Candy in your pocket: the story of the youngest maniac in the history of the USSR

Four-year-old Gerta Gribanova was kidnapped from her own backyard. Soon the girl’s dismembered body was found and examination showed that the child had first been strangled and then beaten eight times with a ‘piercing and cutting object’.

The only clue found was the tip of a knife lodged in the skull. But all the punks in town had “miscarriages” – it was useless to look for the owner of the damaged blade.

The kidnappings of children continue: children from two to four years old disappear from one end of the city to the other, then from the other, as soon as their parents turn their backs on them. A criminal robbed a girl at the entrance to her own house: the mother sent the child to wait near the door while she put on her shoes herself.

Bodies bearing traces of rape were found in the forest, in abandoned buildings and in the sumps of public toilets. All the children were killed in the same way: they were either strangled or stabbed to death.

There were also survivors. Four-year-old Borya Titov was saved by her mother: she managed to catch up with a stranger who tried to take away the sled with her son while she was distracted. Raya Rakhmatulina miraculously managed to survive: the killer dragged her into the toilet cabin, but he was frightened by the noise. The maniac slashed the child’s face and threw Paradise into a cesspool, but the injuries were not life-threatening and the pit was nearly empty after a recent dumping of waste. Despite the monstrous injuries, three-year-old Alya Gubina survived – surgeons sewed the baby up for 16 hours, which they found in a pool of blood inside.

None of the surviving children could describe the criminal – they were all too small and scared. The knife was the only clue. People were carrying hundreds of statements to police, accusing suspected neighbors of murders. Witnesses gave conflicting testimonies: some claimed to have seen a guy of around 25, others described an old-fashioned, elegantly dressed lady.

In the end, the main Sverdlovsk police department took unprecedented action. All the police and cadets were dressed in civilian clothes and sent out in groups of two or three to patrol the streets. They were ordered to detain any suspected adult with a child under the age of seven.

Soon the criminal was caught: the cadets seemed like a strange guy with a three-year-old child who got off the tram and headed for the forest. The youngsters followed him into the thickets and writhed as the maniac knocked the boy to the ground and started ripping off his clothes.

The assailant turned out to be 16-year-old seventh-grader Vladimir Vinnichevsky. Investigators were shocked: they couldn’t even imagine they were stalking a teenager. In total, Vinnichesky killed 8 children and injured 10.

At school, Vladimir was described as a calm, disciplined child from a troubled family who did not study well. Teachers could not even think that Vinnichevsky sometimes kills children when he has a “window” between classes. Her classmates said that Volodya always had money and constantly walked around with pockets full of sweets.

Parents, having learned about the crimes of their son, disowned him and wrote a statement to the newspaper, where they demanded the death penalty for Vladimir. The trial is quick: Vinnichny is condemned to death and all his requests for pardon are rejected. The maniac was executed in May 1940, buried in a mass grave with the rest of the criminals.

Photo: TASS, Matt Hatchett: Pexels