In the early 1920s, as Moscow recovered from revolution, civil war and famine, men began to disappear from the city's horse market. Most were peasants from outside the capital who had come to buy a horse and carried cash to do it. From 1921 their bodies were found in different parts of the city. In May 1923 the Moscow criminal investigation department arrested a cab driver who called himself Vasily Ivanovich Komarov. His real name was Vasily Terentyevich Petrov. He claimed 33 killings. In June 1923 he and his wife, Sofia, were tried in a packed hall at the Polytechnic Museum, and both were sentenced to death.
The case drew huge crowds, foreign correspondents and newsreel cameras, and it was covered by a young reporter named Mikhail Bulgakov, whose sketch of the trial is still read. Russian writers since have called Komarov the first Soviet serial killer. The accounts agree on the outline of what happened. They differ on many of the numbers, on dates, and on how much his wife knew and did.
Petrov was born in Vitebsk Governorate, in the west of the Russian Empire, in what is now Belarus. Moskvich Mag, the Echo of Moscow historians Alexey Kuznetsov and Lev Gulko, Diletant and NEWS.ru all give his birth year as 1877 or 1878; Kuznetsov explained on air that peasant births of the time were often registered late, so the year is not certain. The Belarusian outlet Zerkalo gives 1877. Moskvich Mag and Gateway to Russia both describe him as 55 at his arrest, which does not fit either birth year, and the discrepancy has never been settled.
His childhood was poor and violent. Kuznetsov, drawing on a brochure on murderers published in the 1920s by Sofia Ukshe, described a family of 12 children with a father who drank and beat his wife and a mother who also drank. Diletant and Gateway to Russia describe his father as a railway worker. At 12, according to Moskvich Mag and Diletant, he was sent to work for a local landowner, and he had no schooling. By 15 he was drinking heavily, Moskvich Mag reports. NEWS.ru says one of his brothers was later sent to penal servitude for a killing committed while drunk.
He served four years as a conscript soldier, according to Moskvich Mag and Kuznetsov. During the Russo-Japanese War he was in the Far East and came back with money, Moskvich Mag and NEWS.ru report. He also married for the first time; Kuznetsov cited Ukshe's brochure as saying that he married at 28 and that the marriage was unhappy.
He served a year in prison for theft from a military warehouse. Moskvich Mag says the conviction came when he was about 40; Kuznetsov placed it around 1908 or 1909 and described the offense as selling dried fruit from an army depot; NEWS.ru places the term in the 1910s. His first wife died while he was in prison. NEWS.ru reports that sources differ on whether she died of cholera or took her own life. Bulgakov, who heard him speak about it at trial, wrote that he spoke of her suicide with indifference.
In Riga he married again. His second wife, Sofia, was Polish and a widow with two children, according to Moskvich Mag, Kuznetsov and NEWS.ru. NEWS.ru says the family later moved to the Volga region.
After the revolution he joined the Red forces. Moskvich Mag says he enlisted in the Red Guard; Kuznetsov said he volunteered for the Red Army before May 1918. He rose to platoon commander. Gateway to Russia reports that he shot captured White officers, and Moskvich Mag says that at his trial he claimed to have enjoyed commanding a firing squad. Kuznetsov described his part in executions ordered by military tribunals.
In 1919, by the account he gave investigators, he was captured by the White forces of General Anton Denikin on the southern front. He spent time in captivity; NEWS.ru and one version cited by Moskvich Mag say he escaped. He came back under a different name. Diletant and Kuznetsov both report that he took the surname Komarov after his capture. NEWS.ru adds that he also changed his patronymic from Terentyevich to Ivanovich, and Bulgakov's trial report names him as Vasily Ivanovich Komarov while recording that his real name was Petrov. Kuznetsov noted that Bulgakov hinted at a criminal reason for the change.
In 1920 he moved to Moscow with his family, Moskvich Mag and NEWS.ru report. His first job there was as a freight driver for Tsentroevak, the state body in charge of evacuating and resettling people displaced by the war. Diletant describes the pay as poor. Kuznetsov said the job brought him into contact with goods he could steal and sell.
The New Economic Policy, announced in the spring of 1921, brought back private trade and made cash worth something again. In the summer of 1921, according to Moskvich Mag, Komarov bought a horse and carriage and set up as a private cab driver. He worked at the city's horse market. He kept his horse at home, where he lived with Sofia and the children; MSK1.ru, in a 2026 piece on the city's crime history, gives the number of children as three. Diletant and NEWS.ru report that a baby had been born in the family shortly before his arrest.
Bulgakov described him as a heavy drinker who beat his wife and children. He also recorded that Komarov invited priests to the house on church holidays and drank with them. Kuznetsov said Komarov told the court that he had stopped believing in God but found reading the Gospels soothing.
The method, as later described at trial and in the accounts since, was simple. At the horse market Komarov looked for men who had come alone from the countryside to buy a horse. He offered one cheaply and invited the buyer home to settle the deal over drinks. There he killed the man with a hammer and took his money and sometimes his clothes, Gateway to Russia reports. The bodies were later found in different parts of Moscow. Bulgakov wrote that he sent his wife and the children out of the house before a buyer arrived.
