Russian geniuses of detective

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The famous Scotland Yard was once equal to the Russian investigation. We believe that the country should know its heroes.

Nikolay Sokolov. History

Nikolai Sokolov investigated the most notorious crime of the 20th century - the murder of the royal family. He, the chairman of the Union of Judicial Investigators of the Penza District Court, refused to accept the revolution, quit his job, disguised himself as a peasant and went to Siberia.

In February 1918, he was appointed by Admiral Kolchak to investigate the murder of the royal family and the Alapaevsk martyrs. The conditions under which Sokolov had to conduct his investigation were extreme. The Civil War was going on, Sokolov's investigation team interrogated witnesses, collected material evidence. The territory for collecting case materials was also huge - from Yekaterinburg to Harbin.

After Kolchak's arrest, Sokolov emigrated. The results of his investigation were partially published in 1924 in French. In 1923, Henry Ford contacted. He wanted to present the materials on the murder of the royal family as evidence in court in the case brought against him by the Zionists.

Arkady Frantsevich Koshko. Russian Sherlock Holmes

At the International Congress of Criminalists, held in Switzerland in 1913, the Russian detective police were recognized as the best in the world in solving crimes. It was headed at that time by Arkady Frantsevich Koshko, a legendary investigator known not only in Russia, but also abroad.

It is mistakenly believed that they were the first to use fingerprinting in the investigation of crimes in the English Scotland Yard, but this is not the case. The merit of introducing new methods of investigation belongs to Arkady Frantsevich, he was the first in the world to create a detailed card index of criminals based on anthropometric and fingerprint data. Scottland Yard became the successor to this system.

When Arkady Koshko ended up in exile, he could not find a job for a long time. Scotland Yard offered him a high position, but the condition was the adoption of British citizenship. Koshko refused.

Arkady Koshko wrote three volumes of memoirs abroad, which are still the reference book of any investigator. They are called “Sketches of the criminal world of tsarist Russia. Memoirs of the former head of the Moscow detective police and head of the entire criminal investigation department of the Empire.

Based on the stories of Koshko, in 1995 the series "The Kings of the Russian Investigation" was shot, and in 2004 the film "The Adjuster" was shot by Kira Muratova.

Ivan Putilin. Know everything

At the end of the 19th century, everyone knew about Ivan Putilin. He went from a clerk to the head of the Petersburg investigation. He was respected not only by his colleagues, but also by the leaders of the underworld. He was the first to apply the methods of investigative practice that were still used today, and developed a high-quality agent network among all classes of St. Petersburg society. The mouse will run in the wrong place - they will report to Putilin in an hour, and in another half hour they will find the mouse. Putilin became a literary prototype and hero of several films.

Anatoly Fedorovich Koni recalled the famous investigator in the following way: “In St. Petersburg in the first half of the 70s there was not a single large and complex criminal case in which Putilin would not have put his labor into the search. crimes in January 1873, when the murder of Hieromonk Hilarion was discovered in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra … Late in the evening, on the same day, they let me know that the murderer had been arrested."

Vladimir Arapov. Almost Sharapov

Vladimir Arapov is the prototype of Sharapov from "The Era of Mercy" by the Weiner brothers and the film "The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed". However, the former operative and investigator himself treated such fame with restraint, with irony, over and over again convincing journalists that Sharapov is a collective image, and his character is rather Zheglov.

Indeed, it is unlikely that Sharapov would ever have earned the nickname "black colonel". But Vladimir Arapov was called so by his colleagues. It must be for a tough temper and uncompromising attitude. Arapov headed the headquarters for the search for the "Mosgaz" maniac, and his employee was the "livestock" during the arrest of Ionesyan.

Arapov was investigating the sensational case of "Mitin's gang". This criminal group terrorized Moscow in the 50s and became the prototype of the "Black Cat". Arapov personally took part in the arrest of Lukin, Mitin's right hand. The plot about the introduction into the gang was put together by the Weiners with another story from the biography of Arapov. He did infiltrate the gang and work undercover, but that was after the war itself, in 1946.

Nikolay Kitaev. Expose the magician

Solving any case is similar to the process of exposing it. This is always a search for true motives and a fine knowledge of psychology, but the investigator does not always solve only criminal cases. A unique biography of the former investigator for particularly important cases of the prosecutor's office of the Irkutsk region Nikolai Kitaev. He gained fame thanks to … the exposure of Wolf Messing.

Kitaev conducted an investigation in which he proved that Wolf Messing was a "project" of the famous journalist Mikhail Khvastunov. In the 60s, when Khvastunov was recognized as the master of journalism, the investigation of Kitaev, a Siberian, immediately acquired a sensational status. Nevertheless, no one succeeded in refuting the findings of the Irkutsk investigator. The investigation was carried out with great care. There was no way to dig into the arguments of Nikolai Kitaev, who did a huge amount of archival work both in the USSR and abroad.

Yakov Vagin. Watchmaker

Yakov Vagin headed the Perm criminal investigation department for 17 years - until 1986. During his work, Perm took the third place in solving crimes, which was a huge achievement. Almost all large and small cases were disclosed. Yakov Vagin solved the case of the Vedernikov brothers who were killing policemen, caught the "Kungur maniac" who, having seen the "Dogs of the Baskervilles", went hunting in a luminous mask …

Colleagues nicknamed Yakov Vagin "watchmaker". He always competently organized the work of the investigation teams, providing them with everything they needed. He did not disdain new technologies either. His initiative was to equip the investigation teams with night vision devices. There are memories of Vagin as a "genius human being", he helped his employees and war veterans with the solution of housing problems.

Amurkhan Yandiev. To catch a maniac

Perhaps, the talent of an investigator can be revealed most fully when investigating cases of serial maniacs. In these cases, there are no financial interests of different groups of society, there is no politics and corruption. There is a mentally unbalanced person whose logic of actions is different from the logic of a healthy person. This greatly complicates the work and implies a special algorithm of action.

Prior to Operation Lesopolos, which began in 1985 to capture Andrei Chikatilo, there was no system for searching for serial killers in the USSR. It was a unique operation, during which not only managed to catch the maniac, but along the way to solve more than 1,500 crimes. The head of the investigation group was Amurkhan Yandiev.

Today this personality is already legendary. In addition to the capture of Chikatilo, he also opened many other cases, but it was the Chikatilo case that became the "history of life" for the investigator. Amurkhan Khadrisovich even today lectures at law schools and always answers all the questions of the listeners about the case almost 30 years ago. Yandiev personally interrogated the maniac, built a trusting relationship with him, although he never forgot: in front of him is a beast that has dirtyly and cruelly dealt with almost fifty people.