FIVE members of the same family have been discovered stabbed to death down a well, sparking a mystery murder investigation in Russia.
The bodies of two women and three children missing for four months were found with stab wounds at a creepy ramshackle property, say neighbours.
Those killed were named as Olesya Barskova, 39, her two sons, aged six and two, and her daughter Viktoria Barskova, 22.
The fifth and youngest victim was Viktoria’s baby boy, aged nine months, who was found with a dummy still in his mouth.
Neighbours reportedly “fainted” and vomited as police extracted the macabre remains from a garden in a house near Ufa, where the country’s largest oil refineries are based.
Residents who watched the gruesome police operation told the local media that some of the corpses showed signs of knife wounds.
The two women and three children went missing from a city flat in December last year.
But Olesya’s husband – father of her two sons – Ildar Gainiakhmetov, 47, a metal cutter, said they had moved house.
But Viktoria’s husband and mother-in-law along with friends reported them missing and police went to quiz Gainiakhmetov.
Cops said that while they waited for him to open the door, he hung himself.
He reportedly left a scrawled note which read: “I can’t live without them.”
Gainiakhmetov had allegedly hired a truck to transfer the corpses from the murder scene – believed to be the city flat – to hide them in the well.
All five bodies were found in the overgrown grounds of the family’s small country house.
A drone video released by the Russian Investigative Committee shows the operation to pull the corpses from the well.
Neighbours said they saw bodybags break open, revealing their gruesome contents, as police pulled them from the well shaft.
One woman, Nelya, told local media: “I was fainting”, at the sight, and that a man next to her started vomiting.
She added: “I saw how they pulled out huge bags from the well.
“They broke and in the gaps, hands and feet were sticking out. I saw someone’s back, and what seemed to be a knife wound.
“I could not stand it and ran away… I’m still shaking.”
A mass murder probe has been opened but investigators said that the only suspect was now dead.
Police say they are unsure of the motive – locals said Gainiakhmetov was a “good father” to his sons.
Neighbours said that Viktoria needed her mother’s help looking after her newborn baby and suggested that this may have created stress in their cramped city flat.
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