Weapons of thick-footed animals. “Once upon a time in Rostov”: Komsomolskaya Pravda studied the real criminal case of the Tolstopyatov gang

Vladimir and Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov were born far from Rostov, in a Bryansk village. Their father was in charge of the district police department and died at the very beginning of the war. There were thirteen children in the family; the mother, along with sixteen-year-old Vladimir and one-year-old Vyacheslav, as well as their sister, managed to get to distant relatives living in Rostov. The Tolstopyatovs lived during the occupation in a tiny outbuilding in the village of Nakhalovka. After the war, things didn’t get much easier for the family - the mother worked for a tiny salary either as a cleaner or as a postman, the children were constantly hungry, and in the winter they had nothing to wear to school. At the same time, Vladimir had good musical abilities, and Vyacheslav drew beautifully. In 1944, Vladimir was drafted into the army, took part in hostilities, and after the capture of Koenigsberg was awarded a medal. Vyacheslav studied well at school, drew better and better every year, and at the age of fifteen he was able to very accurately reproduce a banknote. The boy was tall and large for his age; for a drawn hundred-ruble note of the old type, he bought a bottle of alcohol, which he threw away because he did not like alcohol, and with the change he received he bought everything he wanted. Over time, he began to change money in a taxi, handing over a counterfeit piece of paper folded in four, and filling out only one side of it. One day it failed him - the taxi driver turned around the hundred-ruble bill, and the nineteen-year-old counterfeiter was arrested. During the investigation, he did not hide anything, showed in detail the entire process of making money, was polite and modest, as a result of which, despite the “heavy” article, he received only four years in prison, and a general regime one.

In the colony, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov struck up a close friendship with Sergei Samasyuk, who was convicted under the article “malicious hooliganism,” and all free time was working on some drawings and said that “everyone will hear about him.” Released in 1964, he came to his older brother and shared with him plans to create an armed gang that would engage in bank robberies. Samasyuk also joined the gang, saying that he would prefer to die on a bag of money rather than under a liquor store, as well as the Tolstopyatovs’ neighbor and friend Vladimir Gorshkov, a factory worker. The robbery plans proposed by Tolstopyatov Jr. were innovative for the domestic criminals of that time. He suggested using not what was left over from the war, but what he had made himself. automatic weapons, developed plans to capture Vehicle and hostages, conduct long-term monitoring of the situation before and after the crime. The gang's workshop and headquarters were located in the wing of Tolstopyatov Sr., which had a disguised entrance. Vyacheslav worked as a driver, graphic designer, and even led the shooting section. By 1965, the brothers produced drawings of a weapon that was designed for the caliber of a sports cartridge and, according to experts, had no analogues. Vyacheslav got the cartridges from the section; for the barrels, the brothers used the small-caliber rifles they had, and they agreed on the production of all the necessary parts with the workers of the Rostov Legmash plant. Having made 3 machine guns and 4 pistols, the gang planned to rob a bank, with the goal of taking a million rubles and “laying low.” However, it was difficult to organize an attack on the bank with cash, so the Tolstopyatovs decided to rob the collector near the bank. Having organized a month-long surveillance, the bandits found out the procedure and schedule for the delivery of money, payment days and other details. The first robbery attempt on October 7, 1968 was unsuccessful. The driver of the Volga stopped by the bandits jumped out of the car at the sight of the weapon, forcing them to abandon their plans, and Vyacheslav informed the police about the location of the car by phone. On October 10, bandits in the car of a driver they knew were waylaid by a cashier at a shoe factory. They were unlucky again - the driver of the truck transporting her, violating the traffic rules, made a left turn and disappeared from the intruders at the factory gates. On October 22, the Tolstopyatovs and their accomplices robbed a grocery store in the village of Mirny. They arrived there by tram, in front of the store they put cut-off nylon stockings on their heads and entered the doors with machine guns. Samasyuk, armed with a pistol, took money from the cash register, there was not much of it - 526 rubles. The man who tried to stop them was shot point-blank by Tolstopyatov Jr., after which the criminals returned home by tram. Rumors spread around the city about the Fantomas gang. A month later, bandits stole a radio technical school car, tied up the driver and robbed the collector of a bag containing 2,700 rubles. In December of the same year, they robbed a grocery store, this time the loot was 1,498 rubles. The next big case was supposed to be an attack on a cashier at a chemical plant. At this time, Samasyuk was convicted of a minor offense, and in his absence the gang had no luck - an armed guard carried the bag with money, Gorshkov was wounded, and raids began throughout the city. The bandits hid and began improving their weapons. Vyacheslav developed cartridges own design, with the same caliber, but increased in size, came up with homemade grenades that used a mixture of gunpowder and aluminum powder, and improved the design of the machine gun. In addition, in 1970, a certain Kirakosyan was arrested, committing robberies with small-caliber weapons, and the Tolstopyatovs’ crimes were attributed to him; moreover, witnesses even identified Kirakosyan as one of the “phantomas”.

In the summer of 1971, after the release of Samasyuk, the Tolstopyatov gang robbed a large construction organization, seizing the amount of 17 thousand rubles. In December of the same year, a robbery of the savings bank on Pushkinskaya took place that shocked the entire city. The bandits monitored the work of the collectors for two months and established that one of them came into the cash register, and two of them were waiting for him in the car. The criminals made homemade bulletproof vests, and, grabbing a bag of money from the cash register, rushed to the cash-in-transit vehicle. The collector Dzyuba, who opened fire, was killed, the criminals disarmed and tied up the driver, and drove away in a collector's car, while Gorshkov was wounded in the arm. In the bag, the criminals found bonds, lottery tickets and 17 thousand rubles. Of this amount, 2 thousand rubles were spent on bribing the surgeon Dudnikov, who treated Gorshkov. In the fall of 1972, the Tolstopyatovs developed a powerful folding machine gun that fired balls with a diameter of 9 mm. However, their planned attack on the collectors of the Strela store failed - having driven up to the store in a seized Volga with the driver tied up in the trunk, the bandits saw that the collectors had already left. Trying to catch up with them at the Central Bank, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov began to drive recklessly, and the car crashed into a tree. Having received injuries, the bandits ran away; The tied driver, who was in the trunk, was also injured.

It should be noted that Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, the brains of the gang, was distinguished by high intelligence, restraint and strong character. He punctually kept a diary, where he noted the meanings of foreign words and recorded all expenses. Once he personally operated on the wounded Gorshkov, using a description from a medical textbook. Samasyuk, who was the main enforcer of the gang, had a penchant for drinking and stole common money, and when one day he grabbed a weapon, it ended with Tolstopyatov putting Samasyuk against the wall and starting to carefully insert bullets a centimeter from his head. As for Tolstopyatov Sr., he had the role of an observer rather than a direct participant in the robberies.

The Rostov police began to take emergency measures, duty units were strengthened, and mobile police groups were created. In June 1973, the last crime of the Fantomas was committed. The attempt to rob the cash desk of the Yuzhhydrovodkhoz Research Institute was initially successful. Gorshkov and Samasyuk, at gunpoint, snatched a bag of money from the cashier and ran up the stairs. The institute staff rushed after them. Samasyuk began to shoot back, and although the pistol misfired, he ran out into the street, where Tolstopyatov was waiting for him with a machine gun. On the street, loader Martovitsky rushed at the bandits and was immediately killed. A police squad passing nearby came running to the sound of shots, and Lieutenant Rusov wounded Samasyuk in the chest and legs, and Gorshkov in the buttock. While Rusov was reloading his service pistol, the criminals tried to escape in a captured old Moskvich. A fire department vehicle, driven by Rusov and his partner Kubyshta, set off in pursuit of them. Tolstopyatov stopped and tried to throw grenades at his pursuers. At this time, Samasyuk was dying on a bag of money - just as he had once predicted for himself. Tolstopyatov again tried to escape, and in the heat of the chase he cut off a Volga taxi, which also rushed after him - and cut off so that the Moskvich flew onto the curb. However, the dismantling of the taxi drivers did not take place - they saw a grenade in the hands of the Moskvich driver. Tolstopyatov, having grabbed the wounded Gorshkov and the money, tried to hide on the territory of Rostselmash, but he failed.

The trial of the Fantomas took place in July 1974 and sentenced the gang members to capital punishment, and their accomplices to various terms of imprisonment. While awaiting execution, the brothers worked on improving weapons and a perpetual motion machine, and Vyacheslav, who was placed in a cell, told the agent that he wanted to make a portable helicopter and fly to Finland on it. This is probably why the legend arose that the brothers were not shot, but were sent to work in a secret design bureau.

March 6 marked the 23rd anniversary of the execution of Vyacheslav and Vladimir Tolstopyatov and Vladimir Gorshkov - the Fantomas gang, who for several years kept the whole of Rostov-on-Don in wild fear. The criminal case of the “Fantomas” Tolstopyatov brothers, whose biography formed the basis of the film “Once Upon a Time in Rostov,” has been kept in the archives of the regional court for more than 40 years. The Komsomolskaya Pravda correspondent was allowed not only to get acquainted with unique documents, some of which were previously secret, but also to take photographs. For which many thanks to the staff of the institution! 43 volumes with already enviably tattered bindings about the “exploits” of the gang are very close to the criminal case of another criminal who also “glorified” the Rostov Pope - the maniac Andrei Chikatilo. “Most often students ask for criminal cases, but journalists haven’t stopped by for a long time,” we were greeted at the court archives. And they untied the twine that tied the volumes into bundles...

