Every adult and capable person knows that the law of the state in which he lives must be observed. But in exceptional cases, the punishment provided for by law may not be enough. We are talking about private and very rare situations that invariably end up in world history. For example, in 1964, juvenile criminal Arkady Neyland was sentenced and executed in Leningrad. What did this teenager do and why did the highest officials of the state decide to violate the current legislation of the RSFSR for his sake?

Neyland Family History

In 1949, Arkady Neyland was born in Leningrad. The story of his family is typical of its time. The boy lived with his parents, brothers and sister in a very ordinary communal apartment. Mother and stepfather often drank and spent little time with their children. Physical punishment, often unreasonably cruel, was considered the norm in this family. My mother worked as a nurse, and my stepfather worked as a mechanic, so there was no talk of material wealth. As Arkady himself admitted (after his arrest), he and his brothers and sister were often malnourished, engaged in vagrancy, and began stealing from the very beginning. early childhood. From the age of 7, the boy was registered with the police for hooliganism and petty robbery. At the age of 12, he was expelled from secondary school, and his mother sent his unlucky son to a boarding school. But even in this institution, Arkady “didn’t fit in” - he often clashed with his peers and tried to run away. As soon as Neyland graduated from 6th grade, he was expelled. After which he was sent to work at the Lenpischemash production association. However, Arkady was not able to establish himself positively in this type of activity either. The guy was caught in petty thefts and truancy, but because of his age, he managed to avoid serious punishments and trials.

A big “deal” for the sake of a “new” life

Until 1964, Neyland's biggest crimes were the thefts from the Soyuzpechat kiosk and the hairdresser's. But all this seemed like a trifle to the ambitious teenager; in addition, most of the offenses ended in inevitable “visits” to the police station. In January 1964, Arkady Vladimirovich Neiland, together with a like-minded accomplice, decided to do something really “big” and take possession of a large amount of money at one time. Burglary seemed like the ideal crime for the teenagers. All that remained was to find a suitable object. The attackers took a liking to house No. 3 on Sestroretskaya Street. The villains began to prepare for the upcoming theft in advance. On January 24, 1964, they walked around the entire entrance of the selected building and talked with the residents under an innocent pretext. In one of the apartments, no one opened the door, and then the criminals picked up the key and unlocked it themselves. Having committed a burglary, Arkady and his accomplice calmly left the apartment, but immediately encountered its owner, who made a fuss when she recognized her belongings. As a result, the thieves were detained.

A crime that might not have happened

For yet another theft, the teenagers were traditionally interrogated and left to wait in the office. It was during this pause that Arkady Neiland calmly stood up and left. What’s amazing is that none of the law enforcement officers paid attention to him or tried to detain him. The criminal came to his home and stole one that was distinguished by its light weight and size, as well as its high-quality sharpening. Arkady immediately realized that it was impossible to stay in his parents’ apartment. For several days he spent the night in basements and attics, never ceasing to monitor the chosen apartment. According to some versions, the idea of ​​committing a robbery and murder came to the teenager’s mind spontaneously, during his last arrest. But if we evaluate all the facts together, we can make the assumption that Arkady Neyland and his accomplice came up with and planned everything in advance. Be that as it may, on January 27, 1964, the criminal went “on the job.” And just think: if he had failed to escape from the station three days earlier, or if he had been placed in prison for earlier crimes, the tragedy could have been avoided.

Brutal murder on Sestroretskaya street

The juvenile criminal watched the chosen “rich” apartment for several days. By the time of the attack, he already knew for sure that during the day the only people inside were a middle-aged housewife and her little son. As Arkady Vladimirovich Neyland later confessed during interrogation, he committed the crime, having decided in advance that he would kill the owner and, most likely, the child too. The moral side of this issue did not bother him, and as for the possible punishment, the attacker experienced by personal example more than once that the judicial system of the RSFSR treats teenagers loyally. Arkady rang the doorbell of the chosen apartment, and it was immediately opened for him. The owner, Larisa Kupreeva, recognized the gloomy young man who had come in a few days ago and became wary. The criminal himself also hesitated and uttered some completely unconvincing excuse for the visit, in response to which the door was closed in front of his nose. Then Arkady waited for a while, called again, introduced himself as a postman, changing his voice, and when the door opened, he immediately attacked the owner of the apartment with an ax. A struggle ensued; the woman understood that she was responsible for the life of her own son, and desperately resisted. At one point, she even almost managed to snatch the ax from the criminal’s hands. But then Arkady threw Larisa into a chair and dealt a series of blows to the head. After the owner of the apartment fell silent, the criminal dealt with her son in cold blood. Then he walked around the rooms and collected valuables, after which he did not disdain to have a snack in the kitchen. Before leaving the apartment, Arkady committed arson, hoping that the fire would destroy all traces of his atrocities. However, this expectation was not realized. The fire brigade arrived quickly enough: the neighbors suspected something was wrong when they smelled something burning in the entrance. The fire was put out fairly quickly. But when firefighters entered the apartment, they were shocked. Dead bodies, traces of blood and general chaos in the rooms were clearly evident. In addition, it was even possible to detect the fingerprints of the unknown person, which later became important evidence against the main suspect.

To the sea, for a new life!

15-year-old Arkady Neyland is not a maniac, but simply an unfortunate child who grew up in terrible conditions and with a complete lack of concepts of morality and conscience. In their official statements, he himself and his would-be accomplice said that they wanted to commit a big theft in order to use the proceeds to go to the sea (to Sukhumi or Tbilisi, according to various sources) and relax there, and then start a new one, law-abiding life. Of course, these plans were not destined to come true. Immediately after committing the crime, Arkady handed over the stolen items to the storage room at the station. And after walking around a bit, I started looking for tickets. There was no way to take the train in Leningrad that day long distance in a southerly direction, so the criminal purchased a ticket to Moscow, hoping to make a transfer there. And he succeeded, but when leaving the train on the platform of the southern city of Sukhumi, Neyland Arkady was detained and taken back to Leningrad.

Confessions of a minor fanatic

The criminal was only surprised that he was identified and found 4 days later. Arkady had several important pieces of evidence, in particular, a Zorkiy camera with several noticeable scratches, stolen from a robbed apartment, the passports of Kupreev and his adopted daughter, in addition, there were dried blood stains on the killer’s clothes and some things. Neyland himself was in shock and did not even try to deny it. Quite quickly he began to cooperate with the investigation. Arkady Neyland, whose biography includes a huge number of minor offenses and arrests with the police, thought he knew what could await him. The whole point is that the legislation in force in the country did not provide for capital punishment - the death penalty - for minors. Accordingly, when deciding to commit theft with murder, Arkady thought that the maximum he would face was a prison sentence. During interrogations, Neiland told in detail how he planned his crime and killed a woman and child.

The wealthy apartment turned out to be ordinary

This crime shocked the public throughout the country with its brutality and senselessness. In his confessions, the killer repeated several times that he planned the robbery of a “rich” apartment with the subsequent murder of witnesses. However, the injured Kupreevs were the most ordinary family. It is difficult to say on what exact principle Arkady Neyland himself chose the target for attack. 1964 was a year in which, in principle, there were not so many truly wealthy families in Leningrad. And looking for something like this in the most ordinary house was a mistake from the very beginning. However, what to expect from a young man who grew up in communal apartments at the very social level? According to some versions, the guy lost his head when he saw the front door covered with leatherette, a color TV and a housewife leading an “idle” lifestyle.

Inhuman cruelty and cynicism

During interrogations, the suspect himself will tell you that he struck the first blows to his victim on the arms and shoulders, and during the struggle he had time to change his mind and leave the woman alive. The fight between the victim and the attacker was indeed long and noisy; many neighbors heard suspicious sounds. Neyland himself realized that the sounds of the struggle were quite loud, so at the first opportunity he turned on the owner’s tape recorder in order to muffle them. The child, who was “getting underfoot” while the criminal was killing his mother, was hacked to death by Arkady in several blows. However, the killer even repented of this act, saying that he regretted that “he had to do this.” The case of Arkady Neyland received such a wide public response precisely because of the cynicism of the criminal. After the double murder, the attacker searched the entire apartment for valuables, and then took a series of obscene photographs of the murdered woman’s body using a stolen camera, planning to sell them as pornography in the future. After that, Arkady calmly washed himself in the master bath, went to the kitchen and prepared lunch for himself, using the supplies of his victims. The proximity of two cooling bodies did not spoil his appetite at all. And only after refreshing himself, the killer set fire to the apartment, turned on the gas and hurried to leave. In his defense, the criminal will also say that Larisa herself is to blame for what happened. Like, if she had not defended herself, perhaps she would not have had to be killed...

