Vladimir Tretyakov (serial killer)
Vladimir Nikolaevich Tretyakov, known as The Arkhangelsk Butcher, was a Soviet serial killer who killed seven women in his hometown between 1977 and 1978.
Biography
Vladimir Tretyakov was born in 1953. His father left the family before his birth, and Tretyakov grew up with his alcoholic mother, who often beat him. His grandmother managed to get him a general education, leaving him to study in Tashkent. Since then he hated drinking and women. After school, Tretyakov joined the army, then graduated from a vocational school. For several years he lived in Kemerovo Oblast, where he learned to cut up cattle, which proved useful later on. After returning from the army he married, and began work as a railway repairman. Tretyakov also began to argue with his wife because she, according to Tretyakov, drank too much. At some point, his wife, tired from all this, kicked him out of the apartment.In the mid-1970s, Tretyakov worked as a railroad engineer in Arkhangelsk, was an udarnik, a member of the Voluntary People's Druzhina, and more than once detained hooligans and alcoholics. As an excellent worker, in 1977 he received a separate apartment in one of the new buildings in Arkhangelsk. He also met with Angelina Koroleva, with whom he had a serious relationship. Soon, Tretyakov became annoyed that the woman often consumed alcohol. On these grounds, the pair often quarrelled, eventually leading up to the killer's first murder.
On 9 December 1977, after returning to his apartment and seeing Koroleva in a drunken state, Tretyakov strangled her. Realizing she had died, he used a knife and axe to dismember her corpse, put it in a backpack, and then disposed of the remains in a vacant lot near the train station in Arkhangelsk at night. Tretyakov decided to fight female drunkenness and began to kill women whom he saw on the streets in a drunken state. On 13 December, he murdered a woman named Petrova in her apartment. All of the subsequent murders he committed had the same modus operandi. In addition to the two above, in December 1977 Tretyakov killed and dismembered two more women. He killed another one, Maria Gerasimova, on 13 January 1978.
Panic ensued in Arkhangelsk. There were rumours that the killer sold meat from the victims on the market, but during the investigation, no such thing could be confirmed. The radio broadcast "Voice of America" reported that cases of cannibalism were noted in the city. On 25 January, Tretyakov killed two girls, who were invited to his home and offered a drink. In his own words,