The Danilovsky Maniac

WEBVTT

1
00:00:02.399 --> 00:00:24.120
Discretion is advised. This is ten
minuted murder. There's only one country that

2
00:00:24.160 --> 00:00:28.760
can rival the United States when it
comes to the reported body counts of murderers,

3
00:00:29.559 --> 00:00:33.920
Russia, which has the second most
prolific serial killers in the world,

4
00:00:34.719 --> 00:00:37.439
the first one, of course,
being the United States. And I'm not

5
00:00:37.479 --> 00:00:42.039
going to delve deep into the statistics
right now, maybe in a future episode,

6
00:00:42.479 --> 00:00:46.280
but just know that it's disturbing for
those of us that live here because

7
00:00:46.399 --> 00:00:51.439
we're ahead of all other countries in
terms of numbers of serial killers. And

8
00:00:51.520 --> 00:00:55.920
it's not even close. It's not
even close. But today our focus is

9
00:00:56.000 --> 00:00:59.920
Russia. And because I'm not Russian
and can just barely pronounce it. So

10
00:01:00.000 --> 00:01:03.880
one of the American names and places, please know that I mean no disrespect

11
00:01:03.040 --> 00:01:07.359
by the way that I will inevitably
wreck some of these Russian names. So

12
00:01:07.439 --> 00:01:12.519
here we go. Sherapovitz, a
city in northwest Russia, sits in the

13
00:01:12.519 --> 00:01:18.719
shadow of one of the country's largest
steel mills. It contains pockets of wasteland

14
00:01:18.879 --> 00:01:23.680
with half demolished buildings left abandoned because
of legal issues. Throughout the day,

15
00:01:25.040 --> 00:01:29.959
smoke from the steel plant's chimney covers
the entire sky. In two thousand and

16
00:01:29.959 --> 00:01:34.840
four, Shiapovitz became the perfect place
for a serial killer to hunt undetected.

17
00:01:36.799 --> 00:01:42.159
The first girl went missing in February
of two thousand and four. Marina Ostrovskaya

18
00:01:42.480 --> 00:01:46.280
was seventeen years old, and she
had plans to meet up with her boyfriend's

19
00:01:46.319 --> 00:01:49.719
parents on the evening of February fourth. During her walk to their house,

20
00:01:49.959 --> 00:01:55.640
Marina took a short cut, walking
through an empty lot on Danislovsky Street.

21
00:01:56.200 --> 00:02:00.519
She never walked out to the other
side. When Marina failed to come that

22
00:02:00.599 --> 00:02:05.079
evening, her parents called the police, who then searched the area. The

23
00:02:05.159 --> 00:02:08.439
initial search uncovered no sign of a
missing girl. In the middle of the

24
00:02:08.479 --> 00:02:14.039
afternoon and broad daylight, it was
as if she vanished into thin air.

25
00:02:14.919 --> 00:02:17.919
Six months later, a body was
found in Cheripovits, but it did not

26
00:02:19.120 --> 00:02:23.960
belong to Marina. Instead, the
remains were identified as belonging to a nineteen

27
00:02:23.000 --> 00:02:29.879
year old student named Irina Popova.
Arena had been sexually assaulted and strangled to

28
00:02:29.960 --> 00:02:34.520
death before her body was dumped out
in the open. Her murderer had made

29
00:02:34.560 --> 00:02:38.800
no efforts to bury or cover the
body, leading to the quick discovery of

30
00:02:38.840 --> 00:02:42.919
the crime. The following month,
a second body was dumped a few miles

31
00:02:42.960 --> 00:02:46.759
away from Arenas, a twenty two
year old university student, Tatiana Beva.

32
00:02:47.479 --> 00:02:52.960
She had gone missing while walking home
from a club. Like before, Tatiana

33
00:02:52.960 --> 00:02:58.719
had also been sexually assaulted and strangled. There wasn't enough evidence to confidently draw

34
00:02:58.759 --> 00:03:02.520
a connection between the two cases,
but the police were suspicious at the similarities.

