A woman who had a baby with one of the world's most dangerous serial killers who was 40 years older than her said she didn't care about the past.
Serhiy Tkach, a serial killer dubbed the 'Polohy maniac', was finally arrested in August 2005 after years of committing horrific crimes.
He was a police investigator in the Soviet Union who first worked in Kemerovo Oblast, Siberia, before being forced to resign after getting caught falsifying evidence.
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After losing his job he moved to Ukraine in 1982 and continued to work as a police investigator, where he used his experience to cover up his crimes for more than two decades.
The first signs of the serial killer were the disappearances of young women and girls in areas near to where Tkach worked, as women aged between eight and 18 years old were raped and murdered, as well as being sexually assaulted after death.
The amount of Tkach's confirmed victims stands at 37, but when arrested he declared that he had murdered over 100 people and demanded he receive the death penalty.
Instead he was sentenced to life in prison, which is where he met and married Elena Bulkina despite her being 23 and him being 63 when they tied the knot.
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Married in 2015, 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 their relationship, saying she didn't feel any guilt as she hadn't committed her husband's crimes.
She said: "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.
"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."
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Elena explained that she had got in contact with the serial killer after seeing him in an interview, and that the terrible crimes he had committed did 'not matter that much to me'.
The couple were allowed a three day conjugal visit every two months and the serial killer was even allowed to handle sharp knives, though prison guards checked on the couple every hour to make sure he hadn't killed her.
Tkach 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.
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In addition to the victims he murdered, Tkach also managed to ruin the lives of others who were wrongly convicted of his terrible crimes.
A number of men spent 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 to his vile crimes.
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Topics: World News, Netflix, Crime, True crime, News