The first documents are inspections of incident sites, testimonies of frightened people, many talking about “stockings” on their heads like “Phantomas”, as well as photographs of hijacked and shot “Muscovites”, which the attackers used for movement during attacks. Dry data about stolen money and expert conclusions. By the way, at first they could not say anything about the weapon used. At the end of almost every volume there is a resolution to suspend the criminal case due to the absence of suspects. After some time (in the 15th volume), the investigators realize that one gang is operating and combine criminal cases.

The most interesting thing begins in the 17th volume: it describes how in June 1973, gang leader Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov and his comrade Gorshkov were detained with a chase and shooting, and his accomplice Samasyuk was liquidated. Black and white photographs, of course, are not color, but the last jackpot that the bandits hit - 125 thousand rubles - looks impressive.

Investigators drew in detail a scheme for detaining criminals (what happened on the outskirts of Rostov in 1973 is clearly different from the movie version), and then the Tolstopyatovs’ yard, where there was a secret room in the outbuilding, the entrance to which was disguised behind a massive mirror.

The cache was not identified immediately, he recalls Nadezhda Ivanova, director of the museum of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for Rostov region. “They say that criminologists and experts walked around the room several times and went inside, not understanding why something bothered them. It turned out that the size of the house did not match the area of ​​the room - it was much smaller.

For a long time, legends circulated around Rostov about the contents of the Tolstopyatovs’ shelter, tales were told about the skeletons of tortured women and children and cosmic sums. In the criminal case, everything is written in detail: on what shelves were the cartridges, weapons, blanks for pistols and revolvers. Nothing about the remains of the victims. After his arrest, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov immediately confessed to everything, spoke in detail about the attacks, did not deny his guilt, went to the places with detectives and showed them.

Moreover, he looked quite decent - in the photo he looked like an intelligent-looking dandy. His older brother Vladimir is another matter. Constantly gloomy, not particularly talkative (his testimony is the shortest). He admitted his guilt partially, in that he only helped in the creation of weapons, they say, he himself was interested. But Gorshkov, in his testimony, actively blamed everything on his accomplices.

In the criminal case, there are interrogations of the wife of Vladimir Tolstopyatov (by the way, she actually met with Vyacheslav), as well as testimony from gang members who unanimously claim that the woman did not know about the crimes. Did not help.

A case was opened against her for failure to inform, as indicated in the criminal case. True, how her fate turned out is unknown.

SPECIFICALLY IN THE CINEMA AND IN REALITY*The Tolstopyatovs committed crimes after they witnessed the execution of workers in Novocherkassk. In fact, they had never been to Novocherkassk, and therefore the events of 1962 could not have affected the gang in any way. At first, they allegedly wanted to become famous as gunsmiths, offered their developments to the KGB, and when they laughed there, they decided to use their talent differently. * The Tolstopyatovs regularly “communicate” with government officials; in fact, they were never suspected of banditry. The brothers officially worked, were married, and had never been in the sight of the police before their arrest. Not counting the story with counterfeit money.

"KP" compared real gang members and movie characters. Photo: Channel One and the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for the Republic of Uzbekistan

*There are only two children in the Tolstopyatov family - the eldest Vladimir and the youngest Vyacheslav, in fact there were 13 of them! Ten died while still young, three survived. The brothers still have a sister alive. There is not a word about her in the film. *The brothers treat their mother with tenderness, who allegedly was ill for a long time and did not get out of bed. In fact, they lived separately, visited very, very rarely and did not help financially. Their mother before last day I walked and took care of myself. *The brothers commit crimes in different time- both in the morning, and at night, and during the day, in fact, they almost always acted during the lunch break. The fact is that Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov was a laborer at the construction site of a helicopter plant, and spent his free time at home. The only thing left for “business” was the lunch break.

In 1974, the Rostov Regional Court considered the case of the Tolstopyatov brothers. The uniqueness of this case was that the Tolstopyatov gang was “advanced” in the criminal world and was armed with homemade machine guns and revolvers - at that time it was easier to make weapons yourself than to buy them on the black market.

“Gangsterism is not a phenomenon for our soil!”

For two decades in the USSR, the courts did not consider cases of “banditry.” It was believed that the gangs were destroyed and could no longer be revived. However, there were criminal groups that carried out attacks, but their cases were classified as armed robbery - after all, there could be no bandits in the country of victorious socialism. In the 70s, prosecutors liked to repeat: “gangsterism is not a phenomenon for our soil!”

From 1968 to 1973, for 5 years, the Tolstopyatov gang kept Rostov-on-Don in suspense. They were called "phantomas" because they disguised themselves by pulling women's black stockings over their heads for camouflage. Over 5 years, the Tolstopyatov gang carried out 14 armed attacks: on cashiers of government agencies and enterprises, on collectors, on stores and stole 150 thousand rubles. Today these figures seem insignificant, but then the number of attacks and the amount taken was amazing.

Who was part of the criminal group

The Tolstopyatov gang consisted of 4 people: Vladimir and Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, Vladimir Gorshkov and Sergey Samasyuk. They received the nickname “Fantômas” not only because they put women’s stockings on their heads, but also because the premiere of the 3rd part of the film about Fantômas occurred during the group’s activities.

The founder of the gang, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, was born in 1940 in Bryansk. As a child, he loved to draw, design, especially sketch, ensuring that his copy of the drawing did not differ from the original. At the age of 15, he learned to draw banknotes and exchanged them in wine and vodka stores. I threw away the alcohol and used the change to buy myself sweets, books, and pencils. Over time, he began selling copied banknotes to taxi drivers.

He saw that the taxi drivers did not unfold the banknotes, and began to copy the money on only one side. This was his undoing: one of the taxi drivers unfolded the bill and saw that there was nothing on the other side! Vyacheslav was sent to prison for 4 years in a general regime colony.

In prison he met Sergei Samasyuk, and there they began to develop a gang plan. Upon his release, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov enlisted the support of his older brother, Vladimir Tolstopyatov. The fourth member of the gang was Vladimir Gorshkov, who was an old acquaintance of the brothers.

The Tolstopyatov gang: the beginning

Rostov “found out” about the gang in October 1968, when the Tolstopyatovs and their accomplices seized a car from the Rostov watch factory. Dzeron Arutyunov was driving. The Tolstopyatovs needed a car to attack the cashier of the Regional Office of the State Bank. But the attack did not take place: Arutyunov jumped out of the car, and the bandits realized that it was better not to use this car for their insidious purposes. Failure spurred on the bandits.

In October 1968, they tried to attack store No. 46 in the village of Mirny. But the cashiers were able to hide the proceeds, and the bandits were able to take away only 526 rubles. In November, a gang robbed a woman near the Oktyabrsky branch of the State Bank. They took the woman’s bag, which contained 2,700 rubles. In December, the Tolstopyatovs robbed a grocery store on Mechnikov Street in Rostov and “enriched themselves” by as much as 1,498 rubles.

After three not very successful attacks, the bandits realized that they were poorly prepared. It was decided to rob the Chemical Plant. The Tolstopyatovites approached the preparation of the case scrupulously: Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov tried to get a job at the plant, found out the days when salaries were paid, watched the cashiers, the car that brought the money... And again they missed: on the “X-day” the bag with the money was carried not by the cashier, but by the security guard. The man was not afraid, he ran into the factory building, pulled out his revolver and drove away the bandits. After this, the Tolstopyatovs “lay low” for a year and a half.
In 1971, the Tolstopyatov gang attacked the construction organization UNR-112 and were able to take away 17 thousand rubles. In December 1971, they also robbed collectors near the savings bank and were able to “earn” 20 thousand rubles. There were 14 attacks in total, the total amount of loot was 150 thousand rubles.

Homemade weapons

Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov was responsible for arming the gang. The weapons were manufactured in semi-industrial conditions: blanks were made in the workshop, parts were ordered to milling machine operators at the factory “through connections.” Before the series of attacks began, 4 revolvers, 2 pistols of a unique design, 11 grenades and even body armor were manufactured.

Developed bandit tactics

Despite the initial failures, the attack tactics were at that time advanced for the world of criminals. The Tolstoy Pyatovites had 2 options for robbery: first, one of the bandits stops the car asking for a ride. After he managed to catch the car, the bandit asked him to be taken to the designated place, where other gang members were waiting for him. The driver was tied up and placed in the back seat or trunk. Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov was always the “driver”, and Samasyuk and Gorshkov carried out the attack. After that, the car drove away at great speed, the driver and the car were left somewhere in an inconspicuous place.

In another case, a collector's car was seized at the scene of the attack. Then they committed a crime in this car and disappeared.

Vladimir Tolstopyatov did not participate in the “active phase” of the crime. Usually he worked in the rear: he ideologically inspired the group, observed the situation after the crime was committed, monitored the police and listened to the stories of witnesses.

Detention

To detain the bandits, the operational headquarters of the Ministry of Internal Affairs created mobile response teams and equipped several police cars with radios. In the early summer of 1973, the Tolstopyatov gang was caught: they were trying to rob the cash desk of the Yuzhgiprovodkhoz Research Institute. During the arrest, Sergei Samasyuk was killed and Gorshkov was injured.

