Staņislavs Rogoļevs was convicted in Soviet Latvia of ten murders and about as many rapes of women, committed over a period of roughly two years in and around Riga. His name appears in Latvian and Russian-language sources in several forms: Rogaļovs and Rogoļovs in Latvian, Rogolev and Rogalev in Russian, and Rogolevs in the Latvian-style Latin-script form. All of them refer to the same man. He was arrested in May 1982, sentenced to death in June 1983 and executed in June 1984.
The case is remembered in Latvia for two reasons. The first is the length of time he was able to go unrecognized: the attacks were spread across several towns and districts, police recorded them as separate matters, and at least one complaint was discarded at a local station. The second is that three young men were convicted of one of his killings, and one of them was sentenced to death for it, before the real culprit was identified. The court that tried him is not on record, and the numbers given for his crimes differ from one outlet to another.
Rogoļevs was born in Riga in 1941. A wanted notice from 1982, quoted by the Russian-language newspaper Biznes & Baltija (BB.lv) in 2021, gave his birth year as 1941 and his height as 180 centimeters. The Russian-language news portal Otkrito.lv, in a 2024 article carried by Jauns.lv, gave his birthday as February 14 and said his father was killed in the war. According to that article his mother was repeatedly in prison during his childhood, and he grew up on a farm with little supervision. A 2017 overview on TVNET gave his age at his execution as 43, which agrees with a 1941 birth.
He was in trouble with the law from a young age. Otkrito.lv said he served about twenty years in total, mainly for thefts and robberies. Apollo.lv, in its 2019 series on the case, said he had little formal schooling and described what it called a prison education. After his release he became an informant for the Latvian Interior Ministry. Apollo.lv called him a secret agent of the ministry; Otkrito.lv said the arrangement gave him early warning of police inquiries and helped him avoid capture for a long time. The same article reported that a writer and a lawyer had claimed he worked for senior officials, and presented that as a claim, not as an established fact.
The Latvian public broadcaster, in a 2018 article produced by Latvian Television, said Rogoļevs was convicted of ten murders and roughly as many rapes, and that the crimes were committed over several years. Other outlets give a shorter span. Otkrito.lv put the first attack in October 1980 and the last in April 1982, and counted 21 attacks in all, of which ten victims died. BB.lv gave 10 women killed, 10 attempted murders and 21 rapes, and the TVNET overview counted 21 attacks in about a year and a half. Only the first figure, from Latvian Television, is tied to the court's verdict.
Otkrito.lv listed the places of the attacks as Jelgava (October 1980), Jumprava (October 1980), Salaspils (November 8, 1980), Babīte (New Year's night, 1981), Torņakalns in Riga (March 1981), Šķirotava in Riga (April 8, 1981), Aizkraukle (August 27, 1981) and Jūrmala (April 1982). Other outlets add Ķekava. Which of the ten deaths happened at each place is not on record.
The victims were women. A full list of those who died is not on record. One is named in a local newspaper: Maruta Začs, a resident of Koknese village, who died in the night of August 26 to 27, 1981 near Aizkraukle, then called Stučka. Her case became the basis of the wrongful convictions described below.
Latvian Television said the Soviet system often failed to register such crimes properly or investigate them, so the connections between the cases went unseen for a long time. Apollo.lv, in the first part of its 2019 series, described a run of incidents between 1980 and 1981 in Jumprava, Ķekava, Kaplava, Aizkraukle and Baldone. In several of them the police report was thrown away, the case went nowhere or a woman was pressed to withdraw her complaint. The series did not state that all of these were his crimes, and it blamed a lack of coordination between investigators, not a deliberate cover-up. It named an investigator who had seen no link between the Ķekava case and the others.
On the night of August 26 to 27, 1981, a woman from Koknese died near Aizkraukle. The investigation went in the wrong direction. A local newspaper, Ogres Vēstis, reported in October 2025 that Z. D., then 19, was arrested in September 1981 after a classmate was detained. They were charged with the killing together with two others. The three accused, all of them later cleared, were Z. D., A. K. and V. V.
The case against them rested on confessions and on an eyewitness identification. Apollo.lv reported that one of the men confessed only after about four days of questioning, and that forensic examinations pointed to none of the three. The eyewitness later admitted she had been persuaded to give false testimony. The trial began in April 1982 in the Latvian SSR Supreme Court, according to Ogres Vēstis, which dated the opening to April 19; Apollo.lv gave April 20. On May 5, 1982 the court sentenced Z. D. to death. V. V. received 15 years and A. K. ten years.
An official of the prosecutor's investigation department, Rita Aksenoka, doubted the conviction after looking at the evidence and the expert opinions, and the execution was stayed. Ogres Vēstis reported that Z. D. spent seven months in pretrial detention and a further period under sentence of death; Jauns.lv, citing Otkrito.lv, put his time on death row at 229 days before the sentence was found unenforceable. Apollo.lv said the three convictions were overturned in late 1982 and the men were released. Ogres Vēstis, citing a notice that the Supreme Court had published in a regional newspaper in April 1985, said the court had declared the three unlawfully prosecuted and convicted, annulled the verdicts and dismissed the case. The two accounts give different dates for the end of the matter. The same source said six police officers were convicted on March 26, 1985 of exceeding their powers and a former district prosecutor of negligence.
