Head of a prostitution ring was jailed for life in eastern Russian on Thursday for his involvement in kidnapping, raping and killing 14 young women

The head of a prostitution ring was jailed for life in eastern Russian on Thursday for his involvement in kidnapping, raping and killing 14 young women, a judge said Friday.Eduard Chudinov was charged by the Sverdlovsk regional court in the Urals region for his part in murdering the kidnapped girls between 2002 and 2005 after they refused to work as prostitutes, Russian media reported.
In sentencing broadcast on national television, the judge said the court had decided to "sentence Chudinov to life imprisonment in a high-security prison."
Seven other members of the gang, four of whom were relatives, were also found guilty and given jail terms of between 10 and 24 years, Interfax news agency reported.The gang set up a food delivery service as a cover for the prostitution ring and used the better looking member of the group to charm women into coming back with them.
They then kidnapped the girls and forced them to write letters to their parents saying "Everything is OK. I've gone to Moscow. I've found work" before killing them, NTV television reported, citing the gang members testimony.
The gang members were arrested after the bodies of girls between 13 and 25 years old were discovered in a shallow grave in a forest outside the town of Levikha in February 2007.Relatives of the victims complained to journalists that the sentencing was too light."She just went out with a girlfriend for a walk," Olga Shishkova, whose 13-year-old daughter was one of the victims said."They met some boys and they raped them. They beat them all night, raped them, tied them to a radiator, humiliated them in different ways. ... the girls did not agree to become prostitutes and they killed them."Chudinov was also accused of killing his daughter Lena, who was 14 when she died, through carelessness, but the accusation was dropped by prosecutors. Chudinov said that her death occurred during a domestic argument and was an accident, NTV reported.The group may have been responsible for more deaths and police said they are continuing their investigation.A number of other possible victims were discovered in the mass grave but were in such a bad condition that it was not possible to identify the remains, NTV said.

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