Welcome or welcome back to Twisted Minds. My name’s James, and today we’re going to be talking about Alexandra Rubell, also known as the Handicap Killer. Alexandra was a very intriguing man, to put it lightly. He was committed to a series of murders between 1997 and 1998. What’s strange about Alexander’s case is that, unlike most vicious criminals, he didn’t take credit for his crimes.
Instead, he blamed them on gasoline vapors. More on that shortly. To make things even more bizarre for Alexander, he didn’t spend a lot of time in prison. He was only sentenced to a handful of years. And despite having murdered over five people, he is a free man to this day.
After spending just a few years behind bars, Alexander was released and now he lives a normal life. He is married and now has a family and children. How is it that one of the world’s most vicious serial killers is now roaming the streets as a free man and can live a perfectly normal life? Well, let’s find out.
Born in Ukraine on Christmas Day, 1980, Alexander Rubell seemed to be your standard kit. However, even though the Christmas holiday is typically filled with love and cheer, the opposite could be said for Alexander, who seems to have been battling his mental sanity for a very long time. Despite having lived in Ukraine, he frequently stayed in Estonia, often visiting beaches and various other attractions. The childhood of Alexander Rubell isn’t very well known. He doesn’t seem to have been abused or neglected the same way that many serial killers are.
However, he doesn’t seem to have had the best childhood either. We know that Alexander likely had some demons throughout his younger days because, at the age of 13, he began to host gasoline fumes to get high. I’m sure most of us already know that for the most part, people don’t begin abusing drugs if they have a great life. While it’s certainly possible for someone with a perfect family and perfect life to fall victim to the clutches of addiction, it’s uncommon and there’s often a lot of underlying trauma that has been suppressed for many years. For this reason alone, it seems safe to assume that Alexander had likely been struggling in some way for quite a long time.
13-year-old Alexander would Huff gasoline fumes to disassociate himself from the outside world. We don’t know why he chose gasoline, but it’s likely because it’s somewhat cheap and readily available. For anyone who may not already know, gasoline fumes are remarkably toxic doesn’t take much to cause you to fall unconscious, and if left exposed for too long, you could lose your life as a result of breathing gasoline fumes. However, for Alexander, he would expose himself to the fumes in just small bursts like just enough to get high so that he could continue functioning as a normal person while hiding his addiction from his friends and family. However, like most drugs and addictions, the gasoline vapors awakened something in Alexander that he could have never imagined.
These vapors allegedly turned a completely harmless boy into a brutal Savage serial killer. At least that was Alexander’s defense when he was eventually arrested.
Many serial killers begin to claim lives when they are very young. It’s not uncommon to hear about young killers who take the lives of small animals such as cats or dogs. Some psychiatrists and researchers believe that these crimes are trials for later in life when they plan on claiming much larger victims, often humans. We don’t know for sure if Alexander began his spree with animals or smaller victims, and it seems like his first major crime took place in 1997, when he would have been about 17 years old. Alexander lived near an older gentleman named Tanya Pole.
There hasn’t been much information released about Tanya, but we know that he was an elderly man who struggled with some physical disabilities that made life a little bit more difficult for him. The news media at the time referred to Tanya as handicapped, but it seemed as though he managed to get through his daily life with only minor difficulties. By all means, he was a happy and somewhat healthy man who was just doing his best to get by.
Despite a few medical setbacks along the way, on September 19, 1997, Alexander hopped gasoline the same way he had done dozens of times in the past. Now, truth be told, I don’t understand how Alexander could have had even enough brain cells left at this time to be able to feed himself, let alone commit a crime that he was about to commit.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not bashing Alexander or demeaning him. I’m just saying gasoline vapors are incredibly powerful and can cause lifelong brain damage very easily. However, Alexander was somehow able to hold himself together despite his incredibly dangerous addiction. It was on this day that Alexander’s drug use changed something inside of him. He says that this time the high was much different than it had been before.
Rather than feeling as though he was floating or feeling like the struggles of life no longer mattered and anger had begun to brew, Alexander told investigators that he had a lust for blood that could only be satisfied by taking someone’s life. We don’t know specifically what happened during this time to cause Alexander to snap, but he decided to take his rage out on the nearest and most easy target his handicapped neighbor Tanya pulled.
Tanya had been spending his day home alone. Whether his home was unlocked or if Alexander broke in, Alexander approached Tanya in his house and savagely claimed his life. The articles about this case are unclear about how long Tania remained in his home before being discovered, but Alexander was long gone by this point, and police had no reason to suspect that an otherwise normal, sane 17-year-old boy would commit such a violent crime. For the moment, Alexander got away with the crime and continued living his life as he normally would. When he spoke with investigators, later on, Alexander told them that he chose to take Tanya’s life because he was an easy target.
It doesn’t seem like he had ever done anything like this before, so he wanted to attack someone who wouldn’t put up much of a fight. It seems like simply fighting someone wasn’t enough, and Alexander wanted to make sure that he successfully claimed the life of whoever he decided to attack.
This wouldn’t be the only time that gasoline vapors would lead to Alexander’s bloodlust. Alexander’s second crime is where things begin to take a turn and we begin to see what may have been brewing inside of him since a very young age. Throughout all of the articles that have been written about Alexander over the years, we never hear much about his father. We don’t know what he did for a living, how old he was, or what his relationship with his son was. However, his father, Andre Rubell, seems to have had some serious anger issues of his own.
It’s possible that these emotions were witnessed and inherited by Alexander at a very young age. On November 7, 1997, Alexander’s life would be changed forever. His father returned home and had reason to believe that his wife, Alexander’s mother, had been having an affair. A guest was at their home that day. Alexey Pavlov.
Andre was so enraged that he grabbed a knife and stabbed Pavlov at least four times, presumably ending his life. It seems like Alexander likely witnessed this crime because reports claim that he helped Pavlov into one of the nearby bedrooms after he sustained such serious injuries. However, Alexander’s intentions were much darker than they may seem. From the sound of it, it seemed as though Alexander helped the man into the nearby bedroom under the disguise of helping him patch himself off and phone the police. However, the exact opposite happened.
In a fit of rage, Alexander began to strangle the man who is now fighting for his life in more ways than one. While he was down, Alexander grabbed him and tossed him from a third-story window, ending his life. As soon as he hit the ground, police eventually showed up and arrested Andre, taking him straight to jail. For some reason, Alexander was not held accountable for his portion of the crime. It’s possible his father took full blame for the attack even though he only committed the first half of the crime.
Regardless of what took place, Alexander was allowed to walk away as a free man and his father was sentenced to seven years in prison for taking the life of Pavlov. I think we can all safely assume at this point that Alexander’s life would never be the same again. His family was now completely torn apart, his mental health was obviously in the gutter and his mother was most likely cut out of his life as well as she had been allegedly having an affair with another man.
Alexander laid low for a little while after his father was arrested and he eventually made a trip to Strumi Beach. The beach is a popular tourist attraction that brings in visitors from all across Russia and surrounding areas. The weather is often quite neutral and the ocean waves provide a great place to relax and cool off during the warmer months. However, when Alexander traveled to the beach that day.