Sergey Golovkin was a Russian Serial Killer, active between 1959 and 1996. Known as the Fisher, he kidnapped, tortured, raped, and murdered at least 11 boys between the ages of 10 and 16.
Sergey Golovkin was born Sergey Aleksandrovich Golovkin (in Russian: Серге́й Александрович Головкин) on November 26, 1959 in Moscow, in what was then, the Soviet Union. His father was an alcoholic, and his mother was described as quiet, and ordinary.
Golovkin was born with a birth defect in his sternum, causing him to suffer from bronchitis and indigestion on a regular basis. He also suffered from numerous intestinal infections, and worse, enuresis – the inability to control urination. It is perhaps the enuresis that caused him to be a “loner,” choosing to spend time by himself, rather than with classmates who could potentially smell his urine.
Though he was tall, slender, and some would call him handsome, he was plagued by acne.
At the age of 13, he found a cat in the street. He managed to catch the cat and took it home, where he proceeded to hang it before cutting off its head. He later admitted that watching the cat as it thrashed in agony, he “experienced true satisfaction, there was relaxation, the tension went away, there was spiritual relief.” This is perhaps the first clue we have for what was to come.
During his teen years, he imagined having sexual intercourse with his classmates while masturbating. He would imagine having sex while torturing them, then frying them naked in a pan, or burning them at the stake.
He showed no interest in girls, instead imagining his ideal mate/victim as a boy, thin, average height, and no older than 16.
Golovkin went on to attend the Timiryazev Agricultural Academy. One night, during his last year, he ran into a group of vocational school students. They demanded money from him, but he had nothing, and in return, the boys beat him, knocked out teeth, broke his nose as well as a couple of ribs.
It was after that incident, that Golovikin decided he would make it his mission to punish bullies.
In 1982, Golovkin graduated from the Academy and was assigned to the 1st Moscow stud farm in the Odintsovo district of the region, where he served as a livestock expert. He was so good at his job, and had made achievements in horse breeding development, that he was awarded a silver medal at a VDNKh trade show in 1989.
During his free time, he would take walks, near pioneer camps and children’s institutions, looking for someone to “punish.” Though he attempted to abduct and assault a boy right away, It wasn’t until 1984 when he committed his first moral crime.
During one of his walks outside the pioneer camp, he spotted a boy outside the fence, who had gone off to smoke. Golovkin dragged him into the forest where he attempted to choke him to death, but when the boy lost consciousness, he got scared and ran away.
Having made an attempt and failing, it would be a couple of years before Golovkin would try again. In April 1986 he met 15-year-old Andrey Pavlov near the Katuar railway station in Nekrasov, Moscow Oblast, just outside of Moscow. He threatened the boy with a knife before dragging him into the forest. The boy was raped, then strangled to death. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Golovkin desecrated his body, when he proceeded to perform necrophilia on it.
3 months later, in July, he kidnapped 12-year-old Andrey Gulyaev from a summer camp near Odintsovo, Moscow Oblast. Once again, he threatened the boy with a knife before taking him into the forest where he raped and strangled him. This time, he dismembered the body.
A witness came forward, a friend of the boy, and claimed that he had seen the killer, and he had a tattoo in the form of a snake and knife with the inscription “Fisher” on it. This gave the killer the nickname, “The Fisher.” It is worth noting that the witness statement was later proved to have been made up.
Four days later, the body of a 16-year-old boy was found in Odintsovsky District. The body had been stabbed 25 times before being dismembered.
Around the time of his parents divorce in 1988, Golovkin purchased a beige-colored VAZ-2103 car, and then received the right to purchase a garage on the stud farm. At first, he thought he would dig a cellar for the purpose of storing things like potatoes, pickles, and other items. However, knowing the police were looking for a killer, he realized he had to be more careful. It was then that he realized he could turn his garage into a dungeon, a torture chamber.
He concreted the floor and lined the walls with concrete slabs, into which he installed iron rings for the purpose of restraining his victims. “I bought a baby bath to collect blood in it. In general, I prepared thoroughly.”
