Serial killer Elena Lobacheva got 'sexual pleasure' from stabbing Moscow vagrants

A female killer who took "sexual pleasure" from stabbing her victims has been jailed for 13 years.

Elena Lobacheva and a gang of four men murdered 14 homeless people because they saw themselves as "street cleaners" battling to get rid of Moscow's vagrants.

Lobacheva, 27, is also said to have been inspired by the Hollywood horror movie Bride of Chucky and hero-worshipped Russian serial killer Alexander Picushkin, who killed 49 people.

Jailed alongside her was gang leader Pavel Voitov, 23, who tried to give a Nazi salute when sentenced to life behind bars, despite being handcuffed. He wore a T-Shirt that said 'only hatred'.

After her arrest the Moscow court heard she told police that "randomly stabbing the body of a dying human brought her pleasure compared to sexual pleasure".

The judge was told she enjoyed killing, and she confessed to involvement in half the gang's murders, reported Metro.

One of the murders the gang committed was so violent that parts of the victim's brain were found 16ft away from his body.

A drunken carpenter was killed by the gang who stabbed him 171 times, while other victims were struck with hammers, the court heard.

Two women were among the 14 victims. One, called Tatyana, was stabbed 40 times near Belarussky Station in the Russian capital.

Gang member Vladislav Karatayev, 21, was jailed for 16 years by the Moscow court, Artur Nartsissov, 25, and Maxim Pavlov, 19, both received nine and a half year sentences.

Gang leader Voitov said of Lobacheva: "It was clear that she loved murders and enjoyed watching them. She always spoke about torture and the dismembering of bodies. She laughed as we killed, it was clear as day that she loved it."

Police search

Police searched her flat and found five knives, and a her computer revealed a guide to killing people and pictures of all of her victims with cut open stomachs and dismembered limbs.

Computer folders she kept called 'Tenderness' and 'Need this' contained hundreds of photos and videos of torture and executions.

Prosecutor Yaroslav Myts said. "Members of this gang don't find anything strange in what they were doing. Look at the number of stabs they were inflicting on helpless people. This shows they were enjoying it. It's not just hatred, they are maniacs."

He warned that the gang has admirers, saying that after the five were arrested one neo-Nazi online community renamed itself Support Pavel Voitov.

The court heard that Lobacheva worshipped serial killer Pichushkin, nicknamed the Chess Board Maniac, who murdered 49 people. The killer was arrested in 2006 before he could complete his target of one victim for each of the 64 squares on a chessboard.

Lobacheva was nicknamed 'Chucky's Bride' because she had been obsessed since childhood with the 1998 movie, which involves a doll possessed by a mass murderer. She had a tattoo related to the movie on her arm.

Murder spree

The court heard a female friend describe the gang, she said: "They wore military style clothes: trousers, boots, all were armed. Later Elena told me that she discussed the philosophy of murder with Pavel, and studied maniac Pichushkin from a practical point of view."

The gang murdered their victims in less than a year between 1am and 4am in derelict areas away from CCTV cameras.

The five members of the gang kept in contact using nicknames on sinister social media groups such as Time to Hate, which has since been banned.

Chilling messages were posted on that site such as: "I am not killing, I am cleaning up the world", "Every moment of the day you can pick up a knife, go out and make the world better" and "Love is finding the one and only who will go killing with you."

Gang member Pavlov told detectives: "Voitov was our authority. He was extremely cruel in day-to-day life, and very calm and composed during the murders. He often spoke about arranging a terrorist attack. It was only Voitov who used a hammer to kill. He enjoyed killing."