April 8, 1993, a 14-year-old boarding-school pupil was killed, News.ru reported. His death came to light only after the arrest, according to 360.ru.
On April 12, 1993, near Odintsovo, a 62-year-old woman was killed after a train journey, MSK1.RU reported. News.ru described this killing as his last and said that he left a false clue intended to point investigators toward suspects from the Caucasus. 360.ru reported the same attempt to mislead the police.
The Russian press accounts give different totals for the series. News.ru wrote that he was arrested the day after his eighteenth murder. 360.ru said he killed "more than two dozen" people over five years, that he confessed to 24 attacks, and that investigators suspected him in at least three dozen deaths. Moskovsky Komsomolets in 2002 credited him with 19 victims. Only the counts the court found proven are convictions: 18 murders and two attempted murders.
For years the killings were treated as separate unsolved cases. The victims had nothing obvious in common, and the places where they died were scattered across Moscow and the surrounding region, from the Podolsk area to the Odintsovo and Lyubertsy districts. 360.ru reported that investigators collected biological traces and fingerprints but could not find a pattern linking the cases. MSK1.RU wrote that police did not tie the forest killings together for years.
What changed the case was the survivors. The woman who escaped while skiing in December 1992 gave investigators a description of a tall, heavy man with a gloomy look, and other survivors added to it, according to 360.ru. The composite sketch that resulted became the main tool of the search.
Police caught him on April 13, 1993. News.ru reported that he was arrested the day after his eighteenth murder. MSK1.RU reported that officers, working from the composite sketch, had set up a watch in the area of the March 1993 killing in the Odintsovo district and arrested him there. 360.ru wrote that he came back to that area on April 13 and was recognized from the composite sketch, and that he was detained about a day later.
A search turned up two documents that shaped the case. One was a diary. News.ru said he had recorded every killing in it and that investigators used it to solve both killings and attacks. 360.ru described a notebook in which he marked the deaths with small drawings of coffins, colored by the victim's sex, and noted distances and the price of train tickets. MSK1.RU wrote that he tallied his victims in the diary with colored markers. The other was a notebook containing an unfinished science fiction story whose title translates as "Starfall." MSK1.RU described it as the story of a commander who purges people he regards as inferior.
At first he admitted only one attack, on a pensioner, 360.ru reported. Investigators then took him to the scene of the 14-year-old boy's killing. After that he began to talk, confessing to further killings and leading police to several sites. News.ru reported that once the diary was found he confessed to all the killings and attacks, including some no one had connected to him, and showed investigators the scenes. MSK1.RU likewise said he confessed to crimes the police had not suspected. Surviving victims identified him, News.ru said.
From pretrial detention he wrote a confession to the Prosecutor General's Office describing his crimes from 1982 onward. In it, News.ru reported, he said he had an overwhelming urge he could not control and that after his release from prison in 1986 he felt a built-up aggression he could not master.
Later he withdrew his confessions. 360.ru reported that he claimed they had been forced from him and that he wrote letters to the authorities presenting himself as a victim of the political system. MSK1.RU wrote that the finding that he was sane angered him and that he retracted his testimony after it.
A forensic psychiatric examination found several disorders, which the examiners linked to organic brain damage, News.ru reported, but they found him sane and fit to stand trial.
The trial took place in 1995. The court found 18 of the 19 murders charged proven, along with two attempted murders, MSK1.RU reported; 360.ru gave the same totals of 18 murders and two attempted murders. On July 11, 1995, the court sentenced him to death by shooting, according to MSK1.RU.
Relatives of victims were in the courtroom for the verdict. MSK1.RU reported that the mother of one of the men he killed cursed him and that he shouted back a threat. 360.ru reported that when the sentence was read he said it was the "highest measure of punishment," the Russian legal term for the death penalty, and that after sentencing he shouted, "I'll be back!"
The death sentence was not carried out. News.ru reported that it was replaced with life imprisonment. MSK1.RU wrote that the 1997 moratorium on the death penalty in Russia spared him, and 360.ru said the moratorium on executions led to his transfer from Butyrka prison in Moscow to IK-1, a colony in Mordovia that holds prisoners serving life.
