False Director-rapist called the girls for screen tests, but he was given a monument outside the window

She didn't know the address. I couldn't remember the way to the apartment. In the memory there is only a huge bearded face on a metal disk, which the girl saw from the window. The detectives recognized the monument to Ho Chi Minh near the metro "Academic". This detail gave them an accurate search area for the first time and helped find Valery Asratyan. For two years, he posed as a film director and invited girls to “tests”. The investigation linked him to 17 rapes, two murders and six attempted murders.

In the late 1980s, an offer to star in a movie could outweigh caution. Asratian understood that.

He got acquainted with young women and underage girls near the “Children’s World”, GUM and TSUM, on the Kuznetsk Bridge, Pushkin Square and at the Bolshoi Theatre. He introduced himself as the director of Mosfilm by Eduard Lvovich and showed a fake ID.

For each interviewee there was a film. One Asratyan talked about the international picture and shooting abroad, others offered a role in the continuation of the popular film. He dressed well, talked confidently about the movie and didn't look like a man to be feared.

The meeting ended with an invitation to a film test. The girl was brought to an ordinary Moscow apartment and offered a drink with potent drugs. When she lost her ability to resist, violence began.

Asratyan filmed what was happening on camera. Some of the victims he held for several days. Then he took money, jewelry and clothes, gave drugs again and left the girls near the railway stations or in other parts of the city.

The camera was working. There was no movie.

One of the first known episodes occurred in 1988. A minor girl from Noginsk came to Moscow for shopping. In the center of the capital, a representative man approached her and offered to star in a movie.

After “tests” the girl was found near the station Podolsk. She was under the influence of powerful substances and remembered almost nothing. The victim was able to tell investigators about the director, the apartment and the violence committed over her, but she could not describe the attacker.

Then there were other girls with similar stories. The stranger talked about the movie, showed his ID and invited him to audition. After the drink, consciousness became confused, and further events fell out of memory.

The victims were found in different places. No one could give an exact address. There were isolated words, obscure images and a sense that the person they were looking for was really connected to cinema.

The detectives realized that one criminal was acting. Asratyan, meanwhile, changed places of dating, invented new films and left the girls as far away from the apartment as possible.

Valery Asratyan was born in 1958 in Yerevan. He received pedagogical education, studied preschool psychology. For some time he worked as a psychologist in a specialized boarding school. In 1981 he married a Muscovite and moved to the capital.

Before the beginning of the series “film tests” he had already been tried twice for sex crimes against minors. After his release, Asratyan returned to Moscow.

There he met Marina Agayeva and settled with her. Together with the woman lived underage daughter Tatiana.

According to investigators, the mother and daughter helped to support the legend of the shooting. They portrayed members of the film group and met invited girls in the apartment. Their presence removed suspicions: outside the door, the victim saw not a single man, but a woman and a teenager.

The investigation also established that Agayeva purchased drugs with which Asratyan intoxicated the victims. The woman was later sentenced to ten years in prison. Tatiana was not prosecuted.

The scheme looked thoughtful. Asratyan had an ID, a camera, an apartment and people who confirmed the legend. The girl wasn't dragged inside by force. She was urged to enter voluntarily.

The first testimony led the police to the film studio. The victims were sure they had met a real director. Investigators checked Mosfilm employees and searched for a person whose name was on the ID card.

There was no such director. The document was forged.

Then the police began to look for a man who only portrayed a movie worker. Employees in plainclothes were on duty near major shops, theaters and on central streets. They depicted visiting girls who might be interested in the proposal to shoot.

Asratyan did not fall into the set traps. The attacks continued.

Over time, memory began to return to some victims. They came again for interrogation and supplemented the previous testimony. One of the girls was able to draw Asratyan. Later, there were photo sketches of the false director himself, Marina Agayeva and her daughter.

Now the police had faces. There was no address.

At first, Asratyan relied on the action of drugs. He hoped the victims would not remember him or his apartment. Later, that was not enough for him.

The attacks turned into murders. The criminal chronicles of the case include two dead and six women who survived the assassination attempts. Asratyan acted in different ways and left victims in different areas so that the crimes did not develop into one series.

Investigators continued to search for the rapist, who posed as the director. They did not yet know the full extent of the case.

The turning point came after the discovery of a seriously injured girl near the Tsaritsino station. Asratyan considered her dead, but the victim was saved.

During treatment, individual episodes began to return to her memory. The girl could not name the street or the house, but remembered what she saw from the window of the apartment. In front of her was an unusual monument: a large bearded face on a round metal disk.

There was only one such monument in Moscow. He stood in Ho Chi Minh Square near the Academic Metro Station.

Detectives finally have a search area.

The operatives established surveillance of buildings from the windows of which one could see the monument. Soon, a man appeared near one of the houses, looking like a photo sketch. There was an adult woman and a girl next to him.

The suspect was not immediately taken. The trinity was followed.

Asratyan went to the center of Moscow. Near the Bolshoi Theatre, he noticed another girl, approached her, showed her ID and offered to pass a screen test.

She agreed.

Asratyan was detained when he tried to take a new acquaintance to the “test”. Another attack was prevented.

After the arrest, the man testified about the murders. Only then did the full scale of the series open to the detectives. Before that, they were looking for a rapist with a fake ID, but did not associate the deaths of women with him.

In one proceeding, the testimony of survivors, examinations, Asratyan’s confessions and physical evidence were collected. Among them were fake certificates and literature on the effects of drugs.

The investigation had to combine the events that Asratyan deliberately spread to different districts of Moscow and the region. The victims were found near different stations. Some were able to complete the readings only months later, when the memory was partially restored.

Behind the legend of the screen test was the same order of action. Asratyan lured girls into the apartment, deprived of the ability to resist, raped and robbed. He later killed the victims or tried to do so.

The Moscow City Court sentenced on June 18, 1992. Asratyan was found guilty of murder and rape and sentenced to death.

Marina Agayeva was sentenced to ten years in prison. Asratyan was executed in 1996.

For two years he calculated that the victims would not remember his face, road and address. But one of them looked out the window. The monument, which Asratyan could neither remove nor forge, narrowed the search to several yards.

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