Convicted and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment for the latter crime, his case sparked outrage over the release of dangerous offenders.
[1] At some point during his childhood, he and his single mother moved to Rostov-on-Don, Rostov Oblast, where they lived together at a one-room apartment on Orbitalnaya Street 80.
Subsequently, investigator Amurkhan Yandiyev, who would work on the first murder case involving the teenager, gave him the nickname "The Spruce Robber".
[2] During the interrogations, the 16-year-old admitted his guilt and said that his motive for killing Larina was to prevent her from telling her parents that she was raped, and that the indirect cause of the crime was mental distress from bullying at school.
[2] On 13 December 2006, the now-28-year-old and unemployed Kuleshov broke into an apartment on Belomorskaya Street, where the 14-year-old Artur and 9-year-old Maria Nikogosova lived with their mother Irina.
His guilt was definitively established after a DNA analysis linked semen and sweat traces him to the crime scene, as well as footprints and fibres from the victims' clothes.
[3] Despite his claims, Kuleshov was found guilty on all counts and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment in a strict regime penal colony.