Sentence

On July 1, 1974, the brothers Tolstopyatov and Vladimir Gorshkov were sentenced to death. 8 accomplices received different prison terms for complicity or failure to report. All complaints were rejected, and on March 6, 1975, the brothers Tolstopyatov and Gorshkov were shot.

The Tolstopyatov brothers - Vladimir and Vyacheslav

Case Tolstopyatov brothers was considered by the Rostov Regional Court in 1974. It occupies a special place in the history of Russian crime. For almost two decades there were no criminal cases in the Soviet Union banditry- it was believed that the latter gangs were defeated and banditry in the country had no class or any other roots. It is no coincidence that one of the leaders of the Prosecutor's Office at that time declared with pride for his country: “Gangsterism is not a phenomenon for our soil!”

This was the second case in the country, after a long break, in which the defendants were convicted of banditry. From time to time, cases of criminal groups that committed armed attacks arose, but, firstly, this phenomenon was not at all as widespread as it is today, and, secondly, the actions of the accused in almost all cases were qualified as group armed robbery (in the country By definition, banditry could not have triumphed over socialism). But, according to the criminal legal classification of the actions of the convicts, although the case was rare, it was still not the only one. There was one feature in this case that made it unique. , Gorshkov and Samasyuk were armed with homemade machine guns and revolvers. In those distant times, it was easier to make an assault rifle (not only the Israeli Uzi or the exotic Chechen Borz, but even a Kalashnikov assault rifle) yourself than to buy it on the black market.

Famous “phantomas”: (from left to right) above – Vladimir and Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, below – Vladimir Gorshkov and Sergey Samasyuk...

The city learned about them on October 7, 1968, when a car from the Rostov Watch Factory, driven by Dzeron Arutyunov, was seized. The attack was carried out by Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, Samasyuk and Gorshkov. The car was needed to attack a cashier near the building of the Regional Office of the State Bank. The attack did not take place - they understood that Arutyunov, who jumped out of the car, would inform the police. They will be looking for the car; the appearance of this car near the State Bank may be noticed by police officers. And such means of disguise as fake license plates have not yet been invented by their criminal imagination.

Three days after the attack on Arutyunov, the same persons, with the participation of a new member gangs- Srybnogo - they tried to attack the cashiers of the Rostov shoe factory. They did not at all intend to attack the cashiers of this particular factory from the very beginning. No, they guarded any cashier with a large bag at the October office of the State Bank, thinking that where there was a big bag, there was big money.

In order for the attack to be successful, they stocked up on a car, it was provided by Srybny. So that no one would suspect Srybny of complicity, his hands were tied in advance - let the police think that the car was taken by force. Quite by chance, the cashier with the large bag turned out to be a cashier from a shoe factory. Having hesitated and not having time to carry out the attack before she got into the car, the whole company in Srybny’s car began to move behind the truck with the cashier. But completely unexpectedly for the pursuers, the truck, in violation of traffic rules, turned left along Ostrovsky Lane and disappeared behind the gates of the Shoe Factory. The criminals were furious at the failure.

In October, November and December 1968, four more daring armed attacks were carried out in the city. The coincidence of the signs of the criminals reported by eyewitnesses, the method and nature of their actions allowed us to conclude that all crimes were committed by the same persons. The first in this series is the attack on store No. 46, located in the village of Mirny. The testimony of witnesses has drawn a fairly detailed and bright picture this crime.

On October 22, in the evening, shortly before the expected arrival of collectors, a store with unusual looking Three people entered with machine guns and pistols in their hands. Their faces were covered with black cloth. Their frightening appearance, the indiscriminate shooting they opened at the walls and ceiling, forced the buyers to scatter - among whom the majority were women, including women with children.

One of the robbers remained guarding the door, while the other two, threatening with weapons, moved towards the cash register. And then the first disappointment awaited them - the first, but not the last on the path they had chosen: thanks to the resourcefulness of the cashiers, the main amount of money was safely hidden. Their entire loot this time, together with what was stolen from the departments, amounted to only 526 rubles. But it was not for the sake of such prey that such ferocious-looking revolvers and machine guns were created! In fact, it turned out that this weapon did not intimidate precisely those whom it was intended to intimidate - cashiers Orlova and Luneva, saleswomen Goryunov and Gunina did not give up the proceeds.

Having profited from a little bit from the piece, bread and dairy departments, and some small change from the cash register, the criminals began to leave the store. And here another surprise awaited them. When the first two left the store, pensioner Guriy Sergeevich Chumakov, who happened to be nearby, tried to detain them. A hereditary worker who worked all his life as a blacksmith, defended his Motherland on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War and was awarded orders and medals for the courage and dedication he showed in battles against the fascist invaders, this man rushed after the leaving criminals - one by one, with a piece of pipe - against the machine gun and revolvers.

It was him, Chumakov, that Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov called in the court hearing with the impersonal word “enemy,” and in his diary much more definitely, “enemy.” No, not a piece of pipe - the courage of a Soviet citizen, the conviction that the interests of society are also his interests, the readiness to defend these interests to the last drop of blood - were his main weapon. And they, armed to the teeth, ran. But there was still a third left. He left the store later than the others and Chumakov did not see him. He sneakily shot Chumakov in the back with a machine gun.

Exactly two weeks later, on November 5, 1968, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov and Samasyuk attacked the driver of the Rostov Main Gas Pipeline Administration, Viktor Gareginovich Arutyunov, trying to seize the car. The car was stopped on Tekuchev Street not far from the Central City Hospital, and Samasyuk immediately took a seat next to the driver, and Tolstopyatov, going to the left front door, opened it and demanded that Arutyunov get out of the car. Arutyunov, realizing that he was dealing with criminals, but not at a loss, abruptly rushed away, deciding to detain Samasyuk. Tolstopyatov shouted to Samasyuk: “Shoot!”, and Samasyuk began to shoot. Either from excitement, or from fear - after all, Arutyunov was not afraid of them, but began to resist! - His hands were shaking, he couldn’t hit (it was the driver sitting next to him!), but in the end he hit with the third shot. Then Arutyunov turned onto the tram tracks and stopped the car. People jumped out of a tram that stopped nearby and, although they did not take any measures to detain the criminals, they considered it best to hide.

Just twenty days after the attack on Arutyunov, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, Samasyuk and Gorshkov committed a new crime - they seized a Radiotechnical School car driven by the driver Kushnarev, drove it to the Oktyabrsky branch of the State Bank and here they took a bag with money from the ATX cashier - 5 Matveeva. The roles were distributed and performed as follows. Gorshkov stopped a car on the street (it turned out to be Kushnarev’s car) and drove it to a secluded place near the Zoo, where Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov and Samasyuk were already waiting for him. After tying up Kushnarev and seizing the car, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov got behind the wheel, Gorshkov sat next to him, and Samasyuk sat in the back seat next to the tied up Kushnarev.

At the Oktyabrsky branch of the State Bank, the whole trio stopped the car and began to wait for the cashier with a large bag. This time it turned out to be the cashier of ATX-5 Matveeva. Samasyuk jumped out of the car with a machine gun in his hand, ran up to Matveeva, fired from the machine gun next to her into the ground, snatched a bag of money from the hands of Matveeva, who was taken aback, and got into the car again. There were 2,700 rubles in the bag.

Another month later, on December 29, 1968, there was an attack on store No. 21 of Gorpromtorg, located on Mechnikov Street. Two people entered the store - Gorshkov and Samasyuk, and the third - Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov - remained at the door. a tall robber with a pistol in his hand went to the cash register, pushed the cashier out, unlocked the cash register and took the money. Samasyuk cleared out everything that was there, and there was almost one and a half thousand money in the cash register - 1,498 rubles - an amount, although not very small for such a small store, but still significantly less than what the bandits were counting on.

The next attempt was to seize the salaries of the workers of the October Revolution Chemical Plant. This episode indicates a qualitatively different stage in the gang’s activities. The target of the attack is no longer a small store with three defenseless saleswomen or lone cashiers. They no longer act at random, waiting at the bank for a random cashier with a large bag in the naive confidence that where there is a big bag, there is big money. Here is a preliminary exploration with an approximate (and not very far from the truth) calculation of the size of future production. Here there is a clear division of roles, which required the involvement of new participants: along with the “militants”, there are also observers, “signalmen”, whose job is to notice the car with the cashier in time and give a sign to those who are directly about to carry out the attack.

The gang is no longer just a “stable armed group.” Its stability is determined not only by the repeated attacks. Samasyuk is not there, he is serving a sentence for hooliganism in a colony, but the gang did not quiet down, did not hide - the largest (at that time) attack was being prepared and carried out. Here there is already everything that was repeated later in their last crime - the distribution of roles, and preliminary reconnaissance, and shooting, and the pursuit, and failure as a result. We can judge all this, as well as subsequent events, from the fairly detailed testimony of all participants, which agree in significant details, on both sides, primarily from the testimony of the defendants: both Tostopyatov brothers, Gorshkov and Denskevich. Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov testified in court how he came to the plant several times, allegedly to get a job. I talked with people, studied the orders and announcements posted on the stands. He managed to find out on what days wages are given out at the factory, what kind of car they use to bring money from the bank; find out that an armed guard usually goes along with the cashier to collect the money, and he carries the bag of money from the car to the building.

