[2] His mother would later claim that he suffered from some sort of debilitating abnormality, as he would start banging his head against the wall or an iron bunk if reproached in any way; he repeatedly tried to commit suicide and self-harmed via cutting his skin with a knife and other sharp objects.
According to investigator Dmitry Baichurin, Tambasov would claim that at age 16, he had a sexual relationship with one of the teachers, who was a sadomasochist and liked anal sex, which greatly affected his psycho-emotional state.
[2] The pedagogical staff at the school characterized Tambasov negatively, while teachers noted that he had no interest in the educational process and barely studied.
Due to the fact that he was tall, Tambasov bullied other students and was aggressive, leading to him eventually being arrested on charges of robbery and assault.
During a medical check-up, a psychiatrist expressed doubts about his sanity due to the presence of multiple cuts on his hands, but nevertheless, Tambasov was found fit to serve and transferred to a Naval base in Severomorsk.
At the subsequent interrogation, he denied responsibility and accused the woman of giving false testimony, claiming that the sexual act was consensual.
[1] The rape victim said at the trial that Tambasov's parents went to her house on several occasions, threatening her to change her testimony and even marry their son.
After being presented with a condom found near the crime scene that had his fingerprints on it, Tambasov agreed to cooperate with investigators and was soon transferred out of the colony to a detention centre.
On March 14, 2001, Tambasov went to her room, where, according to Shulenina's roommate, they sat in the dormitory's kitchen smoking, eating ice cream and consuming alcoholic beverages.
[2] During the examination of the crime scene, the investigators found a smudged palm print and also made a fairly detailed sketch using the roommate's testimony, but this did not help them identify the perpetrator at the time.
[1] Tambasov's second victim was 36-year-old saleswoman Tatyana Mekhonoshina, who worked at a clothing pavilion in Perm's central market but lived in the village of Overyata with her mother.
On 5 August 2002, Mekhonoshina told her mother and friends that she would go to a disco in the evening to celebrate Railwayman's Day and would return in the early morning by train.
[1] After her body was found, the Department of Internal Affairs initially refused to classify the cause of death as homicide, but after an autopsy revealed that she was strangled, it was reclassified and investigated as such.
Throughout the 1990s, she changed a number of professions, including a janitor; a pool cleaner for the Spartak arena and director for the Arnold Rainik children's dance ensemble.
[1] By the late 1990s, Nikitenko began to show signs of mental illness, hiding some sort of documents in her apartment and talking to invisible people.
[2] Due to her deteriorating mental health, she cut off contact with her acquaintances, quit her job and began living as a vagrant, spending almost all of her free time at a public garden near the Opera and Ballet Theater.
[1] On November 22, 2002, around approximately midnight, Tambasov was passing by the Opera and Ballet Theater when he noticed Nikitenko standing near a monument of Vladimir Lenin.
[1] Deciding that he wanted to have sex with her, he sat on a bench next to her and, after making sure that the place was deserted, proceeded to put her in a chokehold and drag her behind the building.
[1] After searching around for some time, they started walking down a slope that Tambasov said was a "shortcut", only for him to grab her by the neck, drag her to a nearby isolated corner and raped her.
Unlike the other victims, Tambasov claimed that he did not attempt to strangle this woman—he instead ordered her to count to 100 after the sexual assault was over, after which he quickly ran up the embankment and fled the area.
An expert in the field, Askold Petrov, said that Tambasov was unique in the sense that his cruelty in carrying out the crimes drastically escalated with each new attack.
This examination concluded with the findings that even though Tambasov indeed suffered from mental abnormalities, he was considered legally sane at the time of carrying out the crimes.
The report stated that Tambasov had an inflated ego and justified his crimes due to his "unfavourable circumstances"; cut himself to suppress nervous excitement; complained that Andrei Chikatilo and other serial killers were "unfairly recognized as sane" and that he supposedly suffered from amnesia and had memory blocks.
[7] The trial prosecutor was initially unable to explain this, but in 2022, investigator Gulnara Abibulaeva gave an interview to the media in which she clarified that the reason for this was the due to the lack of advanced technology such as DNA in the early 2000s.
He applied for parole in August 2022 and requested that his remaining sentence be commuted to forced labour, but this was denied by the Perm Krai Court.
[2] A report from the staff indicated that since 2020, he has worked as a bread cutter, day watchman and woodworker, but also had a total of 26 disciplinary incidents and 13 commendations during his detainment.