Motivation motive

A report from Volgograd, where with a young man they dealt with the fact that he was supposedly gay

On the night of May 9 to 10 in Volgograd, 22-year-old Vladislav Tornovoy was brutally killed in Volgograd. According to the investigation, with a young man, they dealt with the fact that he was supposedly gay. The New Times went to the city on the Volga to find out the details of the resonant crime

The deceased Vlad Tornova (left) with his father Andrei Nikolaevich. Photo from the family archive

The city of Volgograd meets the guests with red flags, the stretching “Eternal glory to the heroes who gave their lives for the sacred work of the liberation of the Motherland and all of Europe from the brown plague of fascism” and large posters “Happy Victory Day” ” The New Times correspondent visited the city on May 12. Just three days before, Volgograd was Stalingrad: in January 2013, local deputies adopted a law under which the city was returned to the city during the commemorative military dates*.

The Krasnoarmeysky district, in which the murder of the tornovoy occurred, is located on the southern outskirts of the city. The area is swampy - on both sides of the road, a dry last year's reeds swing. In Soviet times, there were large factories: cable, shipbuilding, petrochemical, soot, the system of schools was also tied to them. According to local residents, everything “froze” and “work for young people has no left” in perestroika. Now the area is called "criminal." “You just don’t sparkle a phone here,” the local boys are admonished by the correspondent of Thue New Times.

All four participants in the tragedy are Vlad Tornova himself, his best friend Alexei Burkov, their acquaintances Anton Smolin and Pavel Semikin - lived in the same courtyard, which went to Kanatchikov Avenue, a long alley with fish, poplars and flowering acacia.

Murder

According to Lilia Tornova, the grandmother of the deceased, on May 9, her grandson told her that by nine in the evening he would go to watch a salute with classmates. After Salyut, he went home alone and met three friends on the way. The company is located in the courtyard of house number 16 on Russian street on a bench under a tree next to the sandbox. “I saw them from the window of my apartment at about eleven in the evening. Two sat on a bench, two squatted in front of them. They played cards, drank beer and smoked, ”the local resident Maxim told The New Times.

What happened next is several versions. The district police officer Alena Krasnova told The New Times: the main suspect Anton Smolin claimed to be interrogated that a friend of the deceased Alexei Burkov told him when they were sitting on a bench: “Do you know that Vlada tried to rape or raped at a party?” “Smolin, like a man sitting in a colony, took it sharply: they say,“ down, ”says Krasnova, who was sitting with us on a bench.

Vlad Tornova after graduation in 2007

Friends of Tornovoy proposed a different version: supposedly Vlad himself insulted Smolin with a hint or a joke that he could have homosexual contacts during his stay in the zone. “Vlad had a kind of sense of humor,” said his classmate Valery Goran. Finally, the senior investigator of the department of the IC of the Krasnoarmeysky district for Volgograd Badma Gilandikov suggested his vision of the situation by The New Times: “Everything is simple. One said: yes you are a homosexual! And the second said: Yes, you are a homosexual! They began to blame each other and rushed. "

During the interrogation, the murder suspects explained that at first they only wanted to “joke” - to undress Vlad and send him home naked. But the joke took another turn.

“I took the bottle and put her neck in an anus, and Lech hit the bottle with his foot, after which she entered almost completely,” said 27-year-old Smolin on an investigative experiment, whose recording is already on YouTube. When asked why he did this, Anton answered this way: “Because he said that he was a homosexual.”

Then Smolin began to beat Vlad lying on the ground on the ribs. “In the end, Smolin took a 21-kilogram cobblestone and lowered it six times to the victim’s head. The stone was hidden in the garbage tank in the yard, ”says investigator Gilandikov. The body was dragged into the center of the playground and, putting a piece of cardboard under it, decided to burn it, but it was not possible and they simply threw the corpse. The grandmother of one of the suspects, Lyudmila Vasilievna Burkova, told The New Times that her grandson had come home at about two in the morning, washed and went to bed. Apparently, the rest did the same.

One of the locals found a corpse at seven in the morning, called the police. The victim’s face was disfigured so that he was barely identified. Vlad lay on his side, naked, in the socks. The suspects were detained a few hours later - they were all at home, slept.

