Her recorded testimony became the basis for the immediate arrest of former principal Gromov. On the morning of May 8, 2022, officers took him into custody at his apartment. During a thorough search, they found an old personal journal.
It turned out he had been writing in it since 1992. On the cover were the words: “Confession of a Man Who Could Not Carry His Guilt.” In that notebook, Gromov described the events of that night in painful detail.
He fully acknowledged his responsibility. He wrote that every day he closed his eyes and saw the faces of the dead students. He admitted he had never forgiven himself for his weakness and cowardice.
The journal also explained the original motive for hiding the crime. In 1992, the country was in chaos. Gromov believed the police were corrupt and the courts unreliable.
He was terrified that he would be accused not of negligence, but of deliberately murdering 24 children. He also claimed that when he first entered the illegal trade, he did so for what he told himself were good reasons.
The school really had been desperate for money. Teachers’ salaries were delayed for months. The building badly needed repairs, and public funding was almost nonexistent.
Desperate to keep the school functioning, Gromov had looked for any source of money he could find. The first small shipment of imported goods came through a local businessman he knew. Gromov sold it quietly through trusted contacts.
His share of the profit paid for urgent roof repairs and new textbooks. But then he got used to the easy money.
The shipments grew larger. Savelyev helped with storage and transport. Before long, the money was no longer going mainly to the school.
Gromov bought an expensive imported car. Savelyev bought a large apartment. What had begun as rationalization turned into plain greed.
The trial began in October 2022. Gromov was 62. Maximova was 60.
Savelyev, the main architect of the cover-up, was long dead and could not be tried. Prosecutors classified the deaths as negligent homicide on 24 counts involving minors.
They also charged Gromov and Maximova with concealment of a serious crime and document forgery. The defense argued for leniency.
The attorneys stressed that Gromov had not planned the deaths. They said he had acted in panic and had later cooperated with investigators.
They pointed to the journal as evidence of long-standing remorse. But the prosecutor asked for the maximum sentence allowed. Twenty-four young lives had been lost.
Twenty-four families had been left in agony for 30 years. And all that time, the people responsible had maintained a lie. The scale of it was hard to overstate…
