Boris Vasilyevich Gusakov was born in 1938 in the Saltykovka district of Balashikha, which is located in the Moscow Oblast of the Soviet Union. He was born into a family that struggled with alcoholism. His early life was marked by mental health issues, but these problems were often overlooked due to the conditions of World War II. When he was just three years old, Gusakov experienced a traumatic event. He witnessed a bomb dropped by German forces, which killed multiple people, including a teenage girl.

Gusakov graduated from school in 1955, but he did not continue his education beyond that. Instead, he started working as a photographer. He married a librarian in 1958, and together they had a daughter. Reports indicate that he was abusive towards his daughter during her childhood. Between 1958 and 1961, Gusakov served in the Soviet Army. After his time in the army, he was involved in some criminal activity and was convicted for theft.

From May 1962 until July 1965, Gusakov worked as a photographer at a factory called "Kartolitografii" GAPU, where he was well-regarded by his coworkers. However, he later took various jobs, including working in a laboratory for the Ministry of Internal Affairs from August 1965 to July 1966. After that, he obtained a position as a photographic engineer at an oncology and chemical research facility between January 1967 and January 1968, but he was fired for issues related to work discipline.

In early 1968, Gusakov had a brief job as a chauffeur for the Moscow Post Office for a few weeks. After that, he did not have a permanent job and survived by taking odd jobs. By May 1968, he was working at the Moscow Children's Distribution Receiver as the head of the darkroom operations.

At the end of December 1963, Boris Vasilyevich Gusakov attacked a girl at the Moscow Institute of History and Archives. The girl resisted and managed to escape. A nearby Komsomol fighting squad tried to catch him, but he vanished. At the time, police thought another killer was responsible, Vladimir Ionesyan, known as the "Mosgaz" killer.

On 21 June 1964, Gusakov committed his first murder in the Tomilinsky Forest Park in the Lyuberetsky District. He raped and killed an 11-year-old girl named Valya Scherbakova by striking her several times on the head with a blunt object. His second victim was a student named Yanova, whom he also raped and killed on 4 September 1965, again in the same park. By 1968, the investigations into these murders had been classified.

On 11 March 1968, Gusakov murdered two first-year female students, Olga Romanova and Elena Krasovskaya, in the attic of the Moscow Power Engineering Institute. He left behind a murder weapon, a steel pipe scrap, which had his fingerprints on it. The girls were last seen with a classmate, Oleg Ryabkov, but his fingerprints did not match the ones found at the crime scene. An inscription mentioning two other young men was found on the wall, but their fingerprints did not match either.

In April 1968, Gusakov attacked another young girl, aged 9, and then assaulted a couple. He struck the man with a blunt object and killed the woman. The man survived and provided a description of Gusakov. Because all these crimes occurred in the Lyuberetsky District, detectives linked them to other similar murders, revealing that Gusakov was responsible for Valya Scherbakova and Yanova's deaths, as well as the three recent murders.

On 16 May 1968, Gusakov met two tenth graders in Serpukhov, Moscow Oblast. He invited them to the countryside. He first tried to poison them and then attack them with a cleaver. The girls escaped and alerted a nearby policeman, who arrested Gusakov.

In 1969, he was found guilty of five murders and sentenced to death. He made several requests for clemency, but they were all denied. Boris Gusakov was executed by firing squad on 27 December 1970.