Viktor Bolkhovsky

Viktor Nikolayevich Bolkhovsky (; born 1959), known as The Necromancer Maniac , is a Russian serial killer and rapist. After serving a murder conviction for killing his wife in 1980, he sought out young women through lonely hearts ads, killing three women in Kemerovo and Zabaykalsky from 1998 to 1999. He would later be convicted of these crimes and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Early life Viktor Bolkhovsky was born in 1959 in Kemerovo Oblast, the third child in what was described as an average family with parents who took great care of their children. Despite this, Bolkhovsky suffered from several traumatic events beginning in 1961, when the 2-year-old fell from a height of 3 metres, receiving a head injury and a concussion. Due to complications brought on from this injury, he began to exhibit concerning behaviour.

Relatives and acquaintances characterized Bolkhovsky as a withdrawn, introverted and impulsive child, and as a teenager, he developed a quick temper and was frequently aggressive towards others. Bolkhovsky himself would later say that he attempted various methods to reduce his stress, but most often would go to the vegetable garden and dig a specific bed to calm himself down. Despite his issues, Bolkhovsky did well at school and was well-regarded as a student. Half an hour later, Bolkhovsky repeated the act on a different woman but was again prevented from raping her by her brother, who also pushed him out on the street. An hour after that, Bolkhovsky returned to his workplace and started wrecking things in the plant's utility room, as well as fighting with the manager and other employees. When the police arrived to arrest him, he violently resisted, forcing the officers to tie him up and put him bound in the police car. During this period, his aunt started to notice that Bolkhovsky was becoming more secretive and nervous, while others described him as a dodgy character who received letters from various women in several post offices. Two of his male cousins would later recall an incident in which Bolkhovsky lost his temper and broke a table with a hammer, but as he had foam coming out of his mouth, they believed he was experiencing some sort of seizure. They then tied him up, after which he fell asleep - when he woke up, Bolkhovsky claimed that he could not remember what happened. The two met through an ad in the local paper's "With You" section, and during a conversation with her, Bolkhovsky presented himself as an entrepreneur who was searching for a business partner. He persuaded Olga to allow him to meet at her apartment, ostensibly to discuss details of their new joint venture. At about 12 o'clock on 4 November, he told his mother and aunt that he was going to a meeting - he then left for Olga's apartment, and upon arriving, he immediately strangled her. He then stole gold jewellery and a Sharp stereo from the apartment.

Not long after Olga's murder, her mother started searching for the killer by herself, discovering that her daughter had wanted to meet a man through newspaper ads. She then contacted all the newspaper offices and inspected several of the dating ads, noticing that one man had submitted several such ads with identical handwriting, but under different names. Olga's mother soon found one woman who claimed to have met Bolkhovsky on the evening of 4 November, who claimed that she refused to take him to her house because he had a black eye and scratches on his face. As he had introduced himself to her under his real name, authorities quickly linked him to the murder and declared him a fugitive.

Murders in Chita After learning of this, Bolkhovsky left Kemerovo and moved to Chita, Zabaykalsky Krai, where he committed his second murder at the end of May 1999. The victim was a 31-year-old woman named Galina, whose body was found by her parents inside her apartment on Lenin Street on 31 May. Local investigators quickly established that Galina had recently met a man through a lonely hearts ad. After having tea with her, Bolkhovsky killed her and stole any valuables he could find, including money, gold jewellery and the key to the front door. He also filled the bathroom in her apartment with water and placed cups, saucers and jewellery in there in an attempt to wash off any potential fingerprints.

On 9 November 1999, Bolkhovsky received a letter from a 42-year-old teacher named Elena, whose friend had written in the newspaper on her behalf. Introducing himself as "Dmitri Ivanovich", he claimed to be the director of a television and radio company in Chita whose wife was dying of cancer. Bolkhovsky convinced Elena that he wanted intimacy in exchange for emotional and financial support, to which she agreed. On the following day, after having sex, Elena went to have a shower, allowing Bolkhovsky to search through her apartment for valuables. He found a jewellery box, and after lying to Elena that he was going out to buy some fruits from the local convenience store, he left with the jewellery box. Bolkhovsky pawned the stolen item at a pawn shop, and spent the proceeds on alcohol, meals in restaurants and cab fares.

