In Khabarovsk, there is a trial in the case of 80-year-old Sofya Zhukova, the oldest serial killer in the history of Russia and the USSR. A quiet pensioner lived for many years in the village of Berezovka on the outskirts of the city, without attracting attention to herself, but after the death of her husband her character deteriorated greatly, and she began to kill. With her victims, whether a child or an old man, Zhukova dealt with cold blood, and then dismembered the bodies of those killed. Even now, being in the dock, she does not feel the slightest remorse. On the crimes of a pensioner named Siplay.
Disappeared in Berezovka
Sofia Zhukova was born in 1939 in the village of Zvyagino, Nizhny Novgorod Region. Little is known about her past: she received no education and was a laborer almost all her life. Over time, Zhukova moved to Khabarovsk, where she settled on the outskirts of the city - in the village of Berezovka, and got married. In 2005, her husband died - and something happened to the woman: either the death of a loved one affected the psyche of Zhukova, or with his passing from the life of a pensioner, a certain restraining factor disappeared. Be that as it may, but she committed her first murder in the same year.
… On the afternoon of December 14, 2005, eight-year-old Masha Dmitrieva (name has been changed) was returning from school with her friend Vika. The girls reached Masha's house, said goodbye and dispersed. Masha never made it to the apartment on the second floor, where her grandfather and grandmother were waiting for her (the girl lived with them during school days). The schoolgirl's grandfather was the first to sound the alarm when the granddaughter did not show up at home by 13:30. He called Vika - as it turned out, the schoolgirl had been at home for a long time and had not seen Masha since they said goodbye at the entrance.
After that, the relatives of the missing girl turned to the police. Masha's mother said that her daughter could not run away from home - the schoolgirl had good relations with her family, who never severely punished her. The next day, grandfather was able to talk to Vika: she said that a man and an elderly neighbor, 66-year-old Sofya Zhukova, entered the entrance with Masha. According to Vika, the pensioner once scolded them and Masha because of the noise in the entrance. "I'll chop off your hands and heads!" - the neighbor threatened the children.
Several days of searches did not produce any results - and soon the investigators summoned Sofya Zhukova for interrogation. According to the pensioner, she knew Masha well: the girl often came to visit her when her husband was alive. They drew together, talked, and the girl asked not to tell her parents about her visits, so that she would not be scolded.
The house where Sofya Zhukova lived.
Promotional video:
The house where Sofya Zhukova lived.
The door to Sofia Zhukova's apartment.
The pensioner added that after her husband's death, Masha never came to visit her - but they talked, meeting on the street. According to Zhukova, the relationship between them was quite trusting. And on the day of her disappearance Masha was walking up the stairs in front of her - but then the girls called out to her through the entrance door that had not yet closed. Masha ran out into the street - and since then she has not been seen …
At first glance, the pensioner's story seemed quite easy to understand - but the relatives of the missing girl were on their guard. Masha's grandmother knew perfectly well that she never went to visit Sofya Zhukova - and could not understand in any way why her neighbor would lie about this after the child was missing?
Scary finds
At the very end of December 2005, the mystery of Masha Dmitrieva's disappearance was revealed. It all started when one of the neighbors told the operatives that on the evening of December 14 - the day Masha disappeared - she went out with the dogs. The pets took their owner around the corner of the building, where she saw pieces of fresh meat and blood stains lying not far from the wall. The woman decided that the meat was poisoned (dog hunters showed up in the area) and took the dogs home by another way.
When she returned, the woman told her mother about the strange findings and called the police. But when patrol officers arrived at her house, they found only blood stains and remains of bones, which the police did not attach much importance to and left. However, law enforcement officers had to return to the topic of meat on the streets of the village very soon.
Sofia Zhukova.
On December 27, a resident of Khabarovsk made a forced stop next to a landfill in the Berezovka area. Coming out of the car, the driver saw a black plastic bag with meat slightly powdered with snow and decided to pick it up for his dog. At home, the man realized that he had brought home something terrible - there were human remains in the package. The shocked man hurried to report the terrible find to the police and told in detail where and how he found the package. The man's story was confirmed by his brother and common-law wife.
