Its members are accused of dozens of murders committed in the Rostov region and Stavropol region

The Prosecutor General's Office sent to court the so-called case of the Rostov Amazons, a gang that included three women. According to the Investigative Committee, the accused are responsible for dozens of murders committed in the Rostov Region and Stavropol Territory. Moreover, law enforcement officers and members of their families became victims of the attackers.

Photo: Denis Vyshinsky, Kommersant / buy photo

Official representative of the Prosecutor General's Office Marina Gridneva said that Deputy Prosecutor General Viktor Grin approved the indictment in a high-profile case against members of a gang that committed murders, sending it to court.

According to the Investigative Committee, the gang was created in the summer of 2007 by Inessa Tarverdieva together with her husband Roman Podkopaev. The group also included Tarverdieva’s daughter Victoria, Podkopaev’s sister Anastasia Sinelnik and her husband Sergei, who was a traffic police officer.

Inessa Tarverdieva, said ICR official representative Vladimir Markin, together with Podkopaev were the leaders of the gang, planned crimes and carried them out. Sergei Sinelnik actively assisted the gang in concealing traces of the crimes committed, hid its members, including in his own home, provided them with driver services and provided the accomplices with a radio station, with the help of which it was possible to listen to radio communications of law enforcement officers.

From 2007 to September 2013, gang members, according to Mr. Markin, committed “a large number of murders, attacks on the lives of law enforcement officers, robberies, thefts of weapons and thefts.” Among the crimes that Tarverdieva and her accomplices are accused of committing is the murder of the head of the special forces detachment of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate for the Nizhny Novgorod Region, Dmitry Chudakov, his wife and their two young children. A knife with the inscription “to my beloved Amazon” was found near the crime scene, which, as it turned out, was not used by the criminals. Nevertheless, the gang members subsequently began to be called “Rostov Amazons.”

In addition to the family of officer Chudakov, whose camera, laptop, hairdryer and money totaling 43.5 thousand rubles were stolen from their car during the attack, other law enforcement officers also suffered from gang members.

So, in Aksai, during a house robbery, they killed the head of the information security department of the State Drug Control Service, Mikhail Zlydnev and his wife. And in Novocherkassk, two private security officers who arrived at a dental clinic where the alarm went off were shot dead. The killers stole police weapons - a machine gun and two pistols. Using a machine gun, they subsequently shot the private security company employees who arrived during the gang’s raid on a store in Novocherkassk.

The gang members were detained after a shootout in September 2013 in Aksai. One of the private police security officers was killed by them, and his partner, despite being wounded, returned fire, shooting Podkopaev and wounding Victoria Tarverdieva.

As Mr. Markin reported, Tarverdieva partially admitted guilt in the incriminated crimes, including confirming that she participated in the murder of the Chudakov family.

The Rostov Regional Court will consider the case on its merits.

Nikolay Sergeev

The case of the Amazon gang came to court