He was also engaged in boxing, being a former two-time vice-champion boxer in Ukraine, as well as being a private entrepreneur in the market, before working for a Mariupol firm named Citadel.
After his discharge, he did not work for a long time in the militia (taking into account the police school and the internship of 10 months).
[3] During the investigation, Dovzhenko was in custody for eight months, when on 30 March 1998, he was released, but was also fired from the internal affairs authorities for forgery of documents (falsified entry in the workbook).
According to Dovzhenko, his first victim was the former owner of the Citadel, Vladimir Chekmak, who was the first to suspect that an employee had caused the attack in the firm's office.
On 19 November 1998, Dovzhenko allegedly made his way to the victim's house and put on the police uniform he brought with him in a nearby entrance.
In addition, the driver Andrei Lyubichov and the commercial director of the Citadel Sergei Shaturov, who were also in the car, were injured.
By committing murder, he hoped to worsen the disclosure rates and thereby achieve the dismissal of responsible police chiefs.
Subsequently, Dovzhenko simplified the scheme for selecting victims—he bought newspapers with ads and was looking for offers where it was reported about the sale of expensive things.
Having determined where the seller lives and to whom his former colleagues, accordingly, the investigation of the crime scene will take place, he was preparing for the murder, and he took money and property to "feed".
Police officers Alexander Rogovets, Vladimir Fedorenko and Andrei Karpenko tried to detain Dovzhenko while he was hiding a gun in the front of his shirt.
To ward off suspicion, he staged an assault with a robbery of Bondarenko's neighbours, during which he killed Galina Ivanova and her 12-year-old granddaughter Tanya.
In November 2003, Dovzhenko refuted his testimony and submitted a request to the Supreme Court of Ukraine to review the case.
[6] Speaking at trial, Dovzhenko revealed the motives of his crimes: "Almost all murders were committed with one goal - to punish those who mock me.
According to the investigation, Sergei Dovzhenko acted with mercenary motives, his victims being random residents of Mariupol, who gave ads in the newspaper about the sales of valuables.
According to the conclusion of the forensic psychological investigation, Dovzhenko was "secretive, ambitious, vindictive, possesses the features of a leader, the motive of his crimes — greed and revenge, transformed by internal unconscious marginal and necrophilic tendencies of personality".
His brother Valery, the director of a law firm, wanted to act as a defender of Sergei Dovzhenko during the trial but was summoned by the court as a witness.