Moskvich Mag dates the first killing to February 1921. Kuznetsov said that by Komarov's own account his first victim was a drinking companion, killed when he was drunk and irritated. Bulgakov's report says the disappearances began at the start of 1922. Bodies were found from 1921 onward, Kuznetsov said, many of them in spring, but the police did not see them as a series at first; he dated that recognition to early 1923.
The victims were adult men. Most were horse traders or peasants from the Moscow region and beyond and had no ties in the city, Moskvich Mag reports. Bulgakov wrote that investigators found 22 bodies and identified seven; Gateway to Russia gives the same figures. The only victim whose name has come down is Ivan Lapin, a peasant from the Moscow region and the father of four children, according to Moskvich Mag, whose body was found in May 1923.
Asked about motive, Komarov gave answers that changed from one telling to another. Diletant quotes his line that his wife liked to eat well and he liked to drink, and that the horse fed him but did not keep him in drink. Kuznetsov called robbery the plain motive, while noting that the doctors who examined him argued about whether there was more to it. NEWS.ru reports that Komarov referred to his victims as "khomuty", horse collars, a word he used for speculators, and Bulgakov recorded the same contemptuous term in court.
Sofia Komarova's part in the killings is the most disputed point in the case. Moskvich Mag reports that he drew her into the crimes in the winter of 1922 and that she helped clean up afterward. Gateway to Russia says that she once came home early, saw what had happened, and helped clean up instead of going to the police. Diletant quotes Komarov as telling her, after she had seen a killing, that they would have to get used to it, and says that afterward she took the children and left the house when he brought strangers home. NEWS.ru says she helped cover up the crimes, and a second NEWS.ru article says she knew of the killings and took part in several of them.
Bulgakov, who watched her in court, described a meek and dull woman who was sent away with the children while the killings took place and may have helped clean up afterward. He allowed that she might be holding something back, but wrote that he doubted she was hiding any great secrets. Kuznetsov told listeners that Komarov forced her to help, and that he found her death sentence surprising; he suggested that the pressure of public anger on the judges might explain it.
The Moscow criminal investigation department, known by its initials MUR, was less than five years old in 1923. Moskvich Mag names its chief, Ivan Nikolaev, as the officer in charge of the hunt, with his deputy Grigory Nikulin, who had taken part in the 1918 execution of the imperial family and whose memoir from the late 1950s is one of the sources on the case.
The detectives worked from physical clues left with the bodies. Grains of oats suggested someone who kept horses. Knots of the kind used in harnessing pointed to a driver. Then they found a baby's diaper, which suggested a household with a small child. Moscow had more than 2,000 licensed cab drivers, Diletant reports, so the clues narrowed the field without closing it.
Komarov drew attention because he did not behave like other drivers. Traders at the market told investigators that he rarely chased fares and often stood around the market, yet he always had money and drank in the nearby taverns, according to Moskvich Mag, Gateway to Russia and Bulgakov. Diletant adds that his wife had recently given birth.
On the night of May 18, 1923, police came to Komarov's home on the pretext of searching for an illegal still for home-brewed alcohol. Komarov let them in. When officers reached a small storeroom, he jumped from a window, from the second floor according to Bulgakov, and ran. Officers found evidence of a killing committed only a short time before; Moskvich Mag identifies the victim as Ivan Lapin.
Komarov did not get far. He was caught the same night in Nikolskoye, a village outside Moscow, at the home of an acquaintance who sold milk, according to Bulgakov and Moskvich Mag. When he was taken, he was writing a confession on the back of an identity document. In it, Bulgakov and NEWS.ru report, he tried to blame neighbors he disliked.
When police later brought him back to the neighborhood during the investigation, a crowd gathered. Bulgakov wrote that people shouted and pressed against the police line trying to reach him, and that the officers barely got him away. Moskvich Mag and Kuznetsov also describe how close the crowd came to lynching him.
Before the trial Komarov and his wife were examined by psychiatrists. Bulgakov and Kuznetsov both say there were three. One was the young Evgeny Krasnushkin, who later became one of the founders of Soviet forensic psychiatry and of the Serbsky Institute, and who gave evidence at the trial, according to Moskvich Mag and Kuznetsov. The experts described Komarov as an impulsive psychopath with signs of alcoholic degeneration but found him fit to stand trial, Moskvich Mag, Gateway to Russia and NEWS.ru report. Bulgakov summed up the finding in two words for each: completely normal, and Sofia too. Moskvich Mag reports that the experts wrote of the couple's dulled social feelings.
During questioning Komarov answered with mocking laughter, Moskvich Mag says. Kuznetsov mentioned an unverified story that Krasnushkin devised ways of getting defendants in open Moscow trials to incriminate themselves, and that he could not confirm it.
