The smell of the killer

Raskolnikov in the "Crime and Punishment" for a long time occupied one question: why is it so easy to find traces of almost all criminals? If this novel were published in the 21st century, Dostoevsky, who was interested in forensics, would probably prefer to compose a different way of double murder.

I write this because last year the most memorable event for me happened during the trial of one bloody criminal case. Almost everyone who was then in the hall of the Pskov Regional Court was under a strong impression. All of us are experienced people, we have seen a lot, but we came across this for the first time. Moreover, we were impressed not by the crime, but by the evidence presented to the court.

"Could it be?" - my neighbor whispered to the right. “This is something fantastic,” said another when we left the hall. I did not want to argue with this. Yes, fantastic.

So, last year I went to the regional court for three weeks to work. In the literal sense. But not at all as a journalist. As a journalist, I was in court many times - I made reports. Once in the Pskov Province newspaper, in the courtroom, we fought off the lawsuit filed after my publication (and won by all points). Even earlier, I visited the court as a student who studied criminal law at the Eastfacing. But this time I got to court in a completely different capacity. I was chosen by the jury. More precisely, a spare jury. The rights and obligations are the same, but at the very last moment when the verdict is issued, the spare ones do not vote, but leave the deliberation room and wait for the courtroom.

The crime turned out to be a long time. It happened in the winter of 2008. Court meetings would not have been worth even mention, because, at first glance, the crime is completely typical of modern Russia: double murder. There is no other country in Europe where deliberate murders are committed more often than in Russia.

It was a household tragedy. The drinking companions did not share something in the evening. One decided to take scores, returned at night to an unlocked hut, in which there was not even electricity (turned off for non -payment), grabbed an ax that came under the stove near the stove and chopped off the sleeping on the bed "offender"-disabled. He inflicted about twenty -five strokes. In the morning it turned out that in bed in the dark, two were killed at once under one blanket - a man and a woman.

I wrote about a dozen detective novels and stories and I understand that fans of famously twisted plots are not interested in this. The circle of suspects is so narrow that it is difficult to make a mistake.

However, initially the investigation tried and did everything possible for the killer to escape the punishment. After 14 years, we know: the most likely suspect was a person without ties, but the investigating authorities still could not cope. Another "Glukhar" flew over the hut located on the outskirts of Pskov.

Many years have passed. The statute of limitations came to an end. Already that hut has been gone for a long time. The only real suspect, as we now know, has since managed to serve five years in a different case - "for a crime on sexual grounds", go out to freedom and again sit on a bench of the defendants. He was finally arrested, accusing of the same double murder. But the jury justified him. It was before us. After some time, a new court began - with another jury. At the meeting, the defendant came from the house on foot. We passed the framework of the judicial metal detector with him.

About a week later, the culmination of the process began. At some point, an expert appeared on the screen on the screen from the hall of the Moscow Court. He said that after 12 years since the crime, three specially trained dogs examined samples taken from the murder tool.

All three dogs stopped at the sample taken from the Pskov ax. And the expert came to the “one hundred percent” conclusion: the smell, fully characteristic of our defendant, was preserved on the ax.

Questions from the judge, lawyer and jury rained down from Pskov: "Since then, many police officers, investigators, experts have been holding this ax in their hands ... You insist that the smell could be preserved? How like the mistake is?" “The probability of an error is zero,” the answer followed. “There are no fingerprints on the handle of the ax, but the smell has been preserved, and this proof is no less accurate than fingerprints.”

There was silence. But not for long. There were even more questions. The jury sent notes to the judge, and he read out our questions. Here is one: "And if the criminal was in gloves?" - “There is no difference. The gloves can be leather, rubber, woolen ... You can even put on two pairs of rubber gloves. The only person is left to the same way. A person can still leave the smell. The fingerprints can be erased, but the smell is not. This is determined by“ OLFACTIONAL RESULTS. ”Flying components are left not by any discharge, but exclusively from human sweat or blood hen.”

It has become even more interesting. As a result, we were still told in court that the smell does not penetrate only through iron and glass. Now, if the offender put on iron knightly gloves, then the expert had no chance of calculating him from “dog-detectors” (as they are called).

