A brutal murder has blindsided a Russian village after a local teenager, the pride of his class, hacked his entire family to death with an ax, so they wouldn’t be upset by his suicide, according to a note he reportedly left.
The tragedy appears to have struck out of the blue. Sixteen-year-old Timerlan, from a village in the Ulyanovsk region on the Volga River, was one of the best students in his school. He got nothing but excellent marks and successfully took part in intra-school competitions in various subjects.
The young man’s demeanor had also been on a par with his outstanding academic performance: those who knew him described Timerlan as a friendly and cheerful guy who was never mean to anybody and never said a bad word. Though he'd grown up without his father, his relations with his other relatives were said to have been calm and peaceful.
“His grandmother thought the world of him and always spoke only about her grandson,” a friend of the ill-fated family recalled.
All that was until Sunday night, when Timerlan took an axe to the members of his own family. The mutilated bodies of his grandfather, grandmother, mother and four-year-old brother and sister were discovered in their home the following morning.
The murderer himself was already dead by then. Investigators believe that Timerlan climbed onto a nearby cell tower and jumped to his death. His body was found at the foot of the structure. Apart from that, little information has been confirmed officially, but Russian media have been reporting various details based on sources close to the investigation and the teenager’s acquaintances.
As incomprehensible and spontaneous as his crime appears to be, Timerlan reportedly left behind a note with a chilling explanation. “I decided to leave this life and so as not to upset my relatives decided to take them with me,” Timerlan wrote, according to an investigator Interfax had spoken to.
Before his rampage at 3 am, the teenager also reportedly sent a voicemail to his friend which tells a slightly different story. In it, he complained about a “permanent conflict” with his mother, brother and sister, and said their murder was the only possible resolution. On the other hand, he said he loved his grandparents very much – so he decided to murder them too so that they wouldn’t be upset by the deaths of the rest of the family.
It's believed Timerlan could have suffered from schizophrenia. The investigators are now planning to carry out a post-mortem psychological and psychiatric examination.
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