Artyom Alexandrovich Anoufriev (; October 4, 1992) and Nikita Vakhtangovich Lytkin (; March 24, 1993 – November 30, 2021) were a serial killer duo from Irkutsk, Russia, known as the Academy maniacs and the Irkutsk Molotochniki (Hammer Men of Irkutsk). The pair collectively committed six murders and injured nine others in a series of attacks that took place in Irkutsk Academgorodok between 14 November 2010 and 3 April 2011, while still teenagers.
Both perpetrators were detained on April 5, 2011, and were collectively charged with murder, robbery, abuse of victims' bodies and organizing extremist activities. The judicial investigation of the case lasted from August 2012 to February 2013. On April 2, 2013, the Irkutsk Regional Court sentenced Anoufriev to life imprisonment, and Lytkin to 24 years imprisonment. On October 3, 2013, the Supreme Court of Russia finalized the verdict of Anoufriev's life sentence, while Lytkin's sentence was reduced to 20 years imprisonment. The drastic difference in their sentences is attributed to the fact that Russia established specific caps for prison time concerning juvenile offenders, and Lytkin was 17 at the time the majority of his crimes were committed. On November 30, 2021, Lytkin slashed his wrists at the Correctional Colony No. 7 in Angarsk and was found dead in the early morning of December 1, 2021.
The case is noteworthy for the fact that it was the first ever time that a case concerning violent extremism in Irkutsk Oblast was solved using forensic science.
Early life of both
Artyom Anoufriev Artyom Anoufriev was born on October 4, 1992, in Irkutsk, a city in Russia in central Siberia, and was raised without a father. Childhood friends described him in court positively, but nevertheless, his childhood was very difficult psychologically. His mother, Nina Ivanovna Anoufrieva, who worked as an accountant in an insurance company, did not have a good influence on the teenager's upbringing. According to the previous headmaster of the school he studied in, she had instructed young Anoufriev to hate people. When he received bad grades, his mother immediately wrote statements in which she reproached teachers for psychological pressure on her son, and if the marks were written only on his diary, she would write complaints about the concealment of information. Ultimately, while Anoufriev was in the 9th grade, the school management was forced to look for a new physics teacher, because the previous one refused to teach the classes that Anoufriev was in.
Anoufriev did well in his studies; he had good marks in literature and English, he participated in many activities and school competitions, had musical lessons for the guitar and double bass in 5 years, and also sang and played in a local music group that fell apart after his organizer left Irkutsk. However, since first grade Anoufriev was an outcast, and only in senior classes, when his classmates gradually matured and became more friendly, Anoufriev managed to get rid of this stigma, but at the same time, while in the 10th grade, his performance worsened and graduated from school with sufficiency. In the senior class, shortly before graduation, classmates shot a farewell amateur film, in which they told what happiness was in their opinion. Anoufriev was the only one who said: "To be honest, I do not know what happiness is. But I would really like to quickly find out what it is." After school, Anoufriev entered the Irkutsk State Medical University and at the same time went to work as an auxiliary worker in the art museum.
At the trial, Anoufriev's mother said that he had been beaten once by a group of Armenians, and a criminal case was opened, but nobody was charged. The Anoufriev family was transferred a sum amounting of 50 thousand rubles as compensation for non-pecuniary damage, but according to his mother, Anoufriev became very unbalanced after this incident. According to some reports, however, Anoufriev himself provoked the conflict by insulting the Armenians' family on an internet social networking site, after which his representatives called him to a "showdown", and the criminal case was stopped after the parties reconciled.
Nina Anoufrieva spoke against her son's friendship with Nikita Lytkin and believed that their communication should be prohibited, because, in her opinion, Lytkin was a bad influence on her son.
Nikita Lytkin Nikita Lytkin was born on March 24, 1993. His great-grandparents were hydraulic builders, and participated in the construction of the Uglich and Irkutsk hydropower stations, while his mother Marina worked as an employee at a shoe store. Like Artyom Anoufriev, his father was absent. His father, Nikita Vakhtangovich Lytkin, was of Ossetian ethnicity and abandoned the family when Nikita was just a toddler. Vakhtang remarried and had another son, hence Nikita's younger half-brother. A few years later, Vakhtang's second wife passed away. His mother's death pertubed Nikita's adolescent, grief-stricken brother so much, he committed suicide via a firearm. Soon after, the father returned to the family, but his severe clinical depression, caused by the death of his second wife and the suicide of his second son, did not allow him to establish contact with Nikita. His father later returned to the family sporadically, leaving Lytkin even more disappointed each time he left. The last time he saw him was at 16, but the two found it difficult to communicate. The overlap of Nikita’s behavior, his brother’s suicide, and their father's severe clinical depression strongly point toward a complex mix of genetic vulnerability and environmental trauma. Nikita's father never made a public statement or legal declaration regarding his son's crimes.
