Sergey Martynov spent most of his adult life either in prison or on the road. A Soviet military tribunal sent him to a labor colony in his early twenties, and in 1992 he was sentenced to 15 years for a murder committed the year before in Khakassia, in southern Siberia. He was let out early in 2004. Over the next six years he drifted across Russia, hitchhiking from region to region, taking casual work and staying with people he met. In November 2010 he was arrested near Voronezh. In November 2012 a court there convicted him of murdering two or more persons, with other charges, and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
Russia's Investigative Committee said it had established eight murders in the series, committed in regions stretching from Sverdlovsk and Bashkortostan to Voronezh and Oryol. The victims were mostly women; the case also covered offenses against two young girls, both of whom survived. Investigators said he made little effort to conceal what he had done and left written notes at crime scenes. He was traced, in the end, through a mobile phone taken from one of the women who died.
Martynov was born on June 2, 1962, in Nyazepetrovsk, a small town in Chelyabinsk region, MSK1.ru reported in 2026. Little has been published about his family or schooling. He later told interviewers that as a boy he had practiced judo and knife throwing.
His first conviction came in his early twenties. According to MSK1.ru, a military tribunal tried him at 22 for desertion, hooliganism and escape and sentenced him to seven years; he was released about two years early under an amnesty. NEWS.ru, in a 2024 retrospective, gave the year of the desertion conviction as 1984 and said he served five years of the sentence in a colony at Uchkuduk, in what was then the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. A 2009 wanted notice reported by the Yekaterinburg news agency EANews said he had deserted from the army in the early 1980s and had committed thefts, robberies and armed assaults on Sakhalin, the island off Russia's Pacific coast, before his first term of seven years.
Martynov has claimed that after his release in 1989 he crossed into Afghanistan and fought with Islamist groups against Soviet forces, and that a grenade blast there cost him parts of several fingers. NEWS.ru reported the claim as his own account. The 2009 wanted notice described him as about 165 centimeters tall, with parts of four fingers of the right hand missing, and said he spoke Uzbek and had once lived in Tashkent. Press accounts later gave him the nickname "Bespaly," roughly "the fingerless one."
In 1991 Martynov killed a person in Khakassia. Accounts of the victim differ. The 2009 wanted notice, as reported by EANews, described a woman killed in a village in the republic. NEWS.ru, writing in 2024, placed the killing in the republic's capital, Abakan, and described the victim as a girl under 18; MSK1.ru in 2026 also described the victim as a girl. The victim's name was not reported.
He was caught quickly. In 1992 he was convicted of murder, with other charges. The Investigative Committee's 2012 statements described this as his earlier conviction for murder and gave the term he served as 14 years. The press reports put the sentence at 15 years, served in a special-regime colony, where, according to MSK1.ru, he contracted tuberculosis. All three press accounts say he was released early, in 2004.
In 2005, the Investigative Committee said, he was placed on the federal wanted list for an attack on an underage girl in Kemerovo, in western Siberia. She survived. According to NEWS.ru, which cited the case materials, he was detained after the attack but a court released him on a written undertaking not to leave the area. He left anyway, and he evaded the police until 2010.
According to the Investigative Committee, after his release he had learned how to win people's trust, and he crossed Russia by hitchhiking, found temporary jobs and met people, often women, through his travels. The wanted notices issued while he was at large, NEWS.ru reported, recorded that he worked without papers and used other names. The 2009 notice listed the regions in which police connected him with crimes: Chelyabinsk, Sakhalin, Khakassia, Kemerovo, Perm, Udmurtia, Nizhny Novgorod and Vladimir. It warned that he might have committed further offenses elsewhere in the country and asked anyone who saw him to contact the criminal investigation department in Udmurtia.
The Investigative Committee's final list of regions in the 2012 case was longer. It named the Republics of Udmurtia and Bashkortostan and the Voronezh, Oryol, Nizhny Novgorod, Kemerovo, Sverdlovsk, Vladimir, Yaroslavl and Lipetsk regions, and said the crimes ran from 2005 to 2010.
The official statements on the case did not name the eight murder victims. Press accounts, drawing on investigators, attributed the following deaths to him.
