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| Andrei Kurochkin, pictured here with his wife Olga, was found to have been cannibalised |
Waving their families goodbye, the
four men were in high spirits as they loaded their jeep and set off on a
much-anticipated adventure holiday.
Their destination was a land from
another time, a largely unpenetrated corner of eastern Siberia roamed by bears
and wolves, where sightings of yeti-like beasts are not uncommon and only the
hardiest of explorers dare to tread.
What happened next to the four
Russian travellers is a mystery only just beginning to yield its secrets. And
the story of their four-month ordeal has gripped and appalled their country in
equal measure.
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| Alexei Gorulenko, pictured with his wife Irina, had known the dead man for 20 years |
Baldly, the facts are these: Two of the men returned alive, one is still missing, while the fourth man – 44-year-old Andrei Kurochina – was found dead in strange circumstances.
At first it was assumed he had
simply perished in the extreme cold. But then the shocking truth began to
emerge. Police discovered he had been cannibalised and that his flesh quite
possibly was eaten by his best friend, Alexei Gorulenko, and fellow adventurer
Alexander Abdullayev, to keep themselves alive.
Abdullayev, 37, insists they ate
Kurochina only after he died from natural causes. But the police suspect otherwise
and have launched a murder investigation.
At her home in Volsk, southern
Russia, Kurochina’s widow Olga is struggling to make sense of it all, while
across town her husband’s friend Gorulenko is back with his family, recovering
from his ordeal, and saying nothing.
‘I am in contact with his wife but
not him,’ said Olga. ‘Her Alexei is alive – but, believe me, she is suffering
no less than me.
‘I can’t bring myself to speak to
Alexei yet. I’m not ready to hear what he can tell me and he can’t open up to
me. I find it too painful to even think what I feel about him now.
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| Alexander Abdullayev filmed at hospital after his ordeal in the Siberian wildernes |
‘Andrei and Alexei were close friends for almost 20 years. They were passionate fishermen and often went away together.
‘This time they were with two others
who I didn’t know and this worried me. But I knew Andrei was with his best
friend so I thought everything would be all right, that they would look after
each other. We could never imagine it would end like this.’
It was from Abdullayev rather than
35-year-old Gorulenko that the ghastly truth emerged following the police
discovery of human remains.
He, like Gorulenko, had initially
denied cannibalism, but taken back to the scene by police helicopter, the
confession spilled out of him. ‘We didn’t kill him.
‘He died from the cold after getting
a leg injury. He was frostbitten and froze to death. Only after that did we
start eating him, to survive.’
Explaining that he and Gorulenko
used an axe to hack apart his frozen remains, he added: ‘We needed protein. We
cut his flesh from the bones and ate it and it helped us to survive for ten
days.’
It was in July, at the height of one
of Russia’s hottest summers on record, that Gorulenko and Kurochina left Volsk
and began a 4,300-mile drive in a Soviet-designed UAZ off-roader.
Fanatical about fishing, they had
ventured many times along lonely rivers together, but never had their
destination been this remote, nor so ambitious.
The desire to undertake such
adventures is ingrained in many Russians and Olga expected them to be away ‘for
one month – or two at the most’.
Both men were fairly well-known
locally. Part of the new bourgeois class that has risen under Vladimir Putin,
they worked as senior managers in cement plants in the region around Saratov,
birthplace of Roman Abramovich.
Gorulenko also dabbled in business, while Kurochina was involved in local politics in Volsk.
It remains unclear how, when and why
they chose unemployed carpenter Abdullayev and 47-year-old welder and former
gold miner Viktor Komarov – the man who is still missing – as the other members
of their expedition.
This pair certainly had a degree of
local knowledge, both being from villages close to where the quartet began
their fishing odyssey.
But Komarov’s involvement is the
reason that some are beginning to suspect that there was another element to the
trip – that in fact its primary purpose was gold prospecting.
On August 8 all four set off from
Pervomaiskiy village, initially going north some 185 miles via the hamlet of
Dipkun to the Sutam River in Sakha, a region home to Russia’s diamond industry.
It is also the location of the
sinister Road of Bones highway, built by inmates of Stalin’s forced labour
camps – many of whom died in the process.
‘I heard from Andrei for the last
time by text on August 10. He said the mobiles wouldn’t work any more as it was
too remote,’ said Olga. ‘I knew he would be out of touch for weeks.’
They had some warm clothes but not
winter gear, as they did not expect to stay in the taiga, Siberia’s vast
forest, for winter.
In their luggage was their fishing
equipment, two hunting rifles and traps to catch hare. They also had ‘a huge
pile of money’.
By around August 20 they hit
trouble. The off-roader broke down and Gorulenko and Abdullayev went back to
Pervomaiskiy on foot before hitching a ride on a cargo train to pick up spare
parts.
They returned to the others with the
vehicle fixed. But a month later catastrophe hit as the group forded the
swollen Tarynnakh River.
The vehicle stuck and as the men
tried to free it from the fast-flowing waters, it upturned. It sank with the
loss of all their possessions except the guns, ammunition and money.
All four took refuge in a remote
hunting lodge, which they used as a base for a number of weeks, until they
exhausted its food supplies.
What happened next is sketchy but it
appears they did not perceive themselves in great danger.
They did not seem in any rush to
escape from the taiga, despite losing their fishing tackle and the vehicle, in
which they had often slept.
During this period they encountered
a number of hunters who had vehicles and walkie-talkies. At least one let them
use his satellite phone.
