Roman Barkovsky

In 2016, as a result of examining cold case murders in Rostov-on-Don and the surrounding areas, investigators connected Barkovksy to an unsolved rape-murder that took place in the city. On the night of March 1-2, 2008, he came across a woman walking home on the street, whom he grabbed, violated and then transported to the Nightingale Grove, where he proceeded to strangle the victim to death.

After laying low for a while, Roman decided to commit crimes elsewhere. He bought a used Lada and periodically travelled to the villages of Rogozhkino and Kazachiy Yerik, near Azov, where he normally went fishing. Along the road connecting the two locations, there was a bar where young people often gathered and partied at a nearby farm, and knowing this, Roman decided that this would be his new hunting grounds. In July 2009, he abducted a local woman from Kazachiy Yerik and dragged her to a nearby grove, where he stripped the victim of her clothing and raped her. Since she didn't resist, Barkovsky spared her life, leaving in his car after the act. Frightened, the woman told her husband, but they were reluctant to notify the police, as they were afraid of being stigmatized.

Born in 1983, Barkovsky, a married man with a son, worked as a gravedigger in Rostov-on-Don's northern cemetery. On March 30, 2008, he abducted 16-year-old Marina Rachkovskaya while she walking home from the Stroygorodka district. He brutally raped and beat the girl, before finally strangling her to death and disposing of her body in a drainage ditch along Taganrogskaya Stret, under some train tracks. By that time, the local media were reporting extensively on the disappearance, and many searches were organized to find Marina. About three months after the fact, her decomposing body was found by some passers-by. When the details of her brutal killing were circulated by the media, it frightened Barkovsky. In the following month, unaware that there were undercover officers out to catch him, Barkovsky approached one female operative and put a screwdriver to her chest in attempt to accost her. The woman managed to shout for backup over the radio, and the officers detained the man for questioning. However, due to the lack of evidence, he had to be released.

Roman Barkovsky (born 1983) is a Russian serial killer and rapist who raped at least four women in Rostov-on-Don and the village of Kazachiy Yerik between 2008 and 2009, killing two of them. He was sentenced to 24 years imprisonment for these crimes, and seven years later, he would be connected to another unsolved 2008 rape-murder. However, his sentence remained unchanged despite this new revelation.