Bio

Oleg Petrovich Belov was born on November 20, 1963, in Gorokhovets, Vladimir Oblast, in the RSFSR, USSR.

According to Belov, he showed strong abilities in mathematics and physics from an early age. His parents hoped he would become an academic. Belov later said he easily enrolled in Moscow universities, including MEPhI.

As a schoolboy, Belov dreamed of designing a flying saucer. He wanted to build such a device and travel to another planet. He said he had a "program planned out for 300 years."

In 1992 he was baptized into the Seventh-day Adventist Church. He was later expelled from that congregation for adultery.

In 2009 he moved permanently to Nizhny Novgorod.

Murder Story

On July 27, 2015, police found the dismembered remains of Oleg Belov's six children and his pregnant wife packed into plastic bags at their home. A neighbor had heard screams during a family quarrel but did not call the police. The wife had earlier filed complaints saying Belov had beaten her and the children.

That same time, the body of Belov's mother was found buried at a dacha in Gorokhovets with multiple stab wounds. Law enforcement started a search for Belov and placed him on the federal wanted list.

Officers found Belov late on August 4, 2015, in a dacha house in Kovrov. Investigators said he had a knife and had planned to kill his mother-in-law. When officers arrested him, he threatened them and lunged at one investigator. He was shot in the stomach, taken to hospital, and then placed in custody.

Belov was charged with multiple counts of murder and with threatening a government official. At first he denied guilt, then he confessed, and later he recanted and said he had been forced to confess. During an on-site investigation, he demonstrated how the killings had occurred. Investigators said he used a knife and an axe and planned to bury the bodies.

A forensic psychiatric examination found that Belov had schizophrenia but was legally sane at the time of the crimes and therefore subject to criminal liability. The court ordered that he would receive compulsory psychiatric treatment while serving his sentence.

On June 29, 2016, the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Court found Oleg Belov guilty of murdering eight people and threatening a government official. He was sentenced to life in a special-regime penal colony with compulsory psychiatric treatment. The court also ordered him to pay 5 million rubles in moral damages to his mother-in-law.

In the case aftermath, investigators opened criminal proceedings against several district police officers for failing to respond to the wife's earlier complaints. Two district officers were later found guilty of negligence that led to particularly grave consequences. The six children and the wife were buried in September 2015.