From sunset to answer: the murderer who strangled the teacher was found after 25 years on a cigarette butt

In the Chelyabinsk region, a murderer was identified by a cigarette butt, who in the early 2000s killed a teacher who moonlighted as a taxi driver. Investigators isolated DNA after almost 25 years and established the involvement of a previously convicted local resident, Nikolai Lishnikov. Being drunk, he raped a woman, strangled her with an electric wire, and then hid the victim's body nearby. In January 2025, he was sentenced to ten years in a high-security penal colony. The details of the case are in the Izvestia article.

How the killer was found

A cigarette butt left at the crime scene more than 23 years ago made it possible to find the perpetrator, who in July 2001 killed a primary school teacher moonlighting as a taxi driver. Anton Kazantsev, an investigator for particularly important cases of the SU IC in the Chelyabinsk region, told Izvestia about this.

In the early 2000s, a drunk passenger strangled a woman with an electric wire, and then hid the victim's body nearby. The attacker wanted to get rid of her car, but he couldn't start the engine. Law enforcement officers took fingerprints, but there were too many of them in the taxi car — the investigation eventually reached a dead end, it was suspended. It was not until 2022 that the investigators resumed their work.

An investigative experiment of a crime committed more than 23 years ago by Nikolai Lishnikov

Photo: RF Investigative Committee

"The main clue was fingerprints from the case, which was suspended due to the expiration of the statute of limitations, and a cigarette butt found near the driver's seat," the investigator explained. — Fingerprints were placed in the database, after which the suspect appeared. It turned out to be a local resident Nikolai Lishnikov, who was repeatedly convicted of theft and drug possession.

Mikhail Domnin, deputy Head of the ECC department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia in the Chelyabinsk Region, explained that there was no fingerprint card of the attacker at the time of the crime, and by 2022 it had been uploaded to the database.

However, investigators assumed that the criminal would deny his involvement in the murder, pointing out that his fingerprints could have ended up in the car of the murdered taxi driver after the trip. Therefore, according to Anton Kazantsev, the investigation conducted a DNA examination of the cigarette butt found at the crime scene.

"The DNA matched, so there was no longer any doubt that it was Lishnikov who killed the woman," he stressed. — A cigarette butt was seized from the driver's seat on the floor. The passenger's cigarette butt could never end up on the driver's mat. This was irrefutable proof. He couldn't refute it.

Photo: IZVESTIA

Nikolay Lishnikov admitted his guilt and said that the taxi driver asked the drunk passenger to get out of the car, but he did not want to. After that, he attacked the woman, raped her, and then strangled her.

"We reached the intersection, and she started dropping me off, and we had a scuffle," the criminal said during the investigation. "She stopped, told me to get out, and sprayed me. I started strangling her, heard her wheeze, and let her go. The corpse was dragged to the fence and left. Then he returned to hide the evidence, took off the headlights and taillights, pads.

The criminal was convicted in January 2025. The court found him guilty of committing murder in order to conceal another crime and of rape using a helpless state. Lishnikov was sentenced to 10 years and 10 days of imprisonment in a high-security penal colony.

Why couldn't they solve the case

The case was not solved in 2001, because Nikolai Lishnikov had not been brought to criminal responsibility before committing the crime, Anton Kazantsev explained.

— After the murder of the teacher, he was prosecuted for violence, theft and drug possession, — Anton Kazantsev added. — But modern technologies with a rich database of those previously involved in criminal records began to be used not so long ago. In the early 2000s, the cards were still checked manually, so it was not possible to immediately contact the killer.

Recently, experts from the molecular genetics branch of the forensic expert center have been conducting a large number of studies in the framework of investigating criminal cases that belong to the category of previous years, Zhanna Merkushina, a senior expert at the forensic expert center of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, told Izvestia.

Photo: IZVESTIA/Pavel Volkov

"A cigarette butt is not a particularly complicated object for a geneticist, since it retains a very large amount of biological material — saliva and epithelial cells of the inner cheek, which contain DNA," she noted. — However, the biological material could degrade during this time, as well as collapse under the negative influence of physico-chemical factors such as temperature, humidity or oxidation.

In addition, biological examinations could have been conducted earlier on this material evidence. Because of this, the biomaterial could have been used up.

"In our case, the cigarette butt retained a sufficient number of traces, so it was possible to establish the genotype," the expert noted.

When conducting a molecular genetic study, a piece of a cigarette butt is placed in a test tube, cleaned of impurities, and then a solution is added that allows DNA to be isolated, the expert explained.

— Then a qualitative and quantitative assessment of the isolated DNA is carried out. After that, copies of fragments of DNA sections are isolated, analyzed, and then the results are compared with the material extracted from the suspect's saliva," she added.

Fingerprints of Nikolai Lishnikov

Photo: IZVESTIA

According to Zhanna Merkushina, when conducting such examinations, it is important that the test sample is stored in favorable conditions. Then the DNA on it can be preserved for several decades.

DNA research for forensic purposes began to be conducted in Russia in the late 1990s, recalled criminologist Lev Bertovsky. According to him, the first objects of study using this technology were the remains of the royal family, which were found near Yekaterinburg.

"This was the impetus for the development of modern criminology and allowed us to move cases that had not been solved for decades before," he stressed.

The expert stressed that the cigarette butt played a key role in the case, as it allowed the prosecution to build not only on the similarity of fingerprints.