Denis Yevsyukov, Moscow, Russia.

[Eat Shit And Die]

It's been a year since Denis Yevsyu­kov, a police major, went on a drunken shooting spree at a southern Moscow supermarket after celebrating his birthday at a bar.

He killed two people and wounded seven, and in the subsequent trial, he was locked up for life.

The case became one of the main factors in persuading President Dmitry Medvedev to overhaul the country's law enforcement and justice system.

But Yevsyukov still doesn't remember a single thing about the incident. Two months after the verdict, the three hours that evaporated from Yevsyukov's memory - a lapse that included a meeting with a mysterious man outside the Golden Time Cafe, a trip home, and then the shooting spree - have not been properly investigated, lawyers on both sides of the case say.

A year on, the incident is spawning a whole slew of conspiracy theories about what really pushed Yevsyukov over the edge that night.

"They rushed the trial because they needed a ruling," Yevsyukov's trial lawyer, Tatyana Bushuyeva, told The Moscow News. "The investigation wasn't interested in this episode at all."

Igor Trunov, a renowned lawyer who represented the families of victims of the shooting spree, agreed. "We have a complete vacuum in terms of motives," he said.

"There were certain violations by Yevsyukov that could have resulted in legal measures being taken. After getting information that this could happen, Yevsyukov decided to take revenge against his superiors. That's the version. The question is - who exactly was he taking revenge against? And we have a complete vacuum here. There isn't even a hint."

During the birthday party at the Golden Time Café, he was called outside by an unidentified man. When he returned 15 minutes later, his wife, testifying in court, described him as "pale, then green," staring in a catatonic way at the corner of the table. His condition worsened when they went home, then he put on his uniform and left. The next thing his family heard about him was over the radio.

"The investigation wasn't interested in this episode at all," Bushuyeva said. "They never tried to understand what happened in that interval."
Neither Yevsyukov nor his wife, Karine, (or anyone else at the party) have been able to identify the man who called him outside.

Could the man and what he said have caused Yevsyukov to snap?

Exiled businessman Yevgeny Chichvarkin, the founder of mobile phone company Evroset, has his own theory of what happened.

On the surface, a connection between Chichvarkin and Yevsyukov would seem implausible.

But that tangled connection is exactly what Chichvarkin, awaiting an extradition hearing in London on charges of kidnapping Andrei Vlaskin, has suggested recently.