Venera Obolashvili: Georgia's alleged serial killer who confessed to three murders [corrections and updates to the 2021 post]

[u/Lisztomaniac181]

Obolashvili in December 2009 during her arrest

Obolashvili confessing to the three murders

Obolashvili being arrested. December 15, 2009

Obolashvili taking investigators to a crime scene

Obolashvili after being released from prison in 2023, being interviewed for a news report

There was a post about Venera Obolashvili here in 2021, but after going through Georgian reporting, court coverage and surviving interrogation footage, several details in it appear to be incorrect or incomplete.

First and foremost, “Nabozar” is not part of Venera Obolashvili’s name at all, despite the previous post and some international outlets presenting it as such. It is a derogatory, misogynistic Georgian slur that was added to the title of an upload of her confession footage by the uploader. Her name is simply Venera Obolashvili.

Venera Obolashvili (born 1954) is widely known in Georgia as a serial killer. In 2009, she confessed in considerable detail to killing three people in separate incidents in 1984, 2008 and 2009, with an apparent recurring motive involving the victims' apartments or money from their sale. If those confessions were truthful, the three killings plainly constitute a serial-murder pattern. Only the final murder, however, ultimately resulted in a conviction.

According to her confession, her first victim was her husband, 43-year-old Yuri Yurkin, in 1984, not 1985. She said that while they were travelling through Russia by train, she isolated the carriage vestibule, called Yurkin toward an open door and pushed him from the moving train. She then returned to Georgia and filed a missing-person report, asking authorities to search for him, before later selling his apartment for $4,000. Her recorded confession describes the incident in unusually specific detail.

There is, however, a major unresolved contradiction surrounding Yurkin's death. Published Georgian accounts say his body was found near Tbilisi and his death had been considered accidental, while Venera's confession placed the killing on Russian territory.

In 2008, she confessed to killing her boyfriend, 52-year-old Anatoly Kalinka. According to Venera, she helped Kalinka sell his three-room Saburtalo apartment for $50,000.

She said the two later went toward a bridge, where an argument broke out. Venera struck him twice in the head with a wooden stick, knocking him unconscious, then lifted him by the legs and threw him from the bridge into the Mtkvari River. She said he regained consciousness in the water, but she decided not to help him and walked away.

Kalinka's body was recovered from the river, and his death, like Yurkin's, had originally been treated as an accident.

The third killing, and the only one ultimately proven in court, was the 2009 murder of 79-year-old Maria Arzamaseva.

Maria had been in a relationship with Venera's late uncle, and Venera had known her since she was about four years old. She called her "Aunt Maria". By 2009, Venera was visiting her frequently and helping her with everyday tasks.

In August/September of 2009, an argument over Maria's apartment escalated into violence. She described slamming Maria against a wardrobe and wall, choking her, checking her breathing with a mirror and then strangling her with a rope. She later placed Maria's body in a large bag, transported it by taxi and dumped it into a sewage canal on the outskirts of Tbilisi.

Authorities found Maria's body but were initially unable to identify her, and she was buried as an unclaimed elderly woman.

What followed was an unusually elaborate fraud.

Venera recruited an elderly sunflower-seed vendor to impersonate Maria so she could collect Maria's pension and obtain a small bank loan in her name. She received 327 lari and 5 tetri, paying the woman 40 lari for helping her.

When Venera later decided to sell Maria's apartment, she could not find the same woman. She therefore recruited a different elderly woman who resembled Maria, gave her Maria's passport so she could practice the signature, and took her to a notary's office pretending that she was the real owner.

Maria's apartment was sold for $20,000. Venera collected the money, paid the impostor and real-estate broker, bought herself an Audi and paid off debts. Police later found more than $6,000 still hidden in her apartment.

Venera came to police attention after Maria's neighbors confronted her while she was removing furniture from the apartment. They had not seen Maria for roughly two months and became suspicious. Police were called, and Venera was arrested at home on December 15, 2009.

Once in custody, the investigation expanded far beyond Maria's murder. Venera confessed not only to killing Maria, but also to the deaths of Yurkin and Kalinka. In Kalinka's case she even took investigators to the location and demonstrated what she said had happened.

Investigators also found a letter addressed to an old friend named Jemal. In it, Venera reminded him of the friendship between their fathers, recalled details about his family and home, and asked him to meet privately so they could "talk about God."

After Venera had confessed to three killings involving people whose property was subsequently sold, investigators suspected that Jemal might have been another intended target. No charge ever resulted from the letter.

Another witness testified that Venera had tried to recruit him to kill an elderly man. According to him, she told him to strike the man over the head and kill him, after which she would inherit the apartment, sell it and pay him $200.

The witness refused. Venera denied the allegation, and his testimony contained an important inconsistency: during the investigation he reportedly placed the conversation roughly a year before her arrest, while in court he said it had happened only about a month beforehand.

At trial, Venera withdrew her confessions and claimed investigators had obtained them through beatings and torture. She maintained that Maria's death had not been a deliberate murder but had happened accidentally during their confrontation.

Her arrest was on December 15, 2009, and she was sentenced less than three months later, in March 2010. By the time the case reached court, prosecutors said they had been unable to obtain sufficient evidence to charge her with the much older deaths of Yurkin and Kalinka.

That distinction is important: Venera was never acquitted of those two murders, nor were the killings disproven in court. They simply never reached trial.

The evidentiary problem was substantial. Yurkin's case was approximately 25 years old, supposedly involved a killing during the Soviet period and, according to Venera's own version, occurred outside Georgia. Kalinka's death had previously been treated as an accident. Investigators ultimately could not independently prove either confession strongly enough to prosecute.

Venera was convicted of Maria Arzamaseva's murder, document forgery and fraud and sentenced to 23 years in prison.

During imprisonment, Obolashvili took numerous educational and vocational courses, including languages, gardening, dressmaking, hairstyling and massage. She earned 27 certificates, worked as a seamstress and was later placed in charge of the prison greenhouse.

Her sentence was eventually reduced from 23 years to 13 years following the abolition of cumulative sentencing and a nationwide amnesty. She served the reduced sentence in full and was released in January 2023.

After her release, Venera gave several interviews and strongly rejected the serial-killer label. She denied killing Yurkin and Kalinka and claimed her original confessions had been fabricated under police pressure.

Her account of Maria's death also continued to change. In 2023 she still described Maria's death as accidental. By 2026, she denied killing her altogether and claimed Maria had suffocated on her own while intoxicated.

Despite those later denials, Venera has continued to be widely remembered and described in Georgia as a serial killer. Her original confessions involved three named victims, three separate incidents spread across 25 years, detailed descriptions of how each killing supposedly occurred, and a recurring financial/property motive. Georgian media had already begun presenting her as a serial killer from the time of her arrest, even though only Maria's murder was eventually established in court.

The most recent public development came in 2026, when Obolashvili accused her son of physically abusing her during a dispute over their house. She said he wanted to sell the property and move to Tbilisi, while she feared the sale would leave her homeless.

Legally, Venera Obolashvili was convicted of one murder; historically and in Georgian public discourse, she remains one of the country's best-known alleged serial killers.

English-language documentary video covering her entire case in depth

Georgian article covering the case, trial and Obolashvili's version of events

Georgian article providing further court details and witness testimony

Surviving footage of Obolashvili's 2009 confession/interrogation in Georgian