The Fantomas gang, or how the Tolstopyatov brothers terrified Rostov-on-Don.

Founded

Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, Vladimir Tolstopyatov, Sergey Samasyuk, Vladimir Gorshkov

Years of activity Territory Criminal activity

Gang of Tolstopyatov brothers- a criminal group operating in Rostov-on-Don in 1973.

The scale, technical equipment, preparedness and the very fact of the emergence and successful long-term existence of this criminal gang are unique for the USSR of the 1960s - 1970s, which gave the gang a legendary character and made it part of the folklore of the city of Rostov-on-Don and the USSR/Russia.

Structure and weapons

The founder and leader of the gang, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov Jr., was born in a village in the vicinity of Bryansk in 1940. Since childhood, he has been interested in designing, drawing and drawing. The first attempt to put his abilities into practice for personal gain ended in failure: Tolstopyatov was sentenced to four years in prison for forgery paper money. In prison, Tolstopyatov met Sergei Samasyuk and the gang’s plan emerged. Upon his release, Tolstopyatov Jr. enlisted the support of his older brother Vladimir, who provided him with premises adapted for the gang’s headquarters and workshop. The fourth member of the gang was an old acquaintance of the brothers, Vladimir Gorshkov.

All the gang’s weapons were manufactured by the Tolstopyatov brothers themselves in semi-industrial conditions: the blanks were made in an underground workshop, the secret entrance to which was hidden using a specially rotating mirror, and the shaped parts were ordered from familiar factory milling workers under the guise of spare parts for household appliances. In total, four small-caliber seven-round revolvers, three small-caliber folding submachine guns of a unique design, hand grenades and even improvised body armor were manufactured.

Since the acquisition of personal vehicles was virtually an impossible and unnecessary task (a personal vehicle in those conditions would instantly unmask and expose the group), the Tolstopyatovs worked out the tactics of seizing other people’s cars and taking the driver hostage.

Information about an alleged attempt to assemble a helicopter for air raids should most likely be classified as an urban legend, but such a legend in the best possible way characterizes the degree of technical ambitions of the gang’s militants.

Robbery tactics

In general, it should be recognized that the gang’s tactics were at that time advanced for the criminal world of the USSR, and the degree of its development inevitably provokes comparison with the actions of Chicago gangsters, urban partisans and intelligence services (many Rostov residents suspected the gang of collaborating with Western intelligence services). These tactics included the “correct” bank robbery, hostage taking, surveillance and collection of information after the action, evasion, conspiracy, alibi preparation, retraining, conspiratorial treatment and disguise. For personal disguise, the gang members used black stockings, which is why they received the nickname “Fantômas”.

The bandits developed two main robbery tactics:

One of the bandits stops a car in the city asking for a ride. In the place named by him, under the guise of his friends, the rest of the gang are waiting. Once they get into the car, the driver is tied up and placed in the back seat or trunk. Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov gets behind the wheel and drives the car to the scene of the attack. The attack itself is carried out by Samasyuk and Gorshkov. After grabbing the money high speed leaving the crime scene, the car and driver are abandoned in an inconspicuous place.

The collector's or cashier's car is seized directly at the scene of the attack. They all carry out the attack together and hide in the same car.

Vladimir Tolstopyatov’s responsibilities included monitoring the situation after the crime, the actions of the police, and the stories of witnesses.

It is worth noting the gang’s independence from government services: when Vladimir Gorshkov was wounded during one of the robberies, he was treated by a doctor bribed by the gang, but the treatment was unsuccessful, and then Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov independently performed a surgical operation, guided by a diagram in a medical textbook.

The gang carried out several successful robberies, leaving human victims and stealing a total of 150 thousand rubles (for comparison: a three-room cooperative apartment cost 5 thousand rubles in those years, a Volga GAZ-24 car - 9 thousand), and more than once evaded prosecution.

Attacks

The gang attempted its first attack on October 7, 1968. On this day, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, Samasyuk and Gorshkov seized a car from the Rostov Watch Factory with the aim of robbing a cashier at the building of the Regional Office of the State Bank of the USSR on the corner of Engels Street (now Bolshaya Sadovaya) and Sokolov Avenue. The attack was preceded by a long preparation: the bandits monitored the process of cashiers receiving money and established on what days and hours the most intensive issuance of money occurs. However, the driver D. Arutyunov managed to leave the car after the seizure. Then the bandits decided not to attack that day, realizing that he would report the capture to the police. The car was abandoned in the courtyard of the House of Actors.

