Nikolai Tymoshenko

Tymoshenko's first known murder was committed between May and June 1999. During that time frame, he met a young woman aged between 18 and 20 years old in the village of Amkhavaya 2, offering to take her to his dacha to relax and have a drink. The woman offered to pay all expenses, as she reportedly earned 2 million rubles.[1]

After spending some time drinking together, Tymoshenko asked the woman if she could share some of her money with him, to which she categorically refused. Angered, Tymoshenko grabbed her and starting pushing her, causing the woman to hit her head against a nearby wall.[1] She began resisting, causing the assailant to punch her three times in the chest before choking her to death. In order to hide the body, Tymoshenko dismembered the remains and buried them in separate places - one half in his mother's backyard, while the other was buried outside the village. He burned the victim's clothes, passport and personal items, and then spent 900,000 of her money for his own expenses.[1]

Sometime after the first victim's murder, Tymoshenko and his mother moved to Fatina Street in Mogilev, a run-down area of the city occupied by poor people.[2] He made a living by doing odd jobs, most notably butchering pigs at a slaughterhouse, but once his elderly mother passed away, Tymoshenko stopped working overall. Local residents regarded him as a "quiet alcoholic" and loner who spent most of his time drinking and refusing to interact with others at all.[2]

Around February 17, 2010, Tymoshenko stopped by a local bar to buy wine, where he came across 40-year-old Svetlana Karaseva.[2] After talking for a bit, he invited her over to his apartment so they could drink in private. In a drunken stupor, Karaseva started complaining about her personal issues to Tymoshenko, who attempted to offer her some advice. Irritated, she said that she did not need any help, called him a bum and started swearing at him.[2]

A conflict ensued between the two, during which Tymoshenko knocked her down to the ground and choked her for approximately ten minutes. After making sure that she was dead, he grabbed a knife and then proceeded to dismember, decapitate and disembowel her body.[2] He then put the remains in bags, a bucket, a curtain and Bykova's red jacket, which he then discarded in the wasteland or into the Dnieper. As Karaseva's family members had abandoned her due to her constant drinking and frequent disappearances from home, she was not reported missing.[2]

Less than a month later, Tymoshenko was returning home when a seemingly drunken woman ran up to him and asked him for help, claiming that somebody was chasing her to steal her bottle of vodka.[2] The woman, 35-year-old Svetlana Bykova, had just stolen 20,000 rubles of her own son's money gifted for his birthday, and likely wanted to hide from her relatives. Disintered in asking about her personal life, Tymoshenko nonetheless let her stay.[2]

Upon drinking two glasses of vodka, Bykova started complaining about how all the men in her life were homeless bums. This remark was enough to anger Tymoshenko, who punched her in the temple and strangled her to death. Just like Karaseva before her, Bykova's body was dismembered, decapitated and disemboweled, and then scattered in the nearby wasteland.[2]

Following his conviction, Tymoshenko was transferred to Prison Number 8 in Zhodzina to serve his sentence.[4] Two years after his conviction, he contacted the Prosecutor's Office and unexpectedly confessed to the 1999 murder. Authorities were dispatched to the location in Amkhavaya 2 as indicated by him, and soon unearthed skeletal human remains.[4] Attempts to identify the woman proved futile, as the lack of any form of identification and the passsage of time prevented law enforcement from confirming any missing persons reports from the time. As a result, the first victim remains a Jane Doe.[1]

Although he willingly confessed and even indicated the body's location, Tymoshenko later retracted it and claimed that he was innocent.[1] This was not taken seriously by the courts, who convicted him and handed him another life term in 2015. He attempted to appeal the verdict to the Supreme Court, but his appeal was denied.[1] A few months after his initial confession, the Head of the Department of Internal Affairs for the Mogilev Region, Fyodor Baleiko, made a statement to the press that it was very likely Tymoshenko has killed others.[5]

As of March 2023, Tymoshenko remains incarcerated, with no further victims having been linked to his thus far.