Tavakal Khamidov

Tavakal Urinovich Khamidov (; born 13 September 1986), known as The Holosiiv Maniac , is an Uzbekistani serial killer and necrophile who murdered at least 11 people in Kharkiv and Kyiv Oblasts between 2018 and 2024. Khamidov himself has claimed responsibility for at least six additional murders, including one in Russia, but these have not been confirmed.

Khamidov was charged and successfully convicted of his confirmed crimes in Ukraine, which led to him being sentenced to life imprisonment.

Early life Little is known about Khamidov's early life. Born on 13 September 1986 in the village of Pulati, Bukhara Region, Uzbek SSR, he grew up in a large, impoverished family. According to him, his father was an alcoholic and did not protect him from his older brothers and other relatives, whom Khamidov claimed bullied him. He additionally claimed that he was sexually abused by an older man from his native village, but this was never corroborated.

Deportation and move to Ukraine In April 2010, Khamidov was fined 2,000 rubles for immigration offenses and ordered to be deported from the country, but for reasons unknown, this never occurred – instead, he simply left Moscow and moved in with some friends in Tula, Tula Oblast. For the next several years, he traveled across the country as a vagrant and made a living via low-skilled labor, odd jobs, and theft. He preferred to be in the company of other homeless people and petty criminals, most of whom were alcoholics like himself.

In 2020, Khamidov was arrested in the Chernihiv Oblast for immigration violations, for which he was eventually fined and deported. He returned to the country only a couple of months later, but was arrested yet again in the following year in Kyiv for stealing a car. Eleven months later, in 2022, he was found guilty on all counts, but was given a suspended sentence with five years of probation, allowing Khamidov to remain free.

The victims' bodies were often left in vacant lots or other abandoned areas, and most often were found days later, when decomposition made it difficult to determine what the cause of death was. The ages of the victims ranged from 35 to 81, and were of varying nationalities. According to the official tally count, Khamidov killed eight Ukrainians; one Uzbekistani; one Latvian, and one Georgian.

Killings Khamidov's first confirmed murder was committed in February 2018, in Kharkiv. At that time, he was working as a loader at a market and, together with another countryman, was renting space in a dacha. Khamidov claimed that shortly before the murder, his cohabitant confessed that in order to save himself from dire financial straits, he had resorted to prostituting himself, leading to an argument between them. Authorities suspected that the true motive for this murder was that Khamidov offered to have sex with the man after learning that he was a prostitute, but was rejected, a hypothesis which Khamidov himself disputed.

In January 2020, Khamidov befriended three homeless men, a father and two sons, who, like him, were homeless petty criminals who lived via odd jobs and collecting bottles. During his first interrogation, he calmly and monotonously confessed in detail not only to the murder of the saleswoman, but also to the remaining ten murders.

The trial began in the spring of 2025. Throughout the proceedings, Khamidov openly admitted responsibility, but showed no remorse for his actions. His lawyer attempted to request leniency for his client, mostly relying on his active cooperation with investigators, but the court dismissed this, stating that his actions were too severe for this to be considered a mitigating factor. As a result, Khamidov was convicted of the eleven murders and attempted murder, for which he was sentenced to life imprisonment. He expressed no visible emotion upon the announcement of the verdict.

After Khamidov's conviction, Maxim Tsuckiridze, head of the Main Investigation Department of the National Police of Ukraine, praised the actions of law enforcement agencies in exposing the serial killer. In his statement, he noted that this case was an example of how, even in wartime, justice does not lose its power thanks to the coordinated efforts and professional work of police officers.