Capital punishment for a minor

When the full circumstances of this crime became known to the public, reactions were mixed. Many argued that Arkady Neyland was a maniac, a fanatic and not worthy of life as such. The criminal himself aggravated his situation by saying during interrogations that he knew that he had nothing to fear. However, Arkady Neyland was shot in Leningrad in 1964 by court verdict. Many residents of our country asked for just such a punishment for the killer; they sent their letters and official petitions to the prosecutor's office and even personally to L. I. Brezhnev and N. S. Khrushchev. All these citizens' appeals were attached to the criminal case. After receiving such a sentence, Arkady Neyland, whose execution was contrary to all current laws of the country, went down in world history. The intelligentsia and lawyers were somewhat dissatisfied that the verdict did not quite fit into legal norms. But one cannot help but notice that this execution was not only demonstrative, but also rational. According to the law, Neiland should have received a prison term and had a real opportunity (with good behavior in the colony) to be released after 5-6 years. Accordingly, society would receive an adult and recidivist criminal at the age of 20, who has a record of not only robbery, hooliganism and theft, but also the murder of a woman and a child.

The name of Arkady Neiland in world history

The story of this juvenile delinquent ends on August 11, 1964. It was on this day that the sentence was carried out and the killer was shot. There are legends that it was very difficult to find performers to carry out the execution. None of the government officials wanted to shoot the teenager. It is worth noting that Arkady Neyland (you can see the photo of the criminal in our article) had a completely ordinary appearance. He sometimes looked sloppy and was poorly dressed, but the overall impression he made was neutral: an average teenager of his time. When the verdict was read in the courtroom, Neiland was not only surprised, but also truly scared. After that, he began to ask for pardon, wrote a cassation appeal, but his request was not granted. At the global level, these events received a two-digit reaction. Civilized countries were amazed at the impudence and cruelty of the criminal, but among jurists there were those who were outraged. The Western public perceived this case and the verdict as oppression of freedom and individual rights by the socialist system. And yet, in order to carry out the sentence, it was necessary to somehow legitimize such a decision. For this purpose, a unique action was carried out: a written survey was conducted among the judges of Leningrad, in which they had to answer whether it was possible to recognize the Resolution of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Court as having retroactive force? Agreement with this thesis meant the permissibility of carrying out the death penalty on a minor. Of course, the judges who participated in the survey immediately understood what the authorities expected from them and voted in the affirmative almost unanimously. It is worth noting that this case is unique in the history of Russia and the whole world. This is why Arkady Neyland (1964 - the year the crime was committed and the murderer was executed) became so “famous”. Unfortunately, he managed to become famous in a bloody way.

Every adult and capable person knows that the law of the state in which he lives must be observed. But in exceptional cases, for particularly serious crimes, the punishment provided by law may not be enough. We are talking about private and very rare situations that invariably end up in world history. For example, in 1964 in Leningrad, juvenile criminal Arkady Neyland was sentenced to death and executed. What did this teenager do and why did the highest officials of the state decide to violate the current legislation of the RSFSR for his sake?

Arkady Neyland was born in 1949 in Leningrad. The story of his family is typical of its time. The boy lived with his parents, brothers and sister in a very ordinary communal apartment. Mother and stepfather often drank and spent little time with their children. Physical punishment, often unreasonably cruel, was considered the norm in this family.

My mother worked as a nurse, and my stepfather worked as a mechanic, so there was no talk of material wealth. As Arkady himself admitted (after his arrest), he and his brothers and sister were often malnourished, engaged in vagrancy, and began stealing from early childhood. From the age of 7, the boy was registered with the police for hooliganism and petty robbery. At the age of 12, he was expelled from secondary school, and his mother sent his unlucky son to a boarding school. But even in this institution, Arkady “didn’t fit in” - he often clashed with his peers and tried to run away.

As soon as Neyland graduated from 6th grade, he was expelled. After which he was sent to work at the Lenpischemash production association. However, Arkady was not able to establish himself positively in this type of activity either. The guy was caught in petty thefts and truancy, but because of his age, he managed to avoid serious punishments and trials.

Big deal

In October-December 1963, a 14-year-old teenager committed several offenses for which he was quickly convicted. In particular, at this time he tried to rob a woman, and then a lonely man (both times unsuccessfully), committed theft from the Soyuzpechat kiosk, several thefts from the premises of a bathhouse, a hairdresser and a service center. In addition, Arkady stole the only suit and money from one of the brothers, although this episode was not included in the criminal case brought against Neyland by the Zhdanovsky district prosecutor's office.

But all this seemed like a trifle to the ambitious teenager; in addition, most offenses ended in inevitable “visits” to the police station. In January 1964, Arkady Vladimirovich Neiland, together with a like-minded accomplice, decided to do something really “big” and take possession of a large amount of money at one time. Burglary seemed like the ideal crime for the teenagers. All that remained was to find a suitable object.

The attackers took a liking to house No. 3 on Sestroretskaya Street. The villains began to prepare for the upcoming theft in advance. On January 24, 1964, they walked around the entire entrance of the selected building and talked with residents under the innocent pretext of collecting waste paper. So they noticed apartment number 9, the doors of which were opened by a young girl, Larisa Kupreeva. Through the doorway, the criminals saw that the apartment had a TV and rich furnishings. After talking with her a little, the juvenile delinquents moved on, but remembered this apartment in order to return here in the future.

Further, in apartment number 7, no one opened the door, and then the criminals picked up the key and unlocked it themselves. Having committed a burglary, Arkady and his accomplice calmly left the apartment. In the courtyard, however, they encountered the janitor Orlova, who, with the help of passers-by, detained the suspicious couple.

Neyland again found himself in the familiar building of the Zhdanovsky District Prosecutor's Office, where a new criminal case was opened against him. Neiland in this situation showed unexpected impudence and presence of mind. After the assistant prosecutor told him to wait for the continuation of the interrogation in the corridor, Arkady calmly left the office and left the prosecutor's office. True, without a hat - his headdress remained in the office. What’s amazing is that none of the law enforcement officers paid attention to him or tried to detain him. The criminal went to his home and stole a tourist hatchet, which was distinguished by its light weight and size, as well as a fairly high-quality sharpening. Arkady Neyland immediately realized that it was impossible to stay in his parents’ apartment.

For several days he spent the night in basements and attics, without ceasing to monitor the “rich” apartment number 9 on Sestroretskaya Street. According to some versions, the idea of ​​committing a robbery and murder came to the teenager’s mind spontaneously, during his last arrest. But if we evaluate all the facts together, we can make the assumption that Arkady Neyland and his accomplice came up with and planned everything in advance.

Be that as it may, on January 27, 1964, the criminal went “on the job.” And just think: if he had failed to escape from the station three days earlier, or if he had been placed in a correctional facility for earlier crimes, the tragedy could have been avoided.

The juvenile criminal watched the chosen “rich” apartment for several days. By the time of the attack, he already knew for sure that during the day only a middle-aged housewife and her little son were inside. As Arkady Neyland later confesses during interrogation, he committed the crime, deciding in advance that he would kill the owner and, most likely, the child too. The moral side of this issue did not bother him, and as for the possible punishment, the attacker experienced personally more than once that the judicial system of the RSFSR treats teenagers loyally.

Robbery with murder

Arkady rang the doorbell of the chosen apartment, and it was immediately opened for him. The owner, Larisa Kupreeva, recognized the gloomy young man who had come in a few days ago and became wary. The criminal himself also hesitated and uttered some completely unconvincing excuse for the visit, in response to which the door was closed in front of his nose. Then Arkady waited for a while, called again, introduced himself as a postman, changing his voice, and when the door opened, he immediately attacked the owner of the apartment with an ax.