‘Alexander called his mother by this
sat-phone in early October and said they were all OK and would be out in five
days,’ said Olga.
‘But he didn’t mention one crucial
thing – that they had lost the vehicle. Had I only known this I would have done
everything to get search parties to find them.’
Soon after this call, the winter
snows began to fall much earlier than expected. Yet despite chest-high snow
they still seemed in no hurry to leave.
Indeed, they could have paid one of
the hunters they met to help them as they were not short of money.
Olga admits this is perplexing, but
she says only: ‘The weather was against them, everything was against them.
They lost the way at some point and
were going in circles. They had no compass. They took a satnav but lost it with
the car.’
In a region where hot summer
transforms into one of the planet’s coldest winters, with barely a pause for
autumn, the temperature was by now dipping dangerously.
At the beginning of October they
began walking back towards Dipkun.
They left a note in a hunter’s house
saying they had sheltered under the owner’s roof and eaten all his food.
They also left 3,000 roubles –
around £60. Their progress back to civilisation was haphazard.
Had they been fit and properly
equipped, they could have covered the distance in a matter of days, even with
the snow and sub-zero temperatures.
Yet it would be almost seven weeks
before two of them were found some nine miles from Dipkun.
In this time it is known all four
took refuge in another empty hunter’s shack near the Daurka River, an
area described by locals as lonely and macabre.
In recent years, seven dead bodies
have been found here.
After Gorulenko and his companion
were rescued by helicopter on November 28, he said: ‘Andrei’s leg was aching
and he could not walk further, and Viktor was also weak.
‘We agreed to leave them there and
go and seek help.’
But his account did not hold water
for long. When the police visited the bleak timber house in search of the other
two they found it empty.
Outside, they discovered footprints,
but none leading towards the river, now covered with thick ice, the obvious
escape route.
They led to a pile of snow, hiding
frozen body parts, with the flesh hacked off. Nearby, investigators found
blood-stained clothing and a wooden stake that might have been a murder weapon.
When they were first confronted with
the discoveries, Gorulenko and Abdullayev denied any knowledge. Gorulenko has
still not formally confessed.
Asked if he had eaten his friend, he
answered: ‘How can you say such a thing?’
In a case beset by mysteries, among
its most puzzling was the physical condition of the survivors.
‘Doctors were surprised that they
weren’t that bad – not frostbitten, not hurt, their nails neatly trimmed,’ said
a rescuer.
‘They were eating and mumbling
answers to our questions but they were not keen to communicate.’
The police now find themselves in a
peculiar situation over the case.
‘It is right that fisherman
Alexander Abdullayev has admitted eating the flesh off his friend’s body and
that he did this jointly with Alexei Gorulenko,’ said Dmitri Murashko, who is
in charge of the investigation.
However, the Russian criminal code contains no offence of cannibalism. ‘Neither of them are detained, but both are witnesses in a murder investigation,’ he said.
Both men emphatically deny killing
Kurochina, or for that matter the missing Komarov.
DNA and other forensic tests take an
interminable time in Russia, which means formal identification of Kurochina –
and any clues as to how he died – is not likely before March.
Last week Abdullayev’s mother
Lidiya, 57, blocked access to her son, saying: ‘He is not back to normal yet.
‘My heart aches just looking at him.
He can hardly walk or talk, as if he’s lost and can’t find himself.
'He’s a shadow of the man who went
into the taiga. I know he has spoken of cannibalism and I can’t say any more
about it.
‘He told me they could never expect
such a snowfall in October. He talks constantly about Viktor but is too weak to
go out and look for him.
‘He told me Viktor had said: “You
go. I am too weak. I can’t walk any more. I can’t move.”
‘Please understand – this
wasn’t an easy decision.
‘In the end they had to move
otherwise all of them would have died. They were too weak to carry him
out.
‘I can’t be a judge on what
happened. Everything is too emotional. The law of the taiga says that the
strongest survives.
‘My son proved to be the strongest –
but there is terrible heartache and tears in our house since he got back.’
Similarly, Irina, Gorulenko’s
22-year-old wife, said: ‘I hardly recognised him. He was just skin around his
bones, no teeth. He’s exhausted. He says he did not eat his friend.’
At first Olga Kurochina simply
refused to accept the cannibalism claim. Now, after hearing from the police,
and privately from Irina and Abdullayev’s mother, she accepts he was eaten. She
still cannot believe it was murder, however.
‘I do not think they killed him.
There has to be a motive for murder and I can’t see one,’ she said.
‘Andrei was a healthy man, but maybe
because of the cold he got this leg pain that Alexei mentioned.
‘But I still don’t understand what
happened next and how he died. It is so hard to put yourself in their shoes. We
do not know what metamorphosis the human mind goes through being in such
extreme conditions, and nobody knows.’
As she attempts to deal with the
tragedy, Olga is finding unexpected solace in accounts of cannibalism by the
starving and utterly desperate citizens of Russia’s second city St Petersburg,
then Leningrad, trapped under ceaseless Nazi attack during the Second World
War.
‘I’m now reading about the Siege of
Leningrad,’ she said. ‘To try to help me come to terms with what happened to
Andrei.’
But for a miracle reappearance by
Viktor Komarov, this bizarre story is unlikely to unravel further before the
results of the forensic tests in March or possibly even the snow melt in late
May – when the fear is that another set of bones will appear.
Dailymail.co.uk
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