35
00:03:04.039 --> 00:03:07.479
Their suspicions were confirmed three months later
when the body of a third girl,

36
00:03:07.960 --> 00:03:14.080
seventeen year old Tatiana Maskamova, was
found in a vacant lot. Though

37
00:03:14.120 --> 00:03:16.919
Tatiana had been killed in the same
way as the previous victims, it seemed

38
00:03:16.960 --> 00:03:22.680
as if the killer was evolving.
While the first two bodies had been left

39
00:03:22.840 --> 00:03:27.120
entirely in the open, Tatiana's body
had been covered with a layer of snow,

40
00:03:27.439 --> 00:03:30.280
dirt and leaves. Less than a
mile away from the crime scene,

41
00:03:30.439 --> 00:03:36.479
investigators found a garat which had been
handmade from two sticks and a piece of

42
00:03:36.560 --> 00:03:42.080
cable. The DNA on the garat
matched Tatiana Maskamova, and for the first

43
00:03:42.080 --> 00:03:46.759
time police had found a murder weapon. It suggested that the killer hadn't just

44
00:03:46.879 --> 00:03:50.719
changed the way he disposed of his
victims, he had also changed where he

45
00:03:50.840 --> 00:03:53.759
killed them. The first two victims
had been abducted, killed, and then

46
00:03:53.840 --> 00:03:59.520
dumped in a separate location. It
seems that Tatiana had been killed very close

47
00:03:59.560 --> 00:04:02.159
to where her body was found.
Knowing that they were now dealing with a

48
00:04:02.240 --> 00:04:09.199
serial killer, investigators braced themselves for
another abduction and murder, but it didn't

49
00:04:09.199 --> 00:04:13.319
come. Instead, the killer took
some time off, leaving the authorities to

50
00:04:13.400 --> 00:04:17.319
sweat before he returned. Six months
later, on the twenty sixth of June

51
00:04:17.399 --> 00:04:20.920
two thousand and five, a lady
planned to meet up with a friends at

52
00:04:21.000 --> 00:04:26.800
one pm. This lady's name is
very hard to pronounce, but I'm going

53
00:04:26.839 --> 00:04:30.439
to give it a shot. Lyod
Milla myro Shinko, and there's a zero

54
00:04:30.519 --> 00:04:34.519
percent chance that that's correct. But
Lyo Milla. She never showed up to

55
00:04:34.519 --> 00:04:39.439
this one pm meeting, and the
friend was worried when she didn't answer the

56
00:04:39.439 --> 00:04:43.959
phone. She reported her missing,
and almost immediately the authorities came to the

57
00:04:43.959 --> 00:04:47.720
conclusion that lyud Miller may have been
abducted by the serial killer, who had

58
00:04:47.759 --> 00:04:54.720
now been nicknamed the Danislovsky Maniac.
At this point in the investigation, investigators

59
00:04:54.720 --> 00:04:59.439
had not located any eyewitnesses. They
had no idea what the killer looked like.

60
00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:02.319
It was as if they were searching
for a ghost. In July of

61
00:05:02.319 --> 00:05:08.879
two thousand and five, they found
their first eye witness, Sveetlana Stepanova.

62
00:05:09.040 --> 00:05:12.240
She had been walking by a river
with her sister and one of her friends

63
00:05:12.439 --> 00:05:15.360
when she had stopped to tie up
her shoe. Her companions kept walking,

64
00:05:15.759 --> 00:05:19.759
but within minutes they heard a scream
and turned back to see if Svetlana was

65
00:05:19.839 --> 00:05:24.800
okay, but there was no sign
of her apart from her swimsuit and a

66
00:05:24.839 --> 00:05:29.800
bag left abandoned on the ground.
Setlana's sister and friend searched through the bushes

67
00:05:30.199 --> 00:05:33.360
and saw her lying on the ground
in only her underwear. Her throat had

68
00:05:33.360 --> 00:05:38.439
been cut so recently that it was
still gushing with blood. Her killer was

69
00:05:38.439 --> 00:05:42.680
standing over her, and when the
two witnesses screamed, he took off,

70
00:05:43.240 --> 00:05:46.079
But because of the trauma of seeing
Fetlana's body, the two girls could not

71
00:05:46.199 --> 00:05:51.519
remember much about the man's appearance.
However, Setlana's murder provided the police with

72
00:05:51.600 --> 00:05:56.160
a new area that needed to be
searched. They combed through the waste land

73
00:05:56.199 --> 00:06:00.279
where Svetlana had been killed, and
eventually they reached the hose demolish building that

74
00:06:00.360 --> 00:06:05.800
had once been the District Department of
Internal Affairs. The building's underground parking garage

75
00:06:05.839 --> 00:06:11.360
had been left untouched, and when
investigators walked inside, they knew that they

76
00:06:11.360 --> 00:06:15.759
had found exactly what they had been
searching for. This was the Danislovsky Maniac's

