Yevgeny Litovchenko

Yevgeny Anatolyevich Litovchenko (; ) is a Ukrainian murderer, serial rapist and suspected serial killer. The prime suspect in at least 4 murders and a series of rapes in Leningrad Oblast, Russia, from 2006 to 2014, he was detained by Russian authorities and confessed to the crimes, but escaped during an investigative experiment on June 6, 2014.

A month after this, Litovchenko murdered a girl in Kyiv, Ukraine, for which he was tried, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Following his conviction, the Russian government requested for his extradition, but this never occurred due to the subsequent breakdown of diplomatic relations between the two countries. As a result, he was never prosecuted for the crimes he committed on Russian territory.

Early life Yevgeny Litovchenko was born on March 8, 1971, in the village of Lisovichi, Kyiv Oblast, in the Ukrainian SSR. News sources claim that he grew up in a stable environment and that his parents had no known negative qualities that could affect his upbringing. After finishing school, Litovchenko graduated from a vocational school and began a career in manual labor.

Following the collapse of the USSR and the economic reforms that followed, the Litovchenko family began to experience financial difficulties. During the 1990s, Yevgeny changed several jobs, mainly consisting of low-skilled labor, and in 1999, he left his native village, telling his parents that he was going to Saint Petersburg to earn money. According to the victim's testimony, Litovchenko attempted to strangle her after the assault, but she managed to fight back and escape. She remembered his features and the license plate on his car, leading to her assailant's arrest. Kostyunin's parents were also initially held as suspects in his disappearance, but were released a polygraph test could not conclude with certainty that they were involved. Litovchenko claimed that on that day, he was driving past the boy's house when he saw him, spontaneously stopped the car and abducted him. This was indirectly corroborated by the call history on Kostyunin's phone - a few minutes prior to his disappearance, he had called him mother and told her that he would be home any minute, after which he made an outgoing call that was quickly dropped and the phone was turned off after that. According to Kostyuk, after arriving in the area, Litovchenko asked to take off his jacket because it was too hot, after which Kostyuk handcuffed his hands from the front, but unhooked them from himself. His claims were disregarded, and all three men were fired, while station chief Valery Bulychyov was relieved of his post.

Manhunt Following his escape, Litovchenko was put on a federal wanted list. A task force was created for his capture, made up from staff at the Kirovsky District's police department and the Ministry of Internal Affairs amounting to 400 people, including police dogs and a helicopter with thermal imaging.

Following his arrest, Litovchenko claimed that his escape from Russia, he managed to get to Ukraine in just two days, taking a "detour" and wandering into a construction site, where local workers helped him remove the handcuffs. Nonetheless, he pleaded guilty, and since he refused to have a jury trial, his court-appointed lawyer was unable to come up with a stable defense for his client.

On October 17, Litovchenko was found guilty murdering Tymoshchuk and was sentenced to life imprisonment. The Russian side claimed that an agreement concerning the extradition had been reached, but the Ukrainian Interior Ministry denied this, noting that legislature does not allow for the extradition of Ukrainian nationals to other states and that Litovchenko's arrest was solely due to the work of Ukrainian agencies. In addition to this, the negotiations had to be done with Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, who himself was charged with various crimes by the Russian authorities.

In later years, due to the breakdown of diplomatic relations between the two countries, negotiations on the extradition of Litovchenko were completely terminated, and the crimes he committed in Russia officially remain unsolved.