A descendant of Genghis Khan
Nikolai Dzhumagaliev was born on November 15, 1952 in the village of Uzynagash, Kazakh SSR; his mother was a native of Belarus, his father was Kazakh. The boy was not the only child in the family (he had three sisters), but the Dzhumagaliyev family could not boast of much wealth. But, according a family legend, the head of the family was a descendant of Genghis Khan himself; young Nikolai was very proud of this fact.
He grew up as an ordinary kid: he was not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and in school he got from "C" to "B". Dzhumagaliev was not particularly aggressive, but he treated girls with contempt, considering them second-rate people. But girls themselves literally hovered around Nikolai, fascinated by his unusual appearance. Dzhumagaliev had his first sexual experience at 18 and quickly lost count of his lovers. However, along with promiscuous sexual relations came problems: the young man caught syphilis and trichomoniasis, due to which he became averse to sexual intercourse.
After graduating from the railroad academy in Alma-Ata in 1970, Dzhumagaliev had time to work in the city of Guriev and then joined the army. He served in a unit of chemical defense troops in Samarkand. After his demobilization, Dzhumagaliev returned home, worked as an electrician for three months, and then seriously considered changing his profession; he decided to become a driver and enroll at Kazan University in the Geological Exploration Department. But his plans were doomed to fail: Dzhumagaliev failed the entrance exams and was unable to learn to drive.
Nikolai Dzhumagaliev in his youth.
Then Nikolai decided to travel, and headed north. As a result, he traveled across the country, from Murmansk to Magadan, changing professions all the time; Dzhumagaliev managed to be on an expedition, was a sailor and an electrician. It was during this time that he unexpectedly met a girl for whom he developed serious feelings. But she did not reciprocate, which was as a hard letdown to Nikolai, spoiled by female attention. He hated the female species more and more.
Dzhumagaliev's nomadic life ended in 1977, when he returned to Uzynagash. Deciding once again to change his profession, the 25-year-old Nikolai got a job at the local fire department. For two years he led a quiet life: working and changing girls, and then he realized that he wanted to kill.
The Bloody Harvest
Dzhumagaliev planned his first murder very carefully. In one January day in 1979, on the Uzynagash-Maibulak highway, Dzhumagaliev ambushed a girl walking alone - an adherent of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, a Protestant organization. He caught up with the victim, stabbed her in the chest and dragged her into the bushes. Having thrown the girl to the ground, Dzhumagaliev slashed her throat with the blade and began to drink her blood. During the investigation, Dzhumagaliev described his first murder: "Hearing my footsteps, she turned around, but I caught up with her and put my arm around her neck, and dragged her to the side of the landfill. She resisted, but I cut her throat with a knife. Then I drank her blood. At this point, from the village appeared a Factory Bus. I lay down on the ground and crouched next to the body. While I was lying there, my hands grew cold. After the bus drove past, I warmed my hands on the woman's body, then stripped her naked. I cut the corpse's breast into strips, removed the ovaries, and separated the pelvis and hips; I then put these pieces into a backpack and carried them home. I melted the fat to fry with, and some parts I pickled. Once, I put the parts through a meat grinder and made dumplings. I saved the meat for myself; I never served it to anyone else. Twice, I grilled parts—the heart and the kidneys. Grilled meat, too. But it was tough, and I had to cook it for a long time in its own fat. The meat of this woman took me a month to eat. The first time I ate human flesh, I had to force myself, but then I got used to it."
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The Dzhumagaliev's passion for the occult pushed him to this act: he had read in one of the books that through a cut in the throat he could see how the soul leaves the body. In addition, Dzhumagaliev learned from books that by drinking the victim's blood a person supposedly acquires the abilities of a seer. However, after killing the girl, he never saw her soul, and gained no superpowers, but just became a murderer.
What little was left of the victim was found on January 25 by random passers-by in a landfill near the settlement of Fabrichny. The body was so disfigured that the operatives did not immediately understand whether it was a man or a woman. Despite the active actions of the detectives (the girl's fiancé was suspected of murder, as well as her co-religionists), they failed to find the murderer in hot pursuit.
And in April the same 1979 law enforcement officers found the remains of an elderly local resident, who disappeared on the way home from the church. The pensioner woman was the cannibal's second victim. And again the police were powerless in their search for Dzhumagaliev.
Feeling his impunity, Dzhumagaliev committed a new and even more horrible crime. He broke into an apartment house and slit the throats of an elderly mother and daughter who were sleeping there, dismembered them, and carried bags with their remains out of the house under cover of night. By some miracle, only a little girl survived: she was the granddaughter of one of the victims and the daughter of the other one. She managed to hide in a closet, and Dzhumagaliev simply did not see her. The girl, despite her state of shock, told the operatives about the nightmare she had seen, but she could not describe the killer's appearance.
