In the Ramensky Court of the Moscow Region, the trial of the “poisoner from electric trains” Alexei Vygovsky begins – this is the second court in which the case of new episodes will be considered. In 2005-2007, a series of murders in suburban trains and the search for the perpetrator caused a wide public outcry, and the first trial in this case attracted even more attention. Then 25-year-old Vyhovsky refused to testify, claiming torture during the preliminary investigation. 12 years later, in 2023, he suddenly broke his silence and admitted all the crimes in the first case and those episodes that became known later. The story of the search for a deadly fellow traveler is recalled by the correspondent of Lenta.ru Igor Nadezhdin, who witnessed those events.

Today, the name of the poisoner Aleksey Vygovsky is remembered by few, although in 2006-2011 newspapers wrote about him every month, and announcements “do not drink alcohol with unfamiliar citizens” were regularly heard on platforms and trains. There were similar appeals in the newspapers, mentioning the large number of dead. But the number of victims continued to rise. All law enforcement officers were surprised: why do people not hear warnings? The answer to this question was obtained only 14 years later, during the investigation of the second criminal case of Vyhovsky.

smart fellow traveler
Since the spring of 2007, Moscow, and then suburban doctors began to sound the alarm: the number of people admitted to hospitals and morgues with suspected criminal poisoning with potent substances has increased significantly. The circumstances were similar: they rode the train, drank, then suddenly lost consciousness, and often this was accompanied by foam from the mouth. Those who survived most often ended up in psychiatric hospitals.

Related materials:
They lit up They turned radiation into weapons and quietly killed people
March 12, 2018
Kiev poisoner Victims died for years from her poison. She became the last woman shot in the USSR
October 13, 2019
“I wanted her to feel bad” The Russian became interested in the study of poisons and became a serial killer. Women and children died from his poison
April 18, 2020
Poisoning fellow travelers is one of the oldest crimes in the world, this method was first described in ancient Egypt , Greece and Rome , but for a long time this atrocity was considered “female”.

However, survivors of an encounter with a poisoner operating on Moscow suburban trains described the young man, noting his “dapper appearance” and an earring in his ear.

In the summer of 2007, a special investigative-operational group was created, headed by a young but already experienced investigator Denis Zharenov .

In a short period of time, we have analyzed more than 160 facts of poisoning in electric trains of the Kursk and Ryazan directions of the Moscow Railway and selected 45 very similar ones. They started working on them – and went to Vyhovsky. During the arrest, a social card of a Muscovite in a false name was found on him, several bank cards – also strangers, and during a personal search, a vial of clozapine was found in his shorts, moreover, stained with fecal masses – he tried to hide it in a natural opening of the body

Denis Zharenov
Investigator of the Moscow Court of Justice of the ICR in the case of Aleksey Vygovsky in 2009-2011
Vyhovsky was detained on March 2, 2009, but the first official reports about this appeared almost a year later – in February 2010.
Since his capture, the number of poisonings has significantly decreased, which indirectly testified to Vyhovsky’s involvement in a series of crimes.

However, he refused to testify and denied his guilt in every possible way. The fact that the survivors identified him was called a slander, the details of telephone connections were a coincidence, and the discovered medicine was declared a sleeping pill, which he personally used. In general, he behaved more than impudently.

Meanwhile, the survivors talked about a man who sat down with them and said that he was having a holiday – either a child was born, or he himself had a birthday, and on this occasion treated his fellow travelers with cognac from his flask. The new acquaintance poured the contents into a glass-lid and took the first sip himself, so the victims believed him. Here, according to investigator Zharenov, the peculiarity of the effect of clozapine on memory affected: many fell into amnesia, but they clearly remembered the last moments before that.

During the first year of the investigation, it was possible to unequivocally prove Vyhovsky’s involvement in 13 deaths and another 15 attacks using clozapine. After the release of information about the capture of the poisoner, new victims and witnesses went to the investigators. As a result, in early 2011, Vygovsky was charged with 17 episodes of causing grievous bodily harm, which negligently caused the death of the victim, and 18 robberies. After that, the case was sent to court.

Vyhovsky during the arrest
Vyhovsky during the arrest

Photo: from the materials of the criminal case

There, Vyhovsky declared torture and refused to testify, nevertheless, his guilt in the death of 15 people was proven – he was acquitted for two deaths due to insufficient evidence. On December 30, 2011, the Ramensky City Court of the Moscow Region sentenced Vygovsky to 22 years and 3 months in a strict regime colony. He was sent to serve his sentence in Khakassia .

New victims
While the poisoner was sitting, the investigators were engaged in unsolved crimes of the past, among which came across with a characteristic handwriting.

