Latest / 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories / The Danilovsky Maniac

Transcript

The Danilovsky Maniac · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

0:02
Discretion is advised. This is ten minuted murder. There's only one country that
0:24
can rival the United States when it comes to the reported body counts of murderers,
0:29
Russia, which has the second most prolific serial killers in the world,
0:34
the first one, of course, being the United States. And I'm not
0:37
going to delve deep into the statistics right now, maybe in a future episode,
0:42
but just know that it's disturbing for those of us that live here because
0:46
we're ahead of all other countries in terms of numbers of serial killers. And
0:51
it's not even close. It's not even close. But today our focus is
0:56
Russia. And because I'm not Russian and can just barely pronounce it. So
1:00
one of the American names and places, please know that I mean no disrespect
1:03
by the way that I will inevitably wreck some of these Russian names. So
1:07
here we go. Sherapovitz, a city in northwest Russia, sits in the
1:12
shadow of one of the country's largest steel mills. It contains pockets of wasteland
1:18
with half demolished buildings left abandoned because of legal issues. Throughout the day,
1:25
smoke from the steel plant's chimney covers the entire sky. In two thousand and
1:29
four, Shiapovitz became the perfect place for a serial killer to hunt undetected.
1:36
The first girl went missing in February of two thousand and four. Marina Ostrovskaya
1:42
was seventeen years old, and she had plans to meet up with her boyfriend's
1:46
parents on the evening of February fourth. During her walk to their house,
1:49
Marina took a short cut, walking through an empty lot on Danislovsky Street.
1:56
She never walked out to the other side. When Marina failed to come that
2:00
evening, her parents called the police, who then searched the area. The
2:05
initial search uncovered no sign of a missing girl. In the middle of the
2:08
afternoon and broad daylight, it was as if she vanished into thin air.
2:14
Six months later, a body was found in Cheripovits, but it did not
2:19
belong to Marina. Instead, the remains were identified as belonging to a nineteen
2:23
year old student named Irina Popova. Arena had been sexually assaulted and strangled to
2:29
death before her body was dumped out in the open. Her murderer had made
2:34
no efforts to bury or cover the body, leading to the quick discovery of
2:38
the crime. The following month, a second body was dumped a few miles
2:42
away from Arenas, a twenty two year old university student, Tatiana Beva.
2:47
She had gone missing while walking home from a club. Like before, Tatiana
2:52
had also been sexually assaulted and strangled. There wasn't enough evidence to confidently draw
2:58
a connection between the two cases, but the police were suspicious at the similarities.
3:04
Their suspicions were confirmed three months later when the body of a third girl,
3:07
seventeen year old Tatiana Maskamova, was found in a vacant lot. Though
3:14
Tatiana had been killed in the same way as the previous victims, it seemed
3:16
as if the killer was evolving. While the first two bodies had been left
3:22
entirely in the open, Tatiana's body had been covered with a layer of snow,
3:27
dirt and leaves. Less than a mile away from the crime scene,
3:30
investigators found a garat which had been handmade from two sticks and a piece of
3:36
cable. The DNA on the garat matched Tatiana Maskamova, and for the first
3:42
time police had found a murder weapon. It suggested that the killer hadn't just
3:46
changed the way he disposed of his victims, he had also changed where he
3:50
killed them. The first two victims had been abducted, killed, and then
3:53
dumped in a separate location. It seems that Tatiana had been killed very close
3:59
to where her body was found. Knowing that they were now dealing with a
4:02
serial killer, investigators braced themselves for another abduction and murder, but it didn't
4:09
come. Instead, the killer took some time off, leaving the authorities to
4:13
sweat before he returned. Six months later, on the twenty sixth of June
4:17
two thousand and five, a lady planned to meet up with a friends at
4:21
one pm. This lady's name is very hard to pronounce, but I'm going
4:26
to give it a shot. Lyod Milla myro Shinko, and there's a zero
4:30
percent chance that that's correct. But Lyo Milla. She never showed up to
4:34
this one pm meeting, and the friend was worried when she didn't answer the
4:39
phone. She reported her missing, and almost immediately the authorities came to the
4:43
conclusion that lyud Miller may have been abducted by the serial killer, who had
4:47
now been nicknamed the Danislovsky Maniac. At this point in the investigation, investigators
4:54
had not located any eyewitnesses. They had no idea what the killer looked like.
5:00
It was as if they were searching for a ghost. In July of
5:02
two thousand and five, they found their first eye witness, Sveetlana Stepanova.
5:09
She had been walking by a river with her sister and one of her friends
5:12
when she had stopped to tie up her shoe. Her companions kept walking,
5:15
but within minutes they heard a scream and turned back to see if Svetlana was
5:19
okay, but there was no sign of her apart from her swimsuit and a
5:24
bag left abandoned on the ground. Setlana's sister and friend searched through the bushes
5:30
and saw her lying on the ground in only her underwear. Her throat had
5:33
been cut so recently that it was still gushing with blood. Her killer was
5:38
standing over her, and when the two witnesses screamed, he took off,
5:43
But because of the trauma of seeing Fetlana's body, the two girls could not
5:46
remember much about the man's appearance. However, Setlana's murder provided the police with
5:51
a new area that needed to be searched. They combed through the waste land
5:56
where Svetlana had been killed, and eventually they reached the hose demolish building that
6:00
had once been the District Department of Internal Affairs. The building's underground parking garage
6:05
had been left untouched, and when investigators walked inside, they knew that they
6:11
had found exactly what they had been searching for. This was the Danislovsky Maniac's
6:15
