Mihail Tsvetanov Leshtarski (; born 1959), known as The Killer from the Cave (), is a Bulgarian thief, robber, murderer and suspected serial killer. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of 59-year-old Elena Tomova in Vlado Trichkov, and is suspected of murdering at least four other pensioners from 2009 to 2011.
Biography
Early life
Mihail Leshtarski was born in 1959 in the village of Tsarevets as one of two children. His father Tsvetan was a wealthy shopkeeper, but a very aggressive and nervous man, while his mother was a housekeeper. Mihail Leshtarski was an unruly child, and in order to discipline him, his father would chain him to the family bed and put food just out of reach, starving his young son, with his mother never trying to protect or even interact at all with him. His father would even chain him to the family car and drive around the yard, and beat him with a motor cord until his skin turned blue. He studied up to the 8th grade, but didn't finish his education, and was continuously incarcerated for various robberies throughout the rest of his life, during some of which he was also abused and even gang raped by some of the inmates. In order to evade beatings by his father, the young Leshtarski would go out at night stealing and robbing people. Eventually, at 15 or 16 years old, he was called for mandatory service in the army, and began visiting the village only from time to time.
One day, Leshtarski had to return to his regiment following a short break, with his father offering to drive him and his mother to the nearby village in the family's newly bought Moskvitch. From there, Leshtarski would catch a train to Roman. However, shortly after they took off, his father - who had drunk heavily - got into a car crash. Although Leshtarski was unscathed, his father had had his legs broken and his mother suffered a heavy concussion, allegedly causing her mental health issues. According to Leshtarski, she would be in the kitchen cooking and when the cat would jump on the table, she would drag along the cat's fur before putting it back into the pot, and even burned down some of the family's sheep pens. His mother would eventually accuse him of raping her, for which Leshtarski was sentenced to 18 years imprisonment.
During his stay in prison, he was regularly visited by his brother, who'd often ask him for money to buy various house appliances. One of the women in the facility also taught Leshtarski how to do donations, in order to have his sentence reduced. Shortly after his incarceration, his mother suffered from a stroke and stopped talking. Leshtarski was described as an "excellent prisoner, bad citizen", and after 12 years behind bars, he was released in 2005. According to him, his father then told him that his mother had started talking again soon after seeing him.
After this, Leshtarski resumed with stealing and robbing rich people, being incarcerated and released at various times. He had bought off an underage Romani prostitute to have as a live-in girlfriend, but the girl later abandoned him, hurting him deeply. From 2005 to 2008, he worked in hotel complex "Chaika" in Vratsa as a worker. He was described as a good, hard-working employee, but one day, just after his probation period had ended, he went berserk, breaking all of the company cars' and trucks' windows before fleeing. Feeling that he couldn't fit into normal society, Leshtarski began living in caves around the mountain range, surviving by eating 3-4 spoonfuls of honey every day and hunting animals with a self-made bow, with some reports claiming that he had eaten live bats. He was also a skilled climber who scaled his way to most of his hideouts and even during his later confessions, he claimed that he could walk 30 kilometers to the seaside in the span of several days.
For a span of four months, he hid in the house of former cellmate Stoyan Mladenov in Dolna Kremena, threatening to kill the man and his family if they ratted him out. Leshtarski slept in their attic, making a hole in the walls to see what's going on downstairs. He'd disappear for 4-5 days, leaving his hideout by climbing out the roof. On one occasion, he attacked Mladenov with a stool, and even raped his wife.