According to the plan they developed together with Vladimir Tolstopyatov, it was assumed that Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov and Gorshkov would wait at the plant management for a car with money, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov would take a bank bag with money from a security guard, and Gorshkov would at that time take away the keys to the car in which they were already driving from the driver. money - they will disappear safely. Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, who was “exposed” during reconnaissance visits to the plant, feared that if he and Gorshkov waited for a car with money in the immediate vicinity of the checkpoint, he might be recognized. Therefore, they decided to wait around the corner - on Teatralny Avenue. In case the car arrives on Tekuchev Street, because of which they see it too late and do not have time to run up to the entrance, Vladimir Tolstopyatov and Denskevich should be on Tekuchev Street. Their task was to give a timely signal to Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov and Gorshkov about the appearance of the car. Perhaps this was almost the only part of their plan that turned out to be realized - Vladimir Tolstopyatov and Denskevich stood where they were placed, and were ready, as they say, to “give the go-ahead” if the car appeared from their direction. In all other respects, as is known, the plans of the criminals did not come true. The car drove up along Teatralny Avenue, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov and Gorshkov saw it in time and jumped up to the entrance in time. But then life made its own adjustments.

The courage of the plant workers was the reason for the failure. The same courage that these strategists did not take into account. They, who considered themselves “superman”, who relied only on strength and did not value human life at all, could not think of those around them as anything other than people meekly raising their hands at the ferocious sight of their revolvers and machine guns. However, in life everything turned out differently. The security guard was not afraid and did not give up the money. On the contrary, he himself, retreating to the entrance and further - inside the building - from the raiders who were shooting at his feet, began to take his Nagan out of his holster. Tolstopyatov, not immediately understanding what was happening, rushed after him into the entrance, but quickly came to his senses and returned back. As they say: “I don’t care about fat, I wish I was alive.” We had to save ourselves. At this time, Gorshkov tried to take the keys from the driver. The terrifying shots at the fence next to him and even a fatal shot at the driver himself did not really frighten him. Moreover, the wounded driver himself took the machine gun from Gorshkov. And Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, together with Gorshkov, no longer had the keys - they had to take back their own machine gun. Vyacheslav shot at the driver, wounded him again, snatched the machine gun and they began to run away.

Armed from unarmed, young and healthy from a wounded old man. And people were already rushing to the driver’s aid, including his son. The raiders jumped up to a truck stopped in front of a red traffic light and pulled the driver out of the cab, which they did only because they shot at him and wounded him in the arm. They fled in a seized truck, escaping from a chase organized by the guards, during which Gorshkov was wounded in the back by one of the shots.

After this failure, there was almost a year and a half break in the gang's activities. There were objective reasons for this. Samasyuk was imprisoned, Gorshkov was wounded in the back, and Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov was not so brave and reckless as to attack anyone alone. But Gorshkov’s wound healed. They didn’t even think about removing the bullet - they didn’t contact the doctors, and being stuck in the back, it didn’t hit the spine or any vital organs and, in general, didn’t really interfere with Gorshkov’s life. Samasyuk's sentence ended and in July 1971 he returned to Rostov. Just a month after his return, the gang committed another attack - on the cashier of the UNR-112.

The attack itself was preceded, as Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov told us, by two of his visits to this department for reconnaissance. He managed to find out when money was brought to UNR-112 to pay salaries to employees. And so, at half past one on August 25, 1971, when the cashier Gorbashova with a bag containing 17 thousand rubles, as well as the UPR employees accompanying Gorbashova - engineer Marchenko and driver Lunev - entered the UPR building and began to climb to the second floor, they Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov and Gorshkov met the stairs. Vyacheslav demanded that the money be given to him and he shot upward as a warning. Gorbashova got scared and gave the money, after which Vyacheslav and Gorshkov jumped out into the yard, got into the bus standing there - there was no other car - and together with Samasyuk, who was standing “on watch” outside, they left. After driving a few blocks, they abandoned the bus, leaving behind a bag with 500 rubles in change - it was hard to carry.

The attack on UPR-112 served as a warm-up before what happened next. On the evening of December 16, 1971, the gang raided collectors who arrived at savings bank No. 0299, located on Pushkinskaya Street not far from Dolomanovsky Lane.

The shootout that ended with the murder of the collector and the seizure of the collection vehicle was an event that shook the city. Collector Malikov, who was in the savings bank premises at the time of the attack, ran out into the street in response to the shots and opened fire back at the attackers; driver-collector Tezikov, who was in the car at the time of the attack and jumped out of it, throwing his revolver; passers-by Mikheev and Kibalnikov, who observed this fleeting battle from the side; the results of an examination that established that collector Zyuba died from gunshot wounds, and the bullets extracted from the corpse, as well as bullets and cartridges found at the scene of the incident, were fired from the same submachine gun that was used in the attack on the October Revolution Chemical Plant. All this allows us to clearly imagine how events unfolded. The criminals, who were waiting for a car with collectors on the street, seized the moment when the brigade of collectors was not in full strength in the car - Malikov entered the savings bank for the proceeds - jumped up to the car and, threatening with machine guns, demanded that Zyuba and Tezikov get out of it. Tezikov obeyed and jumped out of the car, throwing his revolver on the seat. Zyuba, on the contrary, opened fire from a Nagan service revolver. Malikov ran out to hear the shots and also began shooting at the attackers. By that time, however, Zyuba had already been killed, the criminals took possession of the car and drove away. Malikov’s shots “to catch up” could not stop them. The car with Zyuba’s corpse was found some time later in one of the city landfills, but the money, which according to the savings bank documents should have been a little more than 20 thousand rubles, was no longer in the car. Gorshkov was again wounded, this time in the arm, by one of Zyuba’s shots.

The gang improved their tactics. Vladimir Tolstopyatov was nearby during the attack and observed what was happening, and then observed the actions of the police and investigators who arrived at the scene. He observed in order to then carry out an “analysis” of the actions of both the bandits themselves and the police officers. Such a “analysis” with a detailed analysis of errors and conclusions for the future took place a few days later.

Almost six months later - on May 26, 1972 - Samasyuk, with the participation of Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, attacked store No. 44 of the Oktyabrsky District Food Store, which is located on Dolomanovsky Lane. This attack was spontaneous, it was not planned in advance. Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov and Samasyuk were driving along Dolomanovsky on a “Vyatka” scooter, which Vyacheslav had acquired by that time. Seeing the store, Samasyuk suggested that Vyacheslav take the proceeds. He had no objections. We stopped. Vyacheslav remained outside by the scooter. Samasyuk, having entered the store, jumped up to the cash register and, threatening the cashier Reutova with a revolver, grabbed money from the cash register - it turned out to be three and a half hundred rubles - and, in front of the frightened Reutova and the saleswomen, ran out of the store.

Six months later, on November 4, 1972, the defendants, at gunpoint, seized a Volga belonging to the Rostov branch of Gruzavtotrans. Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, Samasyuk and Gorshkov took part in the attack. Driver Ivan Semenovich Azivsky, who stopped at their request, suspecting nothing, agreed to take the trio to the Brick Factory. At the Brick Factory, in a deserted place, to Azivsky’s surprise and horror, they threatened him with a revolver, forced him to get out of the car and climb into the trunk, after tying his hands. A few hours later, at the Tannery Association club, in front of the participants of the recreational party who had gone outside to smoke, this Volga literally crashed into a tree. The engine compartment was crushed and the windshield shattered. The passenger jumped out of the car and ran away, and the driver, who was drunk, was sent to the hospital by compassionate citizens along the way. After that, hearing some knocking in the trunk, the people gathered around the car opened the trunk and took out the bound Azivsky. Azivsky spoke in detail about the circumstances of his captivity and seizure of the car, and identified Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov as one of the raiders. He also identified Samasyuk from a photograph.

At this time, the driver - i.e. Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov - regained consciousness on the way and already on the territory of the Central City Hospital almost next to the emergency room, feeling a revolver in his pocket, he realized that it was not the police who brought him here, he explained to his “saviors” that if they will hand him over to the emergency room, then they will then be called in for interrogation, more than once, but he already feels decent and will walk about forty meters to the emergency room on his own. The owner of the car and his friends were not at all eager to be interrogated, they dropped Vyacheslav off, turned around and left.

Vyacheslav, having washed the blood from his face and hands under a tap that happened to be on the street next to the emergency room, walked home. If the traffic inspector who arrived at the Tannery Association club, having listened to eyewitnesses of the incident and Azivsky, who had been taken out of the trunk by that time, had immediately contacted the city police department, and the duty service had immediately organized search activities, then Vyacheslav could have been detained that same evening. But the traffic inspector did not want to believe Azivsky for a long time and generally stated that before looking for bandits, he needed to find witnesses and draw up a report. When the police department finally reported what had happened, it was already too late - the search did not bring any results.

Both brothers Tolstopyatov and Gorshkov gave detailed testimony about why the car was seized. As a result, we know that Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, Samasyuk and Gorshkov, taking with them weapons - a whole arsenal: two Nagan revolvers, one homemade revolver and two homemade machine guns - one small-caliber and the second that fired 7.9 mm caliber balls - were going to attack on collectors who come to collect money from the Strela store - a fairly large grocery store, located, however, at some distance from major highways. While observing the store, they found out that collectors arrive at it at the end of the route with proceeds received at other points.