On the following day, still intoxicated, Bolkhovsky got a cab to drive him to the home of his new acquaintance Zinaida, who lived alone with her 14-year-old daughter Ekaterina. The two had become acquainted after Bolkhovsky presented himself as a logging entrepreneur who did not smoke or drink alcohol. When he arrived at the apartment, Ekaterina had just been picked up by a friend who lived two floors up. As he was noticeably intoxicated, he got into an argument with Zinaida. Angered, Bolkhovsky lost his temper and began to physically assault her. Despite her fierce resistance, Zinaida suffered a multitude of severe injuries which she would eventually succumb to.

A few minutes after killing her, Ekaterina returned to the apartment, whereupon she was accosted by Bolkhovsky. For the next couple of hours, he repeatedly sexually and physically abused her. In her later testimony, Ekaterina claimed that after being grabbed by the throat, she started calling out to her mom - Bolkhovsky then said to her that he was a "professional maniac", and threatened to kill her if she continued screaming. Frightened, she stopped screaming, whereupon Bolkhovsky dragged her to the bedroom, put Ekaterina on top of her mother's corpse and started hugging and kissing her. He then forced her to undress and fry him some eggs in the kitchen, which Bolkhovsky consumed. After finishing with the eggs, he dragged Ekaterina back to the bedroom, where he asked her if she was afraid of dying before tying up her hands with duct tape and her deceased mother's hands and feet.

For the next couple of hours, after being ordered to collect all the gold jewellery and other valuables from the apartment, Bolkhovsky forced Ekaterina to put on pantyhose and do striptease for him.

Arrest At some point during his abuse of Ekaterina, Bolkhovsky found some champagne in the apartment, which he forced her to drink alongside him. He eventually fell asleep, allowing Ekaterina - naked and her hands still bound with duct tape - to escape the apartment and frantically knock on her neighbour's doorstep. The woman allowed her to go in and let Ekaterina explain what happened, and since they both were afraid to go out through the stairwell, they went down the fire escape to the window of the neighbours who lived on the floor below them. From there, they informed them of what had happened and called the police.

On the early morning of 12 November 1999, a naked and drunken Bolkhovsky was arrested at Zinaida's apartment and dragged off to the police station. After recovering from his drunken stupor, he immediately confessed to committing three murders but went on to change his testimony several times. He claimed that his motive was to "continue [his] self-assertion in the knowledge of the nature of women".

Trial, sentence and imprisonment In 2000, at the request of his lawyer, Bolkhovsky was transported to the Serbsky Center for a psychological evaluation. There, he was ruled to be sane and capable of standing trial but was diagnosed as a sexual sadist with an interest in necrosadism. In early 2001, Bolkhovsky was found guilty on all counts in relation to three murders, and on 7 February, the Chita Regional Court sentenced him to life imprisonment.

After his conviction, he was transferred to serve his sentence at the Black Dolphin Prison, where he remains to this day. Since then, Bolkhovsky took an interest in studying the Criminal Code of Russia, using it to file several frivolous lawsuits against the prison administration and the Zabaykalsky Krai Prosecutor's Office. One such lawsuit was submitted to the Chita Central District Court on 3 June 2022, in which Bolkhovsky claimed that the Sharp stereo stolen from Olga's apartment had actually been his, and that the police had illegally seized it during the raid of his apartment. On this basis, he demanded that the stereo be returned to him. However, the Chita Central District Court rejected the claim, ruling that Bolkhovsky failed to provide evidence that he had owned the device, pointing to the fact that Olga's sister had correctly identified the stereo's model number (indicated only in the instructions given to the owner), design and even the fact that the sound recording option was not working.