A college teacher who confessed to killing two women in their Russian apartment says he scrawled “Free Pussy Riot” in blood on the wall to mislead investigators, police said yesterday.

The initial hint that the killer was inspired by the jailed Pussy Riot punk band provoked new criticism by a Russian Orthodox Church official who said the group’s supporters now had “blood on their conscience”.

But the police report said the crime was not inspired by the group or its protest against President Vladimir Putin in a Moscow cathedral for which the three band members were jailed.

The 38-year-old suspect told police he killed a former classmate and her mother and then wrote the words on the wall “to draw suspicion away from himself and portray it as a ritual killing,” the regional Interior Ministry said.

The bodies were found on Wednesday and state TV repeatedly showed images of the slogan daubed on the kitchen wall of the apartment in Kazan, capital of the Tatarstan region.

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