The Tornov family

Parents of Anton Smolin. The neighbors consider them a prosperous family

Vlad's house is an old brick five -story building. After his parents divorced several years ago, Vlad began to live with his grandmother Lilia Timofeevna in her large three -room apartment. The apartment is cozy, clean and unremarkable: carpets are hanging on the walls, Soviet furniture. Because of the death of her son, the family gathered together again: Vlada Violetta's mother refused to comment, but his father Andrei Tornova willingly communicate with reporters. He specifically returned from Tobolsk, where he now lives and works as the head of the construction and installation organization, in order to "defend the honor of his son." Tornova Sr.-a pumped man in a blue T-shirt, black glasses, with a thick gold chain on the neck-shows a stack of printed pages of Internet sites, where his son “dared to call gay”. He says that he calls the journalists, threatens to sue them.

Upon arrival in Volgograd, Vlad's father first went to the investigator Andrei Gapchenko, who announced the press version of the murder on the basis of homophobia. “I explained to him: my friend, you don’t joke with me. By the words of some bastards, you say to the whole country that you killed gay. I will break me now, and I will go to extreme measures. Your happiness is that you are not in the 90s ”-so Andrei Tornova retold The New Times to the investigator. The investigator’s colleagues say that after this conversation Gapchenko went to the sick leave.

Andrei Tornova, suspects of the murder of his son, also threatened: he says, he will do everything possible to have a hard time in prison. He hinted that he is a “with a certain past” and he has ties in places of imprisonment.

The father tells about Vlad: the guy studied well at school, gave great hopes, but then the transition period came into which he threw two universities. First he entered the manager at the local branch of the Moscow Financial and Legal University, then threw it and went to the faculty of electronics and computing equipment at the Volgograd Polytechnic, but quit him. Finally, he began to study on electrical engineering at a local school, this year he was supposed to graduate. Father wanted to take his son to Tobolsk and already found a place for him.

Vlad’s environment explains the problems with his studies by the fact that he contacted a bad company, in particular, with some of those who are now accused of killing.

Inspired by a bat

The main murder suspect is Anton Smolin

The main suspect of the murder, 27-year-old Anton Smolin, according to their common acquaintances, did not communicate closely with Vlad. Smolin tried to earn a living by repairing apartments. He sat twice for theft and robbery: the last time he freed himself from the colony in August 2012. “His lifestyle is like this: he drank, stole - to prison,” says the district police officer Alena Krasnova. According to her, Smolin is a gambler and a lover of alcohol. It is known for the fact that, having drunk, it becomes very aggressive.

The Smolins family lives on the ground floor of house No. 4 on Udmurt Street - opposite the house where Vlad lived. Mother works as a dispatcher, father is a businessman. They do not give comments to the press. The neighbors say that Smolins live in isolation. When Anton was sitting in a colony, his parents said that his son went north and earns well there.

Anton had few friends. Friends describe him like this: silent, polite, always greeted, did not show aggression. One of his acquaintances told The New Times on anonymity that Smolin was a skinhead. On the page of the suspect on the VKontakte website there is one favorite quote (copyright spelling and punctuation): “The most precious that we have is our own people, and for the sake of these people and with them we will fight and not when we do not step back and not when we do not know our movement, Long live our people (Adolf Hitler).” On the same page, Smolin outlined his political views as “socialist”, in the column “worldview” he has Buddhism. In the section “I am inspired” by Anton wrote “Duravy Bit”. He defined life goals as follows: "House, work, creating a family, purification of Russia from black -assed shit." The favorite book is “Main Kampf”, and from music groups prefers “Kolovrat” and “The Last Tanks in Paris”.

All Smolin's acquaintances surveyed by The New Times say that they doubt his mental health. “During the interrogation, he smiled and joked,” Krasnova said.

The best friend

22-year-old Alexei Burkov is one of Vlad's best friends. He denies his guilt, despite the testimony of Smolin and witness Semikin.

The last three years of friends have constantly seen together. Vlad often came to Alexei, they walked together, went to the cottage, and recently even got a job together. Burkov of an orphan, his father died in the early 2000s, his mother in 2010. His grandmother raised his grandmother. Alexei lived on a pension laid by orphan, he studied for a manager - however, he rarely appeared at the school. Familiar Alexei say that he did not linger for a long time, often fell into depression, blamed others in his failures, behaved passively or aggressively.

