He collected backpacks, jackets, identification papers, and everything else the students had brought with them. He packed it all into large black trash bags. Later, he drove the bags out beyond town and burned them.
At the scene itself, he left only what might someday identify the dead if they were ever found. The metal class pins were kicked under construction debris on the floor. Meanwhile, Gromov drove through town in the middle of the night.
He slipped the forged notes into the mailboxes of the students’ families. By sheer luck, no neighbor or passerby saw him. In that quiet town, most people were asleep.
At dawn, without having slept, Savelyev began building the false brick wall. He worked fast and expertly. His years in military construction had taught him the trade well.
By late the next day, May 24, the wall was finished. He plastered it carefully and painted it to match the dirty color of the surrounding basement walls.
Within a week, it was nearly impossible to tell any work had been done there. The sealed boiler room became an invisible part of the school basement. The forged notes had been written with the help of Olga Svetlova.
Naive and in love with Gromov, she agreed to help without knowing the real reason. He told her the students had run away voluntarily and that the notes were only meant to calm their parents.
She believed him. She carefully wrote 12 notes, trying to vary her handwriting. Savelyev wrote the other 12.
They changed the slant, pressure, and style enough to fool the limited handwriting analysis available in 1992. Detective Kuznetsov listened to Maximova’s account without interrupting.
He wrote down every word. She then described something even worse that she had learned later. About a year after they separated, Gromov called her unexpectedly.
He was in deep distress and seemed desperate to tell someone the truth. Crying over the long-distance line, he finally admitted that the students had not run away at all.
He said all 24 had died inside the school. He swore he had never intended for that to happen. According to him, it had been a terrible accident caused by panic and bad decisions.
Hearing that, Maximova felt pure fear. She hung up immediately and never spoke to him again. After that, she tried for decades to forget the call ever happened.
She married, raised children, and built a new life far from the town. But for 30 years she carried the knowledge that a terrible crime had been hidden. When the interview ended, Maximova was formally detained in Kuznetsov’s office.
She was charged with helping conceal a serious crime…