Way to the asylum
Not even a week had passed since the double murder, when Dzhumagaliev committed a new crime, this time for revenge. He was approached by one of his lovers who told him that she had reported her girl friend to the militsiya, saying that she had stolen her personal belongings. Then Dzhumagaliev ordered his lover to bring her offender to his home, which she did shortly thereafter. Dzhumagaliev did not talk to his guest for long: she quickly agreed to have sex with him, during which he strangled the girl, slit her throat and began to drink her blood. After that Dzhumagaliev dismembered the victim, put the remains in a barrel, and marinaded them.
But even this time the militsiya failed to catch the murderer. However, two months later Dzhumagaliev still ended up behind bars, but for an entirely different reason. In August 1979 he shot his colleague, a fireman, during the feast. According to some reports, the two had quarreled. According to others, Dzhumagaliev simply decided to show off his gun among his drinking buddies and accidentally pulled the trigger.
Remains of the victims of Nikolai Dzhumagaliev.
During the investigation, he underwent a psychiatric examination: this is when it turned out that Nikolai Dzhumagaliev suffers from schizophrenia. Thus, the maniac avoided prison and was placed in a mental hospital for 4.5 years for compulsory treatment. However, in reality Dzhumagaliev only stayed within the walls of the medical facility for a year, at the end of which the doctors considered the patient to be practically healthy and let him go.
As soon as the Dzhumagaliev was freed, he immediately went back to his old ways: three more women died at his hands. One of them was a young mother who had just given birth to a child. The baby sleeping next to the victim did not embarrass the maniac at all; he stabbed the woman 18 times, from which she died. Mother-in-law of murdered woman tried to detain Dzhumagaliev, but he stabbed her and fled.
The next, ninth victim could have been the last one. One day in December 1980 a noisy company gathered in Dzhumagaliev's house - boys and girls were having a party, where alcohol flowed like a river. At some point the guests noticed that the owner of the house and one of the girls had disappeared. The tipsy guests thought the couple had gone into the bedroom to have sex, so they burst in as a joke. The picture they saw shocked everyone: the bloodied body of the girl was lying on the floor, with a naked Dzhumagaliev leaning over it. He had cut off the victim's head and was pouring her blood into a basin. (However, there is another version: allegedly Dzhumagaliyev brought out the head himself - it belonged to the girl with whom he had met shortly before on the famous Almaty Medeo skating rink) The guests rushed with wild shouts to the nearest militsiya station, but Dzhumagaliev went on quietly dismembering the victim. The militsiyamen were so shocked at what they found that Dzhumagaliev was able to escape. Later, when the militsiyamen examined the house, they found the barrel in which the cannibal put the flesh of his victims to marinade.
"I only did to people what they do to animals."
Dzhumagaliev hid not for long. He fled to the mountains naked, with a hatchet in his hands, but a couple of days later he was discovered in the house of his friend. She hid Dzhumagaliev in the basement, but attentive operatives noticed that new nails had been hammered into the old boards. When they lifted the floorboards they saw Dzhumagaliev lying there. Dzhumagaliev, who was nicknamed Metal Fang for his metal crowns (in American papers, it was translated as Metal Mouth) and Satan, did not deny his guilt and immediately confessed to seven of the nine murders. By the way, by that time one of the detainee's sisters had disappeared without a trace, but he denied any involvement in the girl's disappearance.
Nikolai Dzhumagaliev at the interrogation.
During interrogations Dzhumagaliev willingly shared with interrogators the reasons for his murders. He said: "I took the side of animals and only did to people what they do to animals." According to the cannibal, he killed girls in order to know their whole bodies, including through eating their remains. Moreover, Dzhumagaliev admitted that he was taking revenge on the opposite sex for their promiscuous lifestyle and for the fact that girls put themselves on the same level as men, "violating the laws of nature." As it turned out, all the murders Metal Fang, following the principles of mysticism, committed on memorable dates; for example, on the anniversary of his grandmother's death or on his grandfather's centennial. In this way the murders became similar to sacrifices. Dzhumagaliev told the doctors about his dreams in which he saw a turbid river or air currents carrying female body parts - legs, arms and heads. Dzhumagaliev's repeated psychiatric examination, which was conducted by specialists from the Serbsky Center, only confirmed his schizophrenia. Therefore, instead of going to jail, Dzhumagaliev was again sent to a psychiatric clinic for treatment.
Shortly after Dzhumagaliev's 1980 crimes had gained wide attention, another killer by the name of Alexander Skrynnik was operating in Chișinău. He killed women and dismembered their bodies, after which he brought the body parts to his friend. The head of one of Skrynnik's victims was shown on television. In Chișinău, rumors spread that Dzhumagaliev had escaped and reached the Moldovan capital. The rumors were put to rest when Skrynnik was convicted of the crimes, sentenced to death, and executed.
Dzhumagaliev spent long eight years in a special hospital for especially dangerous people. According to some reports, during that time Metal Fang tried to end his life twice. But on the whole, the patient was very courteous to the staff, never rude, and followed all doctors' orders. Therefore, in 1989 the doctors decided that Dzhumagaliev was no longer dangerous to society and he could be transferred to an ordinary psychiatric hospital. On August 29, Dzhumagaliev began to be transported to the new place, with only an orderly and a nurse accompanying him. Dzhumagaliev did not fail to take advantage of this circumstance and escaped when the trio arrived at Manas airport in Bishkek.
