Mikhail Malyshev

Mikhail Yuryevich Malyshev (Михаил Юрьевич Малышев; born October 31, 1965), known as The Perm Cannibal (Пермский людоед), is a Russian murderer, cannibal and possible serial killer.

Mikhail Yuryevich Malyshev was born on October 31, 1965, in Perm, and was raised in an affluent, well-respected family.

Some sources claim that his mother worked as a school teacher, while others say that she worked as a leading engineer at a nuclear plant.

As a child, Malyshev attended violin classes, but was forced to abandon them after sustaining an injury to his arm.

In the late 1970s, his parents divorced and his mother remarried, having a daughter with her new husband in 1983.

The divorce greatly affected Malyshev emotionally and mentally, further distancing him from his peers, who bullied him for being overweight.

This led to him being highly stressed out and frequently angry, with Malyshev resorting to killing stray cats and dogs to vent out his frustrations.

In 1980, he was arrested on charges of cruelty against animals and interned at a juvenile detention center, where he started exercising and attended boxing classes.

In order to effectively build muscle mass, Malyshev decided that he would need to eat more meat, but as there was a shortage of meat products, he resorted to eating dog meat.

He changed three high schools before enrolling at a vocational school, and after graduating in 1984, he was drafted into the Soviet Army.

After completing his service, he returned to his mother's home, whereupon he became even more aggressive and began to show signs of mental illness.

Due to his frequent outbursts, his mother and stepfather accused him of being anti-social and forbade him from contacting his younger sister.

In 1986, Malyshev's mother exchanged the family's current one-room apartment for two separate apartments, one of which was located on Marshal Rybalko Street in the Zakamsk District.

He eventually moved into this apartment, where he lived for the following years and where his future murders were all committed.

It is unclear what professions he held during this period – one source claims that he worked at the "Sorbent" nuclear power plant, while others claim that worked as a welder or carpenter.

Malyshev led a secluded life, never married, was fond of reading and weightlifting, but despite this, he held a reputation as an anti-social man who enjoyed killing stray dogs.

In the mid-1990s, he quit his job due to delayed wage payments, and to avoid economic hardship, Malyshev began to produce and sell moonshine on the streets, as well as selling hats made from the skins of dogs he had killed.

In 1995, he met an 18-year-old mentally-ill orphan named Nikolai, whom he allowed to stay in his apartment – not long after, he began physically and sexually abusing him.

As payment for the housing, Nikolai was ordered to bring stray dogs back to the apartment, which they would later kill and eat.

At around this time, Malyshev also resorted to drinking large quantities of alcohol.

In mid-1996, Malyshev met a 19-year-old nurse named Inna Borovik, with whom he soon began a romantic relationship.

He soon introduced her to his mother and later met her father, who was also an alcoholic.

A few months later, Borovik moved into Malyshev's apartment, where she was soon imprisoned.

Malyshev would torture, rape and abuse both her and Nikolai, and would go so far as to force them to have sex with one another while he watched.

During this period, his own mental state began to rapidly decline and he started experiencing paranoid delusions.

Malyshev eventually installed a metal door inside his apartment with several locks and peepholes to monitor the stairwell, as well as steel bars and blinds on the apartment's windows, crafted from horizontal plates of thick metal steel.

In order to prevent theft, he also placed several pieces of furniture, including his television set, in steel cages that he kept locked up.

Malyshev understood that Borovik suffered from low self-esteem and depression, and in order to keep her under his control, he manipulated her by forbidding her to go outside without him, in addition to intimidating and humiliating her on a regular basis.

During one particular beating, he took a knife and cut off one of Nikolai's ears in front of Borovik, thus completely crushing her will to resist.

As he spent most of his time on the streets, Malyshev often befriended various marginalized people whom he would invite back to his apartment to drink alcohol and eat pies and pelmeni made from dog meat.

As a consequence of his alcohol addiction, his behavior became even more unstable, with him developing an obsession with collecting items.

In the span of a few years, his apartment was turned into a run-down brothel where most of the rooms were filled with various garbage, random items and animal carcasses that were stacked onto one another.

In the kitchen, Malyshev would attach hooks to the walls to hang said carcasses, and would usually dismember animal remains on a cutting board using various carving knives.

Malyshev's first known victim was 16-year-old Natalia Suvorova, a student at one of Perm's vocational schools.

He was convicted of murdering, dismembering and eating the remains of two acquaintances in Perm from 1997 to 1998, but was also suspected of six similar murders for which he was never charged.

Malyshev was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment, but released in 2022 and is currently living in Perm.

At the end of 1997, he let Borovik out of the apartment so she could bring back a girl to satisfy his sexual urges.

After meeting Suvorova on the streets, Borovik persuaded her to go to Malyshev's apartment to drink alcohol together.

According to Borovik's testimony, after Suvorova became intoxicated, Malyshev and several friends (including a supposed police officer) proceeded to sexually abuse her for several hours.

This version was deemed to be faulty by Lt. Gulnara Abibulaeva, a retired Lieutenant Colonel of Justice and former senior investigator of the local prosecutor's office, who ascertained that aside from Malyshev, Borovik and Nikolai, there was nobody else in the apartment.