However, the questions did not stop: “And yet so many years have passed! Is the smell not mixed with other smells? After all, the ax was transported. It was stored somewhere ...”-“Yes, this may be. But not in this case. Usually the smell remains three or four months. But this time the smell of the criminal was“ sealed ”with the blood of the dead and the smell remained for many years. Like sarcophages from dried blood.”

It was one of the most emotional moments. If you believe the expert, the dead seemed to reach the world to point to the killer. The murderer's smell retained with their spilled blood.

Meanwhile, the jury - eight main and four spare ones - with the help of notes continued to ask: "Is it enough just to touch the subject to leave your smell for a long time?" The expert replied: "No, not enough. The longer a person holds the subject, the more worried, the more intensively works (sets out sweat), the more deeply the smell is eaten."

In those three weeks, while the trial lasted, we could not score keywords on the Internet in the search engine: “Dogs-detectors”, “OLPARTAL STRICES”, and so on. Previously, we swore to the judge not to do anything like that. The jury must receive information only from the "clean sheet". We were not supposed to know that the defendant in the beginning of the zero years was already serving a deadline for the murder. Only after the verdict was sentenced to read on the Internet about the olphor studies of the man’s odor traces in forensic examination and about everything else.

During the trial, we only knew what we heard in the meeting room. The jury reported that Olfactor studies have been conducted for many decades, and the first scientific publications in the USSR on this subject began to be published at least since 1985. Someone believed in it, someone is not. Now I know that some forensic experts consider Oulfatic research an ideal way to expose criminals, while others write scientific articles with names like the “False Path of Forensics”. But more importantly, something else: for some time, these studies have been accepted in Russian courts as evidence.

Raskolnikov at Dostoevsky after a double murder, as you know, laundered the bloodied ax with water for several minutes, and an ax even with soap. But it did not help him.

In our case, odor studies, it seems to me, were also not required. The contradictory testimony and behavior of witnesses of protection (wife and mother of the defendant) indicated that the defendant had no alibi. On the contrary, an attempt to create a false alibi is excess evidence of guilt.

However, we must not forget that in Russia it is customary not to trust law enforcement officers. Such is their reputation. Few people believe in an honest court, honest police officers, honest prosecutors and honest investigators of the UK. Indeed, to whom to believe? A native of Pskov, General of Justice Bastrykin, or what?

In addition, the angels hacked by an ax were not. They drank, walked ... Russian man, sometimes, shows pity for the most unexpected occasion. Moreover, you can’t return the killed, and the suspect is “patriotic”, after the next term, he got a job, managed to start a family. A child was born. It is not good to deprive him of his father. Who will educate the son?

In general, four jury out of eight found the defendant guilty, and four - innocent. This meant that the defendant was justified again.

And this also meant that soon the investigator of the SK for particularly important matters called each juror, including the reserve and invited him to ask "two questions." After two and a half hours of conversation, one on one in his office, I told the investigator: "You said that you would ask two questions, but asked twenty -two."

Well, now the curious investigator knows what the maiden name of my mother and what educational subjects I taught at the lyceum.

Finally, when we had already entered the corridor, I asked the investigator: “Where can I find out how the investigation ended?” “It’s better for you to know this,” he answered. “You know less - you’re better sleeping.”

But it is harmful to sleep a lot. Soon it became known that the acquittal was canceled "due to violations that made the jury."

In the fall of 2021, the next season of this series began with the third jury. This time the defendant was found guilty, sentencing to 18 years in prison with serving a sentence in a correctional colony of special regime. And more recently, on January 26, 2022, the Court of Appeal left the verdict unchanged. This is the rare case when the accusatory sentence made by the Russian court suited me.

***

But "sarcophages from dried blood" still does not come out of the head. The killers think that they do not leave traces. This applies to ordinary criminals and high -ranking killers. They spill someone else's blood, hoping that no one will condemn them. And if they come across, they hope for condescension, for "good reasons", for "high goals".

I don’t know how accurate “olphatic research” are, but in the historical sense there is neither the statute of limitations, nor the opportunity to hide. Not contemporaries, so descendants will find out how it really was.

And the more the criminal or the criminal regime shed blood, the longer the smell of the killer remains under the "sarcophagus".

Alexey Semenov - writer

The "Opinion" expressed in the heading of the point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial office

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