Vasily Filippenko

At the beginning of 1968, Filippenko, using a trade union voucher, went to Yalta. There, he was arrested when he tried to rape and strangle the sanatorium maid, and was placed at a detention center in Simferopol. In the cell, he told his cellmate, who was a police informant, about his crimes in Leningrad. This information was sent to Leningrad, where investigators were sent to Simferopol to interrogate the confessor. During interrogation, Filippenko spoke in detail about the five Leningrad murders in the area of Obvodny Canal, reporting on many significant details that no outsider could know about. The offender was taken to Leningrad, where his testimony was checked and fixed during investigative experiments. In addition, it turned out that Filippenko, as a druzhinnik, helped the police search for the maniac, and in effect, was searching for himself.

Filippenko tried to avoid the court by pretending to be insane, but a comprehensive forensic psychiatric examination found him to be sane. In 1968, the court sentenced Vasily Filippenko to death through firing squad. In November, the sentence was carried out.

In 1967, in the Obvodny Canal area, Filippenko began attacking women in the evening. When investigating the crimes, it was suggested that the people the maniac chose as victims were women whom he saw parting with another man.

The first crime was committed on the night of May 23–24, 1967. The victim of the maniac was 19-year-old "Red Triangle" factory worker Nina Petukhova. While giving his testimony during the investigation, Filippenko stated: the future victim, after parting with the sailor accompanying her, decided to meet him herself while standing on the embankment of the Obvodny Canal; they reached the round-the-clock kindergarten located near the Canal and the women's hostel of the Red Triangle plant; during a conversation on the territory of the kindergarten, the girl reminded him of his ex-wife, and so he beat, raped and then strangled her. On the night of the murder, the on-duty kindergarten teachers heard the girl's screams, but thought they were unimportant. Two hairs belonging to the killer were found in the girl's right hand. The rapist's sperm was also detected, by which his blood type was determined.

Even before Vorobyev's trial, an incident occurred in Leningrad, calling into question the testimony of the maniac's surviving victim. In September 1967, an LPI student was arrested in the Lenin Park, who had attacked and tried to strangle his friend. Although this attack was not similar to the crimes in the Obvodny Canal area, the arrestee was investigated for his involvement in Petukhova's murder, but his blood type did not match. However, he was presented in a police lineup to the surviving victim, in which she, again, recognized the attacker. It later turned out that the victim suffered from myopia, but did not wear glasses. This fact was not taken into account, and the Vorobyev case was brought to court.

Filippenko was born in Kerch, where he lived for the first 30 years of his life. He worked as a crane operator in a port, when one day he fell off from a great height, receiving serious injuries (about 17 fractures). During treatment, his wife, believing that he would remain disabled for life, filed for divorce. However, he recovered, but Filippenko became hostile towards the opposite sex. In 1966, he moved to Leningrad, where he also got a job as a crane operator at a port, living in a dorm room with a propiska. At work, he was characterized as positive, and was part of the Voluntary People's Druzhina.

Vasily Efimovich Filippenko (Russian: Васи́лий Ефи́мович Филиппе́нко; 1936 – November 1968), known as The Leningrad Strangler (Russian: Ленинградский душитель), was a Soviet serial killer and rapist, operating in Leningrad in the area of the Obvodny Canal.