We continue our story about the heroic deeds of service dogs who worked for the police in Sloboda Ukraine in the early 20th century.
As we recall from the previous article, the terriers were so highly valued that they spent the winter in a specially equipped shed in the courtyard of the governor’s residence.
Of course, the investigations in which they participated did not always result in the apprehension of criminals. However, the contribution made by the Kharkiv police dogs—even in such “unsolved” cases—was extremely important.
For example, on April 14, 1911, the Sumy District Magistrate sent a report to the governor of Kharkiv:
On the night of April 9, in the town of Belopolye, on Lobanovsky Lane, in a secluded spot, in their own home, Anastasia and Maria Emelyanov-Esipenko, two biological sisters and middle-class residents of Belopolye who lived together far from their neighbors, were murdered by unknown assailants with the intent of obtaining an inheritance or seeking revenge. The murder weapon was a knife, a chisel, or a gouge.
Nothing was stolen from the victims’ apartment; the lock on the chest in the room was undamaged, and the food prepared for the holiday was untouched. On the same day, Deputy Sheriff Manzheley, a guide named Arap with his dog, and two agents were dispatched to the crime scene. Upon arriving at the victims’ home, Arap sniffed their bodies and various objects, then, accompanied by the guide, headed through…
He walked up to the fence where Babenko’s freshly washed pants were hanging, sniffed them, and, chattering his teeth, pulled them off the fence and laid them at the feet of the conductor, Snopchenko. When Babenko was brought before him, Arap barked at him.
Here’s another story that’s just as interesting.
It all began on the night of April 15, 1911, in the village of Ivanovka, on Serikovskaya Street, an unknown person broke into a locked residential house by picking the lock and stole various household items (men’s and women’s clothing) belonging to the townsman Stepan Panteleymonovich Stepanenko.
They stole a sum that was quite substantial for those times—300 rubles. During searches of the homes of suspects living in the vicinity, the stolen items were not found, and the victim himself did not suspect anyone.
However, that was not the end of the story. A week later, the aforementioned townsman, Stepan Panteleymonovich Stepanenko, appeared before the chief of the Kharkiv Criminal Investigation Department.
The victim asked that action be taken and suggested that the perpetrators were the same people who had broken into his home on April 15. Stepanenko also complained that the local county police were not taking adequate measures to solve such crimes.
The chief of the Kharkiv Criminal Investigation Division deemed the victim’s statement worthy of attention. Consequently, he dispatched Police Inspector Stelmakh, along with police dog Max and guide Pushkar, to Stepanenko’s apartment in the village of Ivanovka.
At dawn on April 23, officers from the detective division arrived at the victim’s apartment.
They determined that one of the assailants, who had left a cap at the scene, must have been wounded, since at the moment Stepanenko fired, that assailant was standing near the fence across the street, and if the shot with which the gun was loaded had not hit the assailant, it would at least have struck the fence—yet not a single pellet was found on the fence. A police dog named Max was subsequently used to search for the assailant.
So, after giving the cap a good sniff, Max set off on the trail. From the gallery window, he headed across the Stepanenko courtyard toward the neighbor’s fence, where scratches had been found—apparently made by criminals who had climbed over it.
After jumping over this obstacle, Max ran through the neighbor’s yard, jumped over the fence again, and found himself on a meadow belonging to Stepanenko. Then, following the meadow to the river, the police dog led the investigators to the village of Pavlovka. However, once they reached the dusty road, Max’s trail was lost. This was due to a number of factors:
1) A full day has passed since the crime was committed.
2) On the eve of the religious procession on April 22, a large crowd of people walked and drove along the road.
However, the lead provided by Max was extremely valuable to the police. As a result, Police Superintendent Stelmakh instructed the agents to discreetly gather information on all the safe houses used by thieves living in Pavlovka, as well as to inquire at hospitals and medical facilities to see if anyone had been admitted with a gunshot wound. Upon receiving the necessary information from the agents that evening, I once again dispatched officers from the department to the village of Pavlovka to search for the perpetrator; while checking the thieves’ hideouts, in one of them—on Borodinskaya Street in Zavarina’s house— in the apartment of the notorious thief and criminal, Daniil Platonovich Degtyarov, they apprehended an unknown man with a bandaged wound on his chest, who identified himself as Ivan Makarov Levadin, a townsman from Zolochiv, unemployed and having previously served a sentence for theft. When asked about the origin of the wound, Levadin stated that it had been inflicted on him at the Blagoveshchensky Market with a knife by some man while he was playing cards. Finding Levadin’s statement implausible, he was asked to accompany them to the detective division. As Levadin was about to leave the house, it turned out that he was not wearing his cap.
When questioned by the police about the cap, Levadny stated that he had lost it in a card game at the Blagoveshchensk Market. In addition to the aforementioned Levadny, in connection with the attack on Stepanenko’s apartment in the village of Pavlovka, the peasant Yakov Tokarev and Stepan Kononenko—who were known thieves—were also detained. During a search, the following items were found in their possession:
Levadny did not recant his testimony. In order to, as the saying goes, “expose” the criminal, the investigators once again called in the bloodhound Max. They let the dog sniff the cap. Then, in the presence of professors from the Kharkiv Imperial University (including Bokarius), Max was presented with the suspects arrested in the village of Pavlovka—Levadny, Tokarev, and Kononenko.
As a result, Max barked and lunged at Levadny. During the lineup, Levadny was moved from one spot to another. However, each time, the police dog unerringly pointed him out. After that, Levadny confessed to everything without reservation.
In the early 20th century, there were quite a few crimes in Kharkiv and throughout the Sloboda Ukraine region that were solved with the help of police dogs. Thanks to them, the perpetrators were punished, and justice was restored. And we, of course, have the right to know about this and to remember it. After all, this, too, is part of the true history of our most beloved city…