In a Gruzavtotrans Volga with Azivsky in the trunk, they drove up to the store and began to wait for the collectors. We waited a long time, got bored with the wait, so we went for wine. We returned and began to wait again. They drank out of boredom. Drunk, they almost quarreled: Gorshkov, offended by the collectors for his shot hand, demanded that Samasyuk give him the “ball” machine gun - he really wanted to take revenge, and this machine gun had a larger caliber and twice the amount of gunpowder in the cartridge. Samasyuk objected and even hit the machine gun on the floor of the car. The impact caused an involuntary shot - it pierced Samasyuk’s hat almost a centimeter from his temple. Without waiting for the collectors, they took Gorshkov home, the bag with weapons to a hiding place, and decided to abandon the car on the station square. On the road, on the descent near the Leather Club, a drunken Tolstopyatov lost control and the car crashed into a tree. The impact knocked out several of Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov's teeth and he was forced to turn to dentists. Dentists Sitnikova and Rusanov identified him as a person who came in for a traumatic tooth extraction a few days after November 4.

The failure led to the conclusion that more careful preparation attacks. The next crime - an attack on the cashier of the Yuzhgiprovodkhoz design institute - is characterized primarily by lengthy preparatory actions. As Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov testified in court, they - and mainly he himself - “went to the scene” several times - walked around the institute building, clarified the location of the cash register, using orders and instructions posted on stands, and based on conversations of employees in the dining room and corridors, trying to figure out how many workers at the institute and what the amount of their earnings is, on what days the institute pays salaries. According to the estimates of Vyacheslav and Vladimir Tolstopyatov, on the day the salary is issued, the cashier should bring approximately 250 - 280 thousand rubles from the bank, and salaries at the institute are issued on the 7th and 22nd of each month.

Gorshkov fell ill in May 1973 and was hospitalized. It would be completely unreasonable to carry out such a large-scale attack together. And then Chernenko turned up for Vyacheslav. An auxiliary worker at a vegetable store who never thought about the compliance of his actions with the law - he gave the impression of an experienced person and ready for anything. At his job, among other things, Chernenko also delivered goods on a cargo scooter to retail outlets. This came in handy. He was instructed to wait with the scooter near Yuzhgiprovodkhoz during the attack. It was assumed that, having grabbed a bag with money and ran out of the institute building with it, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov and Samasyuk would hand the bag over to Chernenko, who, along with the money, would flee the scene on a scooter and deliver the money to the appointed place.

On May 22, 1973, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, Samasyuk and Chernenko arrived at the Yuzhgiprovodkhoz building and were ready to begin their criminal operation, when suddenly Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, already in the institute building, ran into his friend Kozlova. She recognized Vyacheslav, they stopped and even talked about something. This innocent conversation had serious consequences: Vyacheslav immediately decided to cancel the “operation”, because he was afraid that Kozlova might connect the attack with the fact of his appearance at the institute, which threatened to expose him. Moreover, fearing a second such meeting, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, during the attack on Yuzhgiprovodkhoz that took place two weeks later, did not dare to enter the institute building at all.

Information about the amount of money brought to Yuzhgiprovodkhoz on salary day excited the mind and gave no rest. They decided not to give up on the attack on the institute and to carry it out on the next payday - that same fatal day for the defendants, June 7, 1973, the last day of their criminal activities.

The circumstances of what happened on that day are known in detail. On this day, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov with Gorshkov, Samasyuk and Chernenko arrived at Yuzhgiprovodkhoz in advance. Gorshkov and Samasyuk entered the building, went up to the second floor and began to wait for the cashier with the money near the cash register. Chernenko remained downstairs not far from the watchman in order to cover the departure of Gorshkov and Samasyuk with the money if something happened. Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov was waiting outside the building, so to speak, on standby.

He was supposed to join Gorshkov and Samasyuk, seize a car with them and escape with it. Vladimir Tolstopyatov arrived at Yuzhgiprovodkhoz independently, independently of these four. He, as in a number of previous episodes, had to watch from the outside everything that would happen, in order to then arrange a “debriefing”. The analysis, however, did not take place because immediately after the attack and seizure of money, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov and Gorshkov, as a result of a completely cinematic chase, were detained red-handed, and Samasyuk escaped detention only because during the chase, being wounded, he died on a bag of money. Ironically, somehow in drunk company Samasyuk said that he would like to die drunk on a bag of money. That's exactly what happened.

So, Gorshkov and Samasyuk waited near the cash register until the cashier appeared with the money. We waited and waited. Cashier Ponomareva did not approach the cash register alone. There were several people with her - those who accompanied her to the bank, and those who joined them from among those awaiting their salaries directly in the institute building. There was a lot of money - 124,500 rubles, but the burden was both voluminous and heavy. Therefore, this time they were not in a bag, but in a backpack, which was carried by one of the men accompanying Ponomareva - Amerkhanov. As soon as the cashier Ponomareva began to unlock the lock, Samasyuk and Gorshkov jumped up to her and her retinue with revolvers in their hands. Samasyuk snatched the backpack with money from Amerkhanov’s hands and he and Gorshkov went out. We went downstairs, passed the watchman and Chernenko, who was waiting there, and went out into the street. Several people followed them - Muravitsky, Sarkisov, Kozlova, Kuzina Kravtsova, Ponomareva, Manessi, Shapovalova, Amerkhanov. They indignantly demanded the money back and did not lag behind the raiders, despite the fact that they threatened with weapons.

This unusual-looking group of people attracted the attention of Volodya Martovitsky, a loader from the neighboring Gastronome, who was passing by. Having apparently understood the situation, he grabbed Gorshkov by the shoulder and demanded that he hand over the backpack with the money. Gorshkov and Samasyuk, who were carrying a heavy backpack and snapping at the advances of the group of Yuzhgiprovodkhoz workers pursuing them, had no time for Martovitsky. In any case, the appearance of this decisive guy - Martovitsky - sharply changed the balance of power and created real threat detention or at least return of money.

But that’s why Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov was waiting outside, to insure against such troubles. He shouted to Gorshkov to bend down, and in cold blood - and no wonder, not for the first time - he shot Martovitsky with a machine gun. These shots turned out to be fatal not only for Martovitsky. Police Sergeant Rusov was nearby; Kravtsova turned to his help, and she, along with everyone else, went out into the street and rushed to look for the police. Having found his bearings by the sounds of shots, Rusov, taking his pistol out of his holster as he walked, ran to the scene of events.

He saw a trio leaving, two - they were Gorshkov and Samasyuk - were carrying a backpack, and the third - he was Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov - was running after them with a machine gun in his hands. The criminals did not react to warning shouts and upward shots and Rusov opened fire to kill. Gorshkov was wounded by his shots - he was so lucky that whenever and whoever shot at them - security guard Pluzhnikov, collector Zyuba, or now police sergeant Rusov - Gorshkov was sure to be wounded. Samasyuk was also wounded by Rusov’s shots and, as it turned out later, fatally.

Samasyuk - in agony, and Gorshkov - in passion and excitement - continued to run towards Lenin Avenue, where Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov had already seized a Moskvich that was accidentally standing on the sidewalk, pushing the owner, Korzunov, out of it. They tried to escape in this Moskvich. But Fortune had already turned her back on them. The deputy commander of the Fire Department Salyutin and his driver Doroshenko, who happened to be nearby and observed the shootout, put Rusov in their car and began to pursue the raiders. The district inspector of the Oktyabrsky district police department, Kubyshta, also joined the chase, and managed to inform the Department. And no matter how Gorshkov threatened his pursuers with a machine gun, no matter how hard Tolstopyatov tried to escape the pursuit, they were caught up and detained. The Moskvich contained a dead Samasyuk on a backpack with money, revolvers, a machine gun and three homemade grenades. Tolstopyatov had the fourth grenade, but he did not use it.

In the Yuzhgiprovodkhoz building, in the semi-basement, a worker at the Larin Institute discovered a Nagan revolver, the same one that Chernenko had thrown into a hole in the floor of the toilet, which he himself told about when he was detained the next day. The detainees Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov and Gorshkov confessed to all the crimes at once - and it would be strange to expect anything else after they were detained red-handed, after a search was immediately carried out at the Tolstopyatovs’ house, during which a cache of weapons, ammunition, masks, and false license plates was discovered .

The group consisting of Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, Samasyuk and Gorshkov was a stable group that operated for a long time - more than four and a half years - and carried out a significant number of attacks on government agencies and organizations, to individual citizens. The group was armed with homemade submachine guns, a machine gun, revolvers and hand grenades. On December 16, 1971, the group’s weapons were replenished with two Nagan system revolvers.

Thus ended the activities of the Phantomas gang. Vyacheslav and Vladimir Tolstopyatov, as well as Gorshkov, were sentenced to death, the rest of the defendants were sentenced to imprisonment for various terms. Cassation appeals of convicted persons Supreme Court The RSFSR was left unsatisfied. The sentence has been carried out.

When the first part of the French trilogy about Fantômas was released in Soviet cinemas in 1967, few of the viewers of the film, which was an unprecedented success for the audience, could have imagined that around the same time a gang would appear in the Soviet Union, which the people would call only “Fantômas” . For the two peaceful decades that have passed since the defeat of the post-war criminal gangs, the appearance of Soviet “phantomas” was a shocking event.