News.ru described his years in the special-regime colony. He read science fiction, including Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov and Robert Sheckley, and wrote memoirs. Other prisoners were afraid of him and gave him names that translate as "the ghoul," "the silent one" and "Satan." Only one fellow life prisoner got on with him; the two talked about astronomy, and Ryakhovsky read science fiction aloud to him at night.
He wrote to his mother often. According to a colony official quoted by News.ru, she never came to see him, not even for a short visit. 360.ru described the family's silence the other way round, writing that letters and visits from his mother went unanswered. News.ru reported that his parents died in 2010 and 2015.
Ryakhovsky died on November 12, 2007, in the Mordovian colony, of advanced pulmonary tuberculosis, MSK1.RU reported. 360.ru also gave November 2007 and pulmonary tuberculosis. Shortly before he died he wrote to the investigator who had handled his case, asking to be moved to an ordinary hospital. MSK1.RU reported that he wrote that he was not afraid of death but was afraid for the people he loved.
Totals. The court convicted him of 18 murders and two attempted murders and did not find a nineteenth murder charge proven. His own confession, as reported by 360.ru, covered 24 attacks, and 360.ru wrote that investigators suspected him in at least three dozen deaths. Moskovsky Komsomolets credited him with 19 victims in 2002. None of the killings beyond the 18 proven ones led to a conviction, and they remain attributed only.
An unsolved case. News.ru reported that the remains of a teenager who disappeared in November 1992 were found on April 20, 1993, and that the teenager was never identified; Ryakhovsky's involvement in that death was not established.
The 1989 skiing death. The killing of the 16-year-old in early 1989 was first linked to another serial killer active in the region, who had an alibi. 360.ru and MSK1.RU both treat it as one of Ryakhovsky's killings.
His date of death. News.ru printed his date of death as November 12, 2017, while saying in the same article that his parents, who died in 2010 and 2015, outlived him. MSK1.RU gave November 12, 2007, and 360.ru November 2007.
The moratorium. MSK1.RU tied the end of his death sentence to a moratorium it dated to 1997. The date and form of the decision that replaced his sentence with life imprisonment have not been reported.
His confessions. He confessed in detail in 1993 and then retracted, saying the confessions had been forced. The court convicted him on 18 murder counts nonetheless.
December 29, 1962: born in Balashikha, Moscow region.
March to November 1982: about ten attacks on elderly women in the Golyanovo district of Moscow.
November 24, 1982: arrested; later sentenced to four years for malicious hooliganism.
November 1986: released from prison.
June 19, 1988: first murder, of a 41-year-old man (date from News.ru).
July 1988: a 70-year-old woman is attacked near Podolsk and dies in hospital.
September 1988: a 62-year-old woman is killed in the Kuntsevo district of Moscow.
Early 1989: a 16-year-old boy who was skiing is killed in Moscow.
March 11, 1989: a 42-year-old man is killed (date from MSK1.RU).
May and June 1989: women aged 58 and 53 are killed in the Odintsovo district.
July and August 1990: two women are killed, one of them a 45-year-old Muscovite.
February 22, 1991: a 48-year-old woman is killed while skiing (date from MSK1.RU).
August 1991: a 64-year-old pensioner is killed.
June 30, 1992: a 71-year-old woman survives an attack (MSK1.RU).
September to December 1992: three men, aged 60, 38 and 29, are killed in Moscow.
December 25, 1992: a woman who was skiing fights him off; her description becomes the basis of a composite sketch.
January 1993: a 77-year-old World War II veteran is killed in the Moscow region.
March 1993: a 55-year-old woman is killed near Odintsovo.
April 8, 1993: a 14-year-old boy is killed (News.ru).
April 12, 1993: a 62-year-old woman is killed near Odintsovo (MSK1.RU).
April 13, 1993: arrested in the Odintsovo district; confesses, then later retracts.
1995: tried and found sane.
July 11, 1995: convicted of 18 murders and two attempted murders and sentenced to death (MSK1.RU).
After the 1995 sentence: death sentence replaced with life imprisonment; moved from Butyrka prison to IK-1 in Mordovia.
November 12, 2007: dies of pulmonary tuberculosis in the Mordovian colony.