Academy Maniacs: A thread.

Artyom Alexandrovich Anoufriev was born on October 4, 1992 in Irkutsk, Russia. He was raised without a father. His mother, Nina Ivanovna Anoufrieva, who worked as an accountant in an insurance company, had a great influence on the teenager's upbringing.

She taught her son to hate people, liked to humiliate him publicly and told him that he was always surrounded by enemies.

He was good in Literature and English, he participated in many activities and school competitions, had musical lessons for the guitar and double bass in 5 years. However, since first grade Anoufriev was an outcast, and only in senior classes, when his classmates gradually matured

+ and became more friendly, Artyom managed to get rid of this stigma, but at the same time, while in the 10th grade, his performance worsened and graduated from school with a triple passport.

After school, Artyom entered the Irkutsk State Medical University and at the same time went to work as an auxiliary worker in the art museum.

For some time, Artyom was part of a white-power skinhead group and even took part in the nationalist demonstration called the Russian March. At the trial, Artyom’s mother said her son was beaten by a group of Armenians, which left him psychologically damaged.

However, there was an opposite version of the conflict, that Artyom insulted an Armenian family on social networks.

Nikita Lytkin was born on March 24, 1993.He was raised by a single mother, who worked as a clerk in a shoe store. His father, an Ossetian by nationality, tried to fix the troubled relationship with the family several times, but always left, which made Nikita even more frustrated.

During the investigation, his mother Marina said the main reason for her son’s criminal and antisocial behaviour was the absence of a father. Nikita also had a half-brother, who shot himself after the death of his mother.

He met Anoufriev at a friend birthday party. They didn't have many friends and had similar social backgrounds and hated society. Nikita was in a deep depression at the time and decided to entrust all of his problems to Anoufriev, since he received support from him in return.

They were impressed by the Russian serial killer Alexander Pichushkin, also known as The Chessboard Killer and by the Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs, the Ukrainian serial killers who recorded gruesome videos of their killings hoping to get rich one day with the material they produced.

They also had a noisecore band named Dismembered PugachOva, you can find all the tracks they produced here ( https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22%D0%A0%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%87%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%91%D0%BD%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%8F+%D0%9F%D1%83%D0%B3%D0%B0%D1%87%D0%9E%D0%B2%D0%B0%22), it mostly consists of harsh noise and them swearing and rapping.

• Crimes

Their search for victims began every day at 6 p.m. until 10 p.m. Sometimes they searched for weeks for the right victim: someone weak, unable to give resistance. Mallets, hammers, baseball bats and knives were used as murder weapons.

They chose to attack either in the late evening, night, or early morning, taking advantage of the fact that their mothers worked at night.

Before claiming their first victim, the duo wanted to practice the act of killing.

They hit 18-year-old Anastasia Markov in the head with a mallet and ran away. She survived. A while later they attacked an unidentified woman in a similar manner and stole her bag.

• The killing spree started on the 1st of December 2010, when 12-year-old Danil Semyonov was picked out. He was hit in the head with a mallet and finished off with a baseball bat. At first, his death was ruled as an accident. No criminal case was started, which is why for some

+ time Semyonov was not associated with the murderers. Later, Lytkin and Anoufriev admitted that they simply "trained" on the boy.

• December 16, 2010. The lifeless body of 69-year-old Olga Pirog was found, just twenty yards from the murder scene of Danil Semyonov. On her body there were as many as 30 stab wounds, but her valuables were leer untouched. Since Danil’s murder was ruled an accident

+ investigators were unable to make the connection between the two incidents. Artyom and Nikita made an audio recording in which they talked about their plan to kill someone and then recorded the murder process.

• January 1, 2011. An unknown man’s skull was broken with a mallet. He later died at the hospital. Being homeless, he was identified as the corpse number 20.

• February 21, 2011. The next victim was Alexander Maximov, who was drunk and returning home. He was found with a completely broken jaw and head. Lytkin had shot him in the head with a Baikal Air pistol

+ and Anoufriev tried to extract the eyeballs of the victim but couldn't because of his ignorance about the human anatomy.

• March 11, 2011. Another homeless man, Roman Fayzullina, was shot twice in the head with an air gun, then they dragged the body into some bushes and began stabbing him in the head, groin and chest with knives. Lytkin tried to cut off the hand, but due to the fact that the knife

+ was small, he managed to cut off only the little finger. Later that night, Artyom photographed the corpse from his apartment window.

• April 3, 2011. The last victim was again homeless. Alevtina Kuydin was killed in a similar manner as the rest of the victims. Anoufriev and Lytkin first killed her, then filmed themselves mocking her corpse. On the video, shot by Anoufriev, Lytkin cut off the woman's earlobe

+ with a knife, after which he wanted to cut off her wrists and eyeballs, but this did not work out for him, and then he threw the knife straight into the woman's eye and began to stab her repeatedly in the face. Later, they threw the earlobe in front of a high school.

• Arrest

Both were arrested on April 5, 2011, when Nikita's uncle finds a recording of the murder of their last victim in an SD card. Upon seeing the recording, he took the camera to the police, and after an hour and a

+ half the "Molotchniki" were arrested. Lytkin reacted calmly to the arrest, as his relatives told him to surrender. By midnight, Lytkin and Anoufriev confessed to the authorities about five of the murders and six other attacks.
Later the number of crimes increased to six murders

+ and ten attacks. Anoufriev and Lytkin also added that in the evening of that day they had planned another murder.

• Sentence

Anoufriev was sentenced to life imprisonment in a strict regime correctional colony. When told of his sentence, Artyom claimed:

"Thanks to the media on me now is a stain from which I can't wash off. My grandfather was a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, and they

+ call me a fascist, the ones from whom he defended us. The materials of the case didn't prove my fault. I plead guilty only in the murder of Olga Pirog, as well as in the mockery of the corpse, but only in the fact that I shot the camera. In all other crimes did not participate.

+ It may sound silly, but I myself do not understand why I did it. I do not know what came over me. Sincereley condolences. I believe that there are no people of our age who could not be corrected. You can fix any person at any age. There would be a desire. I have this desire."

Nikita Lytkin was sentenced to 24 years, of which five years was to be held in prison, and the rest in a strict regime colony. This sentence was later changed to 20 years, as his minor age was taken into account at the time of the majority of murders, and the appointment of a

+ term of 5 years was considered unfounded.
Anoufriev's sentence remained unchanged.

Thanks to @hoppereiterr who helped me with this thread