Valery Asratyan was sentenced to death by the Moscow City Court on June 18, 1992, after being found guilty of the murder of two women and of a series of rapes committed in Moscow from 1988. Amnesty International appealed for the sentence to be commuted within three weeks. It was not, and he is reported to have been executed in 1996.
Valery Georgievich Asratyan was born in 1958 in Yerevan, then part of the Soviet Union, into a family that Russian press accounts describe as comfortable by Soviet standards. He finished school in 1975 and went on to a teacher-training institute, where he studied preschool psychology and pedagogy. Amnesty International later described him as an ethnic Armenian and a former teacher. He worked for a time as a psychologist at a boarding school for children with disabilities.
He settled in Moscow in the early 1980s; Infox.ru gives the year as 1981. Infox.ru and Moskvich Mag date his first convictions differently, but both record two convictions for sexual offences before the crimes that began in 1988, and Infox.ru says he was released from his second sentence in 1987.
From February 1988 a series of attacks on young women took place in Moscow. Investigators eventually attributed seventeen rapes to Asratyan. Two of the women he attacked were killed. Others survived, and the charges against him included six counts of attempted murder. The two killings were separate events, committed on different occasions, and the court found him guilty of both.
A woman who had been living with him was also prosecuted and, according to Moskvich Mag, received a sentence of ten years.
The dates of the two killings and the names of the women who died are not on record. One popular account speaks of three deaths where the trial record counts two; the count of two is the one given by Amnesty International and by the Russian accounts of the charges.
Asratyan was arrested in Moscow. The date of the arrest is not on record.
The case was tried by the Moscow City Court. According to Amnesty International, whose document is dated July 7, 1992, the court sentenced him on June 18, 1992. The organization recorded that he had been found guilty of the murder of two women and of an unspecified number of rapes, and that he had been sentenced to death. The Russian press accounts give the charges as seventeen counts of rape, two counts of premeditated murder with aggravating circumstances, and six counts of attempted murder.
In his final statement Asratyan asked the court to impose the death penalty, and the court did so. Infox.ru says he refused to file a cassation appeal. Amnesty International, writing within three weeks of the sentence, said it did not know whether he had appealed, and it called for the sentence to be commuted.
Infox.ru and Moskvich Mag both say the sentence was carried out in 1996, shortly before the moratorium on executions in Russia took effect; Infox.ru names Butyrka prison in Moscow, though it also gives the year as 1992. The year 1996 is reported, not officially confirmed.
The number of deaths is the main point of difference. The court record as reported by Amnesty International and the charges as reported in Russian accounts count two women killed. One popular account speaks of three. Only the two deaths are treated as convictions.
The dates and places of the individual killings and the date of the execution are not on record. The earlier convictions of the 1980s are dated differently by the accounts.
1958: Born in Yerevan.
1975: Finishes school; later studies preschool psychology and pedagogy.
Early 1980s: Moves to Moscow.
1987: Released from his second prison sentence.
From February 1988: series of attacks on young women in Moscow; two women killed.
Date not on record: arrested in Moscow.
June 18, 1992: Sentenced to death by the Moscow City Court.
July 7, 1992: Amnesty International issues an appeal for commutation.
1996: Reported executed at Butyrka prison.