[2][4] Soon Ershov raped a 16-year-old vocational school student on the banks of the Yenisei River, but left her alive.
Of the two men he met, he managed to fight off one with a knife, but one of the local women knocked him out with a fire extinguisher.
[4] Later, while confessing to law enforcement officials, he pointed to his real residence where irrefutable evidence was found - the tools of the crime (two knives that he called "feathers"), as well as the belongings of the victims (old jacket and a worn coat) and their passports.
[4] In June 1998, the Siberian Military District Court found him guilty on all counts and sentenced him to death by firing squad.
[4] Despite the fact that in accordance with the conclusions of the expert opinion of the Serbsky Center, Ershov "suffered from a total delay in psychosexual development...with an anomaly of the sexual attraction of the sadistic circle in the form of a desire to rape and the desire to kill", the court recognized him as sane.
[4] His lawyer filed a cassation appeal, seeking to mitigate the sentence of his client, but Ershov himself stated that he "lost the right to live."
Due to the moratorium on the death penalty announced in the country, the punishment for Vadim Ershov was changed to life imprisonment.