Vladimir Mukhankin was sentenced to death in Rostov-on-Don in January 1997 for murdering eight people in the Rostov region of southern Russia. The Moscow Times, reporting the case on January 22, 1997, gave his age as 36 and said he had pleaded guilty before the court passed sentence. His death sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. The investigator who questioned him, Amurkhan Yandiev, has said that Mukhankin told him about all of his killings once the two had built a working trust, and that years later, from prison, Mukhankin still sent him letters.
His case came to trial in a region that had already seen several serial murder cases in a short space of time. The same Moscow Times report said that a third recent serial murder case from the Rostov region was about to go before the regional court, and it reminded readers that Rostov-on-Don had been the home of Andrei Chikatilo, convicted and executed in 1994.
Mukhankin's early life is known chiefly through Yandiev, who later described it to RT. In the investigator's telling, it was a childhood without love from the start. His father left his mother before he was born, Yandiev said, and in a village a young, unmarried, pregnant woman faced shame; she tried to rid herself of the pregnancy by every means she could. After the boy was born, according to Yandiev, his mother tried to leave him with his father, and she went on to change husbands again and again.
No one brought the boy up, the investigator said. What he received from the person closest to him was mistreatment. Mukhankin told Yandiev that, with nowhere else to go, he had spent nights in a cemetery, in a hollow he dug for himself. Yandiev said investigators later checked these accounts.
Yandiev has said that studying the lives of men like Mukhankin in detail can leave even an investigator feeling some pity for them, and that this was part of the reason he wrote books and papers on both Chikatilo and Mukhankin.
During the investigation, Yandiev arranged, on his own initiative, a meeting between Mukhankin and his mother, to see how they would react to each other. They behaved like strangers, he recalled. Mukhankin told her goodbye and said she would never see him again. She stood and said nothing.
Details of his schooling, work, marriage and any earlier convictions were not reported.
Mukhankin was convicted of eight murders. The Moscow Times, in its January 1997 report, described his victims as eight women. Yandiev, speaking to RT, spoke of eight people, and 360, a Moscow region broadcaster's news site, reported in December 2025 that the first person he killed was a man: his wife's lover. According to 360, after that first killing he killed seven more people, living in Shakhty (Шахты), Tsimlyansk (Цимлянск) and Salsk (Сальск), within three months. 360 also reported that the victims were killed with a knife.
One of the eight was a girl. Yandiev told RT that Mukhankin had killed a girl in the Tsimlyansky district (Цимлянский район). Her name and age were not reported.
The names of the other victims, their ages and the dates of the killings were not reported. 360 dated the series only by its length, a span of about three months after the first killing.
Mukhankin was questioned by Yandiev, whom RT's headline described as an investigator on the Chikatilo case. At the time of the RT interview, Yandiev was a retired colonel of justice, aged 76, working as a defense lawyer.
Yandiev described the moment Mukhankin was brought to him for questioning. The prisoner, he said, expected to be struck and to be blamed for everything. Yandiev believed that such treatment would make a man who had been mistreated all his life close up and say nothing. So, he recalled, he walked in with a friendly greeting, as though they had long known each other, shook his hand, and asked whether everything was all right and whether anyone was treating him badly.
The approach worked, in his account. The two developed a relationship of trust, and Mukhankin told him about his killings, Yandiev said, holding nothing back. The investigator described their relations as good: he brought Mukhankin paper and helped get him moved to a cell with better conditions. Close contact, he explained, was needed so that the accused would open up.
Mukhankin, according to Yandiev, liked showing investigators how he had committed his crimes. He told and demonstrated, the investigator said, like the hero of a film; one of the places he showed them was in the Tsimlyansky district, where, Yandiev said, he had killed the girl.
The case went to court in Rostov-on-Don. The Moscow Times reported on January 22, 1997, that Mukhankin had pleaded guilty to eight murders and had been sentenced to death "just days" earlier. It described the court as the city court. The full list of counts, the date of the verdict and the names of the judges and lawyers have not been reported.
The same Moscow Times article reported that Roman Burtsev, then 25, was about to go on trial before the regional court in Rostov-on-Don in a separate case.
RT, in its interview with Yandiev, said that Mukhankin had asked the investigator to be present at his execution.
The execution did not take place. RT reported that the death sentence was replaced with life imprisonment. The date of the commutation and the authority that granted it have not been reported.
Mukhankin was sent to serve his life term at the special-regime colony for life prisoners known as the Black Dolphin (Чёрный дельфин). RT and 360 both reported that he was held there; the date of his transfer has not been reported.
While in custody, Mukhankin wrote poetry. Yandiev recalled that Mukhankin once heard on the radio a birthday greeting sent to the investigator by his daughter, and wrote him a poem in response. In it, the investigator said, Mukhankin wrote that the two of them stood at opposite poles but that he wished him good health.
From the colony, Mukhankin wrote to Yandiev several times, the investigator said, criticizing some of the officers who had worked on his case and asking for more paper on which to write complaints. Yandiev said he had no wish to keep up a correspondence. After the verdict, he asked, what relationship could he have with a man who had eight victims, and what would they write to each other about?
Russian press coverage of Mukhankin has linked him repeatedly to Andrei Chikatilo, whose case had been tried in Rostov-on-Don a few years earlier. RT's introduction to the Yandiev interview listed Mukhankin among men it called Chikatilo's followers in the region. 360, in its December 2025 article on the Rostov region's history of serial murder cases, headed its section on him with a label presenting him as Chikatilo's successor, and reported that he regarded himself as one. 360 also reported that Mukhankin claimed from time to time that Chikatilo was nothing beside him. These are the claims of the press and of Mukhankin himself as the press relays them; the court record of his case, as reported, deals with eight murders.
Several basic points in the case are reported differently or not at all.
The court. The Moscow Times called the court that sentenced Mukhankin the city court in Rostov-on-Don. In the same article it described the court that would hear the Burtsev case as the regional court. The formal name of the court in Mukhankin's case and the exact date of his verdict were not reported.
The victims. The Moscow Times wrote of eight women. Yandiev spoke of eight people, and 360 said the first victim was a man. The victims' names were not reported.
The first killing. 360 reported that the first victim was his wife's lover. The circumstances of the first killing were not otherwise reported.
His plea. The Moscow Times reported that Mukhankin pleaded guilty. The course of the trial was not described.
His age. The Moscow Times gave his age as 36 in January 1997. His date of birth was not reported.
The commutation and his custody. RT reported that the death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and that Mukhankin was serving it at the Black Dolphin colony, but the date of the commutation has not been reported, and no dated record shows where he is held today.
Before his birth: his father left his mother, according to Amurkhan Yandiev.
Dates not reported: eight people killed in the Rostov region, among them a man and a girl, in Shakhty, Tsimlyansk and Salsk, according to 360 and Yandiev.
After his arrest (date not reported): questioned by Yandiev, to whom he described his killings.
Shortly before January 22, 1997: pleaded guilty to eight murders and was sentenced to death by a court in Rostov-on-Don (The Moscow Times).
January 22, 1997: The Moscow Times reported the sentence.
Later (date not reported): death sentence commuted to life imprisonment; held at the Black Dolphin colony (RT).
December 12, 2025: 360 reported that he had been sent to the Black Dolphin for life.