As part of the disclosure of crimes of past years, we carefully analyzed the criminal cases on the facts of poisoning in the trains of the Gorky and Ryazan directions, committed in 2006-2009, and established a similar method of crime. We resumed investigations on them, compared them with the Vyhovsky case and found serious clues that allowed us to build the work correctly

Alexander Maksimov
Head of the First Department for the Investigation of Particularly Important Cases of the Western Interregional Investigation Department for Transport of the TFR
Alexander Maximov served in St. Petersburg in those years and investigated the criminal case of the murderous taxi driver Aharon Galstyan: he acted according to a similar scheme – he offered passengers a drink and sent seven people to the other world, for which he was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2012. For this reason, the investigator knew about the peculiarities of investigating such crimes. He also remembered the “poisoner from trains” Alexei Vygovsky. Further unraveling of the identified cases was taken up by the investigator for especially important cases, Lieutenant Vladimir Osipov . He began by going to the archives of the Ramensky Court and carefully studying all the volumes of Vyhovsky’s first case.

Vladimir Osipov
Vladimir Osipov

Photo: West MSUT TFR

There, among other things, the details of telephone conversations of all mobile operators were stored in printouts and a notebook seized from Vyhovsky, in which he kept his accounts. The investigator manually checked these documents and found the phone numbers of the victims of those crimes that were not included in the first case, as well as some coincidences in dates in Vyhovsky’s notes. This hard work has paid off.

Aleksey Vygovsky at some point noticed that the money was not delayed with him, and began to keep records: the date, how much money he received, how much and where he spent it. And although he did not write that the money was received as a result of a robbery, the dates and amounts coincided. In addition, coincidences were found in the details of telephone conversations and in billing: at the time of his death, Vyhovsky was in the coverage area of ​​the same base stations, and, since we are talking about electric trains, he moved along with the phones stolen from the dead

Vladimir Osipov
Investigator for Particularly Important Cases of the First Department of Internal Affairs of the Western Interregional Investigation Department for Transport (ZMSUT)
With these materials, the investigator went on a business trip to Khakassia, where Vygovsky was serving his sentence. At the very first interrogation, under the weight of evidence, the poisoner confessed and wrote a confession.

Vygovsky was transferred to Moscow, where, during interrogation, already as a suspect, he gave detailed testimony both on new crimes and on those for which he had already been convicted. Photographs of the victims were shown to him, and he identified them all with certainty. Moreover, several times in conversations with me and with operatives, Vyhovsky stated that he did not intend to repeat the mistake he made during the first investigation, and he would not hide anything, because then he was only 21 years old and he believed what is smarter than the investigator and operatives

Vladimir Osipov
Investigator for Particularly Important Cases of the First Department of Internal Affairs of the Western Interregional Investigation Department for Transport (ZMSUT)
pedantic plucker
He received his first term in 2002, when he was 15 years old, for an attempted theft in a large Moscow electronics store. Vygovsky claimed that he was caught on the very first sortie, but this statement is doubtful: having escaped from his parents, he got from Vladivostok to Moscow and lived in the capital for several weeks before being detained. Where he took the money – he does not really explain, but he lived well.

Ilya Trubanov
Ilya Trubanov

Photo: from the personal archive of the author

After serving a short term for a failed theft, Vygovsky went back to his parents in Vladivostok, but in 2005 he returned to the capital again and began working in the metro on the Arbat and Kaluga-Rizhskaya lines – he cleaned the pockets of passengers at rush hour. Here he met his “teacher” Ilya Trubanov.

He himself says that it was Ilya Trubanov, a thief with great experience, who taught him the intricacies of “pocket pull”. Vyhovsky now remembers him with great respect. And it was Trubanov who told him about clonidine tablets and even showed him where they can be bought without a prescription.

Vladimir Osipov
Investigator for Particularly Important Cases of the First Department of Internal Affairs of the Western Interregional Investigation Department for Transport (ZMSUT)
On January 19, 2006, Vygovsky was caught red-handed for theft in the subway – he was identified by a video surveillance camera in the car, which he did not know about – and already in April he received a year and a half in a colony-settlement. Having freed himself, the shchipach returned to Moscow and began to specialize in clonidine.

Vyhovsky during an investigative experiment

Frame: from the materials of the criminal case

He spotted the victim at the Kazan station, started a conversation and offered to drink, but the man quickly felt unwell, and Vygovsky took him out of the train at the Kosino station. There he took the poisoned man to the industrial zone, undressed him, took everything of value and left, leaving him in a snowdrift. The deceased was found only three months later. And Vygovsky that same evening withdrew money from two of the victim’s credit cards in one shopping mall and was photographed twice by ATM equipment. He did not make such a mistake again: there are no other high-quality photos of him from ATMs in the file.

Items seized from Vyhovsky

Frame: the film “Station” DEATH “. The Case of the Moscow Poisoner”

His next proven crime was committed on August 28, 2007 – at the Orekhovo-Zuevo station they found a man in a coma, hospitalized, but four hours later he died without regaining consciousness. On September 3, Vygovsky sat down at the Tomilino station , and the body of the deceased was found on the platform 47 kilometers away. On September 27, early in the morning, the first fellow traveler died, he was found at the Chukhlinka station, and the second was found in the evening right on the platform of the Kazan station …

Vygovsky on the ATM camera while withdrawing funds from one of the stolen cards
Vygovsky on the ATM camera while withdrawing funds from one of the stolen cards

Frame: the film “Station” DEATH “. The Case of the Moscow Poisoner”

Vygovsky initially lived in Moscow in a rented apartment, but soon met a girl, Elizaveta (name changed), and moved in with her. He told her that he worked as a sales manager for used phones. Vyhovsky gave his girlfriend stolen gadgets and trinkets. Later, during a search, investigators found a silver spoon from her, which the poisoner took from another victim – the man was carrying a gift for the birth of his nephew.

