MOSCOW, May 29. /ITAR-TASS/. Police officers patrolling Volgogradsky Avenue in Moscow's southeast on Thursday detained a 67-year-old man on suspicion of committing 90 rapes over the past 30 years, the city police told Itar-Tass.
The spokesman for the Russian Investigative Committee, Vladimir Markin, confirmed the information adding that the suspect, Valery Makarenkov, was detained as a result of several years of meticulous analytical work and is suspected of committing a series of sexual attacks on women and robberies in Moscow in 1987-2014.
The investigators have said that Makarenkov used the same scheme in all the cases: at night time and early in the morning he, pretending to be an ordinary cyclist, followed young women in the yards of residential houses and in parks, then attacked them and strangled to unconsciousness in order to rape them and steal money and valuable possessions.
His last failed sexual assault on a 29-year-old woman took place in Moscow’s Kuzminki Park on May 26.
“Thanks to modern hi-tech equipment of the Russian Investigative Committee’s forensic department, a molecular-genetic express test of the suspect’s DNA confirmed his involvement in 19 episodes,” Markin said. “The woman attacked three days ago did not hesitate to identify the suspect.”
“At present, the detectives are planning to charge Makarenkov and ask the court to arrest him,” Markin said.
Moreover, the investigators are certain they will solve scores of other cases Makarenkov allegedly committed. In recent years, the forensic experts have studied in detail the criminal’s pattern in crime and made lists of men who looked alike and were of the same age group. At least 20,000 Moscow residents were on the list.
Another man was detained during the investigation and he is suspected in seven other cases of attacks on women and underage girls.