Baikal region court finds rapist guilty of murder

The Baikal region court on Thursday sentenced to life imprisonment Yevgeny Kozulin, 19, a resident of Chita, who had been found guilty of raping two girls, aged 9 and 12, and killing one of them. \"He will spend the first five years in prison, and the rest of his sentence in a special regime penitentiary,\" spokeswoman for the regional court Viktoria Mikhailyuk told Itar-Tass. \"It has been ascertained that on September 3, 2012, Kozulin saw a schoolgirl in an Internet cafe. He waited till she left the cafe, took her hand and forced her to walk to a square near a school where he raped and strangled her. The body of the girl was found the next day. Police promptly detained the criminal,\" spokesman for the regional department of the Investigative Committee Yegor Markov said. The investigators found that Kozulin was also involved in another rape. \"On March 17, 2012, he raped a nine-year-old girl in the village of Tekstilshchikov near Chita, robbed her of her golden earrings and escaped, the spokesman said. Kozulin confessed to the crimes. A DNA test proved that he had raped the girl. \"A psychiatrist test found him sane. Kozulin told police he had long used psychedelic drugs and that he had committed the crime under their influence,\" Mikhailyuk said. A jury found him guilty on all counts and said he did not deserve clemency.