In cold blood: who staged the massacre near Tambov 42 years ago
In the Tambov region, a criminal case was reopened on the shooting of five people in the village of Glazok in 1984. Recently, mysterious anonymous notes appeared on the graves of the victims, which could have been left by the alleged killer. Local residents and law enforcement officials told Izvestia that during the investigation they interviewed more than a thousand people and collected 90,000 fingerprint images. New details of the mysterious case can be found in the Izvestia article.
Mysterious murder
The village of Glazok is a quiet Tambov outback, where decades later they started talking about one of the most notorious and mysterious crimes of 1984. The reason was the mysterious letters that appeared on the graves of five people killed while transporting money. The notes stated that two brothers from a neighboring village could have been involved in the attack.
"I was silent out of fear, but I don't want to take this secret with me! And I can't keep quiet anymore! I'm sorry!" wrote an unknown person.
The messages were in the cemetery for only a few days, and then disappeared. The residents of the Eye do not know who left them and who then took them off. But the notes made the villagers remember the events of 42 years ago.
On May 10, 1984, a GAZ-69 left Michurinsk for the Glazkovsky state farm. There were 49,974 rubles in the car — money for paying salaries to workers. The car did not reach the village — it was found in a wooded area about three kilometers from its destination. The bodies of five people were found in the cabin and back: party organizer Peter Shchekochikhin, cashier Claudia Mosolova, financier Tatiana Frolova, accountant Galina Milkina and chief engineer of the state farm Evgeny Tarabtsev.
According to one version, people were shot through open doors. This means that the car was stopped first. This could have been done either by a man in uniform or by someone who was known and trusted by those in the car.
Investigators and operatives from the region and Moscow were sent to search for the criminals. The information was sent to units throughout the Soviet Union. They checked previously convicted persons, employees of the state farm, people who might have known about the transportation of money, as well as relatives and acquaintances of the victims.
As Vasily Reva, senior investigator for particularly important cases under the prosecutor of the RSFSR, who took part in the investigation of this case, told Izvestia, more than a thousand people were interrogated, including all employees of the Glazkovsky state farm, who made up a significant part of the village's population.
Vladimir Puchnin, who at that time was the head of the criminal investigation department of the Department of Internal Affairs of the Tambov region, added that eyewitnesses told of red Zhiguli seen nearby with a damaged left wing. All similar cars were checked then.
—Traces of the use of several types of weapons were found at the site," he noted. — A lot of examinations were carried out, including hunting rifles of 12 and 16 calibers. However, it was not possible to install a weapon and use it to reach the attackers. 90,000 citizens were fingerprinted because fingerprints were left at the crime scene. A huge number of cars have been checked. All versions have been worked out, but the investigation has reached a dead end.
Who planted the notes
According to one version, this could have been done by district policeman Semyon Sorokin. On the day of the murder, he was returning from work on a motorcycle, Vasily Reva said. On the way, the vehicle stalled, and Sorokin left it, and then returned for it. That's why he was seen near the crime scene.
The district policeman's son said that 42 years ago Sorokin was one of the suspects and had been in a pre-trial detention center for some time.
— He received an anonymous letter, — said Vladimir Puchnin. — However, there was no involvement: a decent employee, links with criminal elements have not been proven.
According to Puchnin, someone could have suspected Sorokin and written an anonymous denunciation, since two uniformed men participated in the attack. And at that time, criminals rarely disguised themselves as policemen — these were isolated cases in the country. But this thread did not give any results.
Now they tried to connect the former police officer with the messages that appeared at the cemetery, since he died on the same day. The locals decided that it was Sorokin who could have known the truth and revealed it before his death. However, there is no evidence that he left the notes.
Decades later, another possible clue appeared in the case — a fingerprint on a car. Vasily Reva, a veteran investigator, said that in 2024 he applied to the Investigative Committee with a request to conduct a new check using modern databases.
"The person's identity has already been established," he stressed. — In the criminal world, he was known by the nickname Owl. It is known that he was associated with the owners of the red Zhiguli, who also had a police uniform. It was established that they were in the Tambov region at that time. However, the tragedy is that they have already died. I hope they went to hell for the crimes they committed. So we have no one to judge, there will be no verdict.
The materials collected in previous years and new information are now being studied by investigators: the case has been reopened. According to Elena Kyarsna, senior assistant to the head of the Investigative Committee of Russia for the Tambov region, "to verify operational information about the possible involvement of specific individuals in the commission of this crime."
How crimes of the past are solved
It is not always possible to solve a murder committed without obvious witnesses and leads in hot pursuit, said Igor Bushmanov, honorary lawyer of the Moscow Region Bar Association, former investigator for particularly important cases of the Moscow Region Prosecutor's Office. It is especially difficult to investigate cases of previous years: back then, law enforcement officers did not have modern digital tools and forensic technologies.
"It may take years or even decades to identify those involved," the expert noted. — Now there are divisions in the regional departments of the Investigative Committee that deal with such cases. New testimony, new evidence, or a re-examination of materials using modern technology may force a return to the investigation.
Sometimes useful information appears unexpectedly: for example, a person tells someone about the circumstances of a crime years later, and this information then becomes known to law enforcement agencies, he added.
"Even such a random clue can serve as a basis for resuming the investigation," he explained.
According to a source in law enforcement agencies, when investigating long-standing crimes, investigators and operatives use modern forensic methods, genetic examinations, updated databases and artificial intelligence technologies.
Intelligent systems allow you to process photos from old file cabinets and identify people who have been hiding from law enforcement agencies for years. According to the source, in the 1990s, the criminal could have gone abroad, obtained documents under a different name, and then returned to Russia and re-legalized. Now, such a personality change no longer guarantees that a person will not be detected: modern algorithms are able to match him with archived data even decades later — based on facial features and other anthropometric features.
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