Vladimir Ionesyan

Ionesyan's trial was short-lived and was of a closed nature. In fact, the fate of the accused was resolved before the trial. Since his brutal crimes were widely publicized and shocked the public, the Ministry of Public Order Protection proposed that the investigation be completed as soon as possible, that a court be held and the execution sentence be passed to Ionesyan. The correspondence of the police authorities with the Central Committee mentioned the proposal "to sentence Ionesyan to death by hanging and for the sentenced to be done publicly." Other, more sophisticated punitive measures were also suggested. First Deputy Chairman of the KGB Philipp Bobkov, while in retirement, mentioned in 2001 that he received letters from citizens and labor collectives, which, in view of the terrible cruelty committed against children, demanded that the criminal be hanged publicly or quartered in Lobnoye Mesto.

Alevtina Dmitrieva was recognized as an accomplice, although Ionesyan shielded her during interrogations, claiming that she knew nothing about the murders, and even her fault, according to later testimonies of forensics experts, was not proven by the court. She was sentenced to 15 years in prison, but later in 1972 (or in 1974) she was released early.

Ionesyan committed his last murder on January 8, 1964 in an apartment on Sheremetyevskaya Street, near the Marina Grove. The victim was 46-year-old Maria Ermakova, to whom he introduced himself as an employee of the housing office. Ionesyan struck her about twenty times with his axe, then took from her apartment five skeins of yarn, three pairs of socks, a purse, 30 rubles, a Mir clock and a Start-3 television set.

Ionesyan's detention was supervised personally by the Minister of Public Order Protection of the Tatar ASSR Salikh Yapeyev. On January 12, 1964, without any difficulties, the murderer, nicknamed "Mosgaz", was arrested on a platform of the Kazan railway station.

The investigation and the trial took only two weeks. On January 30, 1964, the Supreme Court of the USSR issued a verdict: the death penalty. In the verdict of the court it was clarified that "the verdict is final and can not be appealed." The petition for a pardon was immediately rejected, and on the next day, on January 31, 1964, at 23:00, Vladimir Ionesyan was executed by firing squad at the Butyrka Prison.

After a while he married a graduate of the Tbilisi Conservatoire named Medea, and had a son with her. Having failed to find a well-paid job, he decided to engage in group theft, and was arrested. This time, the court, given his age and marital status, gave him 5 years of a suspended sentence. At the request of his wife, who wanted to protect him from communicating with friends and associates, Ionesyan moved to Orenburg, where he began working as a tenor (according to another source - a concertmaster) in the local Musical Comedy Theater. In November 1963, the theater troupe from Kazan came to work with a certain artist along with his wife, who, in turn, was a ballerina named Alevtina Nikolaevna Dmitrieva (b. 1942). The spouse and Dmitrieva settled near the Ionesyan family, and Vladimir and Alevtina soon began a romance. However, the theater management was unhappy with Dmitrieva's work, she was told that she was not suitable for the theater and still had to learn how to dance. As Ionesyan explained during the interrogation, for her this was a serious blow, with Vladimir deciding to help her, as he put it, "a very good person in every sense" and offered her to go with him to Ivanovo, where he had a friend who was a former director of the Orenburg operetta.

Researchers in the field of criminology, in particular the well-known anthropologist and sculptor Mikhail Gerasimov, came to the conclusion that Ionesyan belonged to the hysteroid type, and that he committed he crimes for self-affirmation, as he wanted to achieve universal recognition. This is confirmed by the fact that in the Orenburg Musical Comedy Theater Ionesyan, despite his vocal education, played second-class roles, but believed he deserved more. This was the main reason that in 1963 he moved to Moscow - to proven that he deserved better.

Ionesyan committed the first murder on December 20, 1963 in apartment No. 95 on the fourth floor on Baltiskaya Street in the Sokol District. Under the guise of a Mosgaz employee, he walked through several apartments at a time, where he inspected for a convenient victim under the pretext of a preventative inspection of gas equipment. That convenient victim was 12-year-old Konstantin Sobolev. After making sure that there was no one at home, Ionesyan inflicted a large number of blows with the axe on the boy (according to other sources, the killer used a knife, and this was the only time he supposedly used a knife). After killing the child, Ionesyan took his sweater, 60 rubles, a bottle of cologne "Shipr" and beach glasses.

On December 25, 1963, Ionesyan, together with Dmitrieva, came to Ivanovo, where he committed two murders. Continuing to pretend to be a gas worker, he entered apartments and looked for suitable victims. In an apartment on Kalinin Street he killed a 12-year-old boy named Mikhail Kuleshov with an axe, then stole his jacket, a pullover, two pens and several bonds. In another apartment, on Oktyabrskaya Street, he killed a 74-year-old woman, but only took a pocket flashlight and 70 kopeks from her apartment. Returning to Kalinin Street, he again began to walk around the apartments. In one of them he attacked 15-year-old Galina Petropavlovskaya, who was raped and then struck nine times to the head with the axe. Ionesyan then took a sweater, a jacket, a fluffy shawl and 90 rubles. Despite her injuries, Petropavlovskaya survived and was able to describe her attacker's appearance.

There is also a third version of Ionesyan's biography, set forth in the "Komsomolskaya Pravda", which brought excerpts from the records of his interrogation. According to these records, he received his first term for evading military service in 1959; on the criminal record from 1954, there was no such thing.

Details of Ionesyan's biography differ in various sources. According to one version, when Ionesyan was still in school, his father was sentenced to seven years for trading fraud, which is why, presumably, Vladimir went along the crooked path, which led him to the fact that in 1954, after graduating from high school, Ionesyan was caught for theft and sentenced to 5 years conditional imprisonment. In 1959 he was drafted into the army, as he, while studying in the university, had to give up training because of, as he said at the interrogation, "a purely nervous illness." When he came to the military registration and enlistment office for an examination, he was sent for examination to the first hospital in Tbilisi, where doctors gave a conclusion that he could not serve. He brought the documents to the military enlistment office, where a certain person, he said, destroyed them, as he was attracted to Ionesyan and did not want him to evade military service. Vladimir was sentenced to two and a half years in prison. At the trial, he tried to prove his innocence, but for some reason the person who destroyed his certificates did not call the court.

Vladimir Mihajlovich Ionesyan (August 27, 1937 – January 31, 1964) was a Soviet spree killer. His nickname was "Mosgaz," as Ionesyan broke into apartments pretending to be an employee of that company.

Ionesyan was born on August 27, 1937 in Tbilisi to a family of ethnic Armenians. As a child, he sang well, and his parents actively encouraged the development of his vocal capabilities. In addition to secondary education, Ionesyan had a diploma from music school, thanks to which he, as a good student, was accepted in the Tbilisi State Conservatoire. In the second year of the conservatoire he went to work in the theater, where he worked until December 13, 1963.