A struggle ensued; the woman understood that she was responsible for the life of her own son, and desperately resisted. At one point, she even almost managed to snatch the ax from the criminal’s hands. But then Arkady threw Larisa into a chair and dealt a series of blows to the head. After the owner of the apartment fell silent, the criminal dealt with her son Georgiy in cold blood.

Then he walked around the rooms and collected valuables, after which he did not disdain to have a snack in the kitchen. Before leaving the apartment, Arkady committed arson, hoping that the fire would destroy all traces of his atrocities. However, this expectation was not realized. The fire brigade arrived quickly enough: the neighbors suspected something was wrong when they smelled something burning in the entrance.

The fire was put out fairly quickly. But when firefighters entered the apartment, they were shocked. Dead bodies, traces of blood and general chaos in the rooms were clearly evident. In addition, it was even possible to detect the fingerprints of the unknown person, which later became important evidence against the main suspect.

Initially, the husband of the deceased Larisa Kupreeva came under strong suspicion of involvement in the crime. The double murder seemed too well thought out and unmotivatedly cruel. Indirect arguments in favor of the fact that the robbery only disguised the murder were the insignificant value of the missing property, the absence of a crime weapon, and the fact that the front door was not broken into or opened with a master key. In fact, the killer left the crime weapon in the apartment, but this became clear only on the third day, when forensic scientists found a smoked ax on the balcony (it was at the epicenter of the fire, its handle burned out and firefighters swept it onto the balcony along with other debris).

For a new life

15-year-old Arkady Neyland is not a maniac, but simply an unfortunate child who grew up in terrible conditions and with a complete lack of concepts of morality and conscience. In their official statements, he himself and his would-be accomplice said that they wanted to commit a big theft in order to use the proceeds to go to the sea (to Sukhumi or Tbilisi, according to various sources) and relax there, and then start a new one, law-abiding life. Of course, these plans were not destined to come true.

Immediately after committing the crime, Arkady handed over the stolen items to a storage room at the station, and bought them with the money winter hat, a bottle of champagne and cognac. Then, after walking around a bit, I started looking for tickets. In Leningrad that day it was not possible to take a long-distance train heading south, so the criminal purchased a ticket to Moscow, hoping to make a transfer there. And he succeeded.

In the capital, Arkady Neyland went on a sightseeing tour of the city, met the young tramp Nesterov, with whom he moved further south. On January 30, 1964, the couple got off the train in Sukhumi and literally 10 minutes later fell into the hands of a police patrol. When asked by the police: “What’s your last name?”, Neyland, without hesitation, blurted out: “Nesterov!” Which, of course, greatly impressed his new friend, the real Nesterov. Neyland Arkady was detained and taken back to Leningrad.

The criminal was only surprised that he was identified and found 4 days later. Arkady had several important pieces of evidence, in particular, a Zorkiy camera with several noticeable scratches, stolen from a robbed apartment, the passports of Kupreev and his adopted daughter, in addition, there were dried blood stains on the killer’s clothes and some things.

Neyland himself was in shock and did not even try to deny it. Quite quickly he began to cooperate with the investigation. Arkady Neyland, whose biography includes a huge number of minor offenses and arrests with the police, thought he knew what could await him. The thing is that the current legislation in the country did not provide for capital punishment - the death penalty - for minors. Accordingly, when deciding to commit theft and murder, Arkady thought that the maximum he would face was a prison sentence in a juvenile colony. During interrogations, Neyland described in detail how he planned his crime and killed the woman and child.

Cruelty and cynicism

This crime shocked the public throughout the country with its brutality and senselessness. In his confessions, the killer repeated several times that he planned the robbery of a “rich” apartment with the subsequent murder of witnesses. However, the injured Kupreevs were the most ordinary family. It is difficult to say on what exact principle Arkady Neyland himself chose the target for attack. 1964 was a year in which, in principle, there were not so many truly wealthy families in Leningrad. And looking for something like this in the most ordinary house was a mistake from the very beginning.

However, what to expect from a young man who grew up in communal apartments at the very social level? According to some versions, the guy lost his head when he saw the front door covered with leatherette, a color TV and a housewife leading an “idle” lifestyle.

During interrogations, the suspect himself will tell you that he struck the first blows to his victim on the arms and shoulders, and during the struggle he had time to change his mind and leave the woman alive. The fight between the victim and the attacker was indeed long and noisy; many neighbors heard suspicious sounds. Arkady Neyland himself realized that the sounds of the struggle were quite loud, so at the first opportunity he turned on the owner’s tape recorder in order to muffle them. The child, who was “getting underfoot” while the criminal was killing his mother, was hacked to death by Arkady in several blows. However, the killer even repented of this act, saying that he regretted that “he had to do this.”

The case of Arkady Neyland received such a wide public response precisely because of the cynicism of the criminal. After the double murder, the attacker searched the entire apartment for valuables, and then took a series of obscene photographs of the murdered woman’s body using a stolen camera, planning to sell them as pornography in the future. After that, Arkady calmly washed himself in the master bath, went to the kitchen and prepared lunch for himself, using the supplies of his victims. The proximity of two cooling bodies did not spoil his appetite at all. And only after refreshing himself, the killer set fire to the apartment, turned on the gas and hurried to leave. In his defense, the criminal will also say that Larisa herself is to blame for what happened. Like, if she had not defended herself, perhaps she would not have had to be killed.

Capital punishment for a teenager

When the full circumstances of this crime became known to the public, reactions were mixed. Many argued that Arkady Neiland was a fanatic and not worthy of life as such. The criminal himself aggravated his situation by saying during interrogations that he knew that he had nothing to fear. However, Arkady Neyland was shot in Leningrad in 1964 by court verdict.

Many residents of the country asked for just such a punishment for the killer; they sent their letters and official petitions to the prosecutor's office and even personally to L. I. Brezhnev and N. S. Khrushchev. All these citizens' appeals were attached to the criminal case. After receiving such a sentence, Arkady Neyland, whose execution was contrary to all current laws of the country, went down in world history.

The intelligentsia and lawyers were somewhat dissatisfied that the verdict did not quite fit into legal norms. But one cannot help but notice that this execution was not only demonstrative, but also rational. According to the law, Neiland should have received a prison term and had a real opportunity (with good behavior in the colony) to be released after 5-6 years. Accordingly, society would receive an adult and recidivist criminal at the age of 20, who has a record of not only robbery, hooliganism and theft, but also the murder of a woman and a child.

Completed story

The story of this juvenile delinquent ends on August 11, 1964. It was on this day that the sentence was carried out and the killer was shot. There are legends that it was very difficult to find performers to carry out the execution. None of the government officials wanted to shoot the teenager. It is worth noting that Arkady Neyland had a completely ordinary appearance. He sometimes looked sloppy and was poorly dressed, but the overall impression he made was neutral: an average teenager of his time.

When the verdict was read out in the courtroom, Arkady Neyland was not only surprised, but also truly frightened. After that, he began to ask for pardon, wrote a cassation appeal, but his request was not granted. At the global level, these events received a two-digit reaction. Civilized countries were amazed at the impudence and cruelty of the criminal, but among jurists there were those who were outraged.

The Western public perceived this case and the verdict as oppression of freedom and individual rights by the socialist system. And yet, in order to carry out the sentence, it was necessary to somehow legitimize such a decision. For this purpose, a unique action was carried out: a written survey was conducted among the judges of Leningrad, in which they had to answer whether it was possible to recognize the Resolution of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Court as having retroactive force?

Agreement with this thesis meant the permissibility of carrying out the death penalty on a minor. Of course, the judges who participated in the survey immediately understood what the authorities expected from them and voted in the affirmative almost unanimously. It is worth noting that this case is unique in the history of Russia and the whole world. This is why Arkady Neyland became so “famous”. Unfortunately, he managed to become famous in a bloody way.

He was executed at the age of 14 on Khrushchev’s personal orders. His name was Arkady Neyland. He was a famous child killer.

