Yuri Anufrievich Ivanov was born in 1956 and lived in Ust-Kamenogorsk, a city in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic that is now called Oskemen. He worked as a driver and forwarding clerk. In 1989 he was sentenced to death and executed for killings of young women that investigators traced across more than a decade.
Ivanov first came before a court at 18. In 1974 he was convicted of attempted rape and sentenced to three years in a settlement colony. In 1976, while serving that term, he was linked to a run of offenses against women in the Sogra district of Ust-Kamenogorsk. Eleven women were victims within less than six months. Police arrested a different man, who was convicted of four of them. Seven stayed unsolved and were later attributed to Ivanov.
He was released in 1977 after three years and went back to work as a driver. For a time his life appeared settled.
Investigators later attributed to Ivanov the deaths of more than ten young women in Ust-Kamenogorsk between 1977 and 1979. The killings stopped by late 1979. Only the earliest of them was proven against him in court. In a separate case from the same period, a woman's husband had been convicted of her killing and served seven years of a 12-year sentence before Ivanov's confession led to his release. He was compensated.
Ivanov told investigators that a breakup in 1986 revived a hatred of women that he traced to the end of his first marriage. In October 1987 a girl aged 16 was killed in Ust-Kamenogorsk. Ivanov was arrested in the city that month.
Ivanov confessed after his arrest and offered to describe everything.
Ivanov said he had killed between 24 and 25 women. Investigators were able to corroborate 12 to 14 deaths. The total is also given as more than ten, and as 16 separate episodes. Only two killings, the earliest of the late 1970s and the 1987 case, were proven in court. Many of the episodes lacked enough evidence to be tried.
A psychiatric examination in Moscow was inconclusive; he declined to speak with the doctors, though the officers who escorted him described him as lucid and talkative.
The trial took place in 1989 in the Kazakh SSR. The name of the court and the exact wording of the verdict are not on record. Ivanov asked to be charged with every offense he had confessed to, including those that could not be proven. He told the court he understood how much grief he had caused and asked for the maximum penalty.
He was sentenced to death and executed in 1989. Before the execution he asked to see his daughter, who refused.
The number of victims is given as more than ten, 12 to 14, 16, and 24 to 25. Only two killings were established at trial, so the larger figures are attributions and his own claims. He described his motive as revenge on women for betrayal by his first wife and later partners.
1956: Born in Ust-Kamenogorsk.
1974: Convicted of attempted rape; three years in a settlement colony.
1976: Seven of eleven offenses in the Sogra district later attributed to him.
1977: Released.
1977 to 1979: More than ten deaths of young women attributed to him; the earliest proven in court.
1986: A breakup, which he cited as renewing his hatred of women.
October 1987: A 16-year-old girl killed; he is arrested and confesses.
1989: Tried in the Kazakh SSR; sentenced to death and executed.