The Madman

There are murder series that are so incomprehensible that only a madman could have committed them. One such man was the always friendly detective Serhij Tkach, who is considered one of the worst mass murderers in the world. Tkach was born on September 12, 1952, in the Russian city of Kiselevsk in Siberia. He was a good student who, after completing his military service in the Soviet Army, trained with the police. He then became a detective in the city of Kemerovo. Tkach was popular among his colleagues, did excellent work, and acquired special knowledge in the field of forensics. In his spare time, he enjoyed boxing and even became a featherweight champion. Everything was going perfectly until he was caught falsifying evidence. To avoid a prison sentence, he voluntarily resigned from the police force. Shortly afterwards, Tkach killed for the first time. After excessive alcohol consumption, he raped a former schoolmate with whom he had an on-off relationship. Fearing punishment, he then killed her. In 1982, Tkach moved to the Ukrainian industrial city of Dnipropetrovsk, where he left a trail of blood. Between 1980 and 1984, he killed 36 young women and girls, all between the ages of 8 and 18. Tkach always used the same modus operandi, pressing down on his victims’ carotid arteries until they were dead. He then sexually assaulted the corpses, sometimes even before killing them. Afterwards, he meticulously cleaned the crime scene. He removed his semen and smudged his footprints and fingerprints. He kept jewelry or cosmetics belonging to his victims as souvenirs. He wanted it to look like a robbery-murder. He deposited the bodies near highways to give the impression that the perpetrator was a traveler or truck driver. Sometimes he placed the body on recently tarred railroad tracks so that police dogs would have difficulty detecting the scent. He was a master of his craft thanks to his excellent training with the criminal investigation department. This enabled him to lead a double life undisturbed for over two decades. During his 25-year killing spree, Tkach frequently changed jobs, residences, and wives. He was married three times and had five children, three daughters and two sons. He worked as a factory worker, on farms and in mines until he returned to work as an investigator in the Dnipropetrovsk region. His series of murders only came to light after he kidnapped 9-year-old Katya, the daughter of a co-worker, in front of children who were playing. When he attended Katya’s funeral, the other children recognized him as Katya’s kidnapper. Tkach was arrested at his home, where he greeted the officers with the words, “I’ve been waiting twenty years for you to come.” During interrogation, Tkach, who claimed to have been a mercenary in the Afghanistan war, confessed to killing more than 100 people. However, only 36 murders could be proven. He stated that his motive was to embarrass his incompetent colleagues. Then he said that he hated women, only to then simply emphasize that he had killed for fun. Tkach, who showed no remorse for his victims, demanded the death penalty for himself. Since Ukraine had abolished the death penalty, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in the trial, which had been ongoing since 2007. On November 4, 2018, Tkach died of heart failure at the age of 66. Tragically, more than 10 men were wrongfully convicted of Tkach’s crimes. One of them even committed suicide.