Three days later, an attempt was made to attack the cashier of the Rostov shoe factory in the car of the Tolstopyatovs’ accomplice Srybny. To prevent Srybny from being suspected of complicity, his hands were first tied. But even here the Fantomas were unlucky: first they did not have time to attack the cashier before she got into the car, and then this car unexpectedly, in violation of traffic rules, turned into the factory gates.

If at first I was overcome by the passion for design, then later the question only came down to money. The injury of one of us unsettled us, continuous nervous tension, the nerves were subjected to a triple test - this had a detrimental effect on the mind. I could no longer think creatively, as before, any event caused trauma, I was haunted by the nightmare of what was happening, its meaninglessness. You can’t blame me for envy and greed, I’m used to being content with little, I shouldn’t live for the sake of sweetness. I was surrounded by people, I alone had to think for everyone. But nothing goes unpunished, especially meanness. With my will, I could have become what I wanted, but I became a criminal and am responsible for this before the court.

Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov (from last word)

All cassation appeals were rejected, and on March 6, 1975 the sentence was carried out.

In culture

Mentions of the “Fantômas” can be found in novels of modern Russian writer Danil Koretsky, living and working in Rostov.
“Fantômas” are also the heroes of the novel “Rostov-Papa” by the famous Don writer Anton Gerashchenko.

Other

In Rostov, one of the streets bears the name of the worker Martavitsky, who tried to detain the bandits and was killed by them.

Links

N. I. Buslenko The end of the “phantomas” (the case of Tolstopyatov and others) // Prosecutor’s Office of the Rostov Region at the turn of the century. - Rostov-on-Don: Expert Bureau, 2000. - P. 269-277.
Kostanov Yu.A. Case of "Fantomas" // Judicial speeches. And not only.(speech by the public prosecutor at the trial)
Ionova L.

The founder of the first gangster group in the Soviet Union took revenge on the state for his unrecognized talent.
Bandits in life and in movies
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, first in Rostov region and then throughout Soviet Union Rumors spread about an elusive gang of robbers in black masks raiding banks and stores. At that time, French films about Fantômas with Louis de Funès and Jean Marais were very popular in the USSR, so the newly minted Soviet gangsters were also called “Fantômas.”
Of course, the rumors greatly distorted reality, but the gang of “phantomas” really operated in Rostov for several years. Desperate efforts of the Soviets law enforcement agencies to neutralize it did not lead to success until June 7, 1973.
On this day, the bandits' raid on the cash desk of the Yuzhgiprovodkhoz Research Institute ended in failure, and a pursuit began after the criminals' car. During it, one of the criminals was killed, the rest were detained.

The gang's story, which ended in the summer of 1973, began many years before the criminals first took up arms.

Criminal talent
Vladimir and Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, the creators of the “gang of phantomas,” were born in the Bryansk region, and moved to the Don to distant relatives with their mother at the beginning of the war, along with columns of other refugees. The eldest, Vladimir, was 15 years old at that time, and the youngest, Vyacheslav, was one year old.
The father of the Tolstopyatov brothers was the head of the police department and died in the first days of the war.
In childhood, Vladimir and Vyacheslav were not noticed to have bad inclinations - they studied well, helped their mother, were fond of design, and Vyacheslav also showed talent as an artist.
This talent brought him to the dock for the first time. One of Vyacheslav’s hobbies was the careful redrawing of various pictures and illustrations, down to the smallest detail. Having achieved success with book drawings, at the age of 15 Slava took up something more difficult - he began to redraw 50- and 100-ruble bills.
At first it was just, so to speak, a sporting interest, and then Vyacheslav decided to try to benefit from his hobby. He took the drawn bill to the store and successfully exchanged it for real money - the seller did not notice the trick.
Vyacheslav decided that this way he could earn money for books, sweets, various tools, etc. Taxi drivers became the young counterfeiter’s favorite “clients”: he would get into the car, drive a short distance, hand the driver a bill folded into a rectangle, take the change and leave.

