He had a troubled childhood, as his parents were alcoholics who neglected him, and his frequent misbehaviour and vagrancy led to him being arrested and placed in a boarding school for difficult teenagers.

While serving his sentence in 1991, he murdered a fellow inmate, in line with his desire to punish people who committed sex crimes.

Maslich, believing that he would be sent to a psychiatric institution rather than prison had he been considered a cannibal, cut open the man's body and cooked his organs, although he did not eat them.

Each admitted guilt at trial, and after being transferred to the Serbsky Center in Moscow, doctors, realizing the inmates were feigning insanity, declared Maslich and the others sane.

After a moratorium on the death penalty in Russia was announced shortly after, Maslich's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.