Vladimir Ionesyan, born in 1937, presented himself at apartment doors in Moscow and Ivanovo as an inspector from Mosgaz, the city gas utility, and killed five people with an axe once inside, between late December 1963 and January 1964. Most of the victims were children; one was an elderly woman. The nickname Mosgaz came from the utility he claimed to represent, and the phrase entered Russian usage.
The killings caused open panic in Moscow at a time when Soviet press practice was not to report violent crime, and information spread largely by rumour. He was arrested with his companion Alevtina Dmitrieva on January 12, 1964.
He was tried, convicted and executed by shooting on January 31, 1964, nineteen days after the arrest, an unusually rapid disposal even by the standards of the period. Dmitrieva received fifteen years.