Soviet ruble. Humane sentence
Tolstopyatov Jr.'s self-confidence let him down - noticing that taxi drivers did not unfold the bill, he began to draw it only on one side. But on February 23, 1960 young man I came across an incredulous taxi driver who unwrapped the bill and... Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov ended up in the police station.
There he honestly admitted everything, during an investigative experiment he perfectly drew a 100-ruble bill, and surprised the investigator with his modesty and erudition.
Law enforcement officers found themselves in a difficult position: on the one hand, in front of them was a talented guy who could bring great benefit to the country, and on the other hand, counterfeiting banknotes in the USSR was punished very strictly. Moreover, Tolstopyatov had not one, but a whole series of similar episodes.
As a result, 20-year-old Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov received 4 years in a general regime colony - an extremely lenient sentence for this type of crime.
"Take a million"
But Tolstopyatov Jr. believed that he had become a victim of state tyranny. Once in the colony, Vyacheslav began to hatch a plan for revenge. There, in the colony, he also found his first like-minded person - Sergei Samasyuk, convicted of malicious hooliganism.
After leaving the colony, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov moved on to implementing his plan - creating an armed gang for raids on banks, shops and enterprises.
Vyacheslav was 14 years younger than his brother Vladimir, but in this pair he was the leader. Vladimir, who until that moment had not shown any criminal inclinations, supported his brother’s idea and provided him with premises for a workshop and the headquarters of the future gang.
The third member of the gang was Sergei Samasyuk, who was released from prison, and the fourth was a childhood friend of the Tolstopyatov brothers, Vladimir Gorshkov, whom the aspiring gangsters initiated into their plans.

Vladimir Gorshkov. Photo: Frame from NTV channel
The “strategic goal” of the gang was defined by Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov - “to take a million and stop criminal activities.” A million rubles after the monetary reform of 1961 was simply a gigantic sum, but Tolstopyatov Jr. was determined to see his plan through to completion.
Vyacheslav was the brain of the group, and Vladimir was his “ right hand" They solved the issue of weapons on their own: they developed unique folding machine guns of their own design, as well as revolvers.
Shaped parts for weapons were ordered from familiar factory milling workers under the guise of spare parts for household appliances, and the brothers carried out the final assembly themselves, in their own workshop. In total, four small-caliber seven-round revolvers, three small-caliber folding submachine guns, hand grenades and even body armor were manufactured.
Bandits could get caught right away
Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov dealt not only with weapons: he carefully developed the tactics of the bandits during raids, distributing tasks of observation, capture, covering and leaving the crime scene among the gang members. Since getting your own car in those years was unrealistic, Tolstopyatov developed a plan to seize cars to quickly leave the robbery scene.
The gang's tactics included two main attack options.

Option one. One of the bandits stops a car in the city asking for a ride. In the place named by him, under the guise of his friends, the rest of the gang are waiting. Once they get into the car, the driver is tied up and placed in the back seat or trunk. Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov gets behind the wheel and drives the car to the scene of the attack. The attack itself is carried out by Samasyuk and Gorshkov. After seizing the money, they leave the crime scene at high speed, abandoning the car and driver in an inconspicuous place.

Option two. The collector's or cashier's car is seized directly at the scene of the attack. They all carry out the attack together and hide in the same car.
After careful preparation The criminals first took action on October 7, 1968, intending to rob a cashier at the Regional Office of the State Bank of the USSR. But the raid went wrong - the driver of the car in which they were going to commit the robbery, seeing the gun pointed at him, jumped out of the car and ran away. The criminals had to retreat empty-handed.
However, no one took the incident seriously, especially since the bandits left the car near the site of the failed raid.
First murder
On October 10, an attempt to rob the cashier of the Rostov shoe factory failed - the woman was saved by the fact that the bandits were late, and the driver carrying the cashier drove into the gate of the enterprise, grossly violating traffic rules.
On October 22, 1968, “Phantomas” burst into store No. 46 in the village of Mirny, opening indiscriminate fire. But here, too, everything went wrong - the women who worked in the store managed to hide from the criminals in the back room with most of the proceeds. The raiders got only 526 rubles.
When the bandits jumped out of the store, pensioner Guriy Chumakov stood in their way. The war veteran, hearing the screams of the saleswomen, realized what was happening and tried to stop the bandits. One of the “phantomas” shot him with a machine gun.
After this first murder of the gang members, panic set in, but the eldest of the Tolstopyatovs, Vladimir, intervened. He told his accomplices that they had been “baptized by fire” and there was no turning back now. After that speech, other gang members nicknamed Vladimir “political officer.”
“Fantômas” continued what they started. On October 25, 1968, a female cashier was robbed near the Oktyabrsky branch of the State Bank, with 2,700 rubles in her bag. On December 29, 1968, the Tolstopyatov gang attacked a grocery store on Mechnikov Street; production amounted to 1,498 rubles.
But a raid on the cashier of the Chemical Plant named after October Revolution broke thanks to a security guard who entered into battle with the criminals. As a result, the bandits retreated, and Vladimir Gorshkov was wounded.
For some time, the gang chose to go into the shadows, especially since the violent Samasyuk was again in prison, receiving a year and a half for a fight in a pub.
Big jackpot

But in August 1971, the “Phantomas” made themselves known loudly, raiding construction organization UNR-112 - production amounted to 17 thousand rubles.

