Sergey Khalmetov

Sergey Baltabayevich Khalmetov (; born 1978) is a Russian serial killer and rapist who murdered at least four children and young women in Perm and Udmurtia from 2002 to 2007. He achieved notoriety following his second arrest in 2017 for the cold case murder dating back to 2002, and is currently under investigation for other crimes.

Khalmetov was later convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Early life Very little is known about Khalmetov's early life. Born in 1978 in the Kezsky District of the Udmurt ASSR, he married after finishing school and, together with his wife and child, moved to the village of Cheptsa, where he worked as a trackman on a railroad. At the time, he was regarded positively by friends and relatives.

Murders Murder of Valentina Shklyeva Khalmetov's first known murder occurred on 30 September 2002, with the victim being 18-year-old Valentina Shklyeva, a fellow villager from Cheptsa. She had graduated school that summer and enrolled at the Perm Pedagogical College, moving into a local hostel. In late September, she returned to Cheptsa to spend the weekend with her parents, and on 30 September, at half past five in the morning, Shklyeva got on the No. 0662 "Belesino-Perm-2" train to travel back to Perm. While traveling in one of the carriages, she encountered Khalmetov, with whom she engaged in conversation for several hours. Authorities interviewed college professors, fellow students and acquaintances. While investigating the double murder, investigators found traces of the killer's semen on the girls' bodies and isolated DNA, but this did not lead to an arrest at the time.

While serving his sentence, Khalmetov was considered a good inmate by the prison administration. In the mid-2010s, a blood sample was taken by Khalmetov, from which DNA was isolated and entered into the federal database. After serving more than 8 years in prison, Khalmetov was granted parole on 1 August 2016 and released from prison.

Second arrest and trial While investigating the double murder that Khalmetov committed in the summer of 2006, DNA was isolated from the perpetrator and entered into a federal database. In mid-2017, an analysis of the samples revealed that Khalmetov's genotypic profile, leading to him being put on a wanted list. After his release from prison, Khalmetov divorced his wife and started living on the streets, making money via odd jobs. In November of that year, investigators established his whereabouts in Udmurtia and arrested him. A few days later, he was able to conceal a small sharp object after prison guards failed to properly search him, allowing him to cut out his confession from the criminal case, which he brought back to his cell and subsequently destroyed. He was subsequently charged with obstruction of justice, with Khalmetov objecting to the charges, claiming that he only did because the confession was supposedly obtained under duress. According to her, Khalmetov muttered out an answer that she was unable to clearly hear, but to her, it sounded like he said that if found guilty, she wouldn't get anything at all. The head investigator of the case, Dmitry Popov, later released a statement in which he reiterated that while the victim's body has not been found, there was sufficient evidence for conviction. He folded the cut sheets into his A4 notebook, after which he burned them in his cell in the floor toilet. He said that he had a small sharpened plate in his notebook.

At the end of January 2025, Khalmetov was found guilty of destroying evidence in connection to the murder of Valentina Shklyeva, after which the Leninsky City District Court in Perm sentenced him to 200 hours of forced labor as punishment. Khalmetov almost immediately filed an appeal, claiming that the sentence was "absurd" given his life sentence. His appeal was upheld, after which the appellate court overturned the verdict and sent it for review.

On 27 March 2025, he was found guilty of all charges a second time, but the court took into account his confession of guilt and apparent remorse as mitigating circumstances. As a result, he was given 180 hours of forced labor.