How the maniac who killed 17 people lived in freedom: he started a YouTube channel

Stories about dead maniacs rarely continue. But in the case of the Black Angel, this is a reason to raise the topic of supervision of serial killers who are on the loose.

The last days of the maniac Vasiliev were tracked by an MK observer.

Let us recall that Alexander Vasiliev committed 17 murders in Krasnoyarsk from 1997 to 2001. His victims were mainly women, to whom he came with an advertisement for the sale of various things. At the crime scene he left the inscription: “It’s bad to be rich.” Over time, he began to kill no longer for money, but, as they say, casually – like, for example, an old man who was digging potatoes in the garden and did not like something.

Vasilyev was sentenced to 25 years in prison, and in November 2017 the court released him due to a serious illness, which is included in the list of Government Resolution No. 54. And there are no questions about this decision: everything was done according to the law. Although it is worth mentioning that, for example, those sentenced to life due to illness are never released (at least not in any case, I don’t know of such precedents). Vasiliev was lucky twice – he received a non-life sentence and was released.

However, calling someone “lucky” who is missing several internal organs (he was eaten by cancer) and whose metastases have penetrated the entire body, tongue, does not rise.

At the moment when MK published the first article about him, it was not even clear when he died. More precisely, it was assumed that Vasiliev died literally a few days, or at most weeks, after his release.

But no! “Black Angel” (as Vasiliev called himself) lived for two whole years. How is this possible with his illness? Oncologists usually explain this by saying that it is not always possible to predict the course of the disease – sometimes remission occurs for some period of time. Of course, care and quality of life are of great importance. Who looked after the “Black Angel”? What living conditions could they create for him?

And here is the most interesting thing. The FSIN documents say that he did not maintain social ties while in the colony. That is, he did not correspond with either relatives or friends, they did not call him and did not come on a date. His first wife abandoned him many years ago, and, as he believed, she put him behind bars for the first time on an unfair charge (allegedly he molested his little daughter’s girlfriend). It was after this that he, apparently, began to take revenge on the whole world, committing his bloody crimes. In the colony itself, Vasiliev was unable to make close friends with anyone. I did not receive any parcels or packages. When he was released, no one met him at the gates of the colony. But further – more. It turned out that the house where he was registered (a two-story barracks) was declared unsafe back in 2016 and was demolished. According to the documents, the released Vasiliev ended up in the “Krasnoyarsk Center for Social Adaptation of Persons Released from Prison.” Former convicts live here for up to six months. Each person has a bed, a one-time hot meal (consisting of two courses), and guests can use a washing machine and shower. They try to find a job and housing for the tenant within six months. This is not always possible, because most people end up here extremely neglected – in the social and medical sense. They don’t hire people like that. But there is an opportunity for them to extend their stay in the center for a fee – for 145 rubles per day.

None of the current residents of the Center remember Vasiliev. The director (who recently took this post) did not see him either. But as it turned out, there was no one to remember – Vasiliev never spent the night here.

“He contacted us to register on December 22, 2017,” says an employee of the Center. – We helped. Registration was issued for six months. He didn’t come again.

But the police documents continued to indicate that he lived in the Center.

So, there is registration, but what about housing? I was unable to locate my place of residence with the help of law enforcement agencies. But Vasiliev not only lived out his life somewhere, but enjoyed every day! At the beginning of 2019, judging by the documents, he purchased an Opel car. And he didn’t do it on credit – there are no enforcement proceedings regarding it. The maniac dressed well, as can be seen from the photos and videos. Yes, Vasiliev registered on YouTube, created his own channel where he posted videos. He looks quite decent in them and films himself on his mobile phone. The three-minute story (by the way, it also had to be edited) about Vasiliev is pure narcissism against the backdrop of shops, expensive restaurants, parks… People in the frame, including children, look with curiosity at a man in a white T-shirt, white headphones and black glasses. If only they knew how many he sent to the next world…

Vasiliev seemed to be trying as hard as possible to record his life in freedom. Here he is in a fur hat next to the glowing Christmas trees in the winter, here he is in a light cap near the flower beds in the summer. Well, a maniac dancing in a flashing light is a completely different story… And all this is not only on YouTube, but also on TikTok.

Someone will say: “What’s wrong with that? Has the right to!”. I do not argue. But I confess to you, I have rarely seen convicts who, after a long stay behind bars, first of all began to film themselves for YouTube and TikTok. I also remembered the words of those who saw him immediately after his arrest. Among them is former journalist Elena Penzina, who was asked to help by law enforcement officers because Vasiliev agreed to testify only in the presence of a general and necessarily a correspondent for a federal channel. According to her, he was posing. “He was very concerned about how he would look. This was visible throughout the entire interview, because he tried to somehow sit down, look at himself from the side, well, this is an element of posing. It was very important to him how he would be assessed.”

It turns out that Vasilyev’s years in prison did not change him. But posturing is not a crime.

But it could have been a different crime.

Officially, the Black Angel was not employed anywhere. It’s hard to imagine that he worked illegally at some kind of hard work – Vasiliev was, after all, seriously ill, so he would hardly have been physically able to unload the cars and clean the territory. Then who kept him? It is possible, of course, that he found himself a compassionate woman who decided to shelter him, dress him and put on shoes. But could he do it not just quickly, but actually instantly?! Let me remind you that he never lived in the Center for a day. So where did you spend the night?

The first thing that comes to mind is that Vasiliev could have used the old method. During one of his first robberies, he accidentally crushed his grandmother, and she died. So he lived in this apartment for three days, took food from her refrigerator, slept on the sofa on which my grandmother watched TV. That is, he behaved absolutely calmly in the apartment with the corpse. And after the arrest, he cynically and casually said that at that moment he realized: the victims had to be killed so that they would not scream, and he would have time to get comfortable in the apartment.

A colleague from MK in Krasnoyarsk, Vladislav Pirogov, tried to find people who could intersect with Vasiliev. But no trace. In what case could this happen? If the animal, having received prey, hid in the lair. How many lonely old women are there in Krasnoyarsk? Hundreds.

Elena Penzina, remembering him, calls him a monster. “He has, as they say, some kind of animal energy. Being close to him, you understand that he is dangerous. He has absolutely empty eyes, the eyes of a wild animal. I remember what he said, how he tracked. He walked past the post office around the time when the pension was issued, calmly followed the man, looked at who he was meeting, with whom he was communicating… By some kind of inner instinct, he understood that the man was lonely. I still have a double feeling. On the one hand, it seemed to me that he needed to be treated. But on the other hand, he was very seasoned and thoughtful, that is, he prepared these crimes.”

If administrative supervision had been established over Vasiliev, it would have been possible to at least understand in which area he lived. But no. The Federal Penitentiary Service points to the police, the police point to the Federal Penitentiary Service. In fact, NOBODY was supervising the maniac, who has no social connections, no job, is terminally ill, no one was interested in his fate except us. As Penzina rightly noted, he absolutely should be under the close attention of law enforcement agencies, because “a wild animal will never become a herbivore.”

But this did not happen. Vasiliev died on January 28, 2020. At the cemetery where he was buried, they say that no one comes to his grave.