Brothers Tolstopyatov

On October 22, 1968, three men burst into the Gastronom store in the village of Mirny in the Pervomaisky district of Rostov-on-Don. Two of them had black women's nylon stockings on their heads, the third had green ones. Soviet gangsters arrived at the store on a tram. One of the bandits stood in the doorway, clutching a homemade machine gun. A man in a green stocking on his head walked into the center of the store, also with a machine gun at the ready, and a third criminal, armed with a pistol, rushed to the cash registers. But there was little money in the cash register. Having taken the proceeds, the bandits ran out of the store. Here the criminals encountered an elderly man. Guriy Semenovich Chumakov, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, could not pass by when a crime was openly committed before his eyes. He tried to grab one of the bandits. A man in a green stocking mask shot Guriy Semenovich with four shots from a machine gun. The victorious warrior died 23 years after the victory on a Rostov street in a village with the characteristic name “Mirny”. The bandits successfully escaped. True, the jackpot at the Gastronom store was small - some 526 rubles 84 kopecks. There's not much to go around, but it seemed enough to the organizer of the gang - the same man in the green stocking. After all, the raid on the grocery store was the first serious “case” of the gang, which entered Russian crime as the “gang of Phantomas”, or “gang of the Tolstopyatov brothers”.

Nakhalovsky “universities” of Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov

One of the brothers was the man in the green stocking who killed war veteran Guriy Chumakov in cold blood. The bandit's name was Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov. At the time of the events described, he was 28 years old. Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov was born in 1940 in the Bryansk region, into an ordinary Soviet family of middle income. Besides him, the mother had another son - an older brother, Vladimir Tolstopyatov, born in 1929. The brothers' father, by a cruel irony of fate, served in the police - and not just as an ordinary policeman, but as the head of a district department. When did the Great Patriotic War, the head of the family almost immediately found himself at the front and soon died. The Tolstopyatov family fled from the Bryansk region to the east and settled in Rostov-on-Don. Here the mother managed to get a job and find housing. In a small outbuilding on Pyramidnaya Street, in house No. 66A, they spent their childhood and early years brothers Tolstopyatov.

Outbuilding of the Tolstopyatov brothers.

Pyramidnaya Street is Nakhalovka. Officially, Nakhalovka was called the New Settlement, but among Rostovites the area was better known by its first name. Back in the second half of the 19th century, areas on the outskirts of the city began to be populated by workers and artisans, who unauthorizedly erected houses and small houses on empty plots. This is how Nakhalovka appeared. Later, after the revolution, Nakhalovka began to grow to the north quite officially - the city authorities allocated land for private construction. This is how a “new” New settlement appeared, to which Pyramidnaya Street geographically belongs. The people who lived here were always dashing, different from the inhabitants of the apartment buildings in the city center. Nakhalovka had its own customs, which were strongly influenced by the criminal world and its subculture. Many of the “nakhalovites” themselves had been in prison, and almost every second inhabitant of the village was not a fool to drink. It was in this atmosphere that the Tolstopyatov brothers spent their youth. The mother earned little, and the family lived in poverty, denying themselves many things. Perhaps this is why the Tolstopyatov brothers dreamed throughout their youth of a good life, in which they would not have to count every penny and save on the essentials. But almost all Soviet people in those years lived poorly and only a few thought that their financial situation could be improved through criminal means, especially through robberies and murders of innocent citizens.

However, the Tolstopyatov brothers did not immediately take the path of committing violent crimes. Younger brother, Vyacheslav, was a man not deprived of artistic talents. Since childhood, he loved to draw, and he was especially good at drawing pictures and reproducing their details almost identically. Having started by copying illustrations in children's books, by the age of fifteen, Slava Tolstopyatov switched to banknotes. He produced counterfeit banknotes in denominations of 50 and 100 rubles that were almost identical to Soviet money. However, the question arose - how to sell the drawn banknotes. Slava came up with his own method - he got into a taxi, drove some distance and then handed the driver a bill, receiving change. Vyacheslav held out the folded bill and gradually became insolent to such an extent that he began to draw money on only one side. This is where the popular saying “greed ruined the fratern” came into play. On February 23, 1960, he once again got into a taxi and asked to be taken to the Suburban Station. However, the taxi driver still unfolded the bill and saw that a blank sheet of paper was looking at him on the other side.

Pyramidnaya Street, like other streets of the New Settlement, has noticeably improved these days

Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov was arrested. He was only twenty years old at the time of his arrest. The boy's youth and artistic abilities misled investigators. They thought that the young man had made a mistake in life and, having received a small punishment, would correct himself and become an ordinary citizen, a law-abiding member of society. The well-known Rostov journalist Alexander Olenev quotes the words of investigator A. Granovsky, who just happened to handle the first case of Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov - about counterfeiting. Granovsky recalled that during an investigative experiment, Slava Tolstopyatov, “using colored pencils, watercolors, BF-2 glue, a compass, a ruler and a blade, in four hours (!) drew absolutely exact copy 100-ruble bill." This is about the artistic abilities of Tolstopyatov Jr. Another point is related to personal charm young man. “Even while under investigation,” recalled A. Granovsky, “Vyacheslav won everyone’s sympathy with his politeness, modesty, and erudition. It was a pleasure to talk with him. “I petitioned the court for a mitigation of the sentence - given my young age, complete repentance, and assistance provided to the investigation.” Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov was sentenced to four years in prison. But the zone, as often happens, did not reform the young man, but only worsened his criminal tendencies. It was in the colony that Tolstopyatov finally realized that instead of grueling work at an enterprise or somewhere else, good money could be obtained through criminal means. Having been burned by counterfeiting, he decided immediately after his release to take more decisive action. Namely, to rob a bank.

The goal is to rob a bank

In the winter of 1964, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov was released after serving his sentence. He told his older brother Vladimir about his plans, who also liked the younger brother’s idea. Tolstopyatov Sr. was also a man not without talents. He had pronounced artistic abilities and even worked at one time as an artist at the city zoo of Rostov-on-Don. In addition, Vladimir Tolstopyatov was fond of technology and design. It was he who actually became the “gunsmith” of the gang and its ideological inspirer. Almost immediately after the release of the younger Tolstopyatov, the brothers began preparing crimes. They took the matter seriously. Firstly, the brothers decided to refuse to communicate with representatives of the traditional criminal world of Rostov. From his experience in prison, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov knew that the criminal world is “stuffed” with police agents and those who pose as the most “thieves” of crime bosses may well turn out to be police informants. Therefore, the brothers preferred to communicate with those who were not exposed to the professional criminal world.

Secondly, the Tolstopyatovs decided to arm themselves with firearms. Since getting a ready-made firearm in those years was problematic and risky, they decided to make the weapon themselves. For almost four years, the brothers made weapons and prepared morally and organizationally to commit crimes. The Tolstopyatovs independently developed drawings for pistols and submachine guns. Two small-caliber TOZ-8 rifles were used to make the barrels. Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, despite his criminal record, was able to get a job as the head of the DOSAAF small-caliber shooting range and obtained small-caliber cartridges there. Having reached an agreement with familiar factory workers, the brothers gave them orders for the production of complex parts, of course, hiding their true purpose and claiming that the parts were needed as spare parts for household appliances. By the time they committed their first crimes, the Tolstopyatovs had acquired four seven-round revolvers, three folding submachine guns, several hand grenades and even body armor made of steel plates.

The backbone of the Phantomas gang. Above are the Tolstopyatov brothers. Below - Vladimir Gorshkov, Sergey Samosyuk

The closest accomplices of the Tolstopyatov brothers were Sergei Samosyuk and Vladimir Gorshkov. Special mention should be made about them. Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov knew Samosyuk from serving his sentence together in prison. Only Sergei got there for hooliganism - he was a rather primitive person, prone to alcohol abuse. Having been released a little later than Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, Sergei Samosyuk immediately expressed a desire to join the gang as soon as he became acquainted with Slava’s idea of ​​bank robbery. Vyacheslav met Samosyuk at the wine barrel. Drunk Samosyuk then uttered a prophetic phrase: “It is better to die on a bag of money than by a wine barrel.” Vladimir Gorshkov was a childhood friend and neighbor of the Tolstopyatov brothers. He, too, was not distinguished by either great abilities or courage, but he wanted to live without doing anything. It was Gorshkov who provided part of his house for organizing an underground workshop there, in which Vladimir and Vyacheslav constructed homemade weapons.

The bandits were plagued by misfortunes

The Tolstopyatov brothers and their accomplices Samosyuk and Gorshkov decided to take the first case in 1968. On October 7, 1968, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, Samosyuk and Gorshkov decided to rob a cashier near the State Bank building on the street. Engels. Here cashiers received money to pay employees. In order to quickly leave the crime scene, the bandits decided to seize a car. On Engels Street they got into Dzeron Arutyunov’s Volga. However, the driver, seeing a gun pointed at him, jumped out of the car screaming and ran away. The attack plan failed. Out of fear that the driver would contact the police and they would be detained for theft, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov decided to get out of the situation. He himself called the police and reported where the car was parked, and explained his behavior as a prank by the driver. Like, he and his friends decided to joke with the driver, but he didn’t appreciate the joke and got scared toy gun And running.