On December 16, 1971, the gang attacked collectors near savings bank No. 0299. The driver of the collection car, not accustomed to attacks by gangsters, submitted to them meekly, but the senior collector Ivan Zyuba entered the battle, wounding Gorshkov in the arm. The bandits shot the collector with machine guns and fled with 20,000 rubles.
In total, during their career, the “phantomas” carried out 14 armed attacks, and their total loot amounted to 150,000 rubles.
Tostopyatov Jr. was, however, dissatisfied - time passed, and the planned million remained still an unattainable goal.
The raid, which was the last for the Phantomas, was their biggest undertaking. They intended to rob the cashier of the Yuzhgiprovodkhoz design institute on payday, when, according to the gangsters’ calculations, they were supposed to bring 250–300 thousand rubles to the enterprise.
The raid was extremely daring - Samasyuk and Gorshkov penetrated directly into the territory of the enterprise, approached the cash register, where workers who were waiting for their salaries had gathered, threatened with revolvers, took the money and tried to escape.
Die on a bag of money
But then the unexpected happened: the workers began to pursue the raiders, not paying attention to their threats. Already on the street, 27-year-old store loader Vladimir Martovitsky entered into a fight with the bandits. The enraged Gorshkov and Tolstopyatov Jr., who came to his aid, shot the daredevil.
Screams and shots attracted the attention of senior police sergeant Alexei Rusov, who rushed in pursuit of the bandits. In a shootout, he wounded two bandits - Gorshkov and Samasyuk, for whom this wound turned out to be fatal.
While Rusov was reloading his weapon, the bandits managed to seize a Moskvich car, in which they tried to escape.
In the back seat of this car, lying on a bag with stolen 125 thousand rubles, Sergei Samasyuk died. As his accomplices said during interrogations, dying drunk on a bag of money was his dream, so we can assume that the gangster died happy.

Murdered Sergei Samasyuk.
This time the “phantomas” did not manage to escape. Rusov was picked up by the fire department's gas car, which contained Sergeant Gennady Doroshenko and Captain Viktor Salyutin, who had joined the chase. Another policeman joined the chase - local inspector of the Oktyabrsky District Department of Internal Affairs, junior lieutenant Evgeniy Kubyshta, who stopped the UAZ minibus. Through joint efforts, the criminals were captured.
Myths and truth
During interrogations, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov willingly talked about the weapons he had developed and shared new design ideas. Like 13 years before, he seemed not to understand the seriousness of what he had done, and was convinced that instead of punishment he would be sent to work in a secret design bureau.
Decades later, already in new Russia, recalling the “case of the phantoms,” some will say that Tolstopyatov Jr. became a victim of the Soviet system, which did not give talent the opportunity to realize itself. Researchers of the case, however, both then and now claim that this is a lie. Unlike many designers and engineers who achieved worldwide recognition in an honest way, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov wanted recognition here and now, believing that talent is allowed more than “mere mortals.”

This conviction pushed him onto the path of crime, onto which he also enticed his older brother. As for the other gang members, they were driven by a thirst for profit and a desire to feel power over others.

It is also a myth that the “phantomas” acted almost as people’s avengers who decided to settle scores with Soviet system for the execution of workers in Novocherkassk in 1962. The “phantomas” had nothing to do with those events.
And such motivation crumbles at the first encounter with real facts. Gangsters did not hesitate to rob cashiers of enterprises, leaving workers without their hard-earned money. During the last raid they threatened to shoot ordinary people who demanded a refund.
And if the deceased collector Ivan Zyuba can, at least with a stretch, be called a “servant of the regime,” then the murdered war veteran Guriy Chumakov and Vladimir Martovitsky one hundred percent belonged to the same working class, for whose violated honor the “phantomas” allegedly took revenge.
Unlike the bandits, Ivan Zyuba, Guriy Chumakov and Vladimir Martovitsky were real citizens of their country who did not want to put up with lawlessness even under the threat of death.
On July 1, 1974, the court pronounced a verdict in the case of the “gang of phantomas” - Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, Vladimir Tolstopyatov and Vladimir Gorshkov were sentenced to death, and eight of their accomplices, who performed auxiliary functions in the gang, received different prison terms for complicity and failure to report.
The Tolstopyatovs and Gorshkov filed appeals and asked for pardon, but the sentence was left unchanged.
For many years, there were rumors in Rostov that Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov was nevertheless sent to a closed research institute to work on new types of weapons. The truth, however, is more prosaic - on March 6, 1975, the death sentence against the “Phantomas” was carried out.

