This is the story of a mother’s grief that turned into cold-blooded revenge, of a woman driven to despair by the inaction of the law and who decided to take justice with her own hands. Today, our program explores the shocking events of the summer of 1998 in a remote village in the Kirov region.
What drives a mother to take up a knife and turn against those feared by the entire village? And where is the line between revenge and justice when the justice system remains silent? We will show you everything as it was, without embellishments and censorship. The summer of 1998 turned out to be stuffy and disturbing in the Kirov region.
In a small workers’ settlement, lost among forests and swamps, time seemed to have stood still, along with the whistle of the town’s main factory, which fell silent five years ago. Life here flowed according to its own unwritten laws. Once a month, an old UAZ with police officers would come here to draw up a report on a drunken brawl or petty theft.
turn around and drive away, leaving the village alone with its own demons. And there were plenty of demons. Unemployment, rampant drunkenness and a feeling of utter hopelessness gave rise to several groups of exiles, prisoners and embittered youth who kept in fear all who had not yet managed to escape from here.
They were a shadow power and were feared more than the official law. In this world, as viscous as a swamp, lived forty-two-year-old Galina Korotkova with her only daughter, seventeen-year-old Svetlana. Galina was a quiet woman, but with a strong inner core. Life didn’t spoil her. Her husband died tragically at a construction site almost 10 years ago, leaving her alone with a small child in her arms.
She worked two jobs: during the day as a cleaner and at a local school, and in the evenings she worked part-time in a tiny store on the outskirts of the village. She put all her strength, all her unspent love into the world. The girl was her pride and the only meaning of life. Beautiful, smart.
She dreamed of escaping this wilderness, entering the pedagogical institute in Kirov and becoming a teacher. Galina saved every penny for her future. Denying themselves everything, they lived in a small two-room apartment in an old five-story panel building, and their modest life was filled with warmth and mutual understanding rare for these places.
On that fateful July evening, a disco was held in the village’s old community center, a rare event for local youth. Sveta spent a long time persuading her mother to let her go. Galina felt an inexplicable anxiety, but looking into her daughter’s shining eyes, she could not refuse. Mommy, I won’t be long. Just to dance with my girlfriends and back.
I’ll be home at 10:00, honestly, Sveta chirped, trying on the new dress that Galina had been saving up for for three months. Galina walked her to the door, reminding her for the hundredth time to be careful and not to linger. Time passed. The hands on the old wall clock showed 11, then midnight, but Sveta was still nowhere to be seen.
Galina’s heart sank with a bad feeling. She started calling her daughter’s friends, but no one knew anything. Sveta left the disco around ten, saying that she was going home. Galina threw on an old jacket and ran out into the street. The dark streets of the village were deserted and ominous. She walked around all the surrounding areas.
I reached the community center, where the lights had long since gone out. I called my daughter until I was hoarse, but only silence and the barking of stray dogs answered. In the morning, unable to sleep and mad with fear, she ran to the police station in a neighboring, larger village.
The tired district police officer, yawning, listened to her confused story, reluctantly accepted the statement and casually said it. Do n’t worry so much, citizen. The young girl must have been on the prowl. Maybe she’ll find someone, she went to the city to see her boyfriend. These words, spoken with indifferent confidence, became the first blow for Galina .
She realized that there was no one to turn to for help. Nobody will look for her girl. The search turned into Galina’s personal hell . She quit her job and spent her days combing the surrounding forests, questioning the rare passersby who shied away from her wild gaze. Some neighbors shook their heads sympathetically, others looked away . Fear gripped the village.
Everyone knew that that evening at the disco there was a group of local thugs, a trio of recently released repeat offenders who had long been terrorizing the entire area. People saw how they followed Sveta relentlessly, making dirty jokes. But no one spoke about it out loud . They were afraid.
Galina walked from house to house, looked into people’s eyes, begged them to tell her at least something, but she came up against a wall of silence. Hope was fading with each passing hour. And a week later the worst thing happened. A local mushroom picker, who entered the forest belt behind the village, came across a body barely covered with earth and branches.
It was Sveta, tortured, with bruises all over her body, in torn clothes. The examination will confirm later. The girl was brutally raped and then strangled. For Galina Korotkova, the world collapsed in an instant. When she was told about the discovery, she did not scream or cry. She just fell silent.
Her face turned into a frozen mask of grief, and her eyes, once full of warmth, were frozen in cold, dead ice. She looked at what was left of her daughter for identification. And at that moment something inside her broke irrevocably. Hope died, and in its place something else was born: dark, cold and merciless.
