Volgograd Region: former militiamen convicted for committing mass murder

The Volgograd Regional Court has sentenced three members of a criminal grouping accused of killing four people. All the three are former law enforcers.

According to investigators, Eugeniy Sukhorukov, Sergey and Pyotr Klopov killed Klopovs' uncle, who, as the brothers believed, robbed them. In October 2010, they came to him in a car. The uncle was with his guests – his common law wife with a son and a friend of the family. All four were put into the car and taken to the forest belt, where Sergey Klopov killed them all. The bodies were buried at the crime scene. The uncle's neighbours helped to solve the crime: they remembered the number plate of the car.

The case was heard by a jury. The main initiator of the murder – Sergey Klopov – was sentenced to life imprisonment; his brother Pyotr – to 20 years in prison under the articles of the Russian Criminal Code dealing with "a murder of two or more persons" and "a murder committed by a group of persons by prior conspiracy in order to conceal another crime". Their helper Eugeniy Sukhorukov was convicted for abetting, the "Rossiyskaya Gazeta" writes.

In their final pleas only Sukhorukov acknowledged his guilt, the Klopov brothers have rejected theirs, the "Volgograd.ru" reports.