One of the gang members in a hoodie mask with a homemade revolver in his hands.

Type:

Criminal group

Occupation:

Robbery, banditry, robbery, murder

Activity time:

1968 - 1973

Military equipment:

Moskvich-402

Armor:

Improvised body armor

Gang of Tolstopyatov brothers or Fantomas - criminal group, operating in Rostov-on-Don in 1968 - 1973. Consisted of 4 people: Vladimir Tolstopyatov, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, Vladimir Gorshkov and Sergey Samasyuk. However, only three people directly participated in the attacks - Vladimir Tolstopyatov only developed weapons and planned robberies, and was also the “ideological inspirer” of the gang. The criminals received the popular nickname "Fantomas" because of that, that they put black stockings on their heads for camouflage purposes, and also because at the time the gang appeared, the premiere of the third part of the French film about Fantômas.

Story

Background

The founder and leader of the gang, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov Jr., was born in a village in the vicinity of Bryansk in 1940. Since childhood, he has been interested in designing, drawing and drawing. Vyacheslav especially loved to sketch. He could pore over some book for hours, redrawing an illustration, and achieving absolute similarity - right down to the smallest detail. At about 15 years old, Vyacheslav got used to sketching banknotes. He drew 50 and 100 ruble banknotes (this was before the monetary reform of 1961).

At first, Slava exchanged them in wine and vodka stores. He threw the purchased bottle into the bushes (Vyacheslav almost never drank alcohol all his life), and spent real money on sweets, books, and tools. Over time, Vyacheslav got used to selling the drawn money to taxi drivers: he drove a short distance in a car, handed the driver a bill folded into a quadrangle (it should be noted that the “pre-reform” post-war banknotes were much larger than the current ones), took the change and disappeared.

Seeing that taxi drivers never unfold banknotes, Vyacheslav became bolder to such an extent that he began to draw money on only one side. This is what destroyed him. On February 23, 1960, a taxi driver named Metelitsa, having given Vyacheslav a ride to the Suburban Station, nevertheless unfolded the bill offered to him - and was stunned when he saw reverse side blank sheet of paper!

“

Vyacheslav confessed to everything at once,” recalled the investigator in Tolstopyatov’s first case, A. Granovsky. - In an investigative experiment, using only colored pencils, watercolors, BF-2 glue, a compass, a ruler and a blade, Vyacheslav drew absolutely exact copy 100-ruble bill. We all gasped. Even in the police, even while under investigation, Vyacheslav won everyone’s sympathy with his politeness, modesty, and erudition. It was a pleasure to talk with him. I petitioned the court for a mitigation of the sentence - given young age, complete repentance, assistance provided to the investigation.

”

Counterfeiting of banknotes is classified as serious crimes against the state, but the court verdict was unusually lenient; four years of imprisonment in a general regime colony. In prison, Tolstopyatov met Sergei Samasyuk and the gang’s plan emerged. Upon his release, Tolstopyatov Jr. enlisted the support of his older brother Vladimir, who provided him with premises adapted for the gang’s headquarters and workshop. The fourth member of the gang was an old acquaintance of the brothers, Vladimir Gorshkov.

Attacks

"Fantômas" in the television series "Once Upon a Time in Rostov".

The gang attempted its first attack on October 7, 1968. On this day, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, Samasyuk and Gorshkov seized a car from the Rostov Watch Factory with the aim of robbing a cashier at the building of the Regional Office of the State Bank of the USSR on the corner of Engels Street (now Bolshaya Sadovaya) and Sokolov Avenue. The attack was preceded by a long preparation: the bandits monitored the process of cashiers receiving money and established on what days and hours the most intensive issuance of money occurs. However, the driver D. Arutyunov, upon seeing the pistol, sharply pressed the brake and jumped out of the car. Then the bandits decided not to attack that day, realizing that he would report the capture to the police. The car was abandoned in the yard of the House of Actors. In order not to give unnecessary noise to this matter, Vyacheslav himself called the police from a pay phone and reported where the car was, adding that he and his friends decided to play a prank on the driver, but he did not understand the joke and was afraid of a water pistol.

From left to right: above - Vladimir and Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, below - Vladimir Gorshkov and Sergey Samasyuk.