Svetlana’s funeral took place on the third day after the identification. The entire village came to a small, weed-overgrown cemetery on the outskirts. People stood with their eyes downcast, shifting from foot to foot. The air was thick with not only the smell of incense and freshly dug earth, but also a sticky, universal fear.
No one dared to look Galina in the eyes, but everyone briefly glanced in the direction of the three figures standing along the old cemetery fence. It was them, twenty-eight-year-old Sergei Voronov, nicknamed Voron, three times convicted of robbery and grievous bodily harm. His peer, huge and dumb as a valenka, Alexey Lyutov, or simply fierce.
And the youngest of them, nineteen-year-old fidget Pavel Chibisov, known as Chibis. They didn’t hide, they stood there, brazenly smoking, exchanging short phrases and watching the procession with a grin. Their presence was a slap in the face to the entire village, a demonstration of complete impunity. Galina stood at the fresh grave like a stone statue.
She didn’t shed a tear. Dry, wide-open eyes stared into emptiness, and thin lips were pressed into one white line. As the clods of earth dully thudded against the tires of the cheap pine coffin, something changed in her gaze . The cold emptiness gave way to a dark, focused determination. That day she kept not only her daughter, but also her former life, her faith in people and justice.
A couple of days after the funeral, an investigator from the district center, Captain Maltsev, a man of about fifty with a tired, puffy face and the smell of alcohol, came to her home. He sat down in the kitchen, leafed through the file for a long time , and asked formal questions to which he already knew the answers.
Galina answered alone, with difficulty, without taking her eyes off his hands. He didn’t look her in the eyes. “Do you understand, Galina Petrovna?” He finally began, sighing heavily. Your village is unique. We have no direct evidence against Voronov and his company . Nobody saw anything, nobody heard anything.
The fingerprints at the crime scene were smudged and there were no witnesses. They have an ironclad alibi. Allegedly, they spent the whole night drinking at the other end of the village. And a dozen people will confirm this. It is understandable that they are afraid, but evidence is evidence. He paused and took out a cigarette.
We will, of course, work, but, frankly speaking, the prospects are unclear. The case will most likely go cold. He looked at her for the first time, and in his gaze she read not sympathy, but rather advice: “Get over it, forget it, don’t interfere, otherwise it will be worse.” When he left, leaving behind the smell of tobacco and hopelessness, Galina finally understood: “No one will help, no one will punish.
” The system that was supposed to protect her admitted its own impotence, and in fact, cowardice. The following days merged into one grey, viscous nightmare. Galina did not leave the apartment. She sat for hours in the room of light, sorting through her things, school notebooks with neat handwriting, cheap jewelry in a box, photographs of her girl laughing.
This silence was driving me crazy . Previously, the apartment was filled with life, Sveta’s voice, music from her tape recorder, their evening conversations over tea. Now, a ringing emptiness, saturated with grief, has settled here. But it was not just grief. Inside Galina, in the very depths of her scorched soul, another feeling grew and strengthened.
Cold as steel, it was hatred, pure, distilled, unclouded by fear or doubt. She knew who did it. The whole village knew. And the thought that these non-humans walk on earth, breathe the same air, laugh and drink vodka. While her daughter lay in a damp grave, it was unbearable. She became a knife that slowly turned into her heart.
And one night she made a decision: “If the law is dead, then I will have to administer justice myself.” The thought brought her a strange, chilling sense of peace. For the first time in many days she was able to fall asleep, and in the morning she woke up with a different person. Galina began to act methodically.
with a composure she didn’t expect from herself. She knew that she had no right to make a mistake. The first thing she did was go to that forest belt again. She crawled on her knees across the place where they had found the light, centimeter by centimeter, raking away rotten leaves and earth.
The police conducted the inspection formally, and Galina understood this. And she found, under the root of an old oak tree, where it had apparently been kicked, a cigarette butt was lying. And the trigger of an expensive cigarette by local standards , which only one person in their village smoked , the raven boasted that he did n’t smoke cheap prima, but imported cigarettes that were brought to him from the city.
And nearby, caught on a branch of a bush, hung a small button in the shape of a ladybug from Sveta’s blouse, from that very new blouse that she wore to the disco. Galina squeezed these tiny pieces of evidence in her fist. It was her own irrefutable proof. Then she began to observe. She turned into a shadow, wearing an old dark coat and tying a scarf around her head so that it hid half of her face.
