“IVAN the Ripper”

In 1974, a decade after VLADIMIR IONOSYAN sparked a local panic with the “Mosgas” murders, residents of Moscow circulated rumors of another homicidal maniac at large. According to reports, the slayer was a fair-haired, handsome young man, armed with a cobbler’s bodkin or similar instrument, who trailed his female victims from the city’s ornate subway stations, stabbing them to death in nearby streets and alleys.
Manhunting is doubly difficult in a society that admits no crime problem, but Moscow police indirectly confirmed at least some of the reports. By October 19, extra police and militia patrols were at large, their activity officially explained as preparation for the annual celebration of the Bolshevik revolution on November 7. At the same time, posters bearing sketches of a suspect surfaced in the city’s 17 taxi garages, enlisting cab drivers as lookouts in the search.

By October 21, police confirmed that they were searching for the killer of “a woman.” Inside sources put the body count at seven, with the latest murder five days earlier. An eighth intended victim had survived her wounds, providing homicide investigators with the likeness reproduced in suspect sketches. Five days later, on October 26, authorities reported they were holding a suspect in a series of stabbings who had killed at least 11 Moscow women. The unnamed prisoner had been arrested on the evening of October 24, after three victims were slain in a period of 24 hours.

Police maintained their news blackout as the suspect was shuffled off for psychiatric evaluation, and the disposition of the case remains unknown, but this time he official silence backfired. On the streets, a population starved for solid news fell back on rumor, doubting that the slayer had been captured. “They caught one, but there is a second killer,” one woman confided to a Western journalist. “They still have not caught the main one.” “IVAN the Ripper”