Glazov, Udmurtia, June 2007. Svetlana S. was killed in the town of Glazov in early June 2007. Both the 2009 wanted notice and NEWS.ru dated the case to June 8, 2007, and NEWS.ru described it as the first killing of the series.
Yekaterinburg, 2008. Iraida S., described by NEWS.ru as a woman with whom Martynov was living, was stabbed to death in Yekaterinburg. MSK1.ru dated her death to March 2008. Sverdlovsk region, of which Yekaterinburg is the capital, is on the Investigative Committee's list.
Vladimir region, May 2008. Sergei B., a novice at a monastery where Martynov had worked, was killed. NEWS.ru reported that money and valuables were then taken from a church, and that Martynov later described the killing as aimed at punishing a priest he accused of stealing.
Yaroslavl region, 2008. Nadezhda R. was killed in the Uglich district of Yaroslavl region, according to NEWS.ru. MSK1.ru referred to a woman killed near Yaroslavl that year without giving her name.
Oryol region, November 2008. Galina A., 52, was stabbed to death near the village of Znamenka in Oryol region. MSK1.ru gave the month as November 2008.
Gryazi, Lipetsk region, 2010. Evgenia G. was beaten to death in the town of Gryazi, NEWS.ru reported. MSK1.ru also placed a killing in Lipetsk region in 2010.
Ufa, Bashkortostan, 2010. Tamara S., 70, was stabbed to death in Ufa in the summer of 2010. Notes were left behind, one of them addressed to the investigators, MSK1.ru reported. Her mobile phone later led detectives to Martynov.
Voronezh region, 2010. Nadezhda Ch., a pensioner, was strangled in a village in Voronezh region. She was the last of the victims in the official count. Alexander Linchik, a representative of the Investigative Committee in Voronezh, said in a video interview quoted by NEWS.ru that Martynov told investigators he had killed her out of pity, and that once investigators learned this they saw in him the signs of a serial offender.
In June 2007, shortly after the Glazov killing, an eight-year-old girl was abducted in Nizhny Novgorod region, near the city of Dzerzhinsk. According to the Investigative Committee, Martynov had earlier befriended her parents; NEWS.ru reported that her father had employed him. She survived. The offenses against her formed part of the charges on which he was convicted in 2012. The Investigative Committee said that one of the two girls in the case suffered grave bodily harm and the other was the victim of a further serious offense.
Investigators from Ufa followed the dead woman's phone, which Martynov had kept and was using, and it led them to Voronezh region, MSK1.ru reported. In 2010, after another killing there, investigators came to the Novaya Usman area, outside the city of Voronezh. Martynov had been working there as an electrician at a roadside café, some 20 kilometers from the city, and living on the premises.
He was arrested in November 2010 while he was asleep, and did not resist, NEWS.ru and MSK1.ru reported. He later said he had taunted the investigators in order to draw attention to himself. According to MSK1.ru, he told them that it had to end for him sometime.
Because the crimes ran across so many regions, the case was taken over by the Main Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee in Moscow. Martynov gave detailed statements, and, according to NEWS.ru, he agreed to a cooperation deal with the investigators.
One of them, Alexander Shmakov, was quoted by NEWS.ru from an interview with the weekly Versiya as saying that Martynov felt hatred toward the women he killed and saw himself as releasing them from lives he considered worthless. A forensic psychiatric examination found him sane, MSK1.ru reported, and some officers involved in the case objected to describing him as a maniac at all, saying that many of the killings came from sudden bursts of irritation.
According to NEWS.ru, Martynov threatened while in pretrial detention to kill a cellmate. He later said he had only been fooling around and that he would not allow himself to kill anyone in a prison cell. He has been held without a cellmate since that time, the outlet reported.
In May 2012 the Main Investigative Directorate announced that the investigation was complete. Its statement said that Martynov had been charged with intentionally causing grave bodily harm, hooliganism, the murder of two or more persons, and other charges; that from 2005 to 2010 he had committed a series of murders and other grave crimes in more than ten regions; and that investigators had established the circumstances of eight murders. Most of the victims were women, and two were girls under 18. The statement said that in 1992 he had been convicted of murder, had served 14 years, and had begun killing again; that he had been wanted since 2005 for the attack on a girl in Kemerovo; and that he had acted boldly, made no attempt to hide evidence and left letters at crime scenes, and had evaded the police until 2010. Rossiyskaya Gazeta, the government newspaper, reported on May 23 that eight was the number investigators had been able to prove and that the true number of his victims was not known.