In 1964, the whole of Leningrad feared and hated him. His own mother abandoned him. He was shot at the age of 14 on Khrushchev’s personal order. This is the only reliably known case when a minor was sentenced to capital punishment in the USSR - contrary to all norms of international law. It took me a year and a half to find the true story of Arkady Neiland. Three volumes of the criminal case, classified “Top Secret,” are securely hidden in the archives of the St. Petersburg City Court.

Murder on Sestroretskaya

At noon on January 27, 1964, the Leningrad fire department received a signal: an apartment on Sestroretskaya Street, building 3 was on fire. The firefighters who arrived found the body of a woman in the room. She was struck 17 times with an axe. There also lay there, all chopped up - and absolutely gray-haired! - a boy with the face of an old man. Next to the corpses of 37-year-old housewife Larisa Mikhailovna Kupreeva and her 3-year-old son Yurochka, clear fingerprints were found - the killer left traces after being smeared in homemade jam. On the bed lay a bitten loaf of sausage, which the criminal had forgotten when running away. But he took with him oranges and apples from the refrigerator, a Zorki camera, bonds, money:

Lonely Christmas tree with charred tinsel. Tricycle near the balcony. The tape recorder is on full blast: the killer turned it on so that no one could hear the screams of his victims. He also turned on the gas, four burners - they say, the fire will cover all traces. The time for the crime was chosen ideally: morning, neighbors at work. The detectives pulled the first clue thanks to the janitor Aunt Lyuba. “I was collecting food waste when I saw a strange guy on the stairs,” she told the prosecutor’s office. “He was standing in profile, I only saw a green coat. He’s strange. I washed the bins and came back, but he was still standing...”

The name of the mysterious stranger has been established. 14-year-old Arkady Neyland lived across the street from the Kupreevs, in the same house, on the floor above, where he had a bosom friend. It was he who recognized Arkashka from the description...
Four days later, Abkhaz police detained an unknown teenager in Sukhumi wearing a green coat with brown blood stains. They found a Zorkiy camera on him. On the film is the dead Larisa Kupreeva in an indecent pose. Then Arkady will say that he wanted to make pornographic postcards and sell them for 20 kopecks apiece. And with the money you earn, you can buy something to eat.
But at first the detainee swore something completely different: “My name is Vitalik Nesterov, I ran away from home,” he repeated in the orphanage. In the explanatory note, “Vitalik” laid out everything as written, but at the end of the sheet he accidentally scribbled his real name - Arkady Neyland...
A boy nicknamed Pyshka

A courtyard similar to all the courtyards of our Soviet childhood. June rain smells like wet leaves. The boys, smoking on the bench, see off the late girls with impudent whistles. As if forty years had not passed...
It was here that Arkashka Neyland, nicknamed Pyshka, lived. He was nicknamed so for his loose, “womanish” figure and weak-willed character. In the courtyard company, Arkashka was for the “six”, he was often beaten, and he accumulated anger within himself. He absolutely hated his own mother. "She's a witch
- snapped during interrogation. “She doesn’t love me, she sent me to a boarding school so that she doesn’t get in the way.”
In fact, one could only feel sorry for Anna Neiland. Twice widow. The first husband, beloved, desired, died in the Finnish campaign.
He left his son in his arms. Anna married again and had a second child. But the Great Patriotic War began, and the second husband died a heroic death.
She got together with the St. Petersburg hard worker Vladimir Vladimirovich Neyland rather out of desperation. Also, out of despair, she gave birth to children of the same age: a daughter, Lyubasha, and a son, Arkady. My husband worked at a beer factory and rarely came home sober at night. I hung locks on the food cabinets so that the children would not eat too much. He drove his wife so hard that the neighbors in the communal apartment knocked on their wall. However, the neighbors did not wash other people's dirty laundry in public - they had enough of their own. They had nothing to do with Anya’s hungry and ill-mannered children.
Anna became sick with pain and resentment, meanwhile Arkashka completely got out of hand. He was perhaps her most difficult child. He spent whole days reading books, signed up, probably, in all the surrounding libraries, but did not keep up at school, although he was considered not without ability. “When I was little, I was often left at home alone. One day I wanted to eat and lit the gas without matches.
My father came back and beat me badly. I firmly remembered that this could set the apartment on fire and someday it would be useful to me,” Arkady talked about his childhood during interrogations.
Father Vladimir Neyland spoke differently about the same incident: “I beat him up, and Arkashka left home. When he returned, he didn’t look in my direction for several weeks. Since then, I swore off beating my son. I just don’t understand who he’s targeting so evil and secretive? There were no murderers in our family.”
Thousands of boys whose fathers drink and whose stressed-out mothers fail to cope with their responsibilities nevertheless grow up to be decent people. But, apparently, a genetic failure occurred in the Neyland family - Arkady was rapidly turning into an uncontrollable wolf cub.
There were still 10 years left before the murder on Sestroretskaya. It was still possible to stop the guy, take him in the other direction, straighten him out like a sprout of a crooked tree... But no one cared about the boy.
“I started stealing at four, smoking at six, and at seven I was registered in the children’s room of the police,” he said
Arkady. “I dreamed of growing up and going to work at the post office to steal money orders. With this money I would travel... "
At night, the nervous Arkashka wet his bed. At the age of 12, his exhausted mother sent him to a boarding school. There they found out about enuresis, and Arkady immediately became an outcast among his peers. But you kicked him out not for this, but for theft.
At the age of 13, he first ran away to Moscow. I wanted to find my aunt and meet her New Year, and then rush to the Far East as a researcher. He was caught and returned home.
A year later he made another escape. He was already 14.
“When Arkashka was caught again in Moscow, I didn’t want to take him back,” said Vladimir Neyland. “And the police answered me: “Where are we going to take him? He hasn't done anything yet."
At this time, Arkady Neyland already had two robberies in the workshop of the Len-Pishmash plant, several cases of hooliganism - he molested girls, beat passers-by on the street with brass knuckles, apartment thefts...
Nevertheless, he was never caught - about his many secret
"exploits" are learned after the murder on Sestroretskaya.
Another life
The police had been looking for Arkady for several days. His teenage accomplice spilled the beans about one of the recent thefts.
Neyland was finally apprehended. On January 24, three days before the murder, he was interrogated at the Zhdanovsky district prosecutor's office. Arkady understood that a colony awaited him. He imagined it as a huge boarding school behind barbed wire, where they would start beating him again for soiling the sheets in his sleep. He didn't want to go to the zone.
... The prosecutor's office investigator only looked out into the corridor for a minute to find out when the "black funnel" would come for the arrested Neyland. This was enough for Arkady to run away again.
But he had nowhere to go. He was not expected at home. And absolutely no one was happy that tomorrow, January 28, he was supposed to turn 15 years old. It was dark in Arkady’s soul: “I wanted to commit some terrible murder out of spite. I thought I would laugh at the police and at the same time get myself money to escape from Leningrad...”
The punks from the Moscow orphanage told him a beautiful fairy tale that in the city of Tbilisi there lives a man who gives homeless wandering boys new birth certificates and gives them a ticket to another life. Neyland wrote down the address of the mythical benefactor in blue pencil on a piece of paper. Now, on the edge of despair, he felt the treasured note in his pocket and began to think about
"deed".
He considered the house on Sestroretskaya Street his “lucky talisman.” It was here that he committed his first robbery: at the age of four he took a colored Chinese lantern from an unfamiliar boy and did not get caught. He decided to carry out his planned murder here.
Arkashka could have been stopped many times: in Moscow in an orphanage, in the Leningrad prosecutor's office. But some dark forces protected him, preparing him for sacrifice.
This house seemed to mock him, teasing him with inaccessible comfort. The warm front door smelled of semolina porridge. Behind the door in apartment No. 9, happy voices were heard - women's and children's. The door was upholstered in expensive leatherette and decorated with a double lock. “So, there’s something to hide,” Arkady spat on the clean floor and held the cabbage hatchet he had stolen from his mother tighter in his hands.
- The apartment is separate, and the woman doesn’t work, she lives with her husband and raises the child. Rich, happy - I hate..."
- Is Valya Sokolov here? - he rang the doorbell. The woman didn’t hear and muttered hastily: “Olya is on the floor below.” Arkady stomped on the stairs. I watched an elderly sneeze-wielding janitor rummage through food waste.
About 15 minutes later I went up to the apartment again: “There’s a telegram for you!” - shouted in a false Basque voice. The hostess opened the door. Tall, plump, in a flannel dressing gown, she looked at him with bewilderment.
Arkashka. "Give me the money!" - He clicked the bolt behind him.
- The woman began to call some Vadim. I realized that it was my husband and tried to open the entrance lock to escape, but my hands were shaking with fear,” Arkady Neyland testified during the investigation. - At that moment a boy jumped out into the hallway. The woman yelped and rushed at me. Then I realized that they were completely alone. I started hitting her with an axe. She shouted to me: “What are you doing?!” I beat her until she fell. Then I beat the boy, who was crying and getting in the way. I think I hit him six times. When he died down, I rushed through the rooms to look for money and food. I found 57 rubles, bought cognac with them, and mentioned the boy and his mother before the train...
To be honest, I feel sorry for the boy now. But then I was angry with the whole world, I even forgot the stolen sausage on the bed.
Execute, cannot be pardoned
The adults judged the child. For your sins.
For years they did not pay attention to how it matured in Arkash
Neilande is a bloody maniac. And the boy became a monster. There was no turning back for him. And society found the only way to stop him - to destroy him. “We don’t want Arkady Neyland to continue killing after being released. Juvenile criminals are hiding behind a clause in the law that does not allow them to be shot,” workers bombarded the Party’s Central Committee with letters.
Unexpectedly, Khrushchev himself intervened in the matter. It ended
"thaw". The era of mercy has brought disappointing results. According to the Central Committee, many dangerous repeat offenders were released on bail in those years. It was believed that labor and the collective would correct murderers and robbers better than camps. But this led to a sharp rise in crime, and the angry Secretary General again demanded to “bend the hooligans to the ram’s horn.”
A series of cruel sentences ensued.
All that remained was to select a juvenile suicide bomber for the first show trial. Arkady Neyland was ideal for this role. “When the verdict was passed, I ended up in the city court on business,” says Olga Nikolaychuk, the oldest employee of the St. Petersburg court archive. “I was interested in looking at this terrible killer. But behind bars I saw a fat boy, clumsy, ugly, intimidated. I even felt sorry for him..."
The Presidium of the Supreme Council adopted a special decree on the specific case of Neyland and imposed capital punishment on the murderer, bypassing the existing ban on “child executions” in the Criminal Code of the RSFSR.
In Neyland's case, everything seemed crystal clear. He was a scoundrel and a donkey. And yet professionals condemned the decision
Khrushchev. “If the state does not comply with the procedural norms it itself has established, then what kind of law-abiding behavior can we expect from ordinary citizens in the future? What example should we educate them by?” - said the lawyers.
In April 1964, the harsh decision came into force, but the execution of Arkady Neyland was postponed. They couldn't find the executioner. Until two secret telegrams arrived from Moscow by special mail: “Why is there still no execution?”
On August 11, 1964, the exemplary sentence was carried out.
All Leningrad newspapers reported this with a feeling of deep satisfaction. The name and age of the killer were included in all textbooks on criminal law - as an interesting legal precedent. A rusty hatchet for chopping cabbage went into eternal storage at the Museum of Forensic Science.
Neiland's parents, who did not even want to see their son during the trial, refused to take a certificate of his death from the registry office.
The triumph of justice has taken place.
But was this the triumph of the Law?
40 years later, no one remembers Arkady Neiland. The old people died. Young people have other interests.
I was in St. Petersburg on the very day when teenagers suspected of murdering a 9-year-old Tajik girl were detained. This atrocity also had a public outcry. True, it’s not so loud anymore - you won’t surprise anyone with juvenile murderers these days.
The maximum that current murderers face, according to new international standards, is 10 years in prison.
Over the past years, society has not found a recipe for how to turn monsters into normal people. The death of Arkady Neiland taught no one anything.
If death can teach you anything at all...

