Old scores: two high-profile murders of the past years have been solved at once
Several high-profile crimes of the past years were uncovered by the police last week. Among them is the triple murder (including of a child) in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District and the massacre of a man in the Ryazan forest, committed back in the 90s. Details can be found in the Izvestia article.
The chief detective in the city
In the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District, a high-profile crime was solved that shocked the small village of oil workers Gubkinsky in 1997. Andrei Yelchaninov, the former head of the local criminal investigation department, is accused of murdering a family of three, including a five-year-old child. He denies his guilt, and his son claims a "setup."
In July 1997, in Gubkinsky (then the village had just received city status) in the north of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District, the bodies of 45-year-old Valery K., his wife Tatiana and their five-year-old son Adlen were found in an apartment in a high-rise building in the 7th microdistrict. The nature of the massacre, according to investigators, was brutal even for the "dashing 90s": the adults were shot, then finished off with a knife, and the boy was strangled. The case remained unsolved for 29 years.
The turning point was 2026, when investigators applied modern forensic methods — old evidence told a lot about the crime. The result exceeded expectations: the suspect was a man who had participated in the investigation of the murder himself.
Andrey Yelchaninov is a legendary figure for Gubkin. A native of the Voronezh Region, he graduated from the Volgograd Higher Investigative School of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, rose to the rank of chief of the Criminal Investigation Department of the city and the rank of lieutenant colonel of the militia. After almost two decades of service, he retired with honors. Got into business. Since 2004, Yelchaninov has worked in the structures of a large petrochemical holding company, began as an adviser on the economic security of the Gubkin Gas Processing Complex (GPC), and since 2010 became its CEO. His colleagues described him as a "democratic leader, an outstanding person and a talented mentor."
On May 27, 2026, Yelchaninov was detained in the Voronezh Region. He has been charged with triple murder. The investigation believes that the motive was a domestic conflict. The maximum penalty under the article is life imprisonment.
His son, Artyom Yelchaninov, spoke out in defense of the detainee. In an interview with the media, he stated that he was confident in his father's innocence.
"He's a decent, honest man. He was there because he was investigating the case, fulfilling his official duties. This is a great injustice. We do not rule out that he was framed," the son told reporters.
No official statements from the Investigative Committee or other law enforcement agencies, other than the fact of detention and indictment, have yet been published. The investigation is ongoing, no specific evidence has been disclosed.
Andrey Yelchaninov is currently in jail. The investigation is ongoing, new examinations, interrogations and clarification of the version are possible. The investigation does not exclude that the crime may have had accomplices, but so far no new arrests have been made. Residents of the city, judging by social networks, mostly discuss "surprise" and "justice of retribution."
Laid low for decades
Another murder was solved last week, 32 years after it was committed. In the Ryazan region, operatives detained a man who had long been listed as dead on paper.
In October 1994, the body of a man with his throat slit was found in a wooded area near Ryazan. As the investigation found out, the cause of the conflict was the ex-wife of the murdered man. She asked the new boyfriend and his friend to "make claims" to the ex-spouse. They called the victim outside, put him in a taxi, took him to a deserted place and killed him there. After that, all three of them disappeared. The woman was detained in Cheboksary in 1995, and her friend later confessed, saying that he had only been present when the crime was committed. There was not enough direct evidence then — a couple went to the case as witnesses. In 2012, the woman died. But there was still a third character in the tragedy — according to the detectives, he was the perpetrator of the murder.
He hid so well that even the court believed him dead. In 2016, at the request of his mother, he was officially declared dead.
"Hiding under a false name for 32 years, leading a reclusive lifestyle, leaving home almost only at night, is the way the 53—year-old defendant chose to escape the retribution of justice," comments Irina Volk, an official representative of the Russian Interior Ministry.
The fugitive from justice settled in a remote village in the Vladimir region under a false name. He lived without a passport. He was unsociable, leaving the house only after sunset.
The "dead man" was found by detectives from the GUUR of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia and their colleagues from the Ryazan and Vladimir regions. During the search, two documents were found that exposed the killer: a photocopy of a 1999 passport and a medical record. Both have strange surnames and dates of birth, but on all the sheets there is a photo of a man wanted for murder.
"My colleagues were able to obtain irrefutable evidence that a villager from a remote village and a wanted man for a murder committed in 1994 are one and the same person," Irina Volk emphasizes.
The accused has now been transferred to the investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of Russia for the Ryazan region. He is in custody.
What helped to solve the crimes of 30 years ago
A technological breakthrough in criminology played a key role in this and similar cases. It was repeated examinations using the latest databases that allowed us to connect the past with the present.
As a law enforcement source explained to Izvestia, there is almost always a sufficient amount of biomaterial and traces left at the murder scene. Physical evidence remains in any case, even if the case cannot be solved.
The author of the book "Notes of an Old Detective" Valentin Stanovov explains the modern successes of the police in solving crimes of the past years by turning forensic databases into neural network systems.
Stanovov noted that today the Papilon fingerprint database has been digitized, centralized and, most importantly, cleaned. Previously, the "run" of the trace gave hundreds of false positives or zero at the output. The system is now analyzing micro-signatures of papillary patterns that the human eye is unlikely to detect.
The ex-operative called the federal database of genomic information another important ally of the investigation. Stanovov explained that if the killer left a biological trace in 1987, then forensic experts were not able to isolate DNA from old dried blood as efficiently as they are now. Answering the question why it is the murders that are being solved, he stressed that these are the most "material" crimes.
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