According to Alena Krasnova, Burkov was convicted four times from fine and moderate articles: theft, robbery, beatings from hooligan motives. And his grandmother Lyudmila Vasilievna said that she suspected her grandson of enthusiasm for gambling: "As soon as he had a pension, she and Vlad were immediately lowered somewhere."

Burkov also had problems with alcohol: he was repeatedly brought to administrative responsibility for drinking alcoholic beverages in public places. His friends say that he began to abuse alcohol about five years ago, and after his mother’s death he drank drunkenly. “Constantly drunk here was sitting on the site. He often had a white fever - scandalized, knocked out the doors. I knew that everything would end with something terrible, ”says a neighbor Maria.

All acquaintances were surprised why Tornova contacted Burkov. “He and Vlad were as plus and minus, and apparently, everyone in this friendship found what he lacked,” suggests Andrei Tornova. Grandmother Lyudmila Vasilievna does not believe in her grandson: “Alexei could not participate in the murder, but why he didn’t leave or stood up for a friend - I don’t understand. He is generally good. When his rat died, he cried. And I also do not understand what these fagots have to do with it. ”

Witness

The place where the body of the murdered

The fourth participant in the night tragedy-22-year-old Pavel Semikin, who is in the status of a witness-is hiding from the press. “I have no strength and desire to give an interview. Everything in court will be. I do not want to drain anything, ”said Semikin The New Times. However, he managed to give an interview to NTV, after which his mother begged the correspondents to erase the record. Investigators do not want to talk about Paul either: they are afraid that before the trial he can “change your mind”, that is, change the testimony.

Semikin talked a lot with Alexei Burkov, but he was not his close friend. There is no registration with the police, he had no problems with the law.

“Pavel tried to stop the crime, but how do you stop the drunk? They pushed him away, said not to interfere, and continued, ”says investigator Badma Gilandikov. Why didn’t he run away and call for help? Alena Krasnova believes that Semikin was simply bewildered and scared.

“He was harmless, inhibited and a little stupid. It is unlikely that he would have rushed to protect someone, ”says Stanislav Syutov, a friend of Paul.

The issue of orientation

On the playground, where they dealt with Tornov, children play again

Boys from the Krasnoarmeysky district, where the murdered and suspects lived, are not interested in politics, they are indifferent to the news. The fact that in St. Petersburg there is deputy Milonov, who fiercely opposes gays, was first heard from the correspondent of The New Times. But they already consider homosexuality a disease. “This is our curse. You sit in the company, and here one starts: oh you are a fag, ”says Sergey, a fair -haired guy of about 25, sucking a cigarette goby. “But jokes about the lowered in our area do not say goodbye.”

The LGBT community in Volgograd is almost in a semi-underground state: activists from St. Petersburg said that they had no connection with the local cell. The New Times found out that three clubs are operating in the city for people of non-traditional orientation, and there are numerous groups on the VKontakte website: Gay-Volgograd group has 1257 participants, Mix-Bar “Puls”-545, Golden Flirt-912, Full House Club-1370, “Pulsar-Volgograd”-74. Tornova was not in any of these groups, local gays do not know him.

“It was a torna gay or not - it is incomprehensible. The suspects voiced such information, and Vlad's friends and his relatives deny this. Suppose he was not gay. Then it turns out that the killers deliberately chose a homophobic motive, in the hope that this will cause understanding and sympathy, and possibly even the mitigation of punishment. The very fact that the words “killed because it is gay” sounds-that's what is terrible, ”a member of the local gay community Nikolai shares his considerations with the magazine.

Now about the tragic murder in the Krasnoarmeysky district in Volgograd they are talking on every corner. Avoid only to discuss the motives. Investigator Gilandikov even said angrily: “We have such tragedies almost every week happen. This is called ordinary household murder. On a drunken bench. So write. ”

On the site itself, where everything happened, as if nothing happened: children play in the sandbox, by the evening of the bench, men with beer occupy. Residents of the surrounding houses sometimes come to look at the place of the tragedy. “Poor boy, what death he took,” the grandmother waits from the next entrance. “Are you justifying gays? - tells her a young man who introduced himself as Igor. “This is not a reason, of course, to kill, but they need to be treated.”

Photos: from the page vk.com, Julia Chernukhina, from the personal archive