Alexey Tigoyev

Alexey Viktorovich Tigoyev (; born 1970), known as The Medvezhyegorsk Maniac , is a Soviet-Russian serial killer who committed between seven and nine murders in Karelia and Pskov from 1990 to 2003, out of a self-admitted impulse to hurt people whenever he saw an axe.

In 2004, he was acquitted by reason of insanity and ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment for an indefinite period of time.

Early life and first murder Alexey Tigoyev was born in 1970 in Medvezhyegorsk, in the Karelian ASSR. He grew up with both of his parents being alcoholics, leading to them being deprived of their parental rights in the late 1970s and the young Alexey being sent off to an orphanage in Kestenga. In 1988, the 18-year-old left the orphanage and moved to Pskov, Pskov Oblast, where he enrolled in a vocational school to study carpentry. After completing his education in 1990, he returned to Karelia and settled in the village of Tuksa, where he lived with a childhood friend.

A few weeks after his return, Tigoyev killed a friend of his father in a botched robbery. After his arrest for an unrelated theft, he confessed to the man's murder and showed investigators where he had buried the corpse in a plot of land owned by the state. This murder was committed with an axe, similar to Tigoyev's later murders. Upon his release, he moved in with his mother, who still lived in Medvezhyegorsk. Until September 2003, Tigoyev did not display any noticeable concerning behaviour or signs of a mental illness. In early September, a fire broke out in his mother's apartment, after which he was forced to look for a new place to live. Tigoyev eventually decided to leave the city and move to Olonets, where he would begin his murder spree. Shortly before he was due to stand trial, Tigoyev was sent off to the Serbsky Center to undergo a psychiatric examination at the request of his lawyers. On 21 December 2004, he was ruled incapable of standing trial and instead sent off to a psychiatric clinic after a decision by a panel of the Supreme Court of Karelia.

Since then, there has been no reliable information about Tigoyev's fate, and it is currently unclear whether he remains under treatment or if he is even still alive.