She sat for hours on a bench in the far corner of the square, from where she had a good view of the only bar in the village, a dirty dive called Vstrecha. It was there that every evening the three of us would gather. She studied their habits, what time they arrived, how much they drank, who they talked to, where they went.
She later discovered that after the bar closed, they often wandered into an abandoned hangar on the grounds of a former factory, where they continued drinking cheap port wine until the early hours of the morning. No one dared to disturb them. The hangar was their lair. One day she decided to take another step.
She lay in wait for Katya, Sveta’s best friend, at the entrance . The girl, seeing Galina, turned pale and tried to slip past , but Galina blocked her path. She did n’t scream or beg. She simply took her hand and looked into her eyes with her new dead look. Katya, I know you’re afraid, but tell me the truth.
For the memory of Sveta. The girl shook, burst into tears, and whispered everything through her tears , like a fierce lapwing. They didn’t give the light a break all evening, as they grabbed her by the hands. And when she tried to go home, they went after her. Katya and her friends wanted to go see her off, but the fierce one barked at them so loudly that they ran away in fear.
They dragged her towards the forest. She screamed: “But we were scared, Aunt Galya. We were so scared!” the girl whispered, choking on tears. Galina listened silently. Each word was a hammer forging her resolve. She let go of the girl’s hand and said only one thing: “Be quiet, don’t tell anyone, just like before.” And she left, leaving the frightened Katya sobbing in the stairwell.
Now she had everything: confidence, motive, and a plan. In the old medicine cabinet left over from her late husband, a heart patient, she found what she was looking for. Several blisters of clonidine. Her husband had been prescribed it for his blood pressure, but he hardly took it, complaining of drowsiness. Now this medicine was to serve its last service.
Galina carefully squeezed out all the pills, crushed them into powder, and poured them into a small paper bag. She was ready. All that remained was to choose the time. On Friday evening, Galina Korotkova was transformed. She washed away the frozen mask of grief from her face, applied a bright, provocative lipstick she hadn’t worn for 20 years.
She put on an old, but once elegant dress, which seemed alien and out of place on her. She looked at her reflection in the cracked mirror in the hallway and didn’t recognize herself. An unfamiliar, aged woman looked back at her, with a feverish glint in her eyes and a predatory, evil grin on her lips. This was not Galina Korotkogo, the grief-stricken mother.
This was an instrument of retribution. She put a paper bag of white powder and a bottle of the cheapest vodka she had bought at a hardware store the day before into an old bag . Then, hesitating for a moment , she returned to the kitchen. From a drawer, she took out a long, well- sharpened kitchen knife, the one she usually used to butcher meat.
She wrapped it in a rag and hid it in her bag. Her hands did n’t shiver. A ringing arctic cold reigned within her . She locked the door of the apartment, which would never again hear her daughter’s laughter, and without looking back, stepped into the night darkness of the village. The doors of the Vstrecha bar creaked open, letting her into a cloud of tobacco smoke, the smell of fumes and sour beer.
Some cheap pop music blared hoarsely from old speakers. Sullen men and uninhibited women, their faces already touched by the stamp of hopelessness, sat at sticky tables. Galina paused for a moment at the threshold, letting her eyes adjust to the semi-darkness. She saw them immediately. Voron, Lyuty, and Chibis were sitting at their usual table in the corner, laughing loudly and drinking beer from cloudy mugs.
Galina took a deep breath, and Chekanya, with each step, headed straight towards them. Her appearance had the effect of an exploding bomb. Conversations in the neighboring The tables fell silent. Everyone looked at her, the quiet widow Korotkova, who had buried her daughter just a week ago and now came to the village’s main snake pit in war paint.
The trio also fell silent, staring at her in surprise. The raven was the first to come to his senses. “Oh, my, what people!” he drawled with a cheeky grin. “Petrovna, what are you doing here? Have you decided to remember your daughter? The fierce yachebis were preparing disgustingly. Galina approached their table and stopped.
She looked the raven straight in the eyes, and in her gaze there was neither fear nor sorrow, only cold, contemptuous curiosity. “It’s boring, guys,” she said in an unexpectedly firm, throaty voice. “It’s sad to howl at home alone, but I see you’re having fun here.” They clearly didn’t expect such an answer.
Raven frowned, trying to figure out what was going on. He was used to everyone being afraid of her, pitying her, avoiding her, but she stood in front of him, defiantly raising her chin. “And what do you want, Petrovna?” – he asked more cautiously. Galina glanced around their table with its empty mugs. “I see you’re out of beer.