77
00:06:15.839 --> 00:06:20.959
layer. The cinder block walls had
been covered with crudely drawn pornographic images in

78
00:06:21.079 --> 00:06:27.519
black chalk, and nearby there was
a pit full of car tires. Inside

79
00:06:27.519 --> 00:06:30.000
the concrete pit, the killer had
left the bodies of two missing women,

80
00:06:30.680 --> 00:06:35.360
Marina, who had now been missing
for eighteen months and Ludamilla, who had

81
00:06:35.360 --> 00:06:41.399
disappeared four weeks ago. Just like
the Maniac's other victims, Marina and Ludmilla

82
00:06:41.439 --> 00:06:46.839
had been sexually assaulted and strangled.
The Danislavsky Maniac had killed at least six

83
00:06:46.920 --> 00:06:49.920
girls and women in less than two
years, and police felt that they were

84
00:06:49.959 --> 00:06:57.399
no closer to catching him. Then
once again the crimes suddenly stopped. After

85
00:06:57.439 --> 00:07:00.639
two years of radio silence, the
killer returned. On the eleventh of June

86
00:07:00.720 --> 00:07:06.279
two thousand and seven. He abducted
seventeen year old Natalia Zakilova, who was

87
00:07:06.319 --> 00:07:10.680
walking to meet her parents at the
banks of the river. She called her

88
00:07:10.680 --> 00:07:14.480
parents and told him that she was
two minutes away, but she never arrived.

89
00:07:15.040 --> 00:07:17.439
When Natalia's parents tried to call their
daughter, they noticed that her phone

90
00:07:17.480 --> 00:07:23.240
had been turned off and notified the
police. When the news broke that another

91
00:07:23.279 --> 00:07:27.800
young girl had disappeared, the public
and the police both began to worry that

92
00:07:27.839 --> 00:07:31.839
the Danislovsky maniac had returned. A
search of the area revealed no signs of

93
00:07:31.920 --> 00:07:36.399
Natalia, but investigators discovered that she
had been abducted when she was less than

94
00:07:36.439 --> 00:07:42.079
twenty meters away from her parents.
One week later, her remains were found

95
00:07:42.319 --> 00:07:46.160
at a nearby park. Investigators might
not have found any physical evidence at the

96
00:07:46.199 --> 00:07:50.800
site of Natalia's abduction, but they
did find something that they'd been looking for

97
00:07:50.800 --> 00:07:59.000
for years, detailed eyewitness descriptions of
the attacker. Multiple people noticed a man

98
00:07:59.040 --> 00:08:03.079
close to when Natalia had been abducted, stating that he was middle aged,

99
00:08:03.360 --> 00:08:07.399
short, with a stocky build,
and short brown hair that was going gray.

100
00:08:07.079 --> 00:08:11.639
Some of the details varied between eye
witnesses, but they all agreed on

101
00:08:11.639 --> 00:08:16.879
one thing. The killer had extremely
unsettling eyes that were clouded in appearance.

102
00:08:18.720 --> 00:08:22.600
As soon as this description reached the
media, a new nickname for the killer

103
00:08:22.720 --> 00:08:26.680
was born, the Dull Eyed Maniac. After Natalia's murder, there were no

104
00:08:26.800 --> 00:08:31.879
signs of the Maniac at first.
The authorities believed that he was just taking

105
00:08:31.920 --> 00:08:35.840
another short break from the killing,
and they anticipated a new victim in a

106
00:08:35.879 --> 00:08:39.960
month, or six months, or
two years. There were several false leads,

107
00:08:41.200 --> 00:08:43.240
a man who had dragged two girls
into the bushes and share povits,

108
00:08:43.519 --> 00:08:48.679
and a man who looked similar to
the composite sketch had murdered his ex girlfriend,

109
00:08:48.159 --> 00:08:54.519
but DNA testing revealed that both cases
were unrelated. Then, in November

110
00:08:54.559 --> 00:08:58.039
of twenty eleven, there was a
murder that strongly resembled the Maniac's crimes.

111
00:08:58.320 --> 00:09:03.720
Nineteen year olds Fetlanophiliac asked her boyfriend
to pick her up, but when he

112
00:09:03.799 --> 00:09:05.840
arrived at the location she'd given him, there was no sign of her.

