This week the investigation committee I mentioned On the completion of the investigation into the criminal case of Alexei Gaskov, known as the “Novosibirsk maniac”.
He has been constantly in the crosshairs of law enforcement since the early 2000s. He served time for rape of a minor, but only 20 years later were investigators able to prove that he was also involved in a series of murders of girls in the Moscow region.
Gaskov is 51 years old and comes from Berdsk. Tabloids reported that he grew up in a prosperous family and from childhood showed an interest in theater and a dream of acting fame. After the army, Gaskov entered the Novosibirsk Theater School (now the Novosibirsk State Theater Institute), but was soon expelled from there due to absenteeism and alcoholism.
In the late 1990s Gaskov Make friends With Mikhail Yudin, who later became known as “Berdsky” or “the jeans maniac”. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder and rape of five women in Berdsk in 1999-2002. He was given the nickname “Denim” because he chose brunettes wearing skinny jeans as victims.
In 2002, Gaskov came to Moscow and entered VGIK. He studied at Emmanuel Vitorgan’s course for six months, but was expelled again for drunkenness. He justified his use of alcohol by saying that in this way he felt more confident and got used to the role better.
In the same year, Gaskov returned to Berdsk – where he was soon arrested on suspicion of murdering a girl with whom he was staying with Yudin.
Suddenly, for investigators, Gaskov confessed to this and other murders, describing himself as a “jeans maniac” who was feared by the entire Berdsk. However, during the course of the investigation, it became clear that he was lying.
“I can describe him in one word – a clown. During the interrogation, he began to show his acting abilities. He got into the role, they say. One even believed him. His colleagues said that maybe he was a ‘Bird Maniac,’ but I didn’t believe it. When we went to the investigative trial, he was confused. I didn’t know where to go, I didn’t know anything. He just stood there closing his eyes and thought they were going to take him to the crime scene.” I remembered An activist about the investigation.
Biological examination and other evidence showed that the real “jeans maniac” was Yudin.
Gaskov was released, but in 2006 he went to prison again. It was then revealed that he had drugged and raped the daughter of an 11-year-old woman with whom he was in a relationship at the time. For this crime he was sentenced to ten years in prison.
The next time investigators came to Gaskov was in 2024, when they began to suspect that he might be involved in a series of unsolved murders in the Moscow region twenty years earlier. Gaskov again confessed to everything, but now he was no longer confused in his testimony and spoke in detail about each crime.
As it turned out, from March to November 2002 (while living in Moscow and trying to study at VGIK), Gaskov killed and raped nine young women, and also stabbed a man to death. As a rule, he attacked the victims in the dark, hit them on the head with a heavy object, then raped and strangled them.
Gaskov committed his first three crimes in the Babushkinsky district of Moscow. The fourth victim was a university student in Moscow who was killed by him in a forest park in Podolsk. Two other girls were killed on the same day in the central park of the city of Pushkino. He later stabbed a man to death in the same park. Gaskov committed the next two murders in northeastern Moscow.
The tenth victim is foreign student Agnes Carolina Santisteban, 23 years old, the niece of the advisor to the President of Peru. She studied choreography at the Moscow State Institute of Culture. Her body was found near student housing in Khimki.
Gaskov’s involvement in the crimes was confirmed by DNA testing. himself He claimedHe did not count his victims, but committed “more than 100” murders “improvised.”
The other charge against Gaskov is raping his stepdaughter and urging her to drink alcohol. The investigation indicates that he committed these crimes since 2020 in the Novosibirsk region.
The criminal case of Alexei Gaskov will be considered by the Moscow Regional Court. The accused faces life imprisonment.