E. SAZHNEVA, "Moskovsky Komsomolets".& 26;

Law enforcement agencies were twice able to isolate the vicious and dangerous teenager from society, but he remained neglected and committed a savage murder Photo from the site murders.ru

Arkady Neyland committed a double murder in Leningrad the day before his 15th birthday - January 27, 1964. He celebrated his birthday on the way to Moscow, where he left by train a few hours after the brutal massacre of a woman and her young son. In the capital, he bought a train ticket to Sukhumi, and while waiting for the train to depart, he toured the city on a tour bus. In a word, he behaved like a Soviet schoolboy from the provinces who was heading through Moscow to the All-Union pioneer camp"Artek".

On January 30, on the platform of the Sukhumi railway station, Neyland was detained by local operatives, who identified him from a reference received from Leningrad. It took four days to uncover the bloody crime, rumors of which instantly spread throughout the northern capital...

The future killer was registered in the children's room of the police when he was not yet 12 years old

The family - Arkady's mother, younger sister, stepfather and his two sons from his first marriage - huddled in one room of a communal apartment. The head of the Neyland family worked as a mechanic at an enterprise, his wife worked as a hospital nurse. Their more than modest earnings did not provide enough income in the house. In addition, both spouses drank.

The conditions and lifestyle of the Neylands were not something exceptional for the USSR in the 60s. In the same Leningrad, tens of thousands of people lived in densely populated communal apartments, counted pennies until they got paid or “intercepted” advance payments from friends. Many families with children were single-parent or consisted of a mother and stepfather or father and stepmother. The image of a dysfunctional family usually ended with drinking parents who were not involved in raising children.

Arkady grew up without parental supervision, and by the age of 12, the young thief and hooligan was registered in the children's room of the police department of the Zhdanovsky (now Primorsky) district of the city.

A slight digression here suggests itself...

Juvenile technologies in Soviet style

In the summer of 2010, draft federal laws were submitted to the State Duma of the Russian Federation, which allow, in particular, to deprive parental rights or limit them because of “poverty” or “inappropriate” upbringing. The bills were received ambiguously in society. There were many supporters of taking repressive measures against “negligent” parents. Opponents of total state intervention in the internal life of the family objected - if the family is dysfunctional, it is necessary not to destroy it, but, first of all, to help get out of a difficult situation. (“Pravo.Ru” conducted a survey on this matter, which can be found ).

Returning to the Neyland family, we can trace how forty years ago the state, represented by the executive authorities and law enforcement agencies of the Zhdanovsky district, the school where Arkady Neyland studied, responded to the situation in a dysfunctional family.

Let's start with the housing issue. For many years, not only was it not resolved, but it finally reached a dead end - in 1963, one of Arkady’s half-brothers got married and brought his wife under his father’s roof. Thus, two married couples and three teenagers of different sexes lived in one room. And there was no hope for improvement in living conditions in the foreseeable future.

As they say, the secondary school, from which Arkady was expelled after the 5th grade for chronic poor performance, theft and hooliganism, also washed its hands of it. The authorities sent him to a boarding school in the city of Pushkin. But even in this government institution for “difficult teenagers,” Neyland, as they say, did not fit in. Several times his fellow students gave him a “dark” punishment for stealing from others. In addition, Arkady suffered from enuresis, for which he was subjected to ridicule and bullying from others. Here is what the management of boarding school No. 67 provided to the court against Arkady Neiman in 1964: “... showed himself to be a poorly trained student, although he was not a stupid and capable child... The students did not like him and beat him. He was caught in thefts more than once boarding school students have money and things."

According to some sources, a teenager ran away from the boarding school and was detained by the police in Moscow, according to others, the boarding school management insisted that the parents take Arkady. It is only known that after this the authorities employed Neyland as an auxiliary worker at the Lenpischemash Production Association, where he somehow held out until the end of 1963.

During this period, Arkady twice attempted robbery on lonely passers-by for the purpose of robbery, and committed thefts from the Soyuzpechat kiosk, a bathhouse, a service center and several hairdressing salons. All of them were revealed, and the district prosecutor's office opened a criminal case against the teenager. However, it did not reach the court: the prosecutor’s office took into account the “sincere repentance and age” of the defendant, and the case was closed.

