He took the dog for a walk on the morning of January 9th. She found giblets thrown out by someone in a nearby garbage dump. Someone stabbed the pig for Christmas, he thought. Seeing that the dog did not eat anything, he went for a bucket, collected this "delicacy" there and offered it to another dog at home. But she also refused the treat. Strange … So it remained a bucket covered with a rag to stand in the yard in the cold. Who would have thought that an accidental find would help uncover a terrible family drama.
At the bend of fate
The telegram from Uglich in January 1997 was short: "Mom, come urgently, there was a trouble, Igor was the only daughter." Evgenia Kashtanenko immediately got ready for the road. The path to the Yaroslavl Region is not a short one: the son moved there, several thousand kilometers from his home, four years ago.
Before that, everything was fine in their family: Igor received a higher pedagogical education, taught English. I dreamed of building my own house. And dreams could well come true: they managed to accumulate a decent amount, which, for the sake of the promised high interest, they invested in a commercial loan. But the supposedly reliable financial structure collapsed, and the money simply disappeared.
This misfortune seemed to become a new starting point for the entire subsequent life of a young man. Igor Kashtanenko had to leave his father's house and go almost into the unknown - he had a correspondence friend Ella Stoyanova in Uglich. Also a teacher, she worked there at the teacher's college.
Soon after her son's departure, his mother seemed to feel relieved: Igor wrote that he got a job as a teacher in one of the secondary schools, and some time later announced his marriage to that very girl Ella. Of course, the woman could not stand it - she came to look at her daughter-in-law. But it would be better not to go! Even with her, conflicts arose in their family every now and then. In a word, she was leaving then in frustrated feelings, hoping that "if she endures, she will fall in love." In addition, soon a daughter, Vika, was born, in whom Igor, judging by his letters, doted. And suddenly some kind of misfortune - he was left alone!
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To someone else's mouth
In the village, all the people are in sight. Churyakovo, located not far from the ancient Uglich, is no exception. Although Nadezhda Nikolaevna Stoyanova lived with her daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter somewhat closed - they were known as stay-at-home, but they also had relatives and acquaintances with whom they constantly communicated, there were enough in the district. Therefore, the news of the disappearance of the mother and daughter, who went to Moscow for shopping on Christmas Eve (they wanted to celebrate Ella's fur coat), quickly spread throughout the village.
Some believed that a large sum of money taken with them and the purchased renovation itself could become a bait for criminals. Others wondered where the 70-year-old retired woman and teachers who didn’t know how much money suddenly had the means for expensive purchases. Still others had doubts from the very beginning: why go to the capital, if you can buy everything in Uglich for almost the same price?
The subsequent development of events was also not entirely clear. Thus, the Miroshnichenko's spouses, whom Igor Kashtanenko notified on January 9 of the disappearance of his wife and mother-in-law, asking to sit with the child, immediately began to insist on contacting the police. But the allegedly inconsolable husband filed a statement only four days later - on the 13th …
However, the inconsolability was rather ostentatious. One of the relatives, who responded to the request to look after little Vika from morning till lunchtime, did not notice any particular sadness on Igor's face. At the same time, he mentioned that Ella and Nadezhda Nikolaevna were probably already dead somewhere.
Doubts began to prevail and the Shulgin spouses - neighbors of Stoyanova and Kashtanenko in a two-apartment building. In the early morning of January 7, they were awakened by noise and shouts behind the thin partition separating their homes. The next day, the Shulgin's dog barked furiously and rushed to the neighbors.
At first, they did not attach any importance to this - quarrels on domestic grounds were not uncommon there. But here they were alerted by the very giblets of unknown origin found by Shulgin, which even the dogs did not eat.
On January 20, the neighbor decided to share his doubts with the employees of the criminal investigation department, but he did not find the operative, whom they advised to contact, that day. The next day, the police themselves came to them in Churyakovo …
After the first call
Now it is difficult to imagine how the relationship between Igor and Ella would have developed if they had lived separately from the elder Stoyanova. It is possible that it is relatively well. Although even before the birth of her daughter, disagreements happened quite often, and once the young husband beat his wife so that she even had to stitch. And yet the young woman hoped that their life together would improve over time. Again, great hopes were pinned on the appearance of a child.
And so Vika was born in the family. At first, it really seemed that the daughter had extinguished the scandals in the house. But soon everything returned to normal - one conflict followed another. Moreover, often they were initiated not so much by Ella herself as by Nadezhda Nikolaevna, who reproached her son-in-law for her inability to provide for her family.
… Christmas evening in a narrow family circle was coming to an end. Usually a low drinker, Kashtanenko this time clearly went over his norm. Nadezhda Nikolaevna, after several glasses, again sat down on her favorite skate - reproaches poured down: they say, and without such a peasant-breadwinner, they alone will be able to raise a granddaughter, but either the son-in-law is bringing it to the house, or from home … True, this time a verbal duel did not last long: everyone was tired and went to bed - Ella and her daughter went to a separate room, and Igor went to bed alone.
Frustrated by his mother-in-law's reproaches, Kashtanenko could not sleep. I got up and drank another glass of vodka. It didn’t help - sleep didn’t come. Then three sleeping pills were used at once - again in vain. But hatred for the mother-in-law boiled in his chest. At these moments it seemed that it was she who was the culprit of all the troubles and the unsuccessful family life. I wanted to take revenge: scary, cruel, to once and for all rid myself of her presence …
Kashtanenko went into the kitchen, took an ax and approached the sleeping Nadezhda Nikolaevna. Swinging with all his might, he hit the woman. A drunken hand let down - death did not come instantly, and the mother-in-law managed to shout something hoarsely. This scream woke up Ella, who was lightly sleeping next to the child. She entered her mother's room and was numb for a few seconds with horror, and then gave vent to emotions, began to scream. Igor tried to babble something back while drunk, and then, unexpectedly for his wife, raised an ax and hit her several times …
Hiding place in the garden
Tired of the struggle, Igor sat down on the bloody bed and dozed off for several minutes. Waking up, he turned on the light. What he saw immediately made him sober up - both women were dead.
Then he acted decisively and cold-bloodedly: he transferred the bodies to the shed, severed the heads, arms and legs with an ax and a knife and burned them piece by piece in the oven. Late in the evening, he drove the bodies to the fire ponds on a trolley, poured kerosene over them, but they did not want to burn - they were only partially charred. I had to go back with this load. At home, Kashtanenko cut out the insides and threw them in the trash. The bodies were cut into pieces, laid out in nets and taken out on a bicycle to the city dump.
Later, during the investigation, he will convince him that his love for his daughter, who will be left alone, made him hide the traces of the crime. Perhaps, but even in these critical hours after the murders, Kashtanenko did not forget about himself, his beloved: he hid jewelry and savings certificates in the garden. Hoping that punishment could be avoided altogether, he did not rule out the worst option …
The hope of attributing everything that happened to a sudden strong emotional excitement, the narcotic effect of the taken sleeping pill also faded away: the examination did not confirm either one or the other. Other evidence was irrefutable, and Kashtanenko's guilt was proven.
… Little Vika, who did not understand what had happened to her mother and grandmother, was taken into her family by a relative of the Stoyanovs. Although she herself has two children, she flatly refused to send a three-year-old child to an orphanage - the girl will not be left without a mother. Well, the father in her life will be able to appear only after 18 years - this is the verdict of the court. However, as a father for Victoria, he will no longer exist. Never. There is no doubt about it.
Oleg Nikolaev