And that’s the local stuff; drinking it is disrespectful. I have some good white beer with me,” she pointedly patted her bag. “Would you like a treat? Just not here.” It’s noisy and smelly here. There was a note in her voice that any man in their position would jump at the invitation. A lonely forty-year-old woman, clearly driven to the brink of disaster.
It was too weird to be true, but too tempting to refuse. The raven exchanged glances with his friends. Their stupid faces reflected greed and lust. They saw before them not an avenger, but easy prey, a strange entertainment for the evening. And you, Petrovna, have a sparkle,” Raven grinned again, making a decision.
And where are you going to treat us? Will you invite me to your place? Galina smiled. I don’t invite you to my place. I don’t want to tarnish the memory of my daughter . But I know one place, a quiet one. where no one will disturb you. At the old factory, in the hangar. You go there, don’t you? This phrase finally convinced them of her intentions.
She knew their place, which means she was watching, which means she wanted to. They rose from the table, paid and, surrounding Galina, moved towards the exit. The entire bar watched them with stunned looks. Nobody understood what was happening, but everyone felt that something terrible was brewing.
They walked along the dark streets of the village. A raven walked ahead, waving its arms . Next to Galina, a fierce man swayed heavily, smelling of sweat and cheap beer. A lapwing trotted behind, giggling nervously. They made dirty jokes and tried to put their arms around her shoulders, but Galina silently and firmly pushed their hands away.
She didn’t speak to save energy and only showed the way, although they themselves knew it very well. The abandoned factory greeted them with silence and destruction. The broken windows of the workshops were black, like empty eye sockets. It was dark and cold in the huge, echoing hangar. Lyuty lit a kerosene lamp standing on a rusty barrel, and its dim light revealed from the darkness of a mountain of scrap metal old machines covered in a thick layer of dust and a dirty mattress in the corner.
Galina put her bag on the barrel and took out a bottle of vodka and three plastic cups, which she had prudently taken from home. “About yourself, Petrovna?” – asked the Raven. “I’ve already had my drink,” she replied hoarsely. She turned her back to them, as if to take out a simple snack of bread and pickles from her bag.
At that moment, covering her actions with her body, she poured the white powder from the bag into three cups. Her hands acted quickly and precisely. She poured vodka, trying to dissolve the powder, and handed the glasses to the men. “Well, here’s to the meeting,” said the raven. And they drank without clinking glasses.
Galina watched as the codes on their necks twitched, swallowing the poison. Now all that was left was to wait. She sat down on a box to the side and watched silently. At first they perked up, started telling dirty jokes again, and discussing their exploits. But after just 10 minutes their speech began to slur. The lapwing was the first to swim.
He tried to get up, but his legs gave way and he collapsed like a sack onto the dirty floor. Lyuty stared at him blankly. Then to Galina. What did you put in his drink, witch? – he croaked, but could not finish. His eyes rolled back and he fell heavily onto his side. The raven held out the longest. He realized what had happened, and an animal horror appeared in his eyes.
He tried to jump up and reach Galina, but his body no longer obeyed. “For the light, you creature!” he croaked before his head hit the iron barrel with a thud . Silence reigned in the hangar, broken only by their heavy, ragged breathing. Galina slowly rose and approached them. Three powerful, terrifying beasts, which had held the entire village in terror, now lay at her feet, helpless, like newborn kittens.
She looked at their faces: the insolent face of a raven. The dull face of a fierce one, the frightened face of a lapwing. There was neither pity nor satisfaction in her soul . Only an icy emptiness and a sense of accomplishment. She took a knife from her bag . The dim light of a kerosene lamp reflected off its sharp blade.
Galina acted without fuss, like a surgeon. In the operating room, her movements were measured and economical. She felt neither disgust nor fear, only a dull, all-consuming emptiness. and a single thought. This is for the light. She dragged the unconscious bodies one by one to the center of the hangar, placing them side by side on the dirty concrete floor. The first was Raven.
She looked at his relaxed, limp face, frozen in a shadow of horror, and saw no man in him. This was the beast that had torn her child to pieces. The knife entered his heart. Easily, almost without resistance. Then she did the same with the dire and the lapwing. Neither of them twitched, neither made a sound.
They simply passed from deep sleep into eternal darkness. But that was not all. Her revenge required symbolism, a terrible and object lesson. She did what the original report said. She committed an act of retribution, cruel and full of primal biblical justice. She acted mechanically, as if performing a long- learned task.