We can only guess about what Masha Dmitrieva's mother went through when she was invited to identify the remains. The woman confirmed: the fragments of the body really belong to her daughter. Soon the whole of Khabarovsk knew about the brutal murder of a little girl; this story shook the city. But then it was not possible to find the killer.
The mystery of the black machine
Gradually, life in Berezovka returned to its usual course, and the inhabitants of the village began to forget about the terrible events of December 2005. Meanwhile, in March 2013, her distant relative, 77-year-old Anastasia Mikheeva, came to visit Sofya Zhukova. She recently sold an apartment in Khabarovsk and planned to stay with Zhukova for a couple of weeks. But soon after the move, Mikheeva disappeared without a trace.
The daughter and niece of the pensioner reported her disappearance to the police. According to relatives of Mikheeva, she received three million rubles for the sold apartment and, having stayed with Zhukova, was going to move to Moscow and live with her daughter. Soon, the investigators restored the picture of the disappearance of the pensioner. On March 9, 2013, the postman came to Sofia Zhukova's apartment and issued a pension to her and her guest - while there was nothing unusual in the behavior of both. Then, on March 9, Anastasia Mikheeva stopped communicating with her relatives.
Sofya Zhukova (with a cane) during an investigative experiment.
The place where the remains of one of the victims of Sofia Zhukova were found.
The operatives decided to interview Sofya Zhukova - and she said that on March 9, her guest suddenly gathered and announced that she was leaving to live with relatives in Primorye. Surprised Zhukova tried to interfere with Mikheeva and even snatched a bag with documents from the hands of a relative, but she left anyway. According to the owner of the apartment, she saw through the window how Mikheeva got into a mysterious black car, which soon drove off in an unknown direction …
Zhukova's story alerted the guards - especially since blood stains were visible on the wallpaper and on the radiator in her apartment. True, the landlady explained: they say, before the departure of Anastasia Mikheeva, they quarreled, her relative had a nosebleed, and she, actively gesturing, sprinkled it around the apartment. But this version did not seem very convincing to the operatives. And Mikheeva's daughter told the police that they had no relatives in Primorye.
After a while, the investigators talked with the postman from Berezovka. She said that when a month later she again brought a pension to Sofya Zhukova, she began to talk about the disappearance of a relative. But the postman did not believe her words that Mikheeva allegedly got into a black car and left, because the windows of Zhukova's apartment overlooked not the roadway, but the courtyard. In turn, the neighbors of the pensioner said that soon after the disappearance of a relative of Zhukov, she began to wear her clothes and take furniture out of the apartment into the trash. And the neighbors saw a blood stain near the garbage cans near the house … However, it was not possible to prove Sofia Zhukova's involvement in the crime this time too. They interrogated her, but did not detain her.
Blows in the night
Another murder in Berezovka was committed in January 2019: this time the victim was the 62-year-old janitor Vasily Shlyakhtich. The mistress threw him out of the house - and Vasily asked for a while to live with his friend. Unfortunately, she turned out to be Sofya Zhukova: the pensioner did not refuse the janitor - and on January 28 the man disappeared.
The disappearance of Shlyakhtich was discovered after the janitor did not appear at work for several days. But this time, the police quickly identified the suspect. Neighbors living on the first floor - right under Sofia Zhukova's apartment - told the operatives that at about 2 am on January 29, they woke up from dull blows from the apartment above.
Garbage cans in which the remains of the victims of Sofia Zhukova were found.
It seemed to them that they were hitting with something heavy, like the butt of an ax. Moreover, after the first blows, the witness heard men's moans, followed by even louder blows. For a while, everything was quiet - but soon the neighbors heard Zhukova washing the floor. In the morning, the couple met a neighbor from above, who was walking through the yard towards the garbage cans with a tightly packed bag. That same evening, dull blows were again heard in the apartment from above - as if they were chopping something.
Investigators quickly compared the disappearance of Shlyakhtich and the story of the neighbors. A day later, the schoolgirls found human remains near the heating main. The former concubine of the janitor identified the deceased - and Sofya Zhukova was detained. During a search in her apartment, investigators found many traces of Vasily Shlyakhtich's blood, including on the blade of an ax.
But the pensioner was not going to admit her guilt. Zhukova said that she didn’t know Shlyakhtich, but she saw him drinking in public a few days ago. The noise was allegedly due to the fact that the pensioner chopped bones for borscht with an ax, and the blood in the apartment was left from a relative who had left seven years ago - the disappeared Anastasia Mikheeva.
Nicknamed Siplaya
But this time, the legend did not help Zhukova stay free - she was detained and sent to a pre-trial detention center on suspicion of the murder of Shlyakhtich's janitor. The investigation of this crime was taken up by the investigative department for the city of Khabarovsk.
Zhukova herself, after spending several days under arrest, offered her version of what happened at her house on the night of January 29. Allegedly, the night before, Vasily Shlyakhtich came to her house with another man and asked for tea. She allowed, after which the men raped her. The acquaintance of Shlyakhtich ran away, and she tried to drive the janitor out of the house, but he did not leave. It was then that she struck him with an ax.
While Zhukova was testifying, the investigation did not stop for a minute. Investigators suspected that the murders in Berezovka could be linked - and began to double-check all similar crimes. Witnesses went through additional interviews on past murders, and a thorough search was carried out in Zhukova's apartment, during which other traces of blood were found under the linoleum. The examination showed that it belonged to Anastasia Mikheeva.
Meanwhile, the suspect in the pre-trial detention center clearly did not like it. In the cell where she was placed in February, there were already two prisoners who nicknamed Zhukova Sipla for their characteristic voice. At first, Zhukova tried to convince them that they wanted to hang the murder of the janitor on her, but soon the pensioner opened up. She told the inmates how she killed and dismembered Vasily Shlyakhtich and Anastasia Mikheeva. But the most terrible confession of Zhukova was her story about the murder of little Masha Dmitrieva: the pensioner admitted that she dismembered the child and threw the remains from the balcony, “so that the dogs would take away”.
The inmates told the investigators about this. Soon, the pensioner herself admitted guilt, telling in detail the circumstances and reasons for each murder. She showed investigators how she hit the victims and where she threw parts of their bodies. However, after a few months she tried to backtrack on her words, saying that she signed confessions under pressure. But by that time, the investigators had collected enough evidence to say with certainty that it was Zhukova who committed all three murders.
Sofia Zhukova. Photo: TsNKiD village Berezovka.
Adelya Vergazova, senior investigator of the department for the investigation of especially important cases of the Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of Russia (TFR) for the Khabarovsk Territory and the Jewish Autonomous Region, was investigating the murder of Shlyakhtich while serving in the investigation department for Khabarovsk. She told "Lente.ru" that Zhukova had not been detained earlier, because at the time of the first two crimes there was no reason to believe that she was involved in them. However, over time, based on the totality of the evidence and taking into account the confessions of the pensioner, the preliminary investigation bodies had no doubts about her involvement in the murders - including the massacre of Masha Dmitrieva.
- It was enough that the pensioner was the last one with whom the girl entered the entrance - this is evidenced by the testimony of the neighbors, - said the interlocutor of Lenta.ru. - Added to this were data on the conflict between the victim Dmitrieva and Zhukova, and the threats from the latter, as well as the confessions of the accused herself.
The reasons for reprisals with Mikheeva and Shlyakhtich were domestic quarrels. After the murders, the pensioner dismembered the bodies of her victims, packed the remains in bags and threw them - either in trash cans near her house, or in different parts of Berezovka. In order to get rid of each body, the pensioner left the house several times. The forensic psychological and psychiatric examination recognized the pensioner as sane. According to the experts, she killed deliberately - knowing what she was doing.
According to Adela Vergazova, the reason for Sofia Zhukova's crimes each time was an insignificant reason, which corresponds to her hot-tempered nature. Investigators, who have studied in detail the life of the pensioner, are sure that she was not involved in other crimes, except for three murders.
Today Sofya Zhukova is in the dock. She is charged with three murders and three cases of desecration of the bodies of the dead. Women in Russia are not sentenced to imprisonment in strict and special regime colonies. Nevertheless, the facts gathered by the investigation are enough to say with confidence: the 80-year-old killer will spend the rest of his days behind bars.
Aslan Rasulov