Elena Bulkina met and married Serhiy Tkach when she was just 23
A woman who had a baby with a serial killer who was 40 years her senior has told how she did not care about his past - which included murdering dozens of people.
Serhiy Tkach, dubbed the 'Polohy maniac', was arrested in August 2005 after years of committing horrific crimes which he covered it using experience he gained as a police investigator.
Tkach worked as an investigator in Kemerovo Oblast, Siberia, before being forced to resign after getting caught falsifying evidence.
He moved to Ukraine in 1982 and continued working as a police investigator, using his skills to cover up his offending.
Women and girls, aged 8 to 18 years old, near the area Tkach worked then started disappearing, before being raped and murdered. They were also sexually assaulted after death.
Thirty seven victims are linked to Tkach, but upon arrest he claimed to have murdered 100 and asked to be given the death sentence.
While serving life in prison he met and and married Elena Bulkina. She was 23. At the time they married, in 2015, Tkach was 63.
Elena gave birth to daughter Elizaveta in 2016, though the child did not meet her father.
The couple appeared on Netflix documentary Inside the World's Toughest Prisons, where Elena explained that she didn't feel any guilt over her husband's crimes.
"Of course I'd not wish this on anyone and if it happened to my family I'd punish that person. But I didn't do anything," she explained.
"I felt happiness when I realised I was pregnant. I wanted this baby and he wanted this baby but she was born in Russia and my parents and the officials won’t let me bring her to this country."
Elena went on to detail how she had reached out to Tkach after seeing him in an interview.
She said the crimes he had committed did "not matter that much to me."
The couple were allowed a three day conjugal visit every two months.
Tkach was even allowed to handle sharp knives, though prison guards checked on the couple every hour to make sure he hadn't killed her.
The serial killed died of heart failure in prison on 4 November 2018, no friends or relatives came to collect the body, and prison staff said at the time they had tried to get in contact with Elena without success.
In addition to his murder victims, Tkach also managed to ruin the lives of other men who were wrongly convicted for crimes he committed.
A number years in prison for the murders committed by Tkach, and according to the
Kyiv Post they were tortured into giving confessions.
One innocent man, Maksym Dmytrenko, spent seven years behind bars for crimes he didn't commit, the majority of those even after Tkach had been caught and confessed.
Related links:
