She said Peter had been under extreme strain. He seemed jumpy, tense, almost paranoid. At the time, she had chalked it up to the end of the school year and the major summer renovation that was coming.
Kuznetsov then asked about the family’s finances. Lydia confirmed what investigators had already begun to suspect. In 1993, their modest family somehow managed to buy a spacious apartment in the regional capital.
According to her, Peter said the money came from a generous bonus from Principal Gromov for loyal work. Of course, no accounting records of any such payment survived. The school’s financial books from the early nineties had very conveniently gone missing during an old municipal office move.
Meanwhile, the forensic team finished its work in the basement after three days. Their report was detailed and technical. The false brick wall had been built with surprising skill.
The mortar matched construction materials commonly used in the early nineties. Lab analysis confirmed the wall was about 30 years old. The lead expert specifically noted the quality of the work.
It was obvious the wall had been built by someone who knew masonry well. The joints were even, the corners square, and the whole job had been done carefully. This was not a panicked rush job. It was a deliberate, controlled effort to seal off a large space.
Savelyev’s Army construction background fit that fact perfectly. He had spent three years in a military engineering unit building brick barracks and storage structures.
In other words, Peter Savelyev knew exactly how to lay brick and mix mortar. Gromov, by contrast, had spent his life in classrooms and offices. He had become principal at 30.
His skills were administrative, not practical. Once Kuznetsov realized that, he returned to the farewell notes left for the parents.
Back in 1992, the available analysis had treated them as genuine. But forensic science had come a long way in 30 years. Modern methods could detect what older experts had missed.
The notes had been preserved in the case file all those years. There were 24 crumpled sheets torn from ordinary school notebooks. A meticulous handwriting expert named Marina Volskaya spent a full week studying them.
She used spectral analysis on the ink. She examined pen pressure under magnification. She compared tiny recurring features in the writing.
Her final report stunned the entire investigative team. All 24 notes had been written by just two adults. One person had written exactly 12 of them.
The second person had written the other 12. The handwriting had been deliberately varied, but the underlying characteristics matched within each group. Once Kuznetsov had that result, he requested old handwriting samples from both Gromov and Savelyev.
Investigators found old memos, orders, and signed statements from the early nineties. Kuznetsov gathered every document he could find that had been written by either man. The comparison took two full days.
The results were clear. One set of forged notes had been written by Savelyev. The match rate was 92 percent. There was no real doubt left: the facilities manager had personally written half the false messages.
But the second handwriting did not match Gromov. It belonged to a woman. Volskaya noted several distinctive features.
The slant of the letters was slightly steeper than average. The loops on certain letters were long and elegant. The dots over lowercase letters consistently drifted a little to the right.
Armed with that information, Kuznetsov began checking handwriting samples from everyone who had worked at the school in 1992. Retired teacher Anna Korneva voluntarily gave him old grade books she had kept. Those records still contained handwritten entries from the faculty.
Experts spent a full day comparing the handwriting. None of the teachers matched. So Kuznetsov widened the search.
He requested personnel records for every former school employee: custodians, cafeteria workers, librarians, even the school nurse. The match came from an unexpected source.
The second writer was identified as former music teacher Olga Svetlova. In 1992, she had been 30 years old. She taught music to younger students.
Samples of her handwriting survived in old lesson plans. Expert Volskaya confirmed the match with an 89 percent probability. Investigators now knew that Svetlova had written 12 of the false notes sent to grieving parents.
Kuznetsov immediately launched a nationwide search for her. It turned out she had resigned from the school in June 1992, just one month after the entire senior class disappeared…