But less than a month has passed since Arkady Neyland again became a defendant in a criminal case - this time for residential theft.

How Neiland escaped from the district prosecutor's office

On January 24, 1964, Neiland and his friend Kubarev, under the pretext of collecting waste paper, called apartments in one of the entrances of building No. 3 on Sestroretskaya Street. Having made sure that there were no residents in one of them, they picked up the keys and hastily tied up the things that seemed most valuable to them. However, when they went outside, the janitor, seeing unfamiliar teenagers with bundles, raised the alarm. The novice burglars were detained by passers-by.

They were interrogated at the Zhdanovsky district prosecutor's office. Due to the obvious oversight of the assistant prosecutor, who sent Neumann into the corridor during Kubarev’s interrogation, the latter managed to leave the prosecutor’s office building without hindrance.

There were three days left before the bloody crime that shook the city was committed.

Breakfast on Sestroretskaya with corpses in the background

All this time, Arkady Neyland was hiding in the basements. Early in the morning of January 27, he appeared at home for a few minutes, where he took an ax. This indicated that the 14-year-old was ready to cross the final line.

He had identified the apartment that Neiland intended to rob on the day when he and Kubarev were “collecting waste paper” in a house on Sestroretskaya and were caught stealing. First of all, he was attracted then by the entrance door, upholstered in leather. When the hostess, 37-year-old Larisa Kupriyanova, let the teenagers into the hallway, Arkady managed to see a color TV turned on in the room, which he had only heard about before. Neyland also noticed that the hostess had a gold crown. He also saw a three-year-old child. But this did not affect his plan in any way...

On the morning of January 27, Arkady Neyland introduced himself as a postman through the closed door to the Kupriyanovs’ apartment. And right from the doorway he attacked the hostess with an ax.

Seeing an ax in the teenager’s hands, Kupriyanova tried to take it away. Therefore, the first blows fell on the woman’s arms and shoulders. In total, the forensic medical examination counted about 15 wounds, 5 of which were fatal. He struck little Georgiy 6 times “to keep him from spinning under his feet,” as he will explain during the investigation.

After searching the apartment, Neiland found a wallet with 54 rubles, three-percent loan bonds, gold women's jewelry, and a Zorkiy camera. For some reason I took the passport of the murdered woman’s husband and her daughter from her first marriage. The camera turned out to be loaded with film, and Neiland, exposing the legs of his victim, took several obscene photographs, which, according to his explanation, he intended to sell under the guise of pornography.

After that, Neyland washed his hands in the bathroom, fried some eggs in the kitchen, and calmly had breakfast. Before leaving, he set the apartment on fire and turned on the gas, hoping that the fire and gas explosion would destroy all traces of the crime. However, neighbors on the landing, sensing the smell of burning, called the firefighters. The crew arrived promptly, and the crime scene was almost unaffected by fire.

Thanks to this, the investigative team found bloody fingerprints on the wardrobe, and the murder weapon - an ax with a burnt ax. After interviewing dozens of residents of the house about the appearance of unfamiliar faces here, a verbal portrait of Neyland was compiled.

The description of the residents - "a lanky, big-lipped teenager of about 15-16 years old" - was all too familiar to both the district police department and the prosecutor's office. So Neiland came under suspicion. When investigators established that he had taken an ax from his apartment, this version became the main one. Kubarev, Neiland's accomplice in the theft from an apartment in the same building, was immediately interrogated. He said that his friend planned to return to Sestroretskaya to “make money” in apartment No. 9, and leave for Sukhumi or Tbilisi.

Orientations were urgently sent to these cities, as well as to Moscow...

The voice of the people, which demanded the execution of a minor from below, was clearly organized from above

As soon as Neyland was detained in Sukhumi, several operatives from Leningrad flew there. On the spot, it turned out that their Abkhaz colleagues searched the detainee poorly, and he managed to hide several important pieces of evidence in the cell - a wallet, the passport of the murdered woman’s husband, the keys to the Kupreevs’ apartment and a bunch of thieves’ master keys. The investigation also found a camera stolen from the apartment. Dried blood stains were found on Neyland's clothing, which were later identified as Kupriyanova's blood type.

During interrogations in Leningrad, Arkady Neyland calmly, without a trace of remorse, spoke about the details of the crime he committed. It was obvious: Neiland had already been enlightened by the inmates of the pre-trial detention center that his age would reliably protect him from severe punishment.

Meanwhile, a brutal double murder committed by a teenager received wide publicity. Letters from citizens and organizations began to arrive from all over the country, addressed to the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Leonid Brezhnev, with requests to adopt a law on the application of capital punishment to minors who have committed particularly serious crimes. And the initiative group of Leningraders, in turn, began collecting signatures for a petition demanding “to destroy the degenerate.”

The voice of the people was heard above. Although subsequent events indicate that, most likely, the letters and petitions were organized on orders from above: the increase in crime, including juvenile crime, which began in the 60s of the last century, worried the party and Soviet leadership, and Neyland was elected as a "whipping boy".

On February 17, 1964, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, contrary to legal rules and customs, adopted a resolution allowing the use of capital punishment - execution - against minors. But what to do with the fact that the law is not retroactive?

The final punishment is death. The sentence was carried out 5 months after the trial

In Leningrad, a written survey was conducted among the city's judges - can the resolution of the Presidium of the Supreme Council be considered retroactive? The organizers of the action had planned a positive response in advance.

The consideration of the case on the merits took place on March 23, 1964 in a closed trial. Considering the great public danger of the crime committed - murder under aggravating circumstances, as well as the personality of Neyland and "guided by the resolution of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of February 17, 1964 No. 2234", the court, based on the totality of the crimes committed, made a final decision: sentenced to death - to shot.

The verdict was generally received with satisfaction in the country. However, it caused a negative reaction among lawyers and part of the intelligentsia. Abroad, the Neyland case was unequivocally commented on as an example of the Soviet Union's non-compliance with international law and relevant agreements.

Arkady Neiland's cassation appeal was left unsatisfied, and the Supreme Soviet of the USSR rejected the petition for pardon. On August 11, 1964, the sentence was carried out.

In preparing the publication, materials and photographs from the site murders.ru were partially used

The text material presented below is subject to the Law of the Russian Federation of July 9, 1993 N 5351-I “On Copyright and Related Rights” (as amended on July 19, 1995, July 20, 2004). Removing the "copyright" signs posted on this page (or replacing them with others) when copying these materials and their subsequent reproduction on electronic networks is a gross violation of Article 9 ("The emergence of copyright. Presumption of authorship.") of the mentioned Law. The use of materials posted as content in the production of various types of printed materials (anthologies, almanacs, anthologies, etc.), without indicating the source of their origin (i.e. the site “Mysterious Crimes of the Past” (http://www.. 11 (“Copyright of compilers of collections and other composite works”) of the same Law of the Russian Federation “On Copyright and Related Rights”.
Section V ("Protection of Copyright and Related Rights") of the mentioned Law, as well as Part 4 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, provide the creators of the site "Mysterious Crimes of the Past" with ample opportunities to prosecute plagiarists in court and protect their property interests (receiving from defendants: a) compensation, b) compensation for moral damages and c) lost profits) for 70 years from the date of origin of our copyright (i.e. at least until 2080). ©A.I.Rakitin, 2010 ©"Mysterious crimes of the past", 2010

Neyland Arkady Vladimirovich (Leningrad, 1964).

A R C A D Y N e i l a n d although not a classic serial killer, yet with full right can take an honorable place among domestic fanatics and moral monsters.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that this young man was a potential serial killer, but thanks to successful exposure at the very beginning of his criminal career, his criminal potential was never realized.

Arkady Neyland. Photos from February 1964 from the criminal case.

