Japan TV Shocked With Vyatka Maniac

Komin was obsessed with a strange idea of making an underground city; he persistently burrowed the rocky soil and cherished a dream of making an underground menagerie
Six years ago first publications about a maniac in Russia's Vyatka area appeared; the man kept prisoners in a deep cave for two and a half years. The story shocked the whole of the country. However, the scandal still draws attention.

A young journalist from the local television worked together with the crew of Japan’s NTV television that made documentaries about maniacs of the 20th century. Every week Japan's program "Prostory" (Open Spaces) shows two films from the series Maniacs of the 20th Century. Now the television crew is working in three countries simultaneously. Last week the TV crew came to Vyatka, the capital of Russia's Kirov Region.

The Russian journalist who worked together with Japanese journalists states: "I couldn't even guess that I would have to come down into the terrible cave that was about 15 meters deep. I don't think I will ever have a chance to see such things once again. The descending was an ordeal for my nerves."

In July 1997, the whole of the world was shocked with a publication saying that a secret bunker was discovered in a garage in the city of Vyatskiye Polyany in the Kirov Region. It was a cave where a man kept other people enslaved. The prisoners were shackled; the deep cave was a tiny underground sewing workshop, a kitchen, a toilet and a torture chamber at the same time. 

As soon as mass media learnt about two women whom the torturer kept in the cave for two and a half years away from the daylight, journalists of central Russian and foreign media started visiting Vyatskiye Polyany.

Japan was probably the last to learn about the scandalous story, as first publications about the torturer (his name was Alexander Komin) appeared six years ago. As soon as Komin learnt the sentence the court passed on him, he killed himself in a preliminary confinement ward.

The scenario of a film about Komin was written already in Japan. The television crew even wanted to bring Japanese actors for participation in the film, but later changed their mind. Actors from a local amateur theatre helped the Japanese TV crew make the film about the torturer; they also helped make scenery of the bunker where the most dramatic episodes of the film were taken. 

The 44-year-old bastard kept Tatyana Melnikova for two and a half years and Tatyana Kozikova for two years in the cave that was over 12 meters deep. One more horizontal bunker locked with a metal door branched off the cave. Following a devilish whim, Komin tattooed the word "SLAVE" on the foreheads of the women. He liked to collar and to shackle his slaves; he beat them with a rubber hose and raped. Nobody outside the garage could hear cries of the people enslaved in the cave, as the depth of the bunker muffled the sounds. The man connected a staircase to the current so that the slaves couldn’t get out of the bunker.

The tiny room with a very low ceiling and partitioned off with a thin wall was the scenery for the terrible tragedy that lasted for several months. The Japanese television agrees that they won't be able to reproduce the whole of the story authentically; they say it is not their main objective. They are making a documentary, not a long-form thriller.

Journalists called Alexander Komin a devil incarnate, a monster and a maniac; indeed, he was too cruel towards the people whom he kept prisoners. He even cruelly executed four of them; the rest couldn't resist, they just had to live in accordance with the law of the hell.

Accomplice of Komin, Alexander Mikheyev was never present at the executions, but he saw how Komin tortured the people and helped him do away with the dead bodies of the executed.

Komin was obsessed with a strange idea of making an underground city; he persistently burrowed the rocky soil and cherished a dream of making an underground menagerie. He wanted to breed black cats in the menagerie and had an idea to make souvenir pictures from cats' fells. The man was a real devil in the flesh. On one of the cave walls there was a picture with a devil dressed like a sultan in it; the devil had a whip with which he lashed a concubine from his harem. It was Komin's best picture; he prohibited to take it off. However, the maniac didn't object when the slaves tore one more picture out of a magazine and attached it to the same wall. An inscription on the picture said: "Zombie is the utmost evil"; the man was flattered with such a characteristic addressed to him.

Although the man is already dead, the poor women whom Komin kept prisoners still consider him the devil incarnate. It was a quirk of fate but the maniac was buried close to the grave of Tatyana Kozikova's father (the woman was one of his slaves). The woman tells that when her mother came to the husband's grave, she nearly fainted when noticed that maniac Alexander Komin was buried there as well. "It is strange that the church allowed to bury the killer on the same cemetery with other people."

Alfinur Gilmutdinova
Vyatsky Krai
www.vk-smi.ru