The killer of the 12-year-old girl from Leningrad Oblast lost his seriously ill daughter 10 years ago.

      On July 8, 2026, at 10:39, Incidents: The court has chosen a preventive measure in the form of detention for 42-year-old Fyodor Mekhnin, who is accused of murdering a 12-year-old girl in the Tosnensky district of Leningrad region. He will spend the next two months in a pre-trial detention center on charges of murdering a minor.

      Fyodor Mekhnin, the owner of the apartment renovation company "Dobrodel," is spoken of positively. Colleagues and friends describe him as kind, conscientious, and deeply religious. However, residents of the gardening community "Zakhozhye-2," where he was a board member, suspected him of torturing dogs. But, as it turned out, the killer had an episode in his life related to personal tragedy - the death of his daughter. Several close friends of Mekhnin shared this with "KP-Petersburg."

      According to acquaintances, the tragedy occurred more than 10 years ago. Fyodor and his wife's daughter was a long-awaited child, but doctors warned them about her weak health.

      "They were expecting a girl, - friends recall, - the doctors did not promise anything good: they said that the child would either not survive or would be severely ill. According to Fyodor, they could not do otherwise and decided to raise the child, even with all the risks. As a result, the girl was born with a genetic disease. He poured a fortune into her treatment. About a year later, the daughter passed away; she was still an infant."

      Mekhnin's relatives claim that this past tragedy does not justify his future actions, but they acknowledge that it had a significant impact on his family life. "Of course, it was hard for them, especially for his wife, - a friend of Fyodor said, - according to him, she can no longer have children. So they lived just the two of them."

      During the interrogation, Mekhnin admitted that he and his wife had almost no intimacy, and he used the services of prostitutes. More frightening was the fact that for over 10 years he fantasized about violence against his friends' wives.

      During the investigative experiment, the killer coldly recounted how he attacked the victim: he saw a "woman" (the girl was tall, 167 cm) from the car window, ran up to her, realized that he was facing a child, but there was no turning back; the girl resisted. He is now in a pre-trial detention center, facing life imprisonment.

      The tragedy shocked not only the residents of the gardening community but the entire region. On the evening of July 2, the girl went to the forest near the gardening community "Zakhozhye" to pick chanterelles. She managed to call her father, and surveillance cameras recorded her walking towards the plot. However, the girl never reached her parents.

      The next day, large-scale searches began, which ended with a horrifying discovery - the girl's body was found in the forest one and a half kilometers from the village. It lay in the grass with stab wounds and bruises, without clothing. The criminal was detained on July 4 at a railway station in the Gatchina district; he tried to escape. After his arrest, the man confessed to his guilt.

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