A woman hid the murder of her stepdaughter for 20 years, and told her husband that her daughter had gone to her grandmother with the gypsies:.

They searched for the girl all over Norilsk for many years, but they never found her. No one would have known about the role of the stepmother in the “disappearance” if not for the pangs of conscience.

Investigators do not like the word “grouse,” but it has firmly taken root among the people thanks to films about police officers. This is what they call cases that cannot be solved. It seems that there is a thread that leads somewhere, but, as they say in the authorities, emotions and guesses cannot be attached to the case.

So the case of the disappearance of the 8-year-old girl Dasha (name changed - approx. ProPedia) in Norilsk was one of those with emotions, riddles and a capacious definition of “grouse”. The schoolgirl disappeared back in 2003.

It all started in the apartment of local resident Nina Ostapova. She was Dasha’s stepmother and raised her husband’s daughter from her first relationship. She was the last one to see the schoolgirl.

In her hearts she said to her husband: “Since you are not interested in the girl’s life, I sent her to her grandmother in the Ivanovo region, a gypsy came and took her, promised to take her to the place.”

No one would believe this, and Igor Shchukin did not believe it: he went to the police and wrote a statement about the girl’s disappearance. At this point, I considered my parental duty fulfilled.

Shchukin was far from the most exemplary father. Dasha was born during an affair in Ivanovo. The father was not needed, he went to Norilsk and forgot to pay child support, and the mother was deprived of parental rights for drunkenness. At the age of 4, the girl ended up in an orphanage.

Meanwhile, her only relative was building a new family in the Arctic city. Nina Ostapova lived comfortably: her children were already grown, she had housing, but there was no personal happiness. Therefore, when Shchukin appeared on the horizon, she agreed to marry him without hesitation. She slowly found out that her husband had a daughter and, in order to tie him more tightly, she offered to take the girl into the family.

Igor gave the go-ahead, but did not look any less on the side. As a result, the 8-year-old girl ended up on Nadezhda’s shoulders. Her husband might not come home for weeks, and she raised Dasha alone.

The orphanage hardening turned out to be stronger, the girl did not give in, but called Aunt Nina mom. Not at all out of great love, but because every child who finds himself in a government institution dreams of a real mother.

When the girl disappeared, the whole world searched for her. We checked all the gypsies, who at that time were actively going from house to house with large checkered bags, selling everything at once. They combed through the passengers leaving the closed town, and even assumed that the girl could have been taken out under a different name.

Perhaps the investigators felt that Nina Ostapova knew more than she was saying, but they could not prove anything.

Only twenty years later she suddenly decided to confess. Apparently, it clicked, investigators were able to find the very key that made the 63-year-old woman speak.

On the last day of her life, Dasha was washing clothes. I stood on the edge of the bathroom to hang it on the line, and accidentally knocked over my mother’s new blouse, which was drying. The thing slid right into the basin of bleach.

The stepmother angrily gave a heavy slap to her stepdaughter’s buttocks. The child could not resist, fell to the floor, hit his head and fell silent forever.

“I didn’t know what to do. I realized that she was not alive. She stepped over it and went into the kitchen. I sat down on a chair and thought about what I should do. Then she came up, squatted down in front of her, and touched her. Then it’s like I’m in a stupor. About half an hour passed and I heard a knock on the door. I opened it and Roman was standing there (a close friend of Nina’s – approx. ProPedia) . I had such a face that he immediately realized that something had happened. He also came up and made sure that the girl was dead. Her temple was broken, but there was no blood. Then I have a memory loss,” Ostapova tells investigators.

It was Roman who organized the entire further process. He put the girl's body in a bag and his in a large checkered bag. She brought it from the “mainland” not long ago, full of clothes.

On the street, the couple stopped a ride and drove out of town. Then we walked along the rails for a long time and turned towards the stream. They left Dasha’s body there and pressed it down with a stone.

“I was angry with Shchukin then. He ran away from me and didn’t look after the child. The parent was disgusting. I realized that I took on too much responsibility when I offered to bring her from the orphanage. But it was too late. It would be better if he ran away from me with her, and nothing would have happened,” the woman says 20 years later.

Nina Ostapova admitted to killing her stepdaughter not long ago, and even agreed to show the place where the girl was left. But alas. More than ten hours of searching ended in nothing. A surveyor was with the criminologists, who explained that if there are no exact coordinates, then it is impossible to find the remains: over the years, the landscape in the Far North changes, some streams disappear, others appear. So looking for a girl is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

A year after the disappearance of his daughter, Igor Shchukin left his wife - he could not forgive. He married again and is raising his wife's two children. He talks about Dasha with tears.

“I was so hoping she was alive. I wanted to believe the story that she was taken away. Because there was still hope that my daughter was alive and that someday I would see her. And now it’s all over...” the website kp.ru quotes him as saying.

Nina Ostapova is accused under the article “Intentional infliction of grievous bodily harm resulting in the death of the victim.” The criminal case was sent to court, but all the statutes of limitations have already passed, so it is possible that the stepmother will no longer be able to be punished in this world. She also says:

“It’s hard to live with this. I understand that I am to blame. Directly or indirectly, but she is guilty. I didn’t want this, but now I have to relive everything again.”

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Photo: SKR