Two Russian students kill and dismember their professor

In short
In March 2020 Vyacheslav Kuznetsov, a chemistry professor at Voronezh University, was killed during a robbery by his former PhD student Dmitry Bykovsky and an accomplice, Alexander Kharlamov, who then dismembered the body and tried to dissolve it in acid. In 2022 they were sentenced to 21 and 19 years.

Vyacheslav Kuznetsov was a professor at Voronezh State University, in Russia, killed and dismembered by Dmitry Bykovsky, a former student of his, and an accomplice, Alexander Kharlamov. A doctor of chemical sciences, he was a respected member of the scientific community and was working on a major project, so-called “solid water”, designed to fight drought.

The disappearance

Kuznetsov, 57, a professor in the Faculty of Chemistry, went missing on 5 March 2020, when he failed to show up at the university. He lived alone and the evening before had called his sister as usual, telling her he would go to bed early. When he didn’t turn up at work the next day and didn’t call his sister, the police were alerted.

Investigators began digging into the professor’s life and found he had three accounts at two different banks. The money in two accounts at Sberbank in Voronezh had been withdrawn from cash machines, while part of the money in the third, at an online bank, had been transferred to accounts at a bank in Magnitogorsk. The holders of those accounts turned out to be bitcoin sellers. They admitted to recent sales but knew their customers only by nickname. Following the payment trail, police reached Alexander Kharlamov and searched his flat.

The discovery of the body

On the balcony of a flat rented by Kharlamov, in an apartment block in Voronezh’s Levoberezhny district, police found two drums containing the professor’s remains. The body had been dismembered and the pair meant to dissolve it in acid, “Breaking Bad” style. The neighbours, who had only recently bought their homes, had suspected nothing.

Bykovsky was a PhD student who had studied at Voronezh University under Kuznetsov. After graduating he had kept doing research with him and the two had remained friends, a friendship that cost the professor his life.

The motive

The two killed him to rob him. Both were deep in debt and knew the professor had savings, around two million roubles. According to their confessions the robbery was Kharlamov’s idea, and Bykovsky went along with it.

They went to Kuznetsov’s home and he let them in, trusting his former student. They knocked him out by pressing a chloroform-soaked cloth to his face and tied him up, then emptied his online account. The professor, however, had diabetes and, according to their version, could not withstand the chloroform. Realising he was dead, they took him to another flat, cut him up and tried to dissolve him in acid.

After his arrest Kharlamov said he was sorry, explaining he had done it because he was struggling financially. The press went wild over the similarity with the famous series Breaking Bad, not least because Bykovsky used a picture of Walter White, the chemistry teacher at the centre of the show, as his profile photo.

Trial and sentence

At trial before the Voronezh Regional Court the two first denied everything, then claimed they had never meant to kill the professor and had bought gloves, acid and a hacksaw only after his death. The judges did not believe them. On 15 February 2022 they were convicted of aggravated murder and robbery, Bykovsky receiving 21 years in prison and Kharlamov 19. In September 2023 Russia’s Supreme Court upheld Bykovsky’s conviction, changing only minor aspects of the ruling.

A man who devoted his life to research, betrayed by the very person he had helped to grow. It really hurts to think about it.

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