A serial killer who abducted babies from their prams in order to sexually abuse them and then kill them was the Russian Anatoly Nikolaevich Biryuko, better known as the Baby Hunter. In the autumn of 1977, he struck fear into the hearts of the people of Russia’s capital, Moscow. On 16 September 1977, the Baby Hunter struck for the first time. In broad daylight, Anatoly abducted an infant from a pram whilst it was left briefly unattended outside a baby shop on Marshal Biryuzov Street in Moscow. A few hours later, the empty pram and the infant’s body were discovered in a residential building on the same street. Just three days after this horrific crime, Anatoly abducted a three-month-old girl from a pram parked outside the ‘Children’s World’ shop on Prospekt Mira in north-east Moscow. Following this incident, the Moscow police suspected that a serial offender was at large. One of the largest search operations in the history of the Moscow police was launched to find the missing baby. The baby was eventually found dead on 17 October 1977 in a rubbish tip not far from the village of Mamyrov, on the outskirts of Moscow. The post-mortem revealed that the baby had been subjected to sexual acts prior to her death. Anatoly subsequently killed three more babies within three weeks. He always followed the same pattern. He abducted the babies from their prams, dragged them to deserted locations where he raped them before killing them with a knife. Who knows how long Anatoly would have continued hunting babies had his attempted abduction on 24 October 1977 not failed, as members of the public caught him in the act. Although Anatoly managed to escape, the description provided by the members of the public led to his arrest. At the time, Anatoly was 38 years old. He was regarded as a loving husband and the father of two daughters. Anatoly was born on 18 February 1939 in Lopasnya, the son of the highly decorated war hero Nikolai Biryukov, who had served as a general in the Soviet Army during the Second World War. Until Anatoly’s arrest, no one had suspected that a monster lurked within him. In 1978, Anatoly was sentenced to death for the murder of five babies. He appealed against the verdict to the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, but to no avail. On 14 February 1979, Anatoly was executed by firing squad. Thus ended the story of the ‘Baby Hunter’.
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Isabella Mueller (crime writer)