layer. The cinder block walls had been covered with crudely drawn pornographic images in
6:21
black chalk, and nearby there was a pit full of car tires. Inside
6:27
the concrete pit, the killer had left the bodies of two missing women,
6:30
Marina, who had now been missing for eighteen months and Ludamilla, who had
6:35
disappeared four weeks ago. Just like the Maniac's other victims, Marina and Ludmilla
6:41
had been sexually assaulted and strangled. The Danislavsky Maniac had killed at least six
6:46
girls and women in less than two years, and police felt that they were
6:49
no closer to catching him. Then once again the crimes suddenly stopped. After
6:57
two years of radio silence, the killer returned. On the eleventh of June
7:00
two thousand and seven. He abducted seventeen year old Natalia Zakilova, who was
7:06
walking to meet her parents at the banks of the river. She called her
7:10
parents and told him that she was two minutes away, but she never arrived.
7:15
When Natalia's parents tried to call their daughter, they noticed that her phone
7:17
had been turned off and notified the police. When the news broke that another
7:23
young girl had disappeared, the public and the police both began to worry that
7:27
the Danislovsky maniac had returned. A search of the area revealed no signs of
7:31
Natalia, but investigators discovered that she had been abducted when she was less than
7:36
twenty meters away from her parents. One week later, her remains were found
7:42
at a nearby park. Investigators might not have found any physical evidence at the
7:46
site of Natalia's abduction, but they did find something that they'd been looking for
7:50
for years, detailed eyewitness descriptions of the attacker. Multiple people noticed a man
7:59
close to when Natalia had been abducted, stating that he was middle aged,
8:03
short, with a stocky build, and short brown hair that was going gray.
8:07
Some of the details varied between eye witnesses, but they all agreed on
8:11
one thing. The killer had extremely unsettling eyes that were clouded in appearance.
8:18
As soon as this description reached the media, a new nickname for the killer
8:22
was born, the Dull Eyed Maniac. After Natalia's murder, there were no
8:26
signs of the Maniac at first. The authorities believed that he was just taking
8:31
another short break from the killing, and they anticipated a new victim in a
8:35
month, or six months, or two years. There were several false leads,
8:41
a man who had dragged two girls into the bushes and share povits,
8:43
and a man who looked similar to the composite sketch had murdered his ex girlfriend,
8:48
but DNA testing revealed that both cases were unrelated. Then, in November
8:54
of twenty eleven, there was a murder that strongly resembled the Maniac's crimes.
8:58
Nineteen year olds Fetlanophiliac asked her boyfriend to pick her up, but when he
9:03
arrived at the location she'd given him, there was no sign of her.
9:07
The following year, her body was found behind an abandoned building, covered with
9:11
leaves and dirt, similar to the way that the Maniac had covered Tatiana's body
9:16
an attempt to hide it. Despite these similarities, police never officially counted this
9:20
one as the Maniac's victim. In late twenty twenty two, investigators made another
9:26
appeal to the public and released three new images related to the case. Two
9:33
of the images were composite sketches of the killer, but the third was a
9:37
real photograph of an unknown man who the police suspected might be the Danislowsky maniac.
9:43
It showed a middle aged man with graying hair, wearing a beige jacket
9:48
and blue pants, standing next to a body of water. The authorities believed
9:52
that the maniac would have found it impossible to stop committing his crimes. If
9:56
the murders have truly stopped, he is most likely either in prison or dead,
10:01
and if he is still alive, he might have fled the country or
10:05
changed his mo but wherever he is, no doubt he's still searching for his
10:11
next victim. That's ten minute murder for today, brief and bingeable true crime.
10:30
I'm Joe, I'm the host, and thank you so much for taking
10:31
the time to listen to the podcast today. And normally this time is where
10:35
I would let you know you need to subscribe or share the podcast with your
10:39
friends and family and maybe say something funny here there, but I'm not going
10:43
to do that today. This podcast episode will be released at or around Thanksgiving
10:48
of twenty twenty three, and that may not be when you're listening to it.
10:52
However, I would like to take this time instead of doing that self
10:56
serving thing that I normally do at this time, and recognize the life and
11:01
now death of the biggest maybe in the entire country's existence of mental health awareness,
11:07
and that's Roseland Carter. Even before she was Jimmy Carter's wife, she
11:13
was on the side of mental health awareness. She had a family member suffering
11:16
from a mental health illness and he scared her just because he was different,
11:22
and instead of moving on from that and moving past it and going on with
11:26
her life, she used that to help others with mental health. From a
11:30
very young age. She made Jimmy Carter promise when he was the governor to
11:35
implement the best mental health awareness organization within the state of Georgia, and he
11:39
did that. When Jimmy Carter became president, she could have sat back and
11:43
just been the first lady, but she didn't do that either. She helped
11:46
found the Carter Center, which is a non governmental organization that is devoted to
11:52
improving lives and specifically the lives of people suffering from mental illness. She was
11:56
a mental health activist from the nineteen seventies on up until she died last weekend.
12:03
She's done so many amazing things to help and doesn't get the recognition I
12:07
think that she deserves as being one of the pioneers of mental health awareness in
12:11
this country. In the show notes of this episode, I'll leave a link
12:15
to the Carter Center and you can go there and learn more about what I'm
12:18
talking about right now now, or you can just go to Cartercenter dot org.
12:24
All right, that's gonna do it. That is your episode for today.
12:26
Thank you so much for listening to ten Minute Murder.