TEENAGER ADMITS TO OVER 30 MURDERS
By David Nowak
Staff Writer
The Moscow Times, Russia
May 29 2007
A teenager studying to paint icons has claimed involvement in more
than 30 murders in Moscow, law enforcement sources said.
There were conflicting reports, however, on the number of victims
and the motives for the crimes.
Suspect Artur Ryno, 18, has claimed responsibility for 37 racially
motivated murders that he said he committed to "clean up the city,"
Vremya Novostei reported Monday.
Ryno, a student at an icon painting school, has told investigators
that he began his murder spree on Aug. 21, the same day a bomb killed
13 people at Moscow’s Cherkizovsky market, the report said.
On that day, Ryno said, he and a group of skinheads provoked a fight
with a group of people from Central Asia, during which he stabbed
one of the migrants to death, the report said.
But a law enforcement source told Regnum.ru that Ryno had admitted his
involvement in 32 murders — not 37 — and that the presumed motive
was robbery. The victims were robbed of money and mobile phones,
the source said.
City prosecutor’s office spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko said she
could not immediately comment on the reports and that details on the
investigation would be available "sometime next week."
Ryno and fellow student Pavel Skachayevsky, 18, were arrested last
month on suspicion of killing Armenian businessman Karen Abramyan.
Abramyan, 46, was stabbed 20 times on the evening of April 16 in
southwest Moscow and died in the hospital.
Ryno and Skachayevsky were detained on a tram with their clothes
covered in blood and in possession of a bloody knife, and the crime
was captured on a surveillance camera.
Ryno confessed to a string of racially motivated murders after being
shown the surveillance footage, while Skachayevsky had denied any
wrongdoing, Vremya Novostei reported.
The night before Abramyan’s murder, Khairullo Sadykov, 26, a street
sweeper from Tajikistan, was stabbed 35 times outside an apartment
building in eastern Moscow. Ryno confessed to Sadykov’s murder too,
the report said.
Most, if not all of Ryno’s and Sadykov’s victims were foreigners
and were stabbed at least 20 times to delay the body identification
process, it said.
Last year, 53 people were killed and 460 others were injured in
apparent hate crimes, according to the Sova center.