President Vladimir Putin pardoned 41-year-old serial killer Denis Zubov, sentenced to 21 years in a maximum security colony for the murder of three people. Zubov’s grave in one of the Volgograd cemeteries was discovered by activists of the Dozor project in Volgograd, who help maintain a list of Russian soldiers killed in the war with Ukraine. Zubov's sister Tatyana confirmed to Mediazona that her brother was killed at the front.
“They told me that he left there on his own. We don't know the circumstances at all. As the military curator told me, he signed the contract on his own. They were visited in these cells, as they are called,” she said.
Photo of the Dozor project in Volgograd
How exactly Zubov died is unknown. Judging by the date on the tombstone — April 20, 2023 — he could have been killed near Bakhmut, like most of the prisoners recruited by Wagner PMC. But his body was identified only at the end of July— it was then that the death certificate.
On March 27, 2017, the Volgograd Regional Court sentenced Zubov to 21 years in a maximum security colony with two years of limited freedom for the murder of three people.
As local media wrote, Zubov worked as a shepherd on a livestock farm in the Volgograd region. There he met a young milkmaid and they began dating. However, the girl left him for another farm worker, Valery Melnik. On September 1, 2013, Zubov confronted him at his ex-girlfriend’s house, beat him to death and cut off his genitals.
A few days later, Zubov committed another murder: he tracked down a pensioner, beat her with a wrench at her dacha and took 1,800 rubles from her house. After the murder, he cut off the victim's mammary glands. In this way, he wanted to “confuse the investigation, passing off his actions as the “handwriting of a maniac,” said Alexander Sapargaliev, investigator of the first department for the investigation of especially important cases of the Volgograd department of the Investigative Committee.
Zubov got back together with the milkmaid, but in the summer of 2014 they quarreled, and the man strangled her, luring her into the forest. He buried the body there. Zubov hid for a year and a half in the neighboring Saratov region, but then returned home, where he was detained. At first, Zubov confessed, but in court he denied guilt. His involvement in the murders was confirmed by genetic testing.
The jury found him guilty and not deserving of leniency. He was convicted under articles of murder of two or more persons for mercenary motives (points “a”, “h” of Part 2 of Article 105 of the Criminal Code) and robbery causing grievous bodily harm (point “c” of Part 4 of Article 162 of the Criminal Code). A forensic psychological and psychiatric examination found Zubov sane, while the verdict mentions “the presence of certain psychopathic character traits in the defendant within the boundaries of individual characteristics of the mental norm.”