Met Police/New Line CinemaA visual effects artist who worked on the Lord of the Rings movies has admitted to murdering his parents after believing they had not been taking good care of his pet dog.
48-year-old Sergey Koudryavtsev stabbed Tatiana and Vladimir Koudriavtseva at their West Kensington home after becoming struck with ‘anger and rage’ over their supposed treatment of his pet mastiff, Enzo.
Koudryavtsev, who had worked on the final two Lord of Rings films, became furious at his parents after they allegedly allowed Enzo to become cold by opening a window.
Met PoliceAccording to the Evening Standard, Koudryavtsev surrendered himself to officers a few days after the double murder of May 20, 2018.
Once officers arrived at the address, they found university lecturer Tatiana, 68, dead in the bathtub. The body of maths and physics professor Vladimir, 69, was discovered in the bedroom.
Koudryavtsev, of North Kensington, pleaded guilty to the murder of both parents at the Old Bailey on October 10. He turned down opportunities to argue potential defences, such as loss of control.
As reported by the Mirror, Koudryavtsev has now been sentenced to at least 26 years in prison, and did not react to Judge Nicholas Hilliard QC’s comments about his parents’ pride in him as he was led from the dock.
Julia BanimProsecutor Anthony Orchard QC made the following statement before the court:
At 6.29am on the morning of Thursday May 23, 2019, Surrey Police received a phone call from Sergey Koudryavtsev.
He told the police operator that he’d called to ‘surrender himself for murder’. He said he’s killed two members of his family. He gave the address of the killing. Metropolitan Police officers arrived at 8am that morning, they had to break in.
Orchard continued:
They found a woman lying dead in the bathtub. The bath was empty and she was fully clothed. She had been stabbed.
They checked the bedroom and found a second body, that of a man. He had also been stabbed. The deceased was Tatiana Koudriavtsev, mother of the defendant, and Vladimir Koudriavtsev, his father.
GeographKoudryavtsev represented himself in court, and admitted he been fighting the urge to kill his parents for three and a half months; ‘imagining scenarios’ in an attempt to stop himself.
Addressing Judge Hilliard, Koudryavtsev said:
I was trying to turn off the rage […]
If you asked me the day before would I do it, I would say definitely not. But on the day I did it, I was fully conscious that was exactly what I was doing.
A psychological report by Dr Ian Cumming found Koudryavtsev displayed ‘anger and rage linked to a personality structure where he has put his needs above his parents’.
Originally born in Russia, Koudryavtsev emigrated to New Zealand in 2002 after completing a maths degree; working on visual effects for both The Two Towers and Return of the King.
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Jules studied English Literature with Creative Writing at Lancaster University before earning her masters in International Relations at Leiden University in The Netherlands (Hoi!). She then trained as a journalist through News Associates in Manchester. Jules has previously worked as a mental health blogger, copywriter and freelancer for various publications.