Outwardly, Lytkin behaved quietly and calmly, but, according to his mother, he grew up very closed and uncommunicative. If guests came to visit, Lytkin preferred not to appear and each time went to his room. In childhood, he was often caught painting walls at the entrance of the house. In elementary school, Lytkin had a friend named Artur Lysenko, who helped him adapt among his peers. "He treated him like an object. But he helped him a lot - helped him to adapt. Nikita could not refuse, did not know how to say no. He had no option. I taught him to be able to say this very no. And when he learned that, he stopped being friends with Artur," Lytkin's mother commented on their relationship.
Prior to the 5th grade, Lytkin was a good student, had exemplary behavior, often participated in creative contests and received commendable letters, his hobby being video games. In 2004, Lytkin enrolled in the mathematics class, due to high test scores, however, his mother later stated the other children did not accept him. He met Anoufriev, who was a year older, at Lysenko's birthday party. By that time, Lytkin was in a state of deep depression, and only decided to entrust all of his problems to Anoufriev, since he received support from him in return. According to Lytkin's mother, since the other boys did not like Anoufriev, Lytkin gradually began to lose previous friends, because Anoufriev's unfriendly attitude began to spread to him, but the teenager did not worry about it, as he considered his relationships with previous friends as "fake children's friendships." Meanwhile, Artur Lysenko said in court that Lytkin lost friends due to his quick change in behavior, which was expressed once when Lytkin came to school, he did not greet anyone, and then completely closed himself. According to unverified claims from Lysenko, this was due to the fact that Lytkin was very jealous of classmates from richer families and more stable home lives. The lack of socialization of the teenager resulted in his classmates bullying him; Lysenko said at the trial that there would be no conflict if Lytkin had learned to fight back, but instead he would answer "die", because of which for 5 years Lytkin's school name was "Jimbo" (referring to the character Jimbo Jones from the American animated series The Simpsons, a grim and cruel teenager).
Together with Anoufriev, Lytkin formed a punk rock band called Злые Гномы (English: Evil Dwarfs). This group did not last long, but managed to release one full-length album in 2008 entitled Чёрные полосы крови (English: Black Streaks of Blood). Soon after, the duo created another new group; this time a noise band called Расчленённая ПугачОва (English: Dismembered PugachOva). The lyrics of both bands centered around violence and obscene language, Dismembered PugachOva in particular tried to be deliberately offensive with its song titles and lyrics which was a characteristic that was heavily inspired by the American grindcore band Anal Cunt—a band that the pair even covered a song from on one of the many digital releases that Lytkin subsequently uploaded to the Internet. Few acquaintances knew about their musical activities, since Lytkin did not show the slightest signs of aggression, sadism or interest in heavy music. According to Anoufriev, Lytkin could not stand up for himself and often gave up to the offenders. At the time of the killings, Anoufriev was Lytkin's only friend, and he was very dependent on their friendship. In turn, Lytkin was also Anoufriev's only friend at the time.
In the 8th grade he began to skip school and, unlike Anoufriev, was expelled after nine classes, entering college twice afterwards—first in energy, then in construction in 2009. In the first case, he was expelled for academic failure, after he failed to pass the first session; in the second, Lytkin had a conflict with his classmates when they began to bully him, one of his classmates patronized him, so in return he burglarized his house and stole money and belongings. Lytkin's mother filed a police report but later withdrew it, not wanting him to be imprisoned. After this, Lytkin stopped attending classes.
As a child, Lytkin and his mother attended church for two years and both were baptized, but over time Marina began paying more attention to work, going to church less and less. Then Lytkin himself began to reject the church. For some time he was engaged in music, painting and kickboxing, but then gave it all up, devoting all his free time to regular visits on social networks. He had a lag in psychological development since childhood. Psychologists had advised his mother to give him more freedom and not to restrict his personal space; however, as time passed, Lytkin's state of mind began to deteriorate, and several years before the killings he began to be ashamed of his mother, trying to avoid her at all costs.
On November 30, 2021, Lytkin slashed his wrists at the Correctional Colony No. 7 in Angarsk. He was found dead in the early morning of December 1, 2021, having served ten years of his sentence. Initially sentenced to 24 years in prison by judges, the Supreme Court of Russia lowered his sentence to 20 years in prison, which would have resulted in his release in 2031. He was 28 years old at the time of his death.
Crimes Background and motives