Detective Tales from the Soviet Union

Fifth Case

This happened during the summer of '96. This case differs from the previous ones, because, firstly, it happened in a good part of town (in which I lived, by the way) and, secondly, because I heard part of this story firsthand, even before my grandpa told me about it.

One night around 1 AM, a man burst into my grandpa's precinct, raving like a lunatic and holding a crying woman in a torn dress. After managing to calm him down, officers on duty started to listen to his story. He (32 y.o., small-time businessman) was visited by some friends that evening, and asked his wife (27, housewife) to take their kid (8 month old, boy) and go for a stroll around the block. What kind of visit and from what kind of friends makes you ask your wife to take your child and leave the house at 11 PM is a separate question and some investigators tried to tie this visit to what happened next and had certain success with it, after running some checks on those "friends" (who had pretty evident connections to a big local gang). He clearly payed them protection money, since both he and his business were doing fine, but I'll come back to it later.

After around 1 hour and 10 minutes he finally managed to get rid of his "friends" and started to worry about his wife who hasn't yet come back. When he came out of the house he couldn't see her anywhere and started to circle their apartment complex, shouting her name, when suddenly he literally stumbled upon the overturned stroller, lying there in the dark (stroller was lying on that asphalt road you can see on the first photo). There were no lanterns on that road back then, and there are none today. The closest ones are something like 30 meters away, near the walkay lying along the edge of the forest, so yeah, you can't see shit there at night. When he realised that stroller was empty he started to seriously panic, but then he heard sobbing coming from the forest and rushed towards it, where he found his wife, weeping and wandering between the trees in nigh-unconscious state. Failing to get any sort of response from her, he just put her in his car and drove towards the precinct. My grandpa had nearly as much success, she was answering slowly, couldn't even recall her own name at first. She was clearly in a state of shock, so doctor was called in immediately. But something my grandfather did learn, by basically asking her the same questions over and over again.

To sum her incoherent speach up, this is what happened: she was walking along that very same road when something big rushed towards her from the direction of an apartment complex, pushed her away, grabbed her child from a stroller and ran towards an "iron tower" and then into the woods. She followed this something to the forest but failed to catch up with it. Also, yes, this is exactly how she called it - "something", that my grandfather remembered very well. After that, there was a theory about a big animal, but I'll tell you about it later. The doctor, who arrived by then, examined her, finding bruises and small scratches, that she probably recieved while pursuing the abductor through the woods. No further damage was found, but she was indeed in a state of shock. Doctor advised to give her some glycine (or glycerol, fuck if I know what I have written in my notes there, don't harass me about it), let her have some sleep and advised to avoid stress (he chastised my granfather for questioning her in such a state). He also advised to hospitalize her if her condition wouldn't improve on the next day.

It was decided (without much hope) to conduct a search, while the trail was hot, with help of a cynologist and his dog. The "iron tower" was found pretty fast. 250 meters away from the spot stroller was found there was an overhead power line, which you can see on the attached photo (I actually found 2 of such towers there, but the second one is too far away, and there are some warehouses near it instead of forest, so I bet I got the right one). During the examination of the stoller, some strange things started to happen. Dog (long-haired German Shepherd, a huge male, saw that dog a few times in my childhood and it was indeed enormous) started to act erratic: growling at the house, pressing its tail, ignoring cynologist's commands, who was pretty surprised by that behaviour from an adult dog that never acted like that before (he was the one who proposed a theory about a large wild animal that might have caused dog, unfamiliar with hunting, to react that way). On the fabric that covered the stroller, there was a small torn gap no one paid much attention to, after all it could have torn during it's fall on the asphalt covered in small pebbles and pieces of broken glass (but my grandfather noted this anyway, maybe he had some thoughts about it). No traces of blood were found inside the stroller or on the ground around it (they even double-checked it during the day - nothing), but stroller was taken for an expertise anyway (which gave no results). When they finally reached the tower (despite the dog acting completely inadequate and outright refusing to pick up the trail) they started to ponder what to do next. There were no obvious tracks and dog wasn't helping. So the cynologist was dismissed, while operatives started to rummage throught the nearest part of the forest with flashlights, just to clear their conscience, but to no avail.

In the morning they have called the man whose child had gone missing, but he had reported that his wife had not become better, and that he was taking her to a hospital (she was sent to the loony bin for some time, but even after getting released she couldn't tell anything new, as if she had lost her memory). There was only one connection left – the man's "friends". But, not to turn all this into one of the boring episodes of Criminal Russia (translator's note: a once popular tv show documenting all kinds of juicy crimes), in brief, it did not lead anywhere. And look for yourself - the businessman was small-time, to put it mildly, and no demands followed his disappearance.

And what's so strange and scary about this story, might you think? The fact that in a month's time the same house had seen a similar case. Two brothers (the elder was 10, the younger - 7) played behind the house, rummaging under the windows, hoping to to find something interesting. The elder brother, naturally, was tasked by the parents to keep an eye on junior. The rest is taken from the elder brother's testimony after his father had taken him to the militsiya. It was a short while before 10 pm - time to return home, when the elder brother had suddenly noticed that the younger brother was standing still and staring into a dark alcove under the a first floor balcony (you can see such alcoves on the first photo, perhaps, it's even one of them).

The elder brother tried calling the kid several times, but he did not react. Setting on his way to him, he froze in place when "fur-covered paws" appeared out of the alcove and dragged the child inside, and the kid did not make a single sound (how he had manage to spot the fur on the paws in the dark is an interesting question, as there were no street lamps there). At first the guy stood dead still and peered into darkness. For a moment he even thought he had seen "big white eyes" (something like that he certainly would never be able to see). And then dashed off as fast as he could back home to his father who was sipping beer after long day's work, and he, having smacked the lad for lying, went looking for the younger son with a flashlight. He had examined every alcove but did not find anything at all, except a hole punched in a corner of one of them which, probably, lead to the basement of the house. But that hole was too narrow for an adult man, only a child could get through.

But the father wasn't intent to give up so easily - he took a crowbar, busted the lock on the basement door and climbed down there. Unfortunately, having gone through the entire basement, he had found nothing. There was a strong stink of rot (that was verified by grandfather who examined the cellar later) and something else in the air - a strange, almost heavy smell (although grandfather could smell nothing of that kind). But in the end nothing was found.

That's all, folks. Funny thing is I knew that boy from my childhood. We were in the same crowd, he was slightly older than me, and the story he told to the militsiya is nearly a perfect fit for the what he told us after those events. He never was a particulary merry fellow and soul of the company, but after those events he barely went out, became somewhat fearful and almost panicked when faced with the backside of his own house, flat out refusing to go there. So, on one hand, I personally believe it, but on the other – who knows what a story a child can concoct.

But there is the matter of the woman's account (who, again, was in a state of shock and thus made a shitty witness) and of a guard dog who would put its tail between its legs as like a little puppy, which is higly atypical. The animal version is doubtful, I'd say. Firstly, what kind of animal likes to snatch little kids without leaving any tracks (seriously, two similar cases in the same place, and in a whole month nobody saw anything), and secondly, if we take into account the hole leading to the cellar, no large animal would fit into it. There are, of course, the man's "friends" from the first case, but as I said, there's just no sense in it for them, since the second man in had nothing to do neither with commerce nor with crime, and it would make more sense to steal both children, I reckon. So, truth to be told, I have no ideas to share about this one.

© 1996 Archive66