Nikolai Dzhumagaliev

Nikolai Dzhumagaliev (Russian: Николай Есполович Джумагалиев, Kazakh: Николай Жұмағалиев, born 1952) is a Soviet serial killer, also known as Metal Fang, convicted for the killing of 7 people in the Kazakh SSR (now Kazakhstan) between 1979 and 1980.

Dzhumagaliev killed and cannibalized at least nine people, targeting mainly women in the Almaty area, and is believed to have killed more until his arrest. He was declared insane and imprisoned in a mental hospital until escaping in 1989, but was recaptured two years later, and is currently serving his sentence.^[1]

Background

Nikolai Dzhumagaliev was born on 15 November, 1952, in Uzynagash, Kazakh SSR, Soviet Union, to a Kazakh father and Belarusian mother, the third of four children and only son of his family.^[1] After completing the 9th grade of school, Dzhumagaliev entered a railway school, and following his graduation he was assigned to work in Atyrau. In 1970, at age 18 he was conscripted into the Soviet Army and served in chemical defense in Samarkand, Uzbek SSR. When his service was completed Dzhumagaliev tried to learn to be a driver and enter university, but achieved neither.^[1] As an alternative he travelled the Soviet Union, visiting the Ural Mountains, Siberia, Murmansk, where he frequently changed a number of professions, including a sailor, forwarder, electrician and bulldozer operator. In 1977, he returned to Uzynagash in Kazakhstan to take a job as a firefighter, contracting syphilis and trichomoniasis that same year.

Murders

Dzhumagaliev prepared his first murder very carefully, in January 1979 killed a woman travelling along a rural path outside of Uzynagash. During the investigation Dzhumagaliev described his first murder:

I always loved to hunt, often went hunting, but this was my first time hunting a woman. When I went out on the Uzun-agach-Maibulak track, I saw some young peasant woman. She was alone. I felt my heart pound within me and I ran after her. Hearing my footsteps, she turned around, but I caught up with her and put my arm around her neck, dragged her to the side of the landfill. She resisted, and then I cut her throat with a knife. Then I drank her blood. At this point, from the village appeared Bus Factory. I laid down on the ground and crouched next to the murder. While I was lying in my cold hands. When the bus drove, I warmed my hands on the woman's body and stripped her naked. I cut the corpse's breast into strips, removed the ovaries, separated the pelvis and hips; I then folded these pieces into a backpack and carried them home. I melted the fat to fry with, and some parts I pickled. Once I put the parts through a meat grinder and made dumplings. I saved the meat for myself; I never served it to anyone else. Twice I grilled the heart and the kidneys. Grilled meat, too. But it was tough, and cook it for a long time had its own fat. The meat of this woman took me a month to eat. The first time I ate human flesh through the power, and then used.^[1]

In 1979, Dzhumagaliev committed six more killings, all of whom he cannibalized. On August 21, in a drunken stupor, he accidentally shot his colleague, for which he was arrested. While detained he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, but in less than a year he was released and returned to Uzynagash, committing three more murders.

Arrest and conviction

Dzhumagaliev was arrested after his ninth murder, which occurred when he invited several friends to his home, one of whom he killed and began to dismember in the next room. Dzhumagaliev told the police that his guests fled in terror from the house when they glanced into the room. Arriving police found Dzhumagaliev on his knees and smeared with blood. In shock, the policemen allowed Dzhumagaliev to escape, fleeing to the nearby mountains naked with only a hatchet. The next day, 19 December 1980, Dzhumagaliev was arrested at his cousin's house.

On 3 December 1981, Dzhumagaliev's trial was held where he was declared to have committed seven murders but because he already had a previous diagnosis of schizophrenia he was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and sent to compulsory treatment at a closed mental hospital in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

Escape and recapture

In 1989, eight years after his initial imprisonment, Dzhumagaliev escaped while being transported to another facility. A letter sent by Dzghumagaliev from Moscow to a friend in Bishkek is believed to have been sent to trick investigators into thinking he had moved to Moscow and would begin killing there. It is unknown if any murders were committed during the time, but he is believed to have hidden in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan for most of the two years until he was recaptured in April 1991, in Fergana, Uzbekistan.

In popular culture

Hungarian poet and philosopher István Cs. Bartos wrote a short story about Dzhumagaliev titled True Story of the Kazakhstani Cannibal (Igaz történet a kazahsztáni kannibálról).^[2]

See also

• Albert Fish
• Hannibal Lecter

References

Further reading

• Николай Джумагалиев. People's History (in Russian). 2004-10-13. 

External links

• Entry at murderpedia.org