Vasiliy Kulik was born in Irkutsk in Siberia on January 17, 1956, qualified in medicine and worked as a paediatrician at a city clinic. He was married with a child, was a Komsomol member, and was regarded as a promising young doctor.
Between 1984 and January 1986 he killed thirteen people in Irkutsk. Seven were elderly women, whom he talked his way in to see by presenting himself as a doctor making a call, and six were children, some as young as two, taken from courtyards and stairwells. He strangled and stabbed them and assaulted the bodies. The alternation between the two victim groups is unusual and was one reason investigators pursued two separate offenders for a period. Soviet reporting called him the Irkutsk Monster.
He was arrested on January 17, 1986, his thirtieth birthday, after being seen with a child who was later found dead.
He confessed and was convicted. He was executed by a shot to the head on June 26, 1989. The case is one of the small number of Soviet serial murder investigations that were reported domestically at the time, because the offender was a doctor and the propaganda value of concealing it was outweighed.