[1] Maduev achieved notoriety after an unsuccessful attempt to escape from Kresty Prison in March 1991, with the help of a female investigator whom he had seduced.
Maduev began to steal at the age of six, and in August 1974, he received his first prison term by the Karasay District Court in Almaty Region, which gave him 6 years for complicity in theft.
[2][3] During his second term, Maduev withstood an attack by 12 criminals, who intended to kill him because he had appropriated an obtshak of some thieves in law from Tbilisi and Tashkent.
At first, a wave of impudent thefts and robberies swept across the USSR - Maduev's tracks covered the areas of Siberia, the Moscow Oblast and Grozny.
In order to cover their tracks, the two criminals set fire to the house, burning alive the couple's 1-year-old son in the process.
After this, Maduev travelled around the country: in the Uzbek SSR, he stole 200,000 roubles from some thieves in law's obtshak, flying under the criminals' radar.
Having no doubts that he would be executed, he willingly testified, handed over his accomplices, indicated the crime scenes and signed the protocols without even reading them.
It turned out that it was a revolver stolen from a safe in the prosecutor's office, with which Maduev had committed his murders in Leningrad and Tashkent.
A special investigation team was created for the attempted escape, spearheaded by the Vyborgsky District prosecutor Kruglov.
One of the colonels, Vladimir Georgiev, figured out who had provided the weapon: it was Natalya Vorontsova, an investigator from the team assigned to the Maduev case.
Vorontsova was later given a 7-year imprisonment term, and her story formed the basis of the film "Prison Romance", with actor Aleksandr Abdulov playing the role of Sergey Maduev.
[5] On 10 July 1995, the St. Petersburg City Court sentenced Sergey Maduev to death for two of the murders and many of his other crimes.