Vladimir Dolin

Vladimir Nikolayevich Dolin (Russian: Владимир Николаевич Долин; 1983 – December 25, 2009), known as The Kopeysk Maniac (Russian: Копейский маньяк), was a Russian serial killer and rapist who killed two girls in Kopeysk in 2007 and 2008, after having been released from a prior murder conviction. Convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for the latter crimes, he hanged himself in prison a few months into serving his sentence.

On July 17, 2008, Dolin was hanging around a reservoir when he took notice of a group of young girls passing by. He approached them and asked one of the girls, 13-year-old Sasha Nikolayzina, if she wanted to accompany him to a nearby convenience store to buy some alcohol and cigarettes. Nikolayzina agreed, but she was instead lured to the sewage treatment plant, where Dolin beat, raped and then strangled her into unconsciousness. Unsure whether she was still alive, he then tossed the body over to a flooded part of the room, where she drowned. In both of these crimes, Dolin undressed the victims and then hid their clothing to prevent identification.

After his release, he returned to Kopeysk and lived a relatively normal life for more than a year, but eventually resumed killing again. On December 17, 2007, he was walking down the street when he took notice of 5-year-old Anya Nikitina playing on the street. He approached her on the pretense of helping him search for his lost dog, whereupon he lured her to an abandoned sewage treatment plant. There, Dolin raped and then strangled Nikitina, hiding her body under a concrete structure. He then left the crime scene, but returned later to move the body to a nearby pit.

Dolin committed his first severe crime at age 16, when he was convicted of killing an unidentified teenager on hooliganistic grounds. For this crime, he was sentenced to 8 years and six months imprisonment and was released in November 2006. According to psychiatric reports obtained from the institution he was detained at, Dolin was described as "cunning, dodgy, quick-tempered and unbalanced".