Shadows in Shilino: The Banquet of Despair

The July heat of 1995 was a palpable presence in the village of Shilino. Just 20 kilometers from Moscow, this settlement was the very picture of post-Soviet survival: 200 wooden houses, a solitary shop, and the dust of streets that had never known asphalt. There, life was measured in factory shifts and bottles of vodka. No one, not even the most perceptive neighbor, could have imagined that behind the walls of one of those houses,  Viktor Semionovic Morgunov , a 40-year-old mechanic with hands calloused from metal and grease, was committing a sacrilege that would forever shatter the village’s peace.

A Family in the Abyss

Victor wasn’t always a monster. In 1978, when he married  Liudmila Covaleva , he was a promising young man. Liuda was the jewel of the region: tall, with eyes as blue as the winter sky and a smile that lit up humble village celebrations. They had two children, Sergei and Marina, and for a decade, they were the epitome of a working-class family.

However, the collapse of the Soviet Union brought with it a personal collapse. Wages at the  Centrolit factory  were delayed for months. Despair seeped into Victor’s bones, and alcohol became his only refuge. By the late 1980s, the hardworking man had given way to a violent drunk. His children, seeking to escape the suffocating atmosphere of shouting and the smell of cheap tobacco, left as soon as they could.

The Awakening of Jealousy

In 1995, Victor and Liudmila lived like strangers under the same roof. At 37, Liudmila retained a beauty that suffering hadn’t managed to extinguish. She began to take care of herself, to wear makeup, to look for a way out. Rumors in Shilino travel faster than the wind: it was said that she had a lover, a bus driver named Nikolay.

For Victor, whose mind was eroded by vodka, these rumors were like acid. Jealousy turned into a consuming paranoia. “All women are the same,” he would tell his friends between drinks, “if I catch her, I’ll kill her.” His comrades laughed, thinking it was just the bravado of a drunk. They didn’t know the abyss opening up inside him.

The Night of the Crime

On July 2, 1995, Liudmila returned home late. She had spent the day with Nikolay, savoring a freedom that tasted like farewell; she planned to save money and run away. As she entered the kitchen, she was met with Victor’s icy stare. He had already called his daughter Marina, confirming that Liudmila wasn’t there as she had lied.

— “Where were you?” Victor asked with unnatural calm. — “With Marina…” she managed to say before the first blow knocked her down.

What followed was an explosion of animalistic violence. Victor dragged her by the hair as she begged, clawing at the wooden floor. Neighbors heard the screams, but in Shilino, domestic shouting was just background noise on drunken nights. No one knocked. In a frenzy of rage, Victor closed his hands around his wife’s neck. He squeezed until the light in her blue eyes died, until the body of the woman he once loved lay limp on the cold floor.

A Monstrous Plan

Upon regaining partial sobriety, his panic led him not to the police, but to the butcher shop. Víctor was a country man; he knew how to skin a pig, how to separate the meat from the bone. With a kitchen knife, a saw, and an axe, he transformed his home into a slaughterhouse.

For hours, he worked methodically. The internal organs were burned on the stove, filling the town with a pungent smell that the neighbors mistook for burning garbage. But the meat… the meat from the thighs and shoulders was cut into neat pieces, wrapped in plastic, and stored in the refrigerator. The bones and head ended up in burlap sacks, hidden under a tarp in the shed.

The Salad of Infamy

On July 10, Victor decided he couldn’t consume “the product” alone. He invited his friends from the factory, Colya and Petrovic. On the table, next to the vodka, he placed a large bowl of salad: boiled meat, potatoes, carrots, and plenty of mayonnaise.

“It’s delicious, Vitia,” Petrovic said as he chewed. “Did you kill a pig?” “Something like that,” Victor replied with a macabre smile. “Fresh, from a few days ago.”

The men toasted and ate, feeding off the woman who had greeted them in the street just days before. It was the final act in Víctor’s dehumanization.

The Discovery

Victor’s lie began to unravel when his daughter Marina, puzzled by her mother’s silence, pressed the police. Lieutenant Petrov, initially skeptical, went to the house for a routine search. Victor, emboldened by his own audacity, let them in.

It was in the shed where the horror took shape. Lifting the tarpaulin, Petrov untied a bag and recoiled in horror: a human skull with remnants of light hair stared back at him from the bottom. Victor collapsed into a box, his gaze unfocused, and simply whispered, “It’s Liudka.”

The End of a Monster

The trial in December 1995 shocked Russia. When Colya and Petrovic learned what they had actually eaten that July night, their lives were shattered; medical reports speak of permanent psychological trauma.

Victor was sentenced to 15 years in prison under a strict regime. He was spared execution only because Russia had instituted a moratorium on the death penalty that same year. In the penal colony of Mordovia, even the most hardened criminals turned their backs on him. The “Cannibal of Shilino” died in his cell in 2002, a victim of a heart attack, alone and despised by the world.

Today, in the village of Shilino, the memory of that summer remains vivid. Families no longer share meat salads at parties. The Morgunov house has been abandoned, but the stigma remains as a reminder that, sometimes, behind the face of an ordinary neighbor, an abyss of absolute evil can lurk.