Inside Burning Man’s Unsolved Homicide
The bad omens came early at this year’s Burning Man — the infamously wild, weeklong celebration of art, music, and unrestrained self-expression held at the end of every summer in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert — portending a particularly extra-ordinary burn.
During the first weekend of the 10-day event, when thousands of early burners were undertaking the formidable task of raising a fully functional city of roughly 80,000 citizens from a barren alkali flat in the wilderness 100 miles north of Reno, powerful gales leveled many of the city’s temporary structures, or prevented them from being built at all. When the wind finally let up on Sunday and the gates officially opened, burners began pouring into the city just as hammering rain began. The deluge repeated Monday and Tuesday, drenching the ordinarily waterless environment. “The playa was a lake,” says burner Erin Kindt, who describes mud that made the city’s desert-dust roads almost unwalkable and entirely undriveable. Those already inside the gate stayed close to camp out of necessity, while those still outside were stuck in their vehicles — some for up to 20 hours — in the infamous one-lane traffic jam into Black Rock City (BRC).
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On Wednesday, the weather finally took a turn for the better, as the winds died down and the playa dried up. As if to providentially underline the metaphor of renewal and rebirth, a Salt Lake City woman at her first Burning Man started the day with inexplicable abdominal pains and finished it with a surprise: a healthy baby daughter born in her RV. Stirred by the resurgent spirit, and a sense of urgency, having “lost” a few days of the Burning Man they’d expected, the citizens of BRC began to party with a vengeance. “The rain finally stopped, and everyone finally landed,” Kindt says. “It turned into a wild, crazy, frantic party, with sunsets and sunrises full of people raging to make the most of what Burning Man days we had left.”
The frenetic energy carried on into Saturday night, the climax of the week, the event whence Burning Man gets its name, when the entire city gathers to watch a towering effigy go up in flames. But as fireworks illuminated the desert sky, and fire engulfed the figure, at least one BRC citizen was not present: Vadim Kruglov. While the rest of Burning Man celebrated, Kruglov lay prostrate on the ground at a faraway campsite in a comparatively desolate section of Black Rock City, his throat slashed, as a puddle of blood congealed around his lifeless body.
What exactly happened and why remain stubborn mysteries for the moment, and we may never learn the full picture of what transpired. The investigation is ongoing, and it’s unclear what progress has been made toward apprehending a suspect. The Pershing County Sheriff’s Dept. declined to confirm to Rolling Stone if any suspects had been identified, or make any statement at all beyond its press releases. Organizers of the event also declined to comment past their existing public statements. “Burning Man Project is doing everything we can to assist the Sheriff’s investigation so the perpetrator can be caught and brought to justice,” the organizers said. “This includes our intent for a coordinated donation to the Secret Witness program, which offers rewards for more information that contributes to law enforcement’s investigation.” The investigation has been hampered by peculiar challenges, though, perhaps none greater than the fact that the entire city in which the crime occurred has vanished.
If confirmed as such, Kruglov’s will be the only murder to happen in Black Rock City in its three and a half decades of existence. Death and tragedy are, unfortunately, rare but regular parts of Burning Man, and violence is not completely absent. In 2024, two people were arrested on charges of assault with a deadly weapon, and three more on battery charges. Sexual assault is, unfortunately, an issue the Burning Man community is forced to deal with every year. But violence of this kind — murder — is unheard of in Black Rock City.
Burning Man is dangerous — that’s part of the challenge, and, as I’ve found over the course of nearly half a dozen burns, part of the allure. Dehydration, heat stroke, bike wrecks, a bad trip; these are just a few of the hazards a burner may face in Black Rock City. But there’s a social contract underpinning that danger that says that burners look out for one another. Part of the reason at Burning Man you can to lose your friends and get lost in a whiteout and have a grand adventure with strangers that ends with you sleeping in the cuddle puddle at a camp you’ve never heard of is because there’s a level of trust and regard for everyone’s safety built into the culture. Safety isn’t a burner’s top concern, or even the second most important, but it’s up there: “Safety third!” as burners are fond of saying. An act of violence so heinous as that which took Kruglov’s life marks a sharp break in that social contract unlike many, or any, other transgressions could.
Though I was unable to go to Burning Man this year, I learned through conversations with friends and my reporting that the impact of the homicide was felt almost immediately. When the news first spread through the Burning Man rumor mill, the first reaction seemed to be confusion — rumors there are supposed to be about whether Daft Punk is playing at the trash fence or a major art piece burn has been rescheduled, not a grisly death. But in the aftermath of the tragedy, some burners are looking back on that last weekend of the celebration with anxiety and even fear. The lingering effects of an incident so vile occurring within Burning man’s sweet bubble are bound to affect people for
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