Because of the public interest, the trial was held in the building of the Polytechnic Museum in Moscow. Moskvich Mag dates its opening to June 6, 1923, and says it lasted three days; Kuznetsov, Diletant and NEWS.ru also give three days. Izvestia described a sea of heads outside the building, Moskvich Mag reports. Foreign journalists attended and the proceedings were filmed, Kuznetsov and Diletant say. The name of the court and the names of the judges and the prosecutor have not come down.
In court Komarov was calm. Gateway to Russia describes him speaking in a level, monotone voice and showing complete indifference to his fate. Bulgakov saw him sneer and giggle, give flippant and contemptuous answers, and show no fear at all. He talked of other people as cranks and as "khomuty". Asked about his first wife, he said he did not care. He described his killings without emotion. "We're all going to croak," he said, in a line quoted by both Bulgakov and Gateway to Russia.
He also boasted. Moskvich Mag and NEWS.ru report that he told the court he had become a hero in Moscow. Gateway to Russia says he declared himself ready to kill as many again; NEWS.ru gives his claim as readiness to kill 60 more. Kuznetsov quoted him saying in court that his wife loved to eat.
Sofia was tried with him and was brought into the courtroom to give evidence.
Bulgakov, who had come to Moscow from Kyiv the year before, reported on the trial and published his sketch "The Komarov Case" in the Berlin newspaper Nakanune. Kuznetsov said Bulgakov had gone to the trial for Izvestia. In the piece Bulgakov called Komarov "not a beast, and yet in no way a human being", a man for whom other people did not exist.
The court sentenced both Vasily and Sofia Komarov to death by shooting. Bulgakov reported that the children were to be raised at state expense, and Gateway to Russia and NEWS.ru say they were placed in state care or an orphanage.
The date of the executions varies by account. Gateway to Russia says the couple were shot together on June 18, 1923. Diletant gives June 1923, Moskvich Mag and NEWS.ru say the sentence was carried out a few days after the verdict, and MSK1.ru says the couple were executed in the summer of 1923.
The number of victims. Komarov spoke of 33 killings. Gateway to Russia and Diletant say he was charged with 29, NEWS.ru says he was officially blamed for 29, and Zerkalo and NEWS.ru describe at least 29 victims. Moskvich Mag gives 33 charged and 29 proven. Bulgakov's figures of 22 bodies found and seven identified come from the time of the trial. MSK1.ru reports that he confessed to 33 crimes under questioning.
His age. The birth year of 1877 or 1878 given by most outlets does not match the age of 55 that Moskvich Mag and Gateway to Russia give for him at the time of his arrest.
Lenin and the search. A story that Lenin personally ordered the hunt for the killer has circulated for years. Kuznetsov said he found nothing to support it in Lenin's collected works and noted that Lenin was already disabled by illness by early 1923.
A political case. Kuznetsov said that the poet Demyan Bedny and other journalists tried to present Komarov as a Denikin agent, but that the Soviet authorities did not take up that line.
The executioner. Moskvich Mag writes that it is quite possible that Pyotr Maggo, later one of the most prolific executioners of the OGPU and NKVD, carried out the sentence. Kuznetsov mentioned the same claim and said he could not confirm it.
A son in the war. Moskvich Mag reports a rumor that one of the Komarov sons went over to the Germans in the Second World War and calls it a legend.
A street song about Komarov circulated among Moscow's buskers and was recorded in 1997, according to Moskvich Mag. Gudok printed a photograph of Komarov and Sofia on June 7, 1923.
Ilf and Petrov, in their book of American travels, compared Komarov to Al Capone, NEWS.ru reports.
1877 or 1878: Vasily Terentyevich Petrov born in Vitebsk Governorate (year uncertain).
About age 12: sent to work for a local landowner.
Four years of conscript service; in the Far East during the Russo-Japanese War.
1900s or 1910s (dates differ): a year in prison for theft from a military warehouse; his first wife dies during his imprisonment.
In Riga, marries Sofia, a widow with two children.
Before May 1918: volunteers for the Red forces; rises to platoon commander.
1919: captured by Denikin's forces, by his account; later uses the name Komarov.
1920: moves to Moscow with his family; works as a freight driver for Tsentroevak.
Spring 1921: the New Economic Policy is announced.
February 1921: first killing, as dated by Moskvich Mag.
Summer 1921: buys a horse and carriage and becomes a private cab driver.
1921 to 1923: bodies of men found in Moscow.
Winter 1922: Sofia drawn into the crimes, according to Moskvich Mag.
Early 1923: police recognize a series, as Kuznetsov dates it.
May 18, 1923, night: police search the Komarov home; he escapes through a window; the killing of Ivan Lapin is discovered; he is caught the same night in Nikolskoye.
Before the trial, 1923: psychiatric examination; found fit to stand trial.
June 6, 1923: trial opens at the Polytechnic Museum, Moscow (Moskvich Mag); it lasts three days.
June 1923: Vasily and Sofia Komarov sentenced to death by shooting; children to be raised by the state.
June 18, 1923: execution of both, as dated by Gateway to Russia (others: "June 1923", "a few days" after the verdict, "summer 1923").
1923: Bulgakov's "The Komarov Case" published in Nakanune, Berlin.
1997: a street song about Komarov recorded.