Gennady Modestovich Mikhasevich (; 7 April 1947 – 25 September 1987) was a prolific Soviet serial killer. He murdered 36 women during the period from 1971 to 1985 in Vitebsk, Polotsk and the rural areas in the nearby regions of the Byelorussian SSR. Biography Gennady Mikhasevich was born in the village of Ist (Vitebsk Oblast) in 1947, and served in the army. He committed his first murder in May 1971. He himself later explained that the killing spree started after he had returned from the army only to find out that his girlfriend had left him and gotten married in the meantime. On the night of 14 May 1971, he was on his way from Vitebsk to Polotsk. It was late so he could not catch a bus to Polotsk where his parents lived. Mikhasevich reported that he was feeling despondent because of the breakup with his girlfriend, and had prepared a loop to hang himself. By chance, however, he encountered a young woman on the road and, in order to vent his anger, decided to kill her. He murdered again in October 1971, and strangled two other women in 1972, near Vitebsk. Mikhasevich graduated from a technical school in Vitebsk in 1973 and returned to Ist, starting work in a sovkhoz. He got married in 1976. In the meantime, the murders went on. Many of his murders were committed to facilitate rape. He invariably strangled or smothered his victims, either assaulting them in solitary locations or, during later years, after having lured them into his own red Zaporozhets or the cars at his workplace (he later had a job in an auto repair shop). Mikhasevich did not carry weapons, choosing instead to use a variety of improvised means, including in one case, a cord made of rye. Besides killing, he robbed his victims of money and valuable items, some of which he would later present to his wife as a gift. He would also take mundane household items, like scissors. In outward appearance, Mikhasevich was a good family man, a teetotaller with two children and was a conscientious worker; he was also a member of the Communist Party (also serving as a local party functionary) and of the Voluntary People's Druzhina. The investigation started to advance in the 1980s, as the young investigator Nikolay Ignatovich firmly believed that all the killings of females near motorways in the region were