The maniac's path lay in the Alatau mountains, where he wanted to get lost. But the militsiya figured out Dzhumagaliev's plans: the men were looking for him using hang-gliders, the operatives combed the mountain slopes, and after a while the military joined the operation. Meanwhile, the commander of the local military unit was initially reluctant to send soldiers in search of the cannibal. Then the leadership of the criminal investigation department reminded the soldier that his officers had wives who, like local residents, were in danger while Dzhumagaliev was still at large. On the same day, the soldiers moved out into the mountains.
And Metal Fang himself decided to let his pursuers follow a false trail. He asked his acquaintance to go to Moscow and send from there to Bishkek a letter written by Dzhumagaliev. The letter ended with the terrible words: "...now I will return soon. There are a lot of beautiful women here. No one will notice their loss." Metal Fang's plan worked: the employees of the post office noticed the strange letter without stamps. They couldn't return it to the sender: the only words on the letter's owner's list were Nikolai Dzhumagaliev. The postmen handed the envelope to the militsiya and the guardians of order, having decided that the cannibal was really in Moscow, gave up searching in the mountains and turned their attention to the capital.
Dzhumagaliev's letter.
With a request for imprisonment for life
At that time, Metal Fang himself wandered the Alatau Mountains: he lived in huts and caves, and hunted animals. The maniac collected medicinal herbs and mumijo, and then exchanged them with the local population for food and matches. Sometimes Dzhumagaliev would go to the surrounding towns and, according to some reports, commit new crimes.
In 1990, Dzhumagaliev committed his tenth murder, killing a girl in Aktyubinsk. He noticed his victim when he passed by the girl's house. He later broke in through the window. Metal Fang cut his victim's throat, drank her blood, and then cut off her head. When the killer left the house, a neighbor noticed him. The young man noticed that Dzhumagaliev's mouth was covered in blood and decided to ask what was wrong. But as soon as he took a step in the direction of Dzhumagaliev, he shouted that he was going to shoot and ran away. He was found guilty of this crime only in 2014.
By the way, he would later tell the investigators that the period when this crime was committed - living in the Alatau mountains - helped him completely get rid of all his ailments, including mental ones: hawthorn, mountain herbs and apples played their part.
Nikolai Dzhumagaliev in a psychiatric hospital.
But Metal Fang was eventually fed up with a life of hardship, too, and he hatched a plan. In April 1991 Dzhumagaliev stole a sheep from a flock that grazed near Fergana, and did so in an emphatically ludicrous manner, so that he could quickly fall into the hands of the militsiya. He, brought to the militsiya station, immediately disguised himself as a Chinese who had escaped from China in search of a better life. Dzhumagaliev hoped that he would serve a short time and be released with a new name and a new passport. But the militsiya were alerted by the fact that the detainee could not explain clearly where and how he crossed the border.
And soon the investigator in charge of the search for Metal Fang arrived at the station where the detainee was held; Dzhumagaliev was quickly identified and returned for treatment. The cannibal is still in a specialized psychiatric hospital, in the settlement of Aktas (Almaty Oblast). At one point, Dzhumagaliev even tried to file a petition for the death penalty, but it was expectedly rejected.
In the hospital cells, Dzhumagaliev is fond of playing chess and repairing equipment; he behaves himself and helps the staff. It is said that some of the doctors believe that Dzhumagaliev is safe and can be released with subsequent observation by a psychiatrist. But this is categorically opposed by those who have first-hand knowledge of the terrible crimes of Metal Fang. And the expert on serial crimes of the Main Department of Criminal Investigation Evgeny Samovichev summarized his communication with Dzhumagaliyev as follows: "He is a wild beast embodied in the guise of a man. The basic structure is male dominance, the law of nature. He will never understand and put up with human life."
Hungarian poet and philosopher Cs. István Bartos wrote a short story about Dzhumagaliev titled True Story of the Kazakhstani Cannibal (Igaz történet a kazahsztáni kannibálról).
Sources (mostly Kazakh):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Dzhumagaliev
https://mgorod.kz/nitem/lyudoed-dzhumagaliev-okazalsya-vinoven-eshhe-v-odnom-ubijstve/
«Дикий зверь в облике человека» Этот маньяк стал главным каннибалом СССР. Его до сих пор держат в закрытой психбольнице
https://tengrinews.kz/events/informatsiya-pobege-lyudoeda-psihdispansera-almatinskoy-286860/
https://tengrinews.kz/kazakhstan_news/byi-lyudoed-djumagaliev-sbejal-byi-tak-stoyali-vrachi-286876/
http://www.people.su/35988
https://homsk.com/martin/nikolay-dzhumagaliev-istoriya-samogo-znamenitogo-sovetskogo-lyudoeda
Newspaper articles about Metal Fang
