Yegor Khabarov

Yegor Nikolayevich Khabarov (Russian: Егор Николаевич Хабаров; born May 18, 1979), known as The Electrician (Russian: Электрик), is a Russian murderer and suspected serial killer who was convicted of electrocuting at least two men in Yekaterinburg from 2008 to 2009, with the help of accomplice Sergey Kochnev.

He was suspected in a total of seven deaths, but was never charged due to a lack of evidence.

Yegor Nikolayevich Khabarov was born on May 18, 1979, in Sverdlovsk (present-day Yekaterinburg).

He grew up in a relatively prosperous and safe environment, which was only bolstered after his father Nikolai achieved success with his business ventures in the early 1990s.

At school, Khabarov expressed great interest in physics, but was considered unpopular due to his introverted nature, causing him to become withdrawn and aloof.

Because of this, he had to be interned at a psychiatric hospital for some time.

After graduating from high school in 1997, Khabarov enrolled at the Ural State Technical University, where he studied electrical engineering.

After successfully graduating from there, he got a job as a foreman of a power plant at the Novoberezyovskaya CHPP.

During this period, his father bought him an apartment with an underground garage in another district of Yekaterinburg, where Khabarov soon moved into.

According to friends and acquaintances, Khabarov was considered a very likeable, compassionate and helpful man, but had difficulty communicating with girls due to his short stature, slim build and premature baldness.

In late 2002, Khabarov began to show signs of a mental illness and started acting erratically, leading to his first crimes.

In 2003, Khabarov was arrested on suspicion of making counterfeit 500-ruble banknotes, but the charge was later dismissed due to a lack of evidence.

In September 2004, he was arrested on charges of manufacturing homemade explosives with the intent of selling - investigators said that he had studied the necessary literature and materials from the Internet and he had managed to make a mixture of ammonium nitrate, aluminium powder and minium.

Khabarov then placed a wire loop on the casing of the bombs as a pin, which exploded after about four minutes.

He detonated several of the devices at the Mikhailovsky Cemetery in Yekaterinburg, making video recordings of the explosions which he planned to use as proof to his potential clients that they worked.

After his arrest, officers recovered two such videos and several explosive devices which would be used as evidence at his later trial.

In response to this, Khabarov's father hired a team of lawyers who petitioned for a forensic psychiatric evaluation at the Sverdlovsk Regional Clinical Psychiatric Hospital, which found him to be insane.

As a result, Khabarov was detained at a facility in the village of Iset, and after spending several months there, he was released with impunity in 2005 - in spite of the fact that a diagnosis determined that he suffered from a superiority complex.

Between 2005 and 2008, Khabarov attempted to engage in entrepreneurial activity, acting as an intermediary in the sale of electrical products and industrial pipes on behalf of his father's companies.

During this period, he developed his skills in electrical engineering and invented a number of devices and appliances, some of which were used in the commission of future crimes.

Sometime in 2008, he formed a small gang with which he attempted to commit small-time crimes, but eventually dismissed them after they were met with failure.

Thinking that his previous accomplices were too cowardly and lacking willpower, Khabarov convinced several colleagues from his job as a security guard to join in instead - in this group, he established strict discipline and enjoyed unquestionable authority, despite his stocky physique and frail appearance.

In order to supply his gang with weapons, Khabarov purchased gas pistols, which he later converted to fire live ammunition and tested them in the woods, where he had set up several arms caches.

For the purposes of secrecy, Khabarov never introduced gang members to one another and their exact number remains unknown.

In order to intimidate subordinates to avoid conflicts, he threatened to kill them if they did not obey him and told them about supposed poisons and experiments with electric currents he had been conducting.

Khabarov decided to choose random individuals as victims, primarily those who placed advertisements in newspapers or the Internet for the purchases of computers and their corresponding parts.

Khabarov committed his first known murder in the summer of 2008, the victim being 27-year-old computer repairman Vladislav Porfiriev.

On the afternoon of June 8, Khabarov met with Porfiriev at the intersection of Lenin and Gagarin Streets under the pretext of offering him an odd job.

Together with accomplice Sergey Kochnev, they took him to garage lot #36 on Botanicheskaya Street, where Khabarov lived.

During the conversation with Porfiriev, both men suddenly attacked and bound him with duct tape and handcuffs, after which Khabarov decided to kill him using a pulse generator that he had constructed.

Through the back left door of the car, Khabarov connected the wires from the device in a wooden case, 15 by 30 cm in size, to Porfiriev's left hand and leg, then closed the doors and windows of the car, plugged the device in and short-circuited the wires.

As a consequence, Porfiriev received a fatal electric shock.

Khabarov's second known murder occurred on January 22, 2009, when he killed a 23-year-old named Anton, a fourth-year student at the Ural Institute of Finance and Law.

In 2010, Khabarov was found not guilty by reason of insanity and interned at a psychiatric clinic, from where he was released after 12 years.

This controversial move sparked much controversy and claims that he was discharged due to corrupt hospital officials being bribed by his rich parents.

Khabarov and Kochnev then placed the victim's body inside the car, drove the 17th kilometer of the Yekaterinburg-Serov highway and dumped the body there.

In order to destroy incriminating evidence, the pair put wooden boxes around the body and then set them on fire, with Khabarov stealing the dead man's cellphone and laptop.

After Porfiriev's remains were found, forensic specialists found a penetrating wound to the left side of his palate, possibly inflicted by a sharp object.

The victim's tongue was firmly clamped between his teeth and stuck out by 1 cm; his feet were severely plantar flexed; his elbows bent and hands clenched at the chin.

According to investigators, the murdered man remained alive for some time after the electrocution, after which Khabarov and Kochnev struck him in the hyoid area with an unknown sharp object to finish him off.