By April 1982, nearly a year after a killing in Ķekava, the criminal investigation department had asked an artist, Arkādijs Jušeckins, to draw sketches of the suspect from witness descriptions; a bus driver's account was the basis for six of them. Apollo.lv reported that investigators saw a resemblance to Rogoļevs, a man registered as an Interior Ministry informant, and that the Deputy Minister, Anrijs Kavalieris, compared the sketches with his photograph. Several witnesses from different cases identified him. On May 2, 1982 a nationwide search began, and his picture was posted in public places. Lieutenant Colonel Aloizs Blonskis, later a general, was given the task of organizing his arrest.
BB.lv and Jauns.lv, both Russian-language, add that an acquaintance of Rogoļevs, A. S., went to the police at Dubulti and gave information that led to him. Any charge against A. S. is not on record.
Rogoļevs was arrested in Ulbroka. Apollo.lv gave the date as May 13, 1982 and said a militia senior lieutenant, Valērijs Išboldins, alerted the criminal investigation department after an informant reported him there. The Latvian public broadcaster, which recalled the arrest in 2018 through an operative officer, Valērijs Sergejevs, dated it to May 1982; BB.lv gave May 12. He was taken to the Interior Ministry in Riga.
Apollo.lv's third part described the investigation after the arrest. Investigators were told, on the advice of the head of a psychoneurological clinic, to tell him that confessing would lead to treatment instead of a trial, and he began to confess. By the time the case passed to a second investigator he had confessed to six murders. Questioning then brought out 12 crimes, among them four murders that had not previously been investigated. Apollo.lv reported that he admitted the killing for which the three young men had been convicted.
The trial opened on April 4, 1983, at 11 o'clock, and was held inside the prison, according to Apollo.lv. The court is not on record. On May 11, 1983 a psychiatrist named Sočņeva found him sane and accountable and described him as a psychopath. Otkrito.lv, by contrast, attributed the sanity finding to an examination at the Serbsky Institute in Moscow headed by Professor Shostakovich. Both agree that he was found sane. His lawyer challenged the finding, citing a wartime bombing in which he and his mother were trapped when he was a small child, hallucinations, and medication that, taken with drink, could make him aggressive; Otkrito.lv recorded these arguments.
Apollo.lv said the judge read the verdict a few days after the psychiatric report and quoted the operative words as an order to sentence him to the highest measure of punishment (in Latvian, "augstāko soda mēru"). Ogres Vēstis, quoting the 1985 Supreme Court notice, gave the sentencing date as June 27, 1983. The notice gives the more specific date. Latvian Television reported that in his last word to the court he said that about 100 more crimes could reasonably be attributed to him beyond the dozens that the court had proved. That figure is his own statement and was not the subject of any verdict.
Rogoļevs was executed on June 19, 1984. Apollo.lv and TVNET both give that date, and Latvian Television gives the year. Otkrito.lv adds that it took place in Leningrad.
Z. D. was released. Ogres Vēstis reported that his prison diary was published in 1992 under the title "219 dienas nāvinieku kamerā" and that he later died in an accident at his home, according to a 1997 newspaper report. In 2023 Apollo.lv described the police plan used in the manhunt, which it attributed to a former State Police chief, Juris Rekšņa.
Convicted and final: murder and rape on the verdict of 1983, ten murders per Latvian Television. Not the subject of a verdict, as far as is on record: the 21 attacks given by Otkrito.lv and TVNET, the 10 attempted murders given by BB.lv, the 12 crimes and four additional murders that came out in questioning, and the 100 further crimes he mentioned in court.
Details that vary: the date of the arrest (May 12 or 13, 1982); the date of the verdict (June 27, 1983 in the Supreme Court notice quoted by Ogres Vēstis; a few days after May 11, 1983 in Apollo.lv); when the wrongful convictions were annulled (late 1982 in Apollo.lv; April 1985 in the Supreme Court notice); which body performed his psychiatric examination; and the length of time he was active (about two years in Otkrito.lv, one and a half in TVNET, several years in Latvian Television).
1941: Staņislavs Rogoļevs is born in Riga.
October 1980: first attack dated by Otkrito.lv, in Jelgava.
August 26 to 27, 1981: a woman from Koknese dies near Aizkraukle; three young men are later convicted of the killing.
September 1981: Z. D. and others are arrested.
April 1982: last attack dated by Otkrito.lv, in Jūrmala; the Supreme Court trial of the three young men opens.
May 2, 1982: nationwide search for Rogoļevs begins.
May 5, 1982: Z. D. is sentenced to death; V. V. and A. K. receive 15 and 10 years.
May 13, 1982: Rogoļevs is arrested in Ulbroka (one outlet gives May 12).
Late 1982: the three convictions are overturned, according to Apollo.lv.
April 4, 1983: his trial opens.
May 11, 1983: psychiatric finding that he is sane.
June 27, 1983: death sentence, per the Supreme Court notice.
June 19, 1984: executed.
1985: Supreme Court notice declares the three men unlawfully convicted.