The bloody massacre on the Urzhum highway was left uninvestigated.

      The retired couple Vyatskov — Viktor and Nadezhda, driving along the Urzhum highway from Kirov to Chistopol (Tatarstan), while passing through the Kumen district, did not expect that at dawn on August 3 an otherwise ordinary-looking man who had come out onto the road from the taiga (at the 71st kilometer, 3:15 a.m.) would throw an axe into their car.

      And they certainly did not expect that the axe-thrower would laugh: "Hooray! I finally hit," — when Viktor Alexandrovich, having crawled out onto the road from a cabin soaked in blood and strewn with shards, would say: "What have you done? You killed my wife"...

      "I was in shock... Nadezhda was holding her chest where the axe handle had struck, trying to breathe. Blood was spurting from the torn cut on her right forearm, shards of the windshield stuck out of the wound. He, already walking back into the forest, turned and said, 'Come here, we'll kill you too.' Hearing 'we,' I thought that I couldn't cope alone with several assailants and that it would be wiser to save my wife. After a couple of kilometers I slowed at the roadside and bandaged my wife — by that time she had begun to breathe more easily. Cars passed by, some stopped, they asked us if they could help and what had happened... I explained, understanding that any of them could also become a victim of the sadist, since I had noticed several stones on the road and a scatter of car glass," Viktor Vyatskov recounted about the beginning of the story.

      When Nadezhda Petrovna was taken to the Chistopol central regional hospital, doctors spent several hours removing shards of glass from the wound on her arm, some of which, in a fine sprinkle and glass dust, had mixed with human flesh:

      "For several days they couldn't even stitch me up — the glass kept coming out. And even today, when the stitches were removed a month later, they still prick and scratch me from the inside. Fortunately we had something to change into — the bloodstained clothes I was wearing had to be thrown away. And we were very worried about Marta — our dog the size of a cat, a funny mix of dachshund and mongrel. She was sleeping in the back when the glass rain fell on her. Poor thing, she is so gentle and easily frightened, she almost lost her mind from terror... Of course she was examined and what was visible was removed, but now she keeps licking herself all the time — apparently the shards are coming out too."

      And then the police arrived

      The trauma doctors called the police, the Vyatskovs were questioned, they filed a report that "was forwarded according to jurisdiction" to the Kumen investigative department. At first in Kumen they vigorously took up the search for the attacker: the couple were even told that a man had been detained and had given a confession.

      According to the "axe-thrower", he was simply angry because he wanted to leave (probably in the direction of Urzhum), but for several hours cars drove by (which is understandable: taiga, night and a man hitchhiking on the road). The victims were also told that the detainee was supposedly a well-known local hooligan and troublemaker whom the entire local population fears:

      "They even sent us a photograph, asking if we could identify him? I answered: 'He looks like him.' Nadezhda only saw the silhouette of a man of medium height and build in dark clothing with a backpack on his shoulder, who stepped onto the road and stood in the middle of our lane. I saw his face when I drove around him in the oncoming lane, and I heard his words. I asked them to send us a voice recording that I would surely recognize and to take a photo, but not in a white T-shirt, rather in darker clothes."

      As Viktor Alexandrovich explained, at first they communicated with them often and actively, telling them about the progress of the investigation: "The Kumen detective called." Then less often, and soon they were told that "he had been released":

      "They stopped answering our calls, probably having put our numbers on a 'blacklist.' And on September 1 a message came from Kumen: to refuse to open a criminal case due to... 'its incompleteness.' I, as someone who worked for half his life as a local police officer, did not understand. After all the bloodstained axe is in evidence, if it hasn't accidentally been lost in Kumen, my wife is ready to give testimony and has been asking for a month to be sent for a forensic medical examination, which they won't do without a police paper. Probably it is precisely the lack of an expert conclusion that the Kumen criminal investigation is hinting at when it writes about the 'incompleteness of the case.'"

      Interestingly, in less public materials, more precisely in an appeal from the Kumen Ministry of Internal Affairs to the head of the Chistopol police — Colonel Aidar Faskhutdinov, the name is given (quote) "of the established person who committed this crime, Ivantsov Alexey Nikolaevich, born 1980" (the document was provided to the victim by the police of Tatarstan, editor's note). At the same time, if you look closely at the photograph of the man presented by the Vyatskovs for identification, over the T-shirt you can see equipment quite similar to the straps of a shoulder holster. Although one could just as well assume that these are the straps of an ordinary backpack.