113
00:09:07.480 --> 00:09:11.559
The following year, her body was
found behind an abandoned building, covered with

114
00:09:11.639 --> 00:09:16.039
leaves and dirt, similar to the
way that the Maniac had covered Tatiana's body

115
00:09:16.159 --> 00:09:20.480
an attempt to hide it. Despite
these similarities, police never officially counted this

116
00:09:20.519 --> 00:09:26.559
one as the Maniac's victim. In
late twenty twenty two, investigators made another

117
00:09:26.639 --> 00:09:33.159
appeal to the public and released three
new images related to the case. Two

118
00:09:33.159 --> 00:09:37.759
of the images were composite sketches of
the killer, but the third was a

119
00:09:37.799 --> 00:09:43.840
real photograph of an unknown man who
the police suspected might be the Danislowsky maniac.

120
00:09:43.440 --> 00:09:48.039
It showed a middle aged man with
graying hair, wearing a beige jacket

121
00:09:48.080 --> 00:09:52.399
and blue pants, standing next to
a body of water. The authorities believed

122
00:09:52.399 --> 00:09:56.039
that the maniac would have found it
impossible to stop committing his crimes. If

123
00:09:56.080 --> 00:10:01.840
the murders have truly stopped, he
is most likely either in prison or dead,

124
00:10:01.600 --> 00:10:05.639
and if he is still alive,
he might have fled the country or

125
00:10:05.720 --> 00:10:11.240
changed his mo but wherever he is, no doubt he's still searching for his

126
00:10:11.279 --> 00:10:28.600
next victim. That's ten minute murder
for today, brief and bingeable true crime.

127
00:10:30.120 --> 00:10:31.799
I'm Joe, I'm the host,
and thank you so much for taking

128
00:10:31.799 --> 00:10:35.399
the time to listen to the podcast
today. And normally this time is where

129
00:10:35.399 --> 00:10:39.720
I would let you know you need
to subscribe or share the podcast with your

130
00:10:39.720 --> 00:10:43.080
friends and family and maybe say something
funny here there, but I'm not going

131
00:10:43.120 --> 00:10:48.200
to do that today. This podcast
episode will be released at or around Thanksgiving

132
00:10:48.039 --> 00:10:52.399
of twenty twenty three, and that
may not be when you're listening to it.

133
00:10:52.440 --> 00:10:56.639
However, I would like to take
this time instead of doing that self

134
00:10:56.679 --> 00:11:01.399
serving thing that I normally do at
this time, and recognize the life and

135
00:11:01.639 --> 00:11:07.679
now death of the biggest maybe in
the entire country's existence of mental health awareness,

136
00:11:07.960 --> 00:11:13.600
and that's Roseland Carter. Even before
she was Jimmy Carter's wife, she

137
00:11:13.799 --> 00:11:16.799
was on the side of mental health
awareness. She had a family member suffering

138
00:11:16.840 --> 00:11:22.279
from a mental health illness and he
scared her just because he was different,

139
00:11:22.519 --> 00:11:26.360
and instead of moving on from that
and moving past it and going on with

140
00:11:26.399 --> 00:11:30.519
her life, she used that to
help others with mental health. From a

141
00:11:30.679 --> 00:11:33.919
very young age. She made Jimmy
Carter promise when he was the governor to

142
00:11:35.159 --> 00:11:39.200
implement the best mental health awareness organization
within the state of Georgia, and he

143
00:11:39.240 --> 00:11:43.480
did that. When Jimmy Carter became
president, she could have sat back and

144
00:11:43.600 --> 00:11:46.480
just been the first lady, but
she didn't do that either. She helped

145
00:11:46.519 --> 00:11:52.279
found the Carter Center, which is
a non governmental organization that is devoted to

146
00:11:52.720 --> 00:11:56.919
improving lives and specifically the lives of
people suffering from mental illness. She was

147
00:11:56.960 --> 00:12:03.200
a mental health activist from the nineteen
seventies on up until she died last weekend.

148
00:12:03.799 --> 00:12:07.960
She's done so many amazing things to
help and doesn't get the recognition I

149
00:12:07.960 --> 00:12:11.519
think that she deserves as being one
of the pioneers of mental health awareness in

150
00:12:11.559 --> 00:12:15.919
this country. In the show notes
of this episode, I'll leave a link

151
00:12:15.960 --> 00:12:18.759
to the Carter Center and you can
go there and learn more about what I'm

152
00:12:18.799 --> 00:12:22.879
talking about right now now, or
you can just go to Cartercenter dot org.

153
00:12:24.440 --> 00:12:26.240
All right, that's gonna do it. That is your episode for today.

154
00:12:26.279 --> 00:12:30.120
Thank you so much for listening to
ten Minute Murder.