German Christan

German Lyubomirovich Christan (; born 1986) is a Russian serial killer. First convicted for murder as a minor, he went on to kill four other people after his release between 2014 and 2017, burning his victims alive. For the later crimes, Christan was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Early life and first murder German Christan was born in 1986 in a small village in the Kostroma Oblast. When he was still a young boy, his parents divorced and his father left for Leningrad Oblast, while Christan and his mother remained in Kostroma.

In early January 2014, he was released from prison and returned to Proba, where he began hanging around 57-year-old Vladimir K., a fellow ex-con he had befriended sometime after moving to the village. The men would occasionally engage in scuffles, mostly due to Christan's habitual thefts, but would nevertheless reconcile afterwards. On January 4, 2014, while the two were binge-drinking, German and Vladimir began arguing again, during which the latter mentioned that he knew what the former had done. Forensic experts who were present at the scene immediately noticed that the couple had been stabbed, while the elderly man, who was unable to get up due to his health condition, had died from smoke inhalation. When they did so, they discovered the victims' stolen moped, as well as blood stains on Christan's black jacket, which he hadn't bothered to wash since he believed the stains weren't noticeable.

Christan was taken to the police station, but denied his guilt in the murders, despite the overwhelming evidence against him. While investigating his past, the authorities recalled the mysterious death of Vladimir K. in 2014, who had died in suspiciously similar circumstances. The evidence from that case was reexamined, and the detectives reclassified it as murder, as a closer look revealed that the fire had been started deliberately, not accidentally as it was previously believed. During court testimony, multiple witnesses who had previously been afraid to come forward, such as Vladimir K.'s daughter and Alexei Emelyanov, testified about what they had seen, both pinning Christan as the assailant in their respective cases.

In order to determine his sanity, Christan was ordered to undergo a psychiatric exam, but while the doctors diagnosed him with unspecified mental abnormalities, their overall conclusion was that he was fully aware of what he had done and understood the gravity of his actions. And thus, shortly after this verdict, Christan was found guilty of four murders and sentenced to life imprisonment in a strict-regime penal colony. The Deputy Prosecutor for the Leningrad Oblast, Mikhail Ustinovsky, even demanded that the killer received the death penalty due to the severity of his crimes, stating that he would be incapable of reentering civilized society if released.