In the late 1990s, Russian women answered newspaper personal ads promising romance, security, and a better life. What they found instead was Viktor Nikolayevich Bolkhovsky — a convicted killer who called himself a “professional maniac.”

From the murder of his own wife in 1980 to a calculated campaign of killings across Kemerovo and Chita, Bolkhovsky refined a chilling method: polish the perfect ad, gain entry to a private home, then strike. His final crime left a 14-year-old girl forever scarred.

Host Alexander Lawson tells the full story of the man known as the Necromancer Maniac — the ads that fooled his victims, the investigation that finally caught him, and the life sentence that sent him to Black Dolphin Prison.

In a small Russian industrial town, a man bludgeoned three people to death with a dumbbell disc, stabbed them, and set the apartment on fire. That triple murder finally stopped Stanislav Nikolayevich Beloruscev—but only after a decade of killing. Between 1999 and 2009, the man known as the Krasnokamsk Maniac murdered at least seventeen people through stabbing, strangulation, bludgeoning, rape, and dismemberment. Many of his victims remained missing or unsolved for years.

Host Alexander Lawson traces Beloruscev’s trail of violence, the 2009 arrest that ended his spree, and the shocking confessions he continues to make from inside Russia’s infamous Black Dolphin prison for lifers.

A True Crime Podcast.

On the morning of September 20, 2021, 18-year-old law student Timur Bekmansurov walked onto the campus of Perm State University in Russia armed with a pump-action shotgun. Within minutes, six people were dead and dozens more were wounded. He had studied the mistakes of other mass killers. He chose a crowded day. And he aimed to kill as many as possible.

In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, host Alexander Lawson recounts the chilling attack, the calculated preparation behind it, the desperate escape of students jumping from windows, and the life sentence that followed.

A story of hatred, planning, and lives cut short in one of Russia’s deadliest university shootings.

In the spring of 2011, women in Yekaterinburg began vanishing after dark. Four were found murdered—raped, robbed, and left in abandoned buildings or isolated corners of the city. Two more barely escaped with their lives.

Police had almost nothing… until the survivors’ descriptions led them to a 21-year-old illegal migrant from Tajikistan who barely spoke Russian and worked nights as a parking-lot guard.

His name was Firuz Hidirovich Aituganov. In less than five months he turned ordinary streets into a hunting ground.

Host Alexander Lawson tells the full story of the crimes, the investigation, the trial, and the life sentence that sent Aituganov to one of Russia’s most remote prisons—the Polar Owl Colony above the Arctic Circle.

A stark true-crime account of isolation, desperation, and irreversible violence.

Content warning: Contains graphic discussion of rape, murder, and violence against women.

In one of Russia’s harshest Arctic prisons, a man serving life for rape and murder picks up a chunk of cement and beats his cellmate to death. It is not his first killing behind bars—and it will not be his last chance to take a life.

Host Alexander Lawson traces the crimes of Nikolai Aleksandrovich Ageyev, the so-called Ural pedophile with a hammer. From an early prison murder and a controversial early release, to a brutal 2018 spree that claimed an elderly woman and a young girl, and finally a second life sentence after he killed again inside Polar Owl colony.

A story of repeated failure, relentless violence, and a killer the system could never contain.

In the winter of 2010–2011, two teenagers walked the same snowy paths every night in Irkutsk’s Akademgorodok, searching for people they considered weak. Armed with hammers, mallets, and knives, Artyom Alexandrovich Anoufriev and his friend Nikita Lytkin left six people dead — including a 12-year-old boy — and filmed themselves laughing over one of the bodies.

Host Alexander Lawson unravels the chilling case of the “Academy Maniacs”: how two high-school-age killers, influenced by online serial-killer lore and extremist ideology, terrorized a quiet academic district for months… until a single video brought their spree to an end.

Listener discretion advised: this episode contains descriptions of extreme violence

In just seven months in 1996, six women in Paris were attacked with such extreme force that police believed a baseball bat had been used. Two of them died. There was no weapon—only a pair of bare hands.

Host Alexander Lawson recounts the crimes of Mamadou Traoré, the Senegalese-born Frenchman known as le tueur aux mains nues. From the brutal assaults that left survivors permanently injured to the shocking courtroom claim of a supernatural curse, this episode examines one of France’s most disturbing serial cases of the 1990s.

Dawn, June 29, 1944. Seven Jewish men are lined up against a cemetery wall in Rillieux-la-Pape and executed. The order came from Paul Claude Marie Touvier, head of the Milice intelligence service in Lyon.

For nearly half a century he vanished—protected by monasteries, living under false names, even briefly pardoned by a French president. In 1994 he became the first Frenchman ever convicted of crimes against humanity.

Host Alexander Lawson traces Touvier’s rise in Vichy France, the reprisal killings that sealed his fate, the long years of evasion, and the trial that finally forced France to confront one of its darkest collaborators.

In March 2017, the quiet French town of Montluçon was shattered by a series of savage crimes. Over just ten days, two young men tortured and murdered three elderly residents in their own homes—then kidnapped a young couple and subjected them to hours of terror.

One of the killers was only 18. His name was Zaki Ali Toumbou. While police were still investigating the first double murder, he walked up to a nightclub and bragged that he was “the killer of Montluçon.”

Host Alexander Lawson unravels the full story of the so-called Barbarians of Montluçon: the backgrounds of the perpetrators, the brutality of the attacks, the missed warning signs, and the eventual capture and life sentence that followed.

Listener discretion is strongly advised. This episode contains graphic descriptions of violence, torture, and sexual assault.

In September 1993, an eight-year-old girl in Perpignan trusted the friendly man she called “Tonton Patrick.” Hours later, her body was found at the bottom of a well.

Patrick Tissier was no stranger to violence. A known murderer and serial rapist who had already served time, he was free again—living quietly among a Mormon community, winning the trust of families, and hiding a monstrous past.

This episode follows the trail of blood from a 1971 killing in Bourges, through years of releases and reoffending, to the shocking crimes that forced France to rethink life sentences for the most dangerous offenders.

Hosted by Alexander Lawson.

Content warning: This episode contains descriptions of sexual violence, child murder, and graphic crime details.