The case was then sent to the prosecutor's office for approval of the indictment and on to court.
The case was heard in Voronezh, where Martynov had been arrested and where the last of the killings had taken place. On November 9, 2012, the Investigative Committee announced that the court had found him guilty and sentenced him to life imprisonment. The convictions included article 105, part 2, paragraph "a" of the Russian Criminal Code (the murder of two or more persons), article 111 (intentionally causing grave bodily harm) and article 213 (hooliganism), with other charges.
The Investigative Committee's announcement summarized the findings. Between 2005 and 2010, it said, Martynov had committed a series of crimes in two republics and eight regions, and the investigation had established the circumstances of eight murders. It said that after his earlier prison term he had used the skills he acquired to gain people's trust, travel across the country by hitchhiking and find temporary work, and that he was detained in Voronezh region in 2010 after another murder.
No appeal against the verdict was reported.
Martynov was sent to IK-2, the special-regime colony for men serving life sentences in Solikamsk, Perm Krai, known as the "White Swan." NEWS.ru reported in August 2024 that he was held there in a cell on his own. When fire broke out at the colony in July 2025, the Moscow-region outlet 360.ru included him in its list of the colony's prisoners. In January 2026, MSK1.ru, citing the Perm news site 59.RU, again reported him as serving his sentence at the White Swan. In an interview from prison, he remarked that he was guarded better than the president.
The official count is eight murders in the 2012 case, plus the 1991 killing for which he was convicted in 1992. MSK1.ru gave the official total as nine proven murders.
Martynov himself has claimed more. In an interview with the journalist and human rights advocate Eva Merkacheva, published by Moskovsky Komsomolets in 2019 and cited by NEWS.ru, he said he was responsible for the deaths of at least 15 people, and that other men were serving sentences for crimes he had committed. NEWS.ru reported that he named killings in Tomsk, Novosibirsk and Oryol region, and said that a man convicted in the Oryol case was innocent. MSK1.ru gave his own figure as 16, and added that he denied involvement in several other cases that resembled his. No charges arising from these claims have been reported.
Several details of his early life rest on his own word. His account of service with armed groups in Afghanistan, and of how he lost parts of his fingers, comes from his interviews. His claim that he escaped from custody three times also rests on his own account.
The press accounts also disagree on some dates. The 2009 wanted notice placed the Oryol killing in November 2007, while MSK1.ru gave November 2008; and the same notice described the May 2008 victim in Vladimir region as a woman, while the later accounts describe a man.
June 2, 1962: Sergey Martynov is born in Nyazepetrovsk, Chelyabinsk region.
Early 1980s: deserts from the army; at 22 he is sentenced by a military tribunal to seven years for desertion, hooliganism and escape.
1989: released, early, under an amnesty.
1991: kills a person in Khakassia.
1992: convicted of murder, with other charges; sentenced to 15 years.
2004: released early.
2005: attack on an underage girl in Kemerovo; she survives; he is placed on the federal wanted list.
June 2007: Svetlana S. is killed in Glazov, Udmurtia.
June 2007: an eight-year-old girl is abducted near Dzerzhinsk, Nizhny Novgorod region; she survives.
2008: Iraida S. (Yekaterinburg), Sergei B. (Vladimir region, May), Nadezhda R. (Yaroslavl region) and Galina A. (Oryol region, November) are killed.
June 25, 2009: a wanted notice for Martynov is published in Yekaterinburg.
2010: Evgenia G. (Gryazi, Lipetsk region), Tamara S. (Ufa, summer) and Nadezhda Ch. (Voronezh region) are killed.
November 2010: arrested near Voronezh after investigators trace the Ufa victim's phone.
May 2012: the Investigative Committee's Main Investigative Directorate announces the end of the investigation; eight murders are established.
November 9, 2012: convicted in Voronezh of the murder of two or more persons, with other charges; sentenced to life imprisonment.
August 2024: reported held alone at the IK-2 "White Swan" colony, Solikamsk.
July 2025 and January 2026: again reported serving his sentence at the White Swan.