Anatoly Slivko, the Russian serial killer
Between 1964 and 1985, Soviet serial killer and sadist, Anatoly Slivko, murdered and dismembered seven young boys and sexually assaulted 43 young boys.
Anatoly Slivko was born on December 28, 1938, in Izerbash, a town in the Soviet Union. He suffered from insomnia and a lack of appetite, leading him to develop a problem with his appearance.
In 1961, at the age of 23, Slivko’s murderous and sadistic appetite would awaken. He witnessed a car crash where a drunk driver killed a young boy wearing a Young Pioneers uniform—the Soviet equivalent to boy scouts.
Slivko described the connection between the car accident and his crimes by saying:
“I felt the attraction to boys for the first time in my life. There was a lot of blood and gasoline on the asphalt. The smell of gasoline and fire. I suddenly felt a desire to hurt a young boy like him [the victim of the accident]. The feeling haunted me, and I had to move far way to make the desire disappear. But after 5-6 months, after an ejaculation during sleep, the same excitement rose again and consistently pursued me."
A few years after the accident, Slivko began running a youth club named Chergid in the town of Nevinnomyssk. He soon began administering his “experiments” on boys between the ages of 13 and 17.
Slivko claimed his experiments would lengthen the boys’ spines and improve their health. At other times, he told the boys he was looking for subjects to test his hypothesis about oxygen deprivation.
On the day of the experiment, Slivko would shine the boys’ shoes and provide them with a new boy scout uniform to wear. He would proceed to hang the boys upside down until they became unconscious, resembling a dead body. He would then strip them and molest them while unconscious. At times, he would place the children in compromising positions while filming and photographing them. When the boys woke up, they had no recollection of what had occurred. If the boy lost consciousness, Slivko would dismember the body and set the body on fire.
In his head, Slivko was reliving the car accident he witnessed in 1961. He chose his victims to resemble the age of the boy that was killed. He would dress his victims in the same uniform and shoes. When watching a teenage boy, similar to the victim of the accident, in a dead-like state, it sexually aroused him and satisfied his sexual fantasies.
In the summer of 1964, Slivko chose his first victim, a 15-year-old homeless boy named Nikolai Dobrishev. He hung the boy upside down until he fell unconscious, and once the boy was unconscious, Slivko masturbated and ejaculated on the boy’s shoes. According to Slivko, Dobryshev’s death was an accident. He tried to revive the boy, but after many failed attempts, he was unsuccessful, and the boy died of suffocation. Slivko then proceeded to dismember the body and bury the boy.
In May 1965, he murdered his second victim, Aleksei Kovalenko. His third victim, Aleksander Nesmeyanov, 15, went missing on November 14, 1973. On May 11, 1975, 11-year-old Andrei Pogasyan disappeared. Pogasyan’s mother told the police that the boy was going to participate in a man’s documentary in the forest nearby, but the police failed to follow-up on the lead because the man was identified as Anatoly Silvok, a famous film maker. Slivko continued his murders in 1980 with Sergei Fatsiev, 13, and in 1982, he took the life of 15-year-old Slava Khovistik.
On July 23, 1985, Slivko murdered his last victim, 13-year-old Sergei Pavlov. Pavlov had last spoken to his neighbor, telling him he was going to meet with Anatoly Slivko.
In November 1985, Tamara Languyeva, a local prosecutor, started investigating the disappearance of Pavlov. She took an interest in the children’s club after discovering that two of its members were missing, Nesmeyanov and Pogasyan. The prosecutor interviewed many of the boys, and they shared that they had suffered "temporary amnesia" and had participated in Slivko’s experiments.
Police were also able to find a darkroom in the children’s club with knives, axes, rope, and disturbing images and films that showed the torture, murder, and dismemberment of the children. Amongst the other items, authorities found a collection of shoes and uniforms— Slivko’s trophies.
In the eyes of the community, he was the beloved leader of a youth club, a loving husband, and a father of two. He even received awards for his work with children, but behind the scenes he was a sadistic serial killer who molested 43 boys and killed seven boys in the span of 21 years.
In December 1985, he was accused of seven counts of murder, sexual abuse, and necrophilia. In 1986, Slivko was arrested and revealed to police the whereabouts of six of his victims, unable to remember the location of his first victim. Three years later, on September 16, 1989, he was executed by a shot to the back of the head.