When it was all over, she accidentally touched the hot glass of the kerosene lamp with her hand. lamps. Bolstroy, but Galina barely noticed it. She only glanced at the reddening burn on her palm, as if it belonged to someone else. She found a piece of chalk in the corner, went to the rusty metal wall of the hangar and, in large but unsteady letters, wrote just three words.
This is for her. Then she silently gathered her things – an empty bottle, glasses, a rag in which the now bloody knife was wrapped – and walked out of the hangar into the pre-dawn fog. She returned to her empty apartment, carefully washed the knife, burned the rag in the ashtray and lay down on the bed without undressing.
For the first time in many weeks, she did not see the face of her tortured daughter before her eyes. In her head there was an absolute ringing silence. The terrible find was discovered only two days later. Two local boys, looking for scrap metal, wandered into the abandoned hangar. A child’s cry, full of genuine A terrifying sound shattered the morning silence of the village and signaled the beginning of the final chapter of this tragedy.
An hour later, almost the entire village had gathered at the hangar. People stood silently, afraid to come close, but also unable to leave. Captain Maltsev, who this time arrived not alone but with an entire task force, saw the scene inside, turned green, and went outside to light a cigarette with trembling hands.
The sight was monstrous even for seasoned police officers. Three dead bodies, the nature of the injuries, the writing on the wall. All this added up to a clear and terrifying picture of ritualistic violence. The investigation was surprisingly short. In a village where everyone knew everyone, there are no secrets .
Dozens of eyes saw Galina Korotkova go to the bar that evening. The barmaid went on record as confirming that she sat down with Troitsa and took them away. One of the neighbors, an old woman who suffered from insomnia, saw Galina return. home in the morning. Black as the earth. The motive was as clear as day.
The final touch was a visit from the local doctor, whom Galina went to the next day after the murder to treat a severe burn on her hand. She said she burned herself with a teapot, but now this detail has become a key piece of evidence. When they came for her, Galina was sitting in the kitchen and drinking cold tea. She was not surprised.
She calmly stood up when they showed her the arrest warrant and quietly said: “I’m ready.” During the interrogation, she did not deny anything. She sat opposite Captain Maltsev, the same one who advised her to accept the situation, and in a monotonous, lifeless voice told everything as it happened. She did not make excuses and did not repent.
Her story was devoid of emotion. It was a report on the work done. “I knew they wouldn’t go to jail,” she said, looking the investigator straight in the eyes with her empty gaze. “I saw it in your eyes.” I knew that they would continue to walk The streets, laughing and drinking vodka, while my daughter lies in the ground.
I simply did what I had to do as a mother. She described in detail how she met them in a bar, how she brought them to a hangar, how she got them drunk on vodka and clonidine, and how she killed them. Her composure frightened the seasoned detectives more than the details of the massacre itself. She didn’t seem crazy; she looked like someone who had crossed the line and would never return.
Galina Korotkova’s trial became an event that shook not only the Kirov region but the entire country. Journalists from major newspapers flocked to the village. The story of the vengeful mother spread across Russia, which was experiencing turbulent times of lawlessness and gangster chaos. For millions of people, Galina became a symbol of people’s justice, the last hope in a world where the law was silent.
They called her the wolf mother, angelomnia. In her support They collected signatures and wrote letters to the editors and the court. Society was divided. Some were horrified by the cruelty of her revenge, while others admired her courage. A forensic psychiatric examination declared her sane, but found that at the time of the crime, she was in a state of intense emotional distress caused by the death of her daughter and the inaction of law enforcement.
It was a state of affect, prolonged over time. The court, under enormous public pressure and obvious mitigating circumstances, handed down an unprecedentedly lenient sentence. Considering all factors, Galina Korotkova was given the minimum possible sentence: three years in a general regime penal colony. The verdict was greeted with applause in the crowded courtroom.
A strange, unfamiliar silence fell over the village after her arrest. The fear that had hung in the air for years disappeared. People began to walk out onto the streets in the evenings more calmly. Mothers no longer frantically feared for their teenage daughters. Tragedy The death of Galina and Svetlana Korotkov cleared the air like a terrible thunderstorm.
Galina served her sentence from start to finish. She was released an aged, silent woman. She sold her apartment in the village and left for an unknown destination. No one knows where she is now or what her subsequent fate was. And her story has become a dark legend, still told in the Kirov hinterland.
A legend of a mother’s grief that proved stronger than fear and stronger than the law. It’s a legend of the terrible price of justice that sometimes must be paid when justice is blind and deaf.