Arkady Vladimirovich Neyland was born in 1949 in Leningrad. His mother was married for the second time and Arkady had two older half-brothers, as well as younger sister. A family of 6 people lived in one room in a “sparsely populated” communal apartment (a “sparsely populated” communal apartment, by St. Petersburg standards at that time, was an apartment in which less than 4 families or responsible tenants huddled). In 1963, the housing problem of the Neiland family became even more aggravated - the eldest of the brothers brought his wife. Arkady's parents were heavy drinkers, his father worked as a mechanic at the Svetlana Production Association, and his mother was a nurse at an oncology hospital on Kamenny Island. The family lived very poorly, meagerly, the children rummaged through garbage dumps, collected bottles, dressed in things thrown away by someone. According to Arkady, he began to steal at the age of 4.
At the age of 12, he was expelled from school for poor academic performance (that’s how bad you had to be to be expelled from a Soviet school!). By this time, he was already registered in the Children's Room of the police as a juvenile hooligan and thief. Through the “police line” he was sent to study at boarding school No. 67 in Pushkin, where the same “difficult teenagers” like himself studied. Arkasha’s relationship in the new team did not work out: he was caught several times “ratting”, i.e. stealing from neighbors, and in addition, Neiland suffered from enuresis, which caused understandable irritation to those around him. The young man was beaten several times by his fellow students and at the end of the 6th grade he was expelled from the boarding school. Neyland was sent by the internal affairs bodies to work as an auxiliary worker at the Lenpischemash production association, located not far from his place of residence in the Zhdanovsky (now Primorsky) district of Leningrad. Arkady worked there until December 1963.
In October-December 1963, a 14-year-old teenager committed several offenses for which he was quickly convicted. In particular, at this time he tried to rob a woman, and then a lonely man (both times unsuccessfully), committed theft from the Soyuzpechat kiosk, several thefts from a bathhouse, a hairdresser and a service center. In addition, Arkady stole the only suit and money from one of the brothers, although this episode was not included in the criminal case brought against Neyland by the Zhdanovsky district prosecutor's office.
It is difficult to say what the fate of the teenager would have been if the “Soviet Themis” had not decided to feign compassion. The criminal case against the young scoundrel was closed in December 1963, and he, to celebrate, as they say, “went into all serious troubles.” In January 1964, he, together with his friend Vitaly Kubarev, committed several more minor offenses, after which the friends began to prepare “big money”, i.e. a crime that was supposed to provide them with money for a trip to the Black Sea.
The young people conducted reconnaissance of the crime scene. In their opinion, this could be house No. 3 on Sestroretskaya Street in the Zhdanovsky district, well known to both. On the afternoon of January 24, 1964, Neyland and Kubarev, under the guise of schoolchildren collecting waste paper, walked around one of the entrances of this house, talking with residents and simultaneously studying the situation in the apartments. It was then that Neiland first met his future victim - Larisa Kupreeva - who lived in apartment No. 9. This apartment seemed prosperous to the young scoundrel - in the large room he managed to see an imported color TV, which was considered an unheard-of luxury at that time! (Necessary clarification: from time to time, various kinds of stupid youth from the “Unified State Exam generation”, discussing this note on various forums, begin to lament: “Well, what kind of color TVs were there in the USSR in 1964? Well, what kind of nonsense does this Rakitin write, before the advent of the Soviet -French SECAM “and even more than three years! Oh, I can’t read these pearls...”, etc. So, especially for over-aged fools who are not familiar with the history of science and technology of the Soviet Union, the author considers it necessary to explain that in the USSR in the late 1950s, a color TV broadcast standard called “OSCM” was developed - it was a slightly modified American NTSC format and imported color televisions reproduced it perfectly. In January 1960, regular color tests began, three times a week. TV broadcasting in OSCM format. Therefore, to the question “what kind of color TV was in the Kupreevs’ apartment in January 1964?” there is a simple answer: “German Grundig.” Learn the history of technology, dear friends!”

Larisa Kupreeva and her son Georgy. Arkady Neyland first encountered them on January 24, 1964. If that day a benevolent woman had not allowed the young rogue into her house, the fates of Larisa and her son would have turned out completely differently...

However, at that moment Neyland was not yet ready to kill, so the couple continued to walk around the entrance. Having established that there was no one in apartment No. 7, the “waste paper collectors” entered it and robbed it. The thieves put the things they liked into blankets and pillowcases, after which Neyland and Kubarev calmly left the crime scene. In the courtyard, however, they encountered the janitor Orlova, who, with the help of passers-by, detained the suspicious couple. Ultimately, Arkady Neyland again found himself in the familiar building of the Zhdanovsky District Prosecutor's Office, where a new criminal case was opened against him.
Neiland in this situation showed unexpected impudence and presence of mind. After the assistant prosecutor told him to wait for the continuation of the interrogation in the corridor, Arkady calmly left the office and... left the prosecutor's office. Nobody detained him and the young bastard was free. True, without a hat - his headdress remained in the office.
Neiland was smart enough not to come home and spent three January nights in the basements of residential buildings, warming himself on heating pipes. At this very time, he developed a plan to rob the “prosperous” apartment No. 9 with a color TV. According to Arkady's plan, the owner of the apartment, who stood on the path to wealth, was to be killed. The attacker knew that a little boy lived with his mother (Neyland saw him riding around on a 3-wheeled bicycle in the room), and he also decided to kill the child. To realize his plan, in the early morning of January 27, Arkady ran to his home, where, without saying a word to anyone, he grabbed an ax and disappeared.

On the morning of January 27, 1964, Arkady Neyland ran into his home for a minute, where he got hold of an ax, which later became the crime weapon. Some sources erroneously indicate that the killer was wielding a light tourist hatchet, but this is not so - in his hands was the most ordinary ax with a wooden handle and a blade length of 12 cm, which were sold in any hardware store.

It was not yet 10 o’clock in the morning on January 27, and Neiland was already standing at the door of the treasured apartment. He rang the bell and said he was “collecting scrap metal.” The owner of the apartment recognized the lanky guy who was rubbing himself in the entrance a few days earlier, and this time she did not let him into the apartment, rather ungraciously slamming the door in his face. For some time, the confused attacker stood on the landing, wondering what he should do now, after which, plucking up the impudence, he again called apartment No. 9, changing his voice and introducing himself as a postman. Larisa Kupreeva opened the door and Neiland attacked her with an ax right at the threshold.
A struggle ensued, accompanied by noise that was heard by at least two neighbors. The attacker was unable to quickly suppress the victim’s resistance; about 10 blows with an ax landed on the woman’s arms and shoulders. As a forensic medical examination subsequently stated, these blows did not pose a threat to life. If Larisa had rushed out of the apartment, then most likely it would have saved her life and thwarted the plans of the scoundrel. But the woman, apparently afraid to leave her son, retreated deeper into the apartment, where the killer finally overtook her, threw her into a chair and inflicted several severe head wounds there. Thinking that he had killed the woman, Neiland retreated, however, Larisa found the strength to get up and again rushed at the robber. During the struggle, the woman managed to grab the ax handle with both hands and almost snatched the weapon. Only with great difficulty did Neyland again throw the victim onto the chair and finish him off there. A forensic examination counted at least 4 fatal blows to Larisa’s head with an ax. After this, Neyland hacked the little boy to death with 6 blows of an ax.
His further actions at the crime scene cannot but be considered reasonable and extremely cynical. First of all, Neyland washed himself in the bathroom, after which he quickly searched the apartment: his loot was a wallet with 54 rubles, a Zorkiy camera with loaded film, as well as the passports of the owner of the apartment and his daughter Larisa Kupreeva from her first marriage. The killer then pulled his victim from the chair to the floor, exposed her genitals and took 11 photographs, which he hoped to later sell as pornographic. And after that, the tormented, hungry criminal cooked scrambled eggs from 5 eggs and had breakfast with appetite.
Neyland spent about an hour in the apartment with two corpses. When leaving, he used the newspapers he found to light a fire in the room and open the gas valve in the kitchen. Neyland hoped that the fire and subsequent explosion would disguise the crime. He didn’t care that a gas explosion would collapse an entire entrance and lead to new victims...

Despite the active extinguishing of the fire and the forced presence of firefighters at the crime scene, the Kupreevs’ apartment retained very important evidence for the investigation: fingerprints, numerous bloody stains and marks on the walls, doors and furnishings, and most importantly, the fire did not damage the corpses.

