NOVOSIBIRSK, November 22. /TASS/. The District Court in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk has re-sentenced former police officer Yevgeny Chuplinsky to life imprisonment for murdering 19 women. A jury earlier found him guilty.
"The Novosibirsk District Court has re-sentenced former police officer Yevgeny Chuplinsky to a life term in a maximum security correctional facility as the retrial of the case provided no reason for exempting him from criminal responsibility. The Court has also ruled that the convict will have to pay one million rubles ($15,200) to each of the five injured parties in the case," the Court said in a statement on Thursday.
According to earlier reports, on February 28, a jury found 52-year-old Chuplinsky guilty of 19 murders. An appeal was filed against the decision. On September 11, Russia’s Supreme Court upheld the jury’s verdict but overturned the court’s ruling, sending the case for a retrial.
Chuplinsky’s crimes
According to investigators, the murder spree began in the autumn of 1998 and carried on until July 2005. Chuplinsky had intimate relations with the women, ranging in age from 18 to 31, and killed them afterwards. In order to cover up his crimes, he dismembered the bodies and left the remains in different parts of Novosibirsk and its suburbs. The body of one woman, whom he had drowned, was never found.
According to the regional branch of the Russian Investigative Committee, the opportunity to track down the murderer arose only ten years after his last crime by using modern molecular-genetic technology. Detectives checked more 5,000 men suspected of committing these crimes, questioned thousands of witnesses and carried out more than 300 tests. The use of modern forensic equipment eventually allowed them to figure out the criminal’s DNA, which matched the DNA of one of the suspects.
Chuplinsky was arrested on April 23, 2016. Initially, he cooperated with investigators and even confessed to two more similar crimes that law enforcement officials knew nothing about, but later he withdrew his confession and pleaded not guilty. Experts found him to be mentally competent but prone to sexual dysfunction and sadism.
