Cannibal killers 'cooked Russian schoolgirl with potatoes and ate her because they were hungry'

By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 1:30 AM on 05th February 2009

Police believe Karina Barduchyan, 16, was killed, dismembered and eaten. She disappeared after leaving for school in St Petersburg

A teenage girl may have been killed and partially eaten by two men, Russian prosecutors said yesterday.

Karina Barduchyan, 16, disappeared after leaving for school in St Petersburg on January 19.

Police believe she was killed and dismembered that night.

Body parts believed to belong to her have been found in plastic bags scattered around the city.

Two 19-year-old men have been arrested in connection with the grisly killing.

Karina knew suspects Yuri Mozhnov, a florist, and Maxim Golovatskikh, a street-market butcher and former psychiatric patient.

The alleged killers lured her to a city flat where they drowned her in a bath.

'The arrestees said they ate the girl's body parts because they were hungry,' city prosecutor's spokesman Sergei Kapitonov said.

They told investigators they baked some body parts with potatoes, he added.

They allegedly disposed of her bagged remains in garbage containers and bodies of water.

Yuri Mozhnov is being held on suspicion of murder

Bags with body parts were found in at least two locations, he said.

Both men are being held on suspicion of murder.

St Petersburg prosecutor, Andrei Lavrenko, said investigators believe the suspects decided to kill Miss Barduchyan after an argument erupted between her and Golovatskikh.

Lavrenko said investigators found traces of blood when they ripped out plumbing and floorboards in the apartment.

Mozhnov was convicted of robbery in 2005, Kapitonov said.

He said Golovatskikh had been treated in the past at a psychiatric hospital.