Span of killings 1979–1985 Date apprehended 1985 | Victims 7+ Other names The Alligator Name Aleksey Sukletin | |
 | ||
Died July 29, 1987, Soviet Union | ||
Cause of death Executed by gunshot Criminal penalty Capital punishment | ||
Aleksey Vasilevich Sukletin (Russian: Алексе́й Васи́льевич Сукле́тин; 1943 - 29 July 1987) was a Soviet serial killer, who along with accomplices Madina Shakirova and Anatoly Nikitin, killed and cannibalized at least seven girls and women in Tartarstan between 1979 and 1985.
Contents
Background
Aleksey Vasilevich Sukletin was born in 1943, in Kazan, RSFSR, Soviet Union. Sukletin lived with his girlfriend Madina Shakirova in Vasilyevo, a small town near Kazan, where he worked at a horticultural facility.
Murders
In November 1979, Sukletin committed his first known murder when he killed 22-year-old woman Ekaterina Osetrova. While being distracted by Shakirova, she was stunned by a blow to the head with a hammer, wrapped with a cloth, then had her throat slit. The corpse of Osetrova was then cannibalized by Sukletin and Shakirova. In early 1980, Sukletin killed three more women: Tatiana Illarionov on January 13, 1980, 15-year-old Rezeda Galimov in February, Nadezhda Sityavina in March, and Natalia Shkolnikova in May. In July, an 11-year-old girl Valentina Elikova was raped and murdered by Sukletin, which unlike the previous killings had supposedly upset Shakirova due to the victim's young age. After an argument about the murder the couple ended their relationship, with Sukletin eventually finding a new mistress, 23-year-old Lidiya Fyodorova. Sukletin befriended a relative of Fyodorova, Anatoly Nikitin, with whom he would become regular drinking partners with. Unlike Sukletin's previous girlfriend, Fyodorova would refuse to be complicit in killing and cannibalism. Sukletin would sometimes sell the human meat to neighbors, stating they were clippings from animal meat, which Fyodorova once threatened to expose.
On March 12, 1985, Sukletin and Nikitin raped and killed Fyodorova, torturing her for 14 hours before slitting her throat. The two began to eat parts of her body, hiding the rest in a transformer box and burning her clothes.
Arrest and conviction
Sukletin was arrested in the summer of 1985, several months after the killing of Lidiya Fyodorova. Shakirova and Nikitin were subsequently arrested shortly after for being complicit in the murders. During excavations in the garden of Sukletin's home, four bags of human bones were discovered, and in house physical evidence of the victims were found, such as half a bucket of melted human fat. A forensic psychiatric examination Sukletina found him to be sane.
In 1987, the Supreme Court of Tartarstan found Sukletin guilty of 7 murders and the consumption of human flesh, and was sentenced to death. Sukletin was executed by firing squad on 29 July 1987. Shakirova and Nikitin were sentenced to 15-years imprisonment each for their involvement in the crimes. In 2002, Madina Shakirova was released from prison and returned to Vasilyevo.