On October 22, 1968, bandits broke into store No. 46 in the village of Mirny. They opened fire indiscriminately and headed towards the cash register. But the cashiers managed to hide the bulk of the money; the loot that day amounted to only 526 rubles. G.S. Chumakov, a pensioner who happened to be nearby and a participant in the war, tried to detain the raiders, but was killed by an automatic burst from a submachine gun in the back by Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov. On November 25, 1968, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, Samasyuk and Gorshkov, having stolen a car that belonged to the Rostov radio engineering school, tied up the driver and drove to the Oktyabrsky branch of the State Bank. As soon as a woman with a bag appeared from the door, Samasyuk ran up to her with a machine gun, fired into the air and snatched the bag from the woman. There were 2,700 rubles in the bag. On December 29, 1968, the Tolstopyatov gang attacked a grocery store on Mechnikov Street; production amounted to 1,498 rubles. The Tolstopyatov gang made an unsuccessful attack on the Chemical Plant named after the October Revolution, although the attack was carefully prepared: Vyacheslav himself came to the plant, tried to get a job, read the advertisements on the stands, found out the days when they brought wages, looked at the cashiers, watched the car bringing money from the bank. And yet the attack failed: the bag with the money was carried not by the cashier, but by the security guard. Shots into the ground did not help either. The guard with the bag ran inside the plant, then pulled out his revolver and pointed it towards the attackers. Shots rang out. The Tolstopyatov gang had to run away, they were rushing to their car, and shots were heard from behind, one bullet hit Gorshkov in the back. They barely escaped pursuit in a truck captured along the way. Realizing that a raid had begun on them in the city, they decided to lie low. The break lasted for a year and a half. During this period, the gang did not take any active actions. Gorshkov was healing his back, and at that time Samasyuk was sent behind barbed wire for some minor crime. In August 1971, the Tolstopyatov gang got together and on August 25 attacked the construction organization UNR-112; production amounted to 17 thousand rubles. On December 16, 1971, the Tolstopyatov gang attacked collectors at the savings bank on Pushkinskaya Street; production amounted to 20 thousand rubles. In this attack, Gorshkov was wounded in the arm. From October 1968 to June 1973, the “phantomas” carried out 14 armed attacks, killing two townspeople and wounding three. The total amount of loot was about 150 thousand rubles.

Detention

Gang car during arrest.

An operational headquarters was created to apprehend the gang Ministry of Internal Affairs, numbering over a hundred employees, mobile response teams were deployed, partial radio coverage was carried out vehicles police. The end of the gang came on June 7, 1973, during an attempt to rob the cash desk of the Yuzhgiprovodkhoz Research Institute. The car, captured by the gang, was stopped after a slight collision with a train, and a shootout ensued with police officers. Sergei Samasyuk was killed right on the bag of money, the bandit Gorshkov again received a gunshot wound, and along with the others was detained. Junior police sergeant A. A. Rusov and V. A. Salyutin took a direct part in detaining the bandits.

Sentence

Tolstopyatov brothers: Vladimir (left) and Vyacheslav.

On July 1, 1974, a verdict was passed, according to which three gang members (Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, Vladimir Tolstopyatov, Vladimir Gorshkov) received capital punishment, and eight accomplices were sentenced to different periods imprisonment for complicity or failure to report (Articles 77; 175; 196, part 1; 196, part 3 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR). From the last words of Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov:

“

If at first I was overcome by the passion for design, then later the question only came down to money. The injury of one of us unsettled us, continuous nervous tension, our nerves were triple tested - this had a detrimental effect on the mind. I could no longer think creatively, as before, any event caused trauma, I was haunted by the nightmare of what was happening, its meaninglessness. You can’t blame me for envy and greed, I’m used to being content with little, I shouldn’t live for the sake of sweetness. I was surrounded by people, I alone had to think for everyone. But nothing goes unpunished, especially meanness. With my will, I could have become what I wanted, but I became a criminal and am responsible for this before the court.

”

All cassation appeals were rejected, and on March 6, 1975, the sentence was carried out.

Armament

All the gang’s weapons were manufactured by the Tolstopyatov brothers themselves in semi-industrial conditions: the blanks were made in an underground workshop, the secret entrance to which was hidden using a specially rotating mirror, and the shaped parts were ordered from familiar factory milling workers under the guise of spare parts for household appliances. In total, before the attacks began, four small-caliber seven-round revolvers, two small-caliber folding submachine guns of a unique design, 11 hand grenades and even improvised body armor were manufactured.

Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov, at the beginning of his “career,” managed to head the sports shooting section of DOSAAF and obtain ammunition for the gang’s arsenal being created. On Pyramidnaya Street, where the Topstopyatov brothers lived nearby, an improvised weapons workshop was created. Quite modest - her most significant acquisitions so far have been a small lathe and welding machine. The main repository of the arsenal was the cache behind the mirror in the outbuilding where Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov lived.

The population still has many weapons with last war, but there was no such movement as later, in the 1990s. And yet, the inventive ambitions of the brothers, especially Vyacheslav, were decisive in the choice of arming the gang. The older brother also participated in the manufacture of the gang's weapons. By the way, Tolstopyatov Sr., a front-line soldier, participant in the assault on Koenigsberg, chose the role of an analyst, ideological inspirer gang and was not directly involved in the attacks.

The same room with the mirror behind which there was a cache of gang weapons.

It is curious that the entire press of that time admired the homemade weapons of the Tolstopyatovs: among the newspaper headlines there were reports that “the self-taught man was able to create the best weapon in the world, which later became a model for arming special forces,” “the Americans were interested in the inventions of the Tolstopyatovs, but KGB immediately classified the information and accepted the development of the bandit’s invention himself,” and also that “the firing power of such a weapon was four times greater than the average in machine guns in all armies of the world.” However, this turned out to be nothing more than just loud headlines - the Tolstopyatovs’ weapons were original it looked only from the outside, but there was nothing ingenious or innovative inside. In addition, it is reliably known about at least two cases of weapon failure. The second time, the malfunction of submachine guns turned out to be fatal - the criminals were detained. police.

The weapon was chambered for .22LR cartridges. A stolen small-caliber rifle was cut into barrels. According to some sources, this rifle was stolen from a local police officer, who regularly checked the lifestyle of the previously convicted Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov at his place of residence and later repeatedly visited that very room with the hiding place behind the mirror. Complex parts were ordered out of friendship or “magarych” to workers of Rostov enterprises, including a high-security helicopter plant, ostensibly as parts for household appliances. They even added “extra” elements to the drawings. I can’t really believe that no one ever suspected anything. But one can understand why this version ultimately suited everyone. Otherwise, “inconvenient” moments would appear in this high-profile case, starting from different accents in the question “What is it like in a sensitive enterprise?” and to problems with the prosecution’s theses about the class rejection of working people and Soviet citizens of an illegal way of life. In total, the Tolstopyatovs produced four revolvers, four submachine guns of two types,

Except homemade weapons, the gang was armed with two captured Nagant revolvers during an attack on cash collectors near savings bank No. 0299 on December 16, 1971 - they were in a cash-in-transit vehicle stolen by bandits. Also, one Nagan was discovered during a search of the bandits’ car after their arrest on June 7, 1973.

Information about an alleged attempt to assemble a helicopter for air raids should most likely be classified as an urban legend, but such a legend best characterizes the degree of technical ambitions of the gang's militants.

Robbery tactics

In general, it should be recognized that the gang’s tactics were at that time advanced for the criminal world of the USSR, and the degree of its development inevitably provokes comparison with the actions of Chicago gangsters, urban partisans and intelligence services (many Rostovites suspected the gang of collaborating with Western intelligence services). These tactics included the “correct” bank robbery, hostage taking, surveillance and collection of information after the action, evasion, conspiracy, alibi preparation, retraining, conspiratorial treatment and disguise. For personal camouflage, gang members used black stockings, which is why they received the nickname “Fantômas”.

At the museum.

The bandits developed two main options for robbery tactics:

One of the bandits stops a car in the city asking for a ride. In the place named by him, under the guise of his friends, the rest of the gang are waiting. Once they get into the car, the driver is tied up and placed in the back seat or trunk. Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov gets behind the wheel and drives the car to the scene of the attack. The attack itself is carried out by Samasyuk and Gorshkov. After seizing the money, they leave the crime scene at high speed, abandoning the car and driver in an inconspicuous place.
The collector's or cashier's car is seized directly at the scene of the attack. They all carry out the attack together and hide in the same car.

Vladimir Tolstopyatov’s responsibilities included monitoring the situation after the crime, the actions of the police, and the stories of witnesses.

Sources

"Fantomas": weapon of the Tolstopyatov gang - Dmitry Gamov.

