Arturas Adolfovich Sakalauskas was born in 1968 in Vilnius, Lithuania. His father, Adolfas Sakalauskas, worked as a turner in the workshops of a research institute. His mother, Olga, was a deputy department head in a statistical department. He had a younger brother named Edward.

After finishing eighth grade, Arturas entered a construction technical school. Classmates described him as calm and reasonable. His relatives said he was also fearless. He completed his studies in 1986.

In June 1986 he was drafted into the army. He served as a private in Unit No. 6717 of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs' Internal Troops in Leningrad.

On the night of February 24, 1987, mail and baggage train No. 934 arrived at the far platform of Moscow Station in Leningrad. It had a special car for transporting convicts. Eight bodies were found in the car. Seven bodies were in the guard's compartment under blood-soaked mattresses. The eighth body, Warrant Officer Pilipenko, was at the entrance to the kitchen. Private Artūras Adolfo Sakalauskas was missing. The gun cabinet in the guard commander's compartment was missing five pistols and five spare magazines.

The missing private was Artūras Adolfo Sakalauskas, born 1968 in Vilnius. He was serving in Unit No. 6717 of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs' Internal Troops in Leningrad. His parents were Adolfas and Olga, and he had a younger brother named Edward.

Investigators found that Sakalauskas had been bullied by fellow soldiers. Nechayev put a bowl of hot soup on his head and used matches between his toes. Gataullin added salt and sand to his food and sometimes took food away. Senior Sergeant Semyonov dunked his head in a toilet, kept him on duty many hours, deprived him of sleep, beat him, and once tore his ear.

On February 23, two soldiers, Dzhamalov and Mankhurov, attacked Sakalauskas with the intent to rape him. They pulled down his trousers and exposed his buttocks. Mankhurov held him down. Dzhamalov attempted to insert his penis into Sakalauskas's anus but ejaculated prematurely. Sakalauskas fainted while they burned his skin with lit matches. When he woke, they threatened further rape and left. Sakalauskas removed stained underpants, washed, and put on clean clothes.

Sakalauskas found the guard commander's compartment door open and the pistol box unlocked. He took two pistols and magazines, loaded them in the restroom, and went to the guard compartment with a pistol in each hand. He shot at those inside until he ran out of ammunition. He returned to the commander's compartment, took a third service pistol, reloaded, and continued firing. He fired through a locked door and shot upward, hitting soldiers in the baggage compartment. He shot the wounded Warrant Officer Pilipenko as the officer tried to escape to the kitchen. Sakalauskas fired a total of 46 shots, 33 hit their targets, and the file records that 18 of the shots were lethal. After confirming the dead, he moved bodies into the same compartment, took a conductor's watch, covered the dead with mattresses, put on the guard commander's uniform, took a briefcase with personal belongings and money, filled the briefcase with food, and placed the five pistols in it. He burned his uniform in the car stove. At 4:35 PM, when the train stopped at Babayevo station, he left the car with the briefcase.

Search teams and soldiers looked for Sakalauskas across the Leningrad area. He hid in back alleys and slept in attics for days. He rode public transport until a passenger on bus route 47 at the Vasilievsky Island loop recognized him. He was detained without resistance.

After arrest, Sakalauskas gave detailed testimony about the abuse, the attempted rape, and the killings. He denied any debt. Prisoners transported in the car were questioned and some corroborated his account. They said many prisoners had watched and encouraged the soldiers. Conductor Mikhail Dashkiyev was reported to have not intervened.

During the investigation, Sakalauskas developed reactive psychosis. He was held first in Matrosskaya Tishina and later in Kresty. In 1989, Leningrad psychiatrists declared him insane, while specialists from the Serbsky Forensic Psychiatric Institute found him sane. A later forensic psychiatric examination said he was "in a state of deep psychological crisis with mental deformation" at the time of the crime.

The trial took place in 1990. Sakalauskas was not present in the courtroom because he was confined to a psychiatric clinic. His lawyer said Sakalauskas had been forcibly injected with psychotropic drugs while in Matrosskaya Tishina. The court did not convict him. A special ruling was issued against the army unit where he served.

A medical exam on March 15, 1990, said he had a continuously progressing chronic mental illness. After the Soviet Union collapsed, hundreds of thousands of signatures were collected in Vilnius in his defense. Russia later extradited him to Lithuania. He then spent about five years under forced treatment in a Lithuanian clinic.

Press reports at first called him "an armed and very dangerous criminal." Later, the Leningrad paper Smena and Komsomolskaya Pravda published articles about the case. Reporting was limited after the first notices.

Sources give different accounts of Sakalauskas's later life. Some say he recovered and lives with a wife and children in Gaižiūnai. Others say he remains in a psychiatric hospital. Filmmaker Saulius Beržinis, author of the documentary "Brick Flag," said Sakalauskas claimed he was an alien and part of an experiment. A 2003 Lithuanian newspaper wrote that some sources said he might be hiding for fear of revenge.