By luck, the explosion did not occur (due to low temperatures the gas pressure in the lines was reduced). Firefighters began extinguishing the fire at 12:45 p.m. Since there was a smell of gas in the entrance, the firefighters suspected an accident from the very beginning and acted with extreme caution: first they broke out the window in the kitchen and one of them quickly turned off the valve of the gas stove. The fireman only had a few seconds to see numerous traces of blood in the hallway and two corpses. Therefore, by the time the fire was put out, the heads of the city’s law enforcement agencies had already gathered near the house on Sestroretskaya Street.

Initially, the husband of the deceased Larisa Kupreeva came under strong suspicion of involvement in the crime. The double murder seemed too well thought out and unmotivatedly cruel. Indirect arguments in favor of the fact that the robbery only disguised the murder were the insignificant value of the missing property, the absence of a crime weapon, and the fact that the front door was not broken into or opened with a master key. In fact, it is true that the killer left the crime weapon in the apartment, but this became clear only on the third day, when forensic scientists found a smoked ax on the balcony (it was at the epicenter of the fire, its handle burned out and firefighters swept it onto the balcony along with other debris).
However, everything fell into place when on January 28, Neyland’s bloody palm print was discovered on the side of the wardrobe. Since Kubarev knew about Arkady’s intention to go to the Caucasian coast of the Black Sea, Neyland was put on the all-Union wanted list and the corresponding information was sent to all territorial police units of Georgia and the Krasnodar Territory.
What was the killer doing at this time? First of all, he bought a winter hat, a bottle of champagne and cognac, and left for Moscow from Warsaw Station by train at 15:55. In the capital, Arkasha went on a sightseeing tour of the city, met the young tramp Nesterov, with whom he moved further south. On January 30, 1964, the couple got off the train in Sukhumi and literally 10 minutes later fell into the hands of a police patrol. When asked by the police: “What’s your last name?”, Neyland, without hesitation, blurted out: “Nesterov!” Which, of course, greatly impressed his new friend, the real Nesterov.
During a search of Neyland, they found things stolen from the Kupreevs’ apartment, and the camera still contained film with photographs of the naked body of the woman killed by the scoundrel. On the same day, an investigation team flew to Sukhumi on a special flight from Leningrad, which, having verified the identity of the detainee and previously interviewed him, immediately flew back with Neyland.
Arkady, at first extremely depressed by the arrest, quickly managed to regain his good spirits. He willingly testified about the crime he committed, without showing even a shadow of remorse or sympathy for the victims. Moreover, he repeatedly stated (and then repeated this statement in court) that he would kill people in the future. His courage and arrogance were a consequence of the firm belief that he, as a minor, could face a sentence of “only” 10 years in prison. And this is in the worst case scenario!

Photograph from 1964. On the right in the photo is the investigator of the Leningrad City Prosecutor's Office O. Prokofiev, who conducted the investigation into the case of Neyland and Kubarev.

However, at the same time, events took place in Moscow that had the most direct relation to the fate of Neiland. On February 17, 1964, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted a resolution allowing the use of capital punishment - execution - against minors. Formally, this resolution owes its birth to Neyland’s brutal crime, however, it seems that in fact the reason for the appearance of this document should be sought not in the criminal, but in the political plane. From the very beginning of the 50s. The Soviet Union was faced with an ever-growing wave of hooliganism and youth crime. Many cities, especially on the periphery and in national outskirts, literally found themselves at the mercy of unbridled youth groups. Since the beginning of the 60s, i.e. During the time of Khrushchev’s unsuccessful economic innovations, a wave of many thousands of riots and even open riots swept across the country, openly taking the form of social protest of young people (more information about mass conflicts in the Virgin Lands, in the armed forces and places of deprivation of liberty can be read in the very informative book by V. A. Kozlov " Unknown USSR. Confrontation between the people and the authorities. 1953-1985", Moscow, OLMA-PRESS, 2006). The communist government, which significantly softened criminal legislation after Stalin’s death, was faced with the threat of increased youth violence in the country. The authorities needed to curb this process and Neiland, who had committed a heinous crime, was ideally suited for a demonstrative act of intimidation.
The CPSU launched a mass campaign to “express the will of the people to demand the death penalty” for the criminal. During lunch breaks, “urban and rural workers” across the country gathered for “voluntary rallies” and adopted resolutions addressed to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, as well as prosecutorial and judicial authorities at all levels, with a “demand” to impose a death sentence on Arkady Neiland. Of the 3 volumes of criminal case No. 78-sk4-2, an entire volume was taken up by such “citizen appeals.”

In the criminal case of Kubarev and Neyland, an entire volume was taken up by citizens’ appeals to the Leningrad city prosecutor’s office and the court with a “demand” to sentence Neyland to death. Such appeals could not have any legal force in any civilized country in the world, but the USSR was not such a country. The “voluntariness” of putting forward such demands should not be taken at face value - in those strict times, an unauthorized appeal to high government authorities could well lead to the labeling of the applicant, such as “troublemaker”, “scandalist” or “demagogue”. In this case, more than 3 hundred appeals were filed with the case." labor collectives“The entire country was called upon to provide a basis for the verdict voluntarily imposed on the Leningrad city court from Moscow.

It is clear that these pieces of paper themselves did not have any legal force, therefore, in order to give the judge grounds to impose a death sentence on Neyland, a truly unprecedented action in the history of the domestic court was organized - a written survey was organized among the city judges, inviting them to decide whether consider the resolution of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Court of February 17, 1964 to have retroactive force and allow Neyland to be sentenced to death? The very idea of ​​interviewing judges unfamiliar with the circumstances of the judicial investigation was contrary to the fundamental principles of criminal proceedings. An even more flagrant violation of the Constitution of the USSR, as well as common sense, legal rules and customs, was the attempt to give retroactive force to the resolution of the Presidium of the Supreme Council. This has not been done in civilized societies since the days of Ancient Rome. But the Leningrad judges did not live in Ancient Rome, but in the Soviet Union, they understood what answer the Government expected from them, and therefore unanimously answered “yes”.
And on March 23, 1964, after considering the circumstances of the case in a closed trial, Arkady Vladimirovich Neiland was sentenced to death. The convict filed a petition for clemency. There is a legend that the head of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR L.I. Brezhnev, having received a lawyer’s opinion on the obvious illegality of the execution, turned to the General Secretary of the CPSU N.S. Khrushchev with a proposal to authorize a pardon. This would allow the Soviet government to “save face” by demonstrating both firmness and generosity. But Khrushchev only scolded Brezhnev and ordered the sentence to be carried out.
On June 12, 1964, the Supreme Court of the RSFSR rejected Neiland's petition for clemency and on August 11 of the same year, Arkady was shot.
Although, according to formal criteria, Arkady Neyland cannot be classified as a serial criminal and sexual maniac, it would not be a mistake to note that he potentially belongs to this category of criminals. Neyland is an obvious psychopath (you can read more about psychopathy in R. Haer’s book “Deprived of Conscience”; almost all the signs described by Haer can be seen in Neyland). His crime had a certain sexual connotation, as evidenced by both the choice of the victim and the post-mortem manipulations of the criminal. Neiland's libido, although not fully formed due to his youth, nevertheless firmly connected sexual desire with violence and humiliation of a partner (Arkady received the corresponding experience in a boarding school and this experience was firmly imprinted in his subconscious attitudes). To suggest correction of the behavior of such a young man is at least frivolous, if not stupid. If in 1964 the life path of this moral monster had not been stopped by the executioner’s bullet, then upon his release society would have received an extremely cynical and ruthless misogynist and sadist who would have tortured as many people as he could.
Despite his inability to study at school, Arkady Neyland was certainly not a stupid person and, moreover, capable of analysis, planning and long-term thinking in general. Given the appropriate criminal experience, he would eventually become a sophisticated and exceptionally dangerous criminal. Therefore, although his execution was, in its legal form, an act completely lawless, from the point of view of common sense, the logic of N.S. Khrushchev cannot be objected to. People like Neiland cannot be corrected, and for those around them it doesn’t matter who or what is to blame: drunken conception, bad heredity or birth trauma. It is in the interests of society to ensure that such people are unequivocally and 100% reliably excluded from society. How this will be done technically - by execution or life imprisonment - is completely unimportant for society.