numerous robberies, another notable attack on a family was done by the gang. Three of them had tried to break into the dacha of Ivan Stepanovich N., with his wife and 3-year-old child present, all camouflaged, carrying batons and handcuffs. Although Ivan was beaten up and his arm broken, his wife managed to close the door in the attackers' faces before calling the police. Because of this, the criminals were scared off and ran away. Discovery and capture On September 11, 2002, the decomposing body of an unidentified man was found by forester Alexander Zholudev. The victim had a bullet from a Makarov lodged into his head. Although some detectives had the feeling this would quickly become a cold case, inspector Yevgeny Gulyaev, who was recently on a business trip to Slantsy, noticed a group of drivers along the road. When one of their cars broke down, he asked them if any of their colleagues had gone missing, with one replying that somebody indeed had: Georgy Romanov. The corpse found in the forest was quickly identified as that of Romanov by the traffic police, but soon after, another body was discovered along the same road. The authorities, who had learned that Petrachkov had also gone missing in the area, connected the dots when a bullet was also found in the head of this body as well. Both killings pointed towards a gang operating in the area. Later on, another forester by the name of Alexander Sergeevich recalled that several months earlier, he had seen a strange man hanging around the burial site at 5 o'clock in the morning. When they approached the man, he quickly entered his car and sped away. The criminals were eventually captured when the cellphone belonging to Petrachkov, which Burdenko registered in his name, was traced and monitored by the police. After a month of close observation, the operatives moved in to arrest the criminals on November 13, 2003. Just a few days before, one of the gang members, Astafurov, sensed that there was some kind of ambush awaiting him in his home, and so he hid in a box storing potatoes. Trembling with fear, he spent two days in there before being discovered and arrested. However, Burdenko remained the only one uncaptured, with policemen only confiscating some of his items for examination. To the authorities' surprise, however, Burdenko himself later appeared in the police department,