By Chris Bartholomew
Yekaterinburg, Russia: After finding the charred remains of a 23-year old law student in a roadside ditch, authorities tracked down a 30-year old electrician who lured victims to his home by advertising for computer equipment on the internet. They seem to have found the killer because they found fingerprints. The body was burned so badly that they had to identify him through dental records. Apparently the killer would kill using the electric chair, and then take the victims to a forest and burn them. He is suspected of killing at least five other people.
He admitted to killing the student and said he would confess to more if they found more bodies. He claims to have killed more people as he conducted experiments on an improvised electric chair that he had invented. Getting the victim into his garage, he overpowered him and wrapped him with copper wire connected to a generator. Hitting a button on his computer he triggered a surge of current through the student's body, which killed him 'almost' instantly.
Some say that when the victims came into the house he simply asked them to sit in the chair, but personally, I like the story above better, since it makes much more sense. There are pictures of the electric chair that he made, it has straps and all, it looks like what it is and so, it only makes sense that someone would not willingly sit there.
Interesting to note that the suspect claims to have designed a doormat that would electrocute anyone who stood on it, but he hadn't tested that one yet. He was working on a camera that would erase the memory of anyone he took a picture of.
He worked at a power station.
Editor's note: this was written in December 2009, months after the arrest, and the suspect is unnamed throughout because he had not then been tried. He has since been named and dealt with, and the outcome is not the one the article's last line implies. He is Yegor Nikolayevich Khabarov, known in Russia as The Electrician, detained in May 2009 over the killing of the law student. He was held responsible for two killings in Yekaterinburg between 2008 and 2009, committed with an accomplice, Sergey Kochnev, whom this article does not mention. The five or six further deaths he was suspected of were never charged, for want of evidence, so the higher figure remains a suspicion and nothing more. He was found not criminally responsible by reason of insanity and served no prison sentence; after compulsory treatment he returned to live in the city, where he was recognised by a former police officer in 2024. This archive has no roster entry for him, and on the record above he is a candidate for one: two deaths established, seven attributed, no conviction.