Vladimir Viktorovich Mirgorod was born on November 1, 1979, in Moscow, Russia. He grew up in the Timiryazevsky District near the Petrovsko-Razumovskaya metro area. His childhood was typical for many in the city. He attended local schools and finished his studies successfully.

After graduating from school, Mirgorod pursued further education at the Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys, known as MISiS. However, he did not stay long. He left the institute when he found a good job that interested him. His friends described him positively, highlighting his friendly nature and good character.

In January 2003, Vladimir Mirgorod committed his first murder by killing a 25-year-old woman from Minsk in her apartment and stealing her valuables. Her body was discovered on January 18. 

In March 2003, Mirgorod murdered two young women in quick succession: a 22-year-old visitor from Omsk and a 20-year-old woman whom he raped and strangled in a forested area near Moscow. The rapid escalation in frequency and violence marked a turning point in his behavior, transforming him into one of Moscow’s most dangerous serial offenders.

Just weeks later, on April 6, 2003, Mirgorod met a 16-year-old named Irina near Vodny Stadion. He accompanied her home, where he raped, tortured, and strangled her before setting her apartment on fire to destroy evidence.

On April 18, 2003, he murdered 33-year-old Natalia Kurochkina, a woman from Novosibirsk. He continued killing at an alarming pace—on July 1, he raped and strangled a 28-year-old woman in the Botanical Garden area of Moscow, and just three days later, he murdered a 23-year-old woman. His attacks shared a consistent pattern: he targeted women between their late teens and forties, often luring them to isolated areas, sexually assaulting them, and strangling them with improvised ligatures.

On July 21, 2003, Mirgorod committed a brutal double murder, killing a 50-year-old woman and her 15-year-old son.

In April 2004, Mirgorod struck again, raping and strangling 33-year-old Larisa with a belt inside a house on Lavochkin Street. As his crimes grew more frequent, his methods became both impulsive and sadistic. By the end of 2004, police were investigating a string of murders in northern Moscow that appeared linked by similar forensic evidence.

However, before detectives could identify him as a suspect, Mirgorod was arrested for an unrelated rape and robbery. In early 2005, he was convicted by the Preobrazhensky District Court and sentenced to serve from January 2005 to July 2010.

Upon his release in late 2010, Mirgorod’s fingerprints were entered into the national criminal database as part of standard procedure for ex-convicts. Investigators quickly discovered a match between his fingerprints and those collected from multiple unsolved murder scenes in Moscow. He was detained immediately.

During interrogation, Mirgorod initially confessed to eight murders, but subsequent DNA testing linked him to at least 16. Investigators later attributed as many as 33 killings to him between 2000 and 2004.

In 2012, Vladimir Mirgorod was convicted of multiple counts of murder, rape, and robbery. The Moscow City Court sentenced him to life imprisonment, a ruling upheld by the Supreme Court of Russia. He was first incarcerated at the high-security “Black Berkut” colony in Sverdlovsk Oblast before being transferred to the “Snowflake” Prison in Khabarovsk Krai, one of Russia’s most restrictive correctional facilities for violent offenders.

For years, Mirgorod remained silent about many of his crimes. However, between May and July 2024, two additional murders were formally linked to him via renewed DNA testing. These included the 2003 rape and murder of 16-year-old Irina and the 2004 murder of Larisa on Lavochkin Street