Three days later, on October 10, bandits tried to rob the cashier of a shoe factory. To do this, they agreed with a certain Evgeny Rybny, who provided them with his Moskvich-407 car. Rybny himself was in the car in the back seat, tied up - this was his condition, so that in case of anything it would appear that the car had been seized from him. In Rybny's Moskvich, the bandits were waiting for the cashier near the bank building, but she managed to quickly get into the GAZ-51. The GAZ driver rushed away from the bank at high speed and soon turned into an alley and drove into the gates of a shoe factory. The bandits were left with nothing. And on October 22, an attack took place on a grocery store in the village of Mirny - the gang’s first real case and the first murder of a person. It was after the first crime, in which Tolstopyatov and his accomplices used nylon stockings as masks, that rumors spread throughout Rostov about a certain gang of “phantomas” committing dashing robberies.

Two weeks later, on November 5, 1968, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov and Sergei Samosyuk attacked the car of the Rostov Main Gas Pipelines Department. Opening the front door, Tolstopyatov demanded that the driver (his name was Viktor Arutyunov) get out of the car. At that moment, Sergei Samosyuk sat down on the other side next to the driver. But Arutyunov did not listen to the bandits and rushed off at high speed, deciding to take Samosyuk, who was sitting next to him, to the police. Samosyuk shot at the driver, but Arutyunov managed to turn onto the tram line and stop the car in front of the approaching tram. Samosyuk managed to jump out of the car and run. However, at the end of 1968, the bandits still managed to carry out two successful attacks - on the 21st store of Gorpromtorg and on the cashier of automobile industry No. 5.

Weapons of the Phantomas gang

The next failure awaited the “Phantomas” in the spring of 1969. By this time, Sergei Samosyuk had managed to get caught for another drunken hooliganism and received a second term of imprisonment. Therefore, the bandits went to the “case” without Samosyuk. He was replaced by his “temporary accomplice” Boris Denskevich. On April 21, 1969, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, Gorshkov and Denskevich set out to rob the cashier of the Rostov chemical plant. Having calculated the exact time when the cashier and the plant security guard bring money from the bank for payment wages workers of the enterprise, Tolstopyatov and Gorshkov were waiting with weapons in their hands at the entrance of the plant. According to the bandits' plan, they were supposed to take the bag of money from the cashier and the car keys from the security guard, and then flee the crime scene. Vladimir Tolstopyatov and Boris Denskevich, as they say, were “on guard.” They were supposed to watch the access roads and as soon as the collection vehicle appeared, signal Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov and Gorshkov about this so that they would prepare for the attack. However, the bandits’ plan, which looked beautiful in words, immediately began to crack in practice. When Tolstopyatov Jr. pointed his weapon at the guard, he ran to the entrance and managed to take his service revolver out of his holster. Gorshkov shot at the driver of the car, but he managed to take the machine gun from Gorshkov. Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, who came to the aid of his accomplice, also shot at the driver, wounding him in the arm. After being wounded, the driver let go of Gorshkov’s machine gun. The bandits ran to the first truck they came across, wounded the driver of the car in the arm and, throwing him out of the cab, rushed away from the plant. However, the enterprise's security guards managed to open fire on the fleeing criminals and wound Gorshkov in the back.

An unsuccessful attack on the cashier of a chemical plant, which almost ended in the arrest of the criminals, or even their liquidation by the enterprise’s security guards, forced the Tolstopyatov brothers to rethink their activities. Firstly, they realized that it was risky for the two of them to go on such attacks, and it was worth waiting until Sergei Samosyuk served his sentence in prison for hooliganism and was released. Despite the fact that Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov treated Sergei Samosyuk with a certain degree of contempt, considering him a primitive and unreliable person, and even dependent on alcohol and prone to senseless hooligan behavior, he understood perfectly well that Samosyuk, desperate and reckless, was a kind of , the “combat cell” of the criminal group. Without Samosyuk, with the cowardly Gorshkov, there was a risk of either falling into the hands of police officers or dying in a shootout. Secondly, the bandits decided that for their own safety and to prevent possible resistance from the guards and collectors, it was necessary to shoot first and to kill. In anticipation of the release of Samosyuk, they “lay low”, improving their weapons base and searching for targets for new attacks. Samosyuk was released in the summer of 1971 and, naturally, immediately expressed a desire to return to criminal activity.

The gang gets a taste

In August 1971, Tolstopyatov's comrades attacked the cashier of UNR-112, who was accompanied by an unarmed engineer and driver. Having fired into the air, the bandits frightened the UPR workers, who meekly gave them a bag containing 17,000 rubles. For that time, this was a huge amount - after all, a Soviet engineer received 120-200 rubles a month. The “phantomas” retreated from the scene of the crime on a UPR bus seized from the cashier, which was abandoned on the street along with a heavy bag - the bag contained 500 rubles in change and the bandits decided not to “fight for money”, leaving the inconvenient bag in the abandoned vehicle.
The captured jackpot whetted the appetites of the bandits. They began monitoring the next object - teams of State Bank collectors serving the savings bank area No. 0299. A plan was developed - to attack the collectors when two of them remained in the car, and one came out of the cash desk with money in a bag. The criminals watched the savings bank for almost two months and finally decided to attack. On December 16, 1971, they arrived at savings bank No. 0299, armed with machine guns and grenades and even wearing body armor. Sergei Samosyuk ordered the collectors sitting in the car to put service weapon on the seat and get out of the car.

The driver of the car got out, and senior collector Ivan Zyuba, who was sitting behind him, fired a revolver at Vladimir Gorshkov and wounded him in the arm. In response, the bandits shot Ivan Zyuba with a machine gun. The third collector who jumped out of the savings bank opened fire on the retreating car and wounded Vladimir Gorshkov again. This time the bandits also managed to seize a huge amount - 17,000 rubles. The Volga with the body of senior collector Ivan Zyuba, who died in a shootout, was later discovered by the police at the city landfill. However, after this raid, the bandits were faced with a certain problem - the twice-wounded Gorshkov needed medical attention, but taking him to the hospital meant definitely attracting the attention of the police. After all, doctors report any gunshot wounds, even without the patient’s consent, to law enforcement agencies. Therefore, two thousand rubles from the gang’s “common fund” were spent on Gorshkov’s treatment at home. For this purpose, the Tolstopyatovs brought the surgeon of the railway hospital, Konstantin Dudnikov, who provided services for a large reward. medical care Vladimir Gorshkov.

Despite the fact that within a few months the gang managed to capture colossal, by Soviet standards, cash, the Tolstopyatov brothers decided to continue their criminal activities and transfer them to a qualitatively more qualitative high level. Moreover, the whole city was talking about the emerging gang of “phantomas”, and it is possible that the Tolstopyatov brothers felt proud when they heard the next “ horror stories"about the elusive "phantomas". In the fall of 1972, the Tolstopyatovs designed and assembled a unique machine gun that fired nine-millimeter balls and had amazing penetration ability (a shot from this machine gun pierced a railway rail from a three-meter distance).

In the fall of 1972, the Tolstopyatovs began to hatch a new attack plan - this time the bandits’ eyes fell on the Strela store in the area of ​​the locomotive repair plant. According to the criminals, “Strela” was one of the final money collection points along the route of the cash-in-transit vehicle. Vyacheslav and Vladimir Tolstopyatov came up with the following plan of action. The criminals seize the car in advance, cover it with fake license plates made from adhesive tape, with the letters ROF, indicating that they belong to the police. Then they drive up to the collectors in a stolen car, shoot them with a machine gun and take away the bags of money. On November 4, 1972, in the area of ​​the 2nd brick factory, bandits seized a Volga car. The driver was tied up and loaded into the trunk, and they drove to the Strela store. But the collectors were delayed that day. The bandits in a stolen Volga, with the driver tied up in the trunk, at the request of Sergei Samosyuk, rushed to buy wine - to the Three Little Pigs store on the street. Engels. This was the height of arrogance - after all, the bandits’ route lay past the building where the regional police department was located. In a drunken state, the “Phantomas” drove around Rostov until they crashed into a tree on Nakhalovka, on Gvardeysky Lane. Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov and Sergei Samosyuk abandoned the car and disappeared. The driver, who was in the trunk, was rescued but was injured when the car collided with a tree.

The last case of the “phantomas”

The “phantomas” hatched the plan for their latest crime for several months. Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov once went to the Yuzhgiprovodkhoz Institute for the purpose of employment. By chance, the cash register of the institution caught his eye and the bandit immediately had a thought in his head: “What if we rob the institute?” Tolstopyatov Jr. found out the number of workers at the institute - there were about four thousand people. Having summed up the average salary of employees at 70-75 rubles, the bandits received a fantastic figure - 300 thousand. For Soviet Union In those years it was unimaginable money, and in the history of the gang it could have become the largest profit. From that moment on, the criminals established surveillance of the institute, which lasted from March to June 1973. Twice a month - on the day of advance payment and payday, on the 7th and 22nd, criminals appeared at the institute building and observed what was happening. Finally they decided to commit a crime. On June 7, 1973, members of the “Fantomas” gang advanced to the institute. Roles were assigned. Sergei Samosyuk and Vladimir Gorshkov were supposed to directly attack the cashier at the entrance to the cash register. Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov was supposed to seize the car and ensure the unhindered departure of the bandits. Another new accomplice, Alexander Chernenko, who owned a service scooter, was supposed to take the bag with money given to him to the indicated place. Vladimir Tolstopyatov himself was at the crime scene, as always, observing what was happening for the purpose of subsequent analysis and analysis.