From August 1990, he killed another 8 boys, ranging in age from 10-16. On two occasions, he kidnapped two boys at the same time, and tortured them together.
Boys in the Odintsovo district were disappearing, and around this time there were about fifty missing. Dismembered bodies of boys were being found more and more often. Though not all could be attributed to Golovkin, it meant he had to be that much more careful.
He continued, kidnapping boys, taking them to his torture chamber, raping them then strangling them. He dismembered the boys and buried their bodies away from the stud farm. His method of killing, by strangulation, earned him another nickname – the Boa.
“I almost loved them,” Golovkin later said. “The more I liked the victim, the more I wanted to manipulate it, cut more, cut.”
At work, people noticed that he was very focused, for lack of a better word. When he would examine and inseminate horses, he would keep his hand inside the rectum of the animal for too long. Onlookers would notice that his eyes seemed to glaze over, and any attempt to speak with him was met with silence; he did not hear anything. “When I felt the genitals of the mare, some women were simply ashamed of his excited appearance.”
On September 15, 1992, Golovkin chose three more victims. He knew the boys, and they weren’t afraid when he suggested that they “go to work.” What he didn’t know was that there weren’t just three boys, there was a fourth who just happened to go to the bathroom when he showed up.
The boys had a moment to make up their mind whether to go with him or not. “If they refused, they would become uninteresting to me, and I would let them go,” said Golovkin. “I would find others…”
The boys disappeared around the corner where they met their friend. They told him about the plan, and asked him to go with them, but he refused, saying his parents would probably miss him. The three returned to Golovkin, climbed into his car, one in the trunk, the other two in the back seat, covered by a blanket.
Little did they know, they were going to Golovkin’s garage, and not the warehouse they expected.
“I told E., who was hanging on a hook, that I would now burn out an obscene word on his chest with a blowtorch. During the burning, E. did not scream, only hissed in pain … I told the three that there would be eleven boys on my account with them, I set the order, informing the children who would die for whom. I dismembered Sh in front of E., while showing the internal organs and giving anatomical explanations. The boy went through all this calmly, without hysteria, sometimes he only turned away.”
Three weeks later, on October 5, 1992, mushroom pickers in the forest discovered their bodies. Police began to question the boys’ friends. That is when they met the fourth boy, who happened to know Golovkin, and his car.
Sergey Golovkin was arrested on October 19, 1992. At first he feigned shock. He refused to speak or answer questions. But then, presented with evidence, he found himself at first giving only “Yes, yes, no, yes” answers. Then the floodgates open and he was unable to be quiet. He talked, calmly about his victims, 11 murders in total.
He testified that he had finally understood what love was. “The more I liked the victim, the more I wanted to manipulate it, cut more, cut it out.” He left the most “loved ones” for last, tortured, killed slowly, even forced them to participate in torture and murder procedures.
He received satisfaction from the consciousness of one’s strength, superiority, power. Pleasure came from the oath promises of the victim to fulfill any of his instructions, even to bring someone in his place. After each murder, “I had such a pleasant feeling as if I had done something good, as if I had done my duty,” he will tell the psychiatrists.
When asked why he did not start a family, Golovkin replied, “I was afraid that I would do the same with my own son as I did with those boys.”
Yet he never felt complete satisfaction, even reporting that he didn’t like the taste of human meat. He reported that his most favorite souvenir was the skull of one of the boys.
He was sent for a psychiatric evaluation at the Serbian Institute, where he was found sane and aware of his actions.
The Moscow Regional Court sentenced Golovkin to death. Though at the time, it was prohibited to warn death row prisoners about their impending execution, Golovkin knew about his. He calmly said goodbye to his cellmate. His cellmate later emphasized that he had never said a word regarding the murders, yet more than once repeated that “he deeply regrets the actions that caused him to be here.”
Sergey Golovkin was executed on August 2, 1996 by a single shot to the back of the head. It was the last death sentence carried out in Russia before the abolition of capital punishment.
If you find this case disturbing, and want more disturbing content, check out this story about serial killer, Javed Iqbal.
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