March 6 marked the 23rd anniversary of the execution of Vyacheslav and Vladimir Tolstopyatov and Vladimir Gorshkov - the Fantomas gang, who for several years kept the whole of Rostov-on-Don in wild fear. The criminal case of the “Fantomas” Tolstopyatov brothers, whose biography formed the basis of the film “Once Upon a Time in Rostov,” has been kept in the archives of the regional court for more than 40 years. The Komsomolskaya Pravda correspondent was allowed not only to get acquainted with unique documents, some of which were previously secret, but also to take photographs. For which many thanks to the staff of the institution! 43 volumes with already enviably tattered bindings about the “exploits” of the gang are very close to the criminal case of another criminal who also “glorified” the Rostov Pope - the maniac Andrei Chikatilo. “Most often students ask for criminal cases, but journalists haven’t stopped by for a long time,” we were greeted at the court archives. And they untied the twine that tied the volumes into bundles...

The first documents are inspections of incident sites, testimonies of frightened people, many talking about “stockings” on their heads like “Phantomas”, as well as photographs of hijacked and shot “Muscovites”, which the attackers used for movement during attacks. Dry data about stolen money and expert conclusions. By the way, at first they could not say anything about weapons used. At the end of almost every volume there is a resolution to suspend the criminal case due to the absence of suspects. After some time (in the 15th volume), investigators realize that one gang is operating and combine criminal cases.

The most interesting thing begins in the 17th volume: it describes how in June 1973, gang leader Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov and his comrade Gorshkov were detained with a chase and shooting, and his accomplice Samasyuk was liquidated. Black and white photographs, of course, are not color, but the last jackpot that the bandits hit - 125 thousand rubles - looks impressive.

Investigators drew in detail a scheme for detaining criminals (what happened on the outskirts of Rostov in 1973 is clearly different from the movie version), and then the Tolstopyatovs’ yard, where in the outbuilding there was secret room, the entrance to which was disguised behind a massive mirror.

The cache was not identified immediately, he recalls Nadezhda Ivanova, director of the museum of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for the Rostov region.“They say that criminologists and experts walked around the room several times and went inside, not understanding why something bothered them. It turned out that the size of the house did not match the area of the room - it was much smaller.

For a long time, legends circulated around Rostov about the contents of the Tolstopyatovs’ shelter, tales were told about the skeletons of tortured women and children and cosmic sums. In the criminal case, everything is written in detail: on what shelves were the cartridges, weapons, blanks for pistols and revolvers. Nothing about the remains of the victims. After his arrest, Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov immediately confessed to everything, spoke in detail about the attacks, did not deny his guilt, went to the places with detectives and showed them.

Moreover, he looked quite decent - in the photo he looked like an intelligent-looking dandy. His older brother Vladimir is another matter. Constantly gloomy, not particularly talkative (his testimony is the briefest). He admitted his guilt partially, in that he only helped in the creation of weapons, they say, he himself was interested. But Gorshkov, in his testimony, actively blamed everything on his accomplices.

The criminal case contains interrogations of Vladimir Tolstopyatov’s wife (by the way, she actually met with Vyacheslav), as well as testimony from gang members who unanimously claim that the woman did not know about the crimes. It didn't help.

A case was opened against her for failure to inform, as indicated in the criminal case. True, how her fate turned out is unknown.

SPECIFICALLY IN THE CINEMA AND IN REALITY*The Tolstopyatovs committed crimes after they witnessed the execution of workers in Novocherkassk. In fact, they had never been to Novocherkassk, and therefore the events of 1962 could not have affected the gang in any way. At first, they allegedly wanted to become famous as gunsmiths, offered their developments to the KGB, and when they laughed there, they decided to use their talent differently. * The Tolstopyatovs regularly “communicate” with government officials; in fact, they were never suspected of banditry. The brothers officially worked, were married, and had never been in the sight of the police before their arrest. Not counting the story with counterfeit money.

"KP" compared real gang members and movie characters. Photo: Channel One and the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for the Republic of Uzbekistan

*There are only two children in the Tolstopyatov family - the eldest Vladimir and the youngest Vyacheslav, in fact there were 13 of them! Ten died while still young, three survived. The brothers are still alive sister. There is not a word about her in the film. *The brothers treat their mother with tenderness, who allegedly was ill for a long time and did not get out of bed. In fact, they lived separately, visited very, very rarely and did not help financially. Their mother before last day I walked and took care of myself. *The brothers commit crimes in different times- both in the morning, and at night, and during the day, in fact, they almost always acted during the lunch break. The fact is that Vyacheslav Tolstopyatov was a laborer at the construction site of a helicopter plant, and free time spent at home. The only thing left for “business” was the lunch break.