Sergei Samosyuk and Vladimir Gorshkov, armed with revolvers, burst into the institute building and took a bag with money from the cashier. They were able to leave the building and were already heading towards Chernenko, who was waiting for them on his scooter, when unarmed institute employees chased after them. In response to the cries of the institute workers, Vladimir Martovitsky, a loader from the nearby Gastronom store, rushed to help. He grabbed Gorshkov by the shoulder. Free yourself from the capture of a strong twenty-seven-year-old guy who was doing military service in Marine Corps, Gorshkov failed, and then Gorshkov and Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, who rushed to help, shot Martovitsky. Meanwhile, one of the institute’s employees, who rushed to look for the police, called a nearby policeman for help. Junior police sergeant Alexey Rusov ran towards the criminals with a pistol in his hands. Sergei Samosyuk shot at the policeman, but his revolver misfired. Alexey Rusov turned out to be a sharp shooter and hit the fleeing Samosyuk and Gorshkov. But while Rusov was hiding from retaliatory shots around the corner of the nearest house, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov seized a Moskvich car standing on the side of the road. The bandits got into the car and rushed towards Selmash. At this time, a fire department official vehicle was passing by, in which there were department employees, driver sergeant Gennady Doroshenko and captain Viktor Salyutin. Policeman Alexey Rusov jumped into their car, after which the three of them rushed in pursuit of the criminals’ “Muscovite.”

District inspector of the Oktyabrsky District Department of Internal Affairs, junior police lieutenant Evgeniy Kubyshta, stopped the minibus and also rushed after the fleeing criminals. Today Evgeniy Kubyshta is 69 years old. Fortunately, he is alive and even gives interviews to the press. In one of them, he told how in order to detain the “Phantomas” he had to seize the car of the deputy director of the Rostov Helicopter Plant: “I seized the car... at gunpoint. A civilian car, driver, deputy director of a helicopter plant. I just rushed to him, he was driving, in a hurry to take the boss to lunch. I tell him: “Stop!” He doesn’t understand, I then jumped out onto the car and threw myself at his window with a pistol. He slammed on the brakes and almost hit me. He shouts at me: “What are you doing, commander? I'm going to get the boss." I tell him, threatening him with a pistol: “If you don’t obey, you will feel bad.” After that, he slowed down, stopped, and let me into the car” (Quoted from: Evgeniy Kubyshta: To detain Tolstopyatov’s gang, I seized the car of the deputy director of the helicopter plant // Southern Region - Don).

Chance helped catch the criminals. On the Square of the Land of Soviets, “Phantomas” escaping from pursuit cut off the Volga of one of the city taxis. Taxi drivers, not knowing who they were contacting, also rushed after the impudent “Moskvich” in order to “talk like men.” In the end, the Volga taxi drivers were cut off by the Moskvich, and the latter flew onto the sidewalk and got stuck on the curb. Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov jumped out of the Moskvich with a grenade, scaring off the taxi drivers. Grabbing the bag of money and taking the wounded Gorshkov by the arm, Tolstopyatov ran to the wall of the Rostselmash plant, hoping to climb over it and escape pursuit. Sergei Samosyuk had by this time died from a fatal wound received as a result of a shootout with policeman Rusov, in the back seat of a stolen Moskvich. But Aleksey Rusov and captain Salyutin, armed with a pistol, were already running towards Tolstopyatov and the wounded Gorshkov. Tolstopyatov lowered the bag of money to the ground. This was the end of his criminal career and the beginning of the end life path. Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov and Vladimir Gorshkov were arrested. Moreover, the gang leader immediately began to confess. From what Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov was telling, the police officers were in a state of shock. It turned out that just like that, completely by accident, thanks to the heroically deceased loader Martovitsky and the young junior police sergeant Rusov, the legendary gang of “phantomas”, about which only the lazy had not spoken in Rostov for the last five years, was finally neutralized.

The court showed no leniency

The investigation into the case of the Tolstopyatov brothers lasted about a year. During a search in the outbuilding on Pyramidnaya, 66A, police officers discovered a cache where the criminals kept their arsenal - machine guns, pistols, grenades and ammunition. The cache was cleverly hidden behind a large wall mirror. The entire circle of people who assisted the bandits in their criminal activities was identified. Finally, in April 1974, the trial of the Phantomas gang began. There were 11 people in the dock. These were the Tolstopyatov brothers - Vyacheslav and Vladimir, Vladimir Gorshkov, as well as more minor and tertiary characters who provided all possible assistance to the gang. The Tolstopyatov brothers behaved with dignity, although they asked for last word keep them alive. Vladimir Gorshkov, who had never been particularly brave, cried and asked to commute the punishment, blaming the Tolstopyatov brothers as the initiators of criminal activity. He uttered absolutely comical phrases, asking the judges to show leniency towards him as a “disabled banditist.” However, the court's verdict was clear.

On July 1, 1974, Vladimir Pavlovich Tolstopyatov, Vyacheslav Pavlovich Tolstopyatov and Vladimir Nikolaevich Gorshkov were sentenced to capital punishment - the death penalty. However, after the verdict, they remained in the Novocherkassk investigative prison for about a year. Only on March 6, 1975, the sentence against the Tolstopyatov brothers and Vladimir Gorshkov was carried out. An accomplice of the “Fantomas” in the last case, Alexander Ivanovich Chernenko, was sentenced to 12 years in prison to be served in a maximum security colony on charges of banditry. The following were accused of aiding and abetting banditry: Denskevich Boris Konstantinovich - sentenced to 10 years in prison in a maximum security colony; Srybny Evgeniy Andreevich - sentenced to 5 years in prison in a maximum security colony; Zaritsky Viktor Nikolaevich - sentenced to six years in a maximum security colony; Nikolai Ivanovich Berestenev and Yuri Ivanovich Kozlitin were each sentenced to three years in prison in a general regime colony. The prosecution demanded that doctor Konstantin Matveevich Dudnikov, accused of harboring a bandit, be given five years in a general regime colony. However, the court reclassified the charge against the doctor from concealment to non-reporting.

Heroic participants in the arrest of the "Fantomas" gang

Heroes of gang arrest

As for the heroic participants in the arrest of the “Fantomas” gang, the memory of them is still alive in Rostov-on-Don. A street in the Voroshilovsky district of Rostov-on-Don is named after Vladimir Martovitsky, an ordinary guy, a loader who died, quite by accident. Alexey Alexandrovich Rusov (1952-2000), who came to the police after military service in border troops and a former policeman-driver of the PMG-16 (mobile police group) of the Oktyabrsky Department of Internal Affairs of Rostov-on-Don, after the capture of the “Phantomas” gang, he was summoned to Moscow. The Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR, General Nikolai Shchelokov, personally promoted the young junior sergeant immediately to police lieutenant. The all-powerful Shchelokov then really liked the sincere and young police officer from Rostov-on-Don. Alexey Rusov worked in the criminal investigation department, then in the juvenile affairs department. In 1986, he was in Kyiv, attending advanced training courses for employees of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, from where he was sent to eliminate the consequences of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. There Alexey Alexandrovich received a dose of radiation. After Chernobyl, he worked for some time in the penitentiary authorities, then quit and worked as the head of the security service in a commercial organization. In 2000, being a 48-year-old man, Alexey Rusov died as a result of a second heart attack.

Viktor Afanasyevich Salyutin (1940-2000), the second direct participant in the detention of Tolstopyatov and Gorshkov, made a serious career in the fire department. He rose to the rank of major general internal service, served as head of the fire service department of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate of the Rostov region. He died at the age of sixty after a long illness. A street and alley in Rostov-on-Don are named after Alexey Rusov and Victor Salyutin. Evgeniy Kubyshta worked for a long time in the internal affairs bodies of Rostov-on-Don, then retired.

The case of the “Fantômas” gang had an impact on the transformation of the very system of fighting crime in the Soviet Union. As former criminal investigation officer Anatoly Evseev recalls, “The Tolstopyatovs’ gangster “successes” prompted the reorganization and creation of a modern police force. It was in Rostov-on-Don that PMGs were created for the first time in Russia - mobile police groups, patrol cars with a driver and two employees. After the gang was detained with their help, the Rostov experience was spread throughout the country. An additional payment for the rank appeared: junior lieutenant plus 30 rubles, lieutenant - 40, senior officer - 50. They began to strengthen the duty units" (Quoted from: Pilipchuk A. "Citizens judges! Mitigate the punishment! I am a disabled person of banditry!"). Perhaps the gang of Tolstopyatov brothers became the first example of post-war organized crime of this level in Rostov-on-Don, and in the Soviet Union as a whole. Its uniqueness lies in its originality, the virtual absence of connections with the professional criminal world and the existence “outside the field” of the traditional criminal subculture. At the same time, the Soviet law enforcement agencies, which initially had no experience in fighting such criminal groups, began to modernize their organizational structure, improved the mechanisms of activity. In Rostov, both young and old still know about the gang of “phantomas”, retelling to each other rumors and tales born forty years ago.

Materials used:
1. Kasyanov V. Tolstopyatovs. Once upon a time in Rostov // http://samlib.ru/w/wladimir_kasxjanow/tolstopjatovi.shtml.
2. Olenev A. The Tolstopyatov Brothers. Dozen reliable facts from the life of Rostov “phantomas”.
3. Pilipchuk A. “Citizens judges! Reduce the punishment! I am a disabled person of banditry!” // http://pravo.ru/.

Ctrl Enter

Noticed osh Y bku Select text and click Ctrl+Enter