When Vygovsky was caught, Elizabeth for a long time could not believe that her beloved turned out to be a serial poisoner, until she ran into relatives of his victims at the trial. Later, she married twice and divorced twice – as experts say, severe mental trauma does not allow her to communicate normally with men.

Meanwhile, in October 2008, the poisoner improved: for the first time he attacked two men at once – one of them, a veteran of the first and second Chechen wars, ended up in a psychiatric hospital, and the second ended up in intensive care. Vyhovsky made three more such paired attacks.

Tossed a pill and waited
Vyhovsky’s victims were well-dressed men who usually traveled not by trains, but by cars, but for various reasons, most often due to corporate parties at work or other celebrations, the car was left at home. It is also interesting that three-quarters of the crimes Vyhovsky committed on the days of the advance payment and salary. He chose a victim in the train, sat down and started a conversation.

Vyhovsky’s flask
Vyhovsky’s flask

Frame: the film “Station” DEATH “. The Case of the Moscow Poisoner”

Vygovsky always had a small flask with him, into which he poured cognac or tincture and dissolved several tablets. But it was an extreme case – basically, when choosing victims, the poisoner stopped at those who got on the train with their alcohol.

He gave preference to those who drank beer or weak alcoholic cocktails. The fact is that the medicine does not dissolve well in strong alcohol, but in carbonated drinks it quickly and easily. Therefore, he simply sat down and, distracting the passenger’s attention, threw a pill into his drink, and then just waited

Vladimir Osipov
Investigator for Particularly Important Cases of the First Department of Internal Affairs of the Western Interregional Investigation Department for Transport (ZMSUT)
Empirically, Vyhovsky found that the medicine works for 20-30 minutes, and as soon as the victim lost consciousness, he set to work.
Vygovsky, an experienced pickpocket, always had a newspaper or magazine in his hands, with which he masked his actions.

Cleaning the pockets of the victim, he tried not to miss anything, but at the same time he looked at those around him – if anyone was watching him. However, most of the time it was ignored. Vygovsky himself explained this simply: “In the train – like in an elevator, people don’t look into the eyes of others”

Vladimir Osipov
Investigator for Particularly Important Cases of the First Department of Internal Affairs of the Western Interregional Investigation Department for Transport (ZMSUT)
Everything valuable became his prey: from telephones and money to chains and rings, he took away briefcases and bags, he could grab a coat or jacket. He handed over the stolen goods for purchase, preferably on the same day, but he used mobile phones for the first time – he called the “phone sex” services several times and talked with them for a total of 45 thousand rubles.

In 2008, Vyhovsky’s average monthly income ranged from 50 to 100 thousand rubles, which he spent on good clothes and expensive trinkets. Shortly before his arrest, he bought a Toyota RAV4 car and tuned it with love, spending a lot of money on it.

Vyhovsky during an investigative experiment
Vyhovsky during an investigative experiment

Frame: from the materials of the criminal case

On December 26, 2008, on the train, Vyhovsky drugged a 42-year-old deputy director of a large construction organization, stole his bank card and mobile phone from him. In it, he came across a message from the bank about the transfer of salaries. To get a PIN code and get to the money, Vyhovsky wrote messages to the victim’s wife asking him to look for it in the papers. On behalf of the victim, the poisoner told the woman that he felt unwell and accidentally left to Ryazan , and in order to return home, he needed to call a taxi. The woman was looking for a paper from the bank with a PIN code all night, and in the morning she found out that her husband was in the Moscow morgue.

“He was afraid of only one question…”
As part of the second criminal case in 2023, Vyhovsky confessed to 22 poisonings, all of which were fatal.

Vygovsky was afraid of only one single question: did he know that people were dying? And even agreed to undergo a psychophysiological examination using a polygraph. She showed: at the time of the crimes, Vyhovsky did not know about the deaths

Vladimir Osipov
Investigator for Particularly Important Cases of the First Department of Internal Affairs of the Western Interregional Investigation Department for Transport (ZMSUT)
This question is actually the key one for the “train poisoner”. If he knew that people were dying, then his actions should be qualified under the article “murder”, and it provides for life imprisonment. If you didn’t know, then this is another article: infliction of grievous bodily harm, negligently resulting in the death of a person. Here the most severe punishment is 15 years in prison. For each of the 15 deaths on the first sentence, Vygovsky received 8 years, but by partial addition, as stipulated by the Russian Criminal Code , the total was 22 years and 3 months. The maximum sentence under the new sentence is 25 years in a strict regime colony.