Three best friends, 22 days, 21 victims. The Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs began their killing spree on June 25, 2007, with their final victims being found on July 16, 2007. With no known motivation, we are left wondering, “What drove these men to murder?”
Viktor Sayenko, Igor Suprunyuk, and Alexander Hanzha attended school together and became friends around the time they were 14-years-old. The three bonded when they worked together to overcome their fears. For instance, Sayenko and Suprunyuk were both afraid of heights. Together, the boys decided to face their fear and not only stood on the balcony of their 14th floor apartment, but hung over the railing for several hours.
Their friend Hanzha suffered from hemophobia, the intense and irrational fear of blood. Along with that, he also refused to bathe his kitten. While most people would fear bathing a kitten for fear of being scratched, that was not his concern. He was afraid he would scald it.
Just as Sayenko and Suprunyuk had faced their fear, it was time for Hanzha to do the same, and Suprunyuk had an idea. They would torture stray dogs, thus facing the fear of blood and of harming an animal. Together, the three boys captured dogs in a wooded area near their home, hung them from trees, disemboweled them, and then took photos next to the corpses.
They didn’t stop with dogs though, they recorded a video of themselves torturing a white kitten.
The three were fond of documenting their activities, not only photos and videos of their animal abuse, but also of them drawing symbols in blood – including swastikas. Suprunyuk happened to be born on April 20 – the same day as Adolph Hitler, and was photographed using a toothbrush for a moustache, imitating Hitler. Other photos showed the boys giving the Nazi salute.
After high school, they held odd jobs here and there. Hanzha worked as a pastry chef and a construction worker. Suprunyuk worked as an unlicensed taxi – using a car that had been gifted to him by his parents. Sayenko actually attended a metallurgy institute and worked in security.
The odd job didn’t keep them from committing crime though. Suprunyuk used his “taxi service” as a means to pick up and rob passengers – with the help of his friends.
Perhaps they felt untouchable, considering they came from respected families. Some would even say their parents were wealthy and influential, having ties to local law enforcement. Vladimir Suprunyuk had been employed as a test pilot and often flew with Leonid Kuchma, who was the president of Ukraine from 1994 to 2005. Igor Sayenko was a lawyer.
At 19, the men took their interests to a whole new level. Gone were the days of torturing animals.
Late on June 25, 2007, Sayenko and Suprunyuk were “out for a walk”. Suprunyuk carried a hammer and when they passed 33-year-old Yekaterina Ilchenko, they officially moved on from animal torture and into the world of homicide.
Suprunyuk “spun around” and hit Yekaterina in the side of the head with the hammer. He hit her again and again, until he had successfully bludgeoned her to death. They left her behind and moved on. When they spotted a man asleep on a bench nearby, they did the same. They took Roman Tatarevich into the woods and beat him unrecognizable. As if that wasn’t bad enough, they gouged his eyes out with a screwdriver.
The next morning, at about 5am, Yekaterina Ilchenko’s body was discovered by her mother.
On July 1, two more bodies were discovered in the nearby town of Novomoskovsk, Yevgenia Grischenko and Nikolai Serchuk. On July 6, three bodies were discovered.
Egor Nechvoloda was a recently discharged army recruit. He was walking home from a nightclub when he was attacked. His mother found his body the next morning near their apartment building.
28-year-old Yelena Shram was murdered just around the corner on Kosiora Street. Suprunyuk admitted to hitting her with a hammer he had kept hidden under his shirt when she walked toward them. Once she was down, he proceeded to hit her several more times. She had been carrying a bag of clothes, and they used them to clean their hammer before tossing the bag out and moving on to their final victim of the evening.
Valentina Hanzha – not related to Alexander Hanzha, was a mother of three and had a disabled husband.
On July 7, 14-year-olds Andrei Sidyuk and Vadim Lyakov were out fishing when they were approached. They were attacked, and Andrei was killed – but Vadim escaped, hiding in the woods.
As they say, no good deed goes unpunished. Vadim was arrested for the murder of his friend. He was denied legal counsel, and beaten by the police. He was repeatedly questioned, but his story remained the same. It helped that the attack on Andrei and Vadim was also witnessed by two other children – who had been hiding in a tent nearby. With their statements, Vadim was no longer a suspect.
Vadim was able to provide investigators with a description of his attacker and they were able to create sketches of their perpetrators. It wasn’t until now, that police began to connect all the murders, linking them to the pair described by Vadim.
On July 12, 48-year-old Sergei Yatzenko disappeared after riding his Dnepr motorcycle. As if his struggle with cancer wasn’t enough, he was beaten to death. His body wasn’t found until four days later.
On July 14, 45-year-old Natalia Mamarchuk drove through a wooded area near the village of Diyovka on her scooter. Suprunyuk and Sayenko knocked her off her scooter before beating her to death with a hammer or pipe. They were seen by locals, but managed to escape.
Their murder spree continued, with at least two victims found on July 14, two victims found on July 15, and two more victims found on July 16. There was no clear pattern to their victims, rather they appeared to have been selected at random. Murder of convenience.
They also didn’t care about age – victims ranged from children to the elderly. And they seemingly enjoyed giving their beatings, using hammers and steel construction bars. Victims were always hit in the head, with many hits directly to the face. Some were mutilated and tortured, some, just like Roman Tatarevich, had their eyes gouged out.
Some would speculate that their motive was robbery – many victims had been robbed of their cellphones and other valuables that were discovered to have been pawned at local shops. However this motive didn’t add up – just as many victims were not robbed.
One particularly vile attack was against a pregnant woman. Beating her to death wasn’t enough for them, they cut open her belly and removed her unborn child from her womb.
A task force was sent from Kyiv, led by criminal investigator Vasily Paskalov. Their investigation was kept secret, all information related to the murders were held close. No information was released to the public while over 2,000 investigators from most local law enforcement agencies worked the case.
Though police kept their lips sealed, the people knew something was going on. As you might expect, they made sure all their tasks were completed during daylight hours, and remained inside locked doors after dark.
But police couldn’t keep their search hidden from everyone – they did need help to identify the killers. They carefully and selectively distributed their sketches as well as lists of stolen property to local pawn shops. Those shops were able to identify several of the stolen items, and led police to Viktor Sayenko, Igor Suprunyuk, and Alexander Hanzha.
The three men were arrested on July 23, 2007, Sayenko and Suprunyuk in a pawn shop where they had just tried to sell a stolen cell phone. Hanzha was arrested at home, where he was reportedly trying to get rid of their remaining stolen property, including an attempt to flush other stolen cell phones down the toilet. Many items were recovered – the phones were ruined.
While the stolen cell phones were ruined, the suspects’ phones were intact. As were their personal computers which contained multiple video recordings of the murders. One video even happened to have been leaked onto the internet. A video of the murder of Sergei Yatzenko, titled “Three Guys, One Hammer. In the video he can be seen lying on his back in a wooded area. One of his attackers can be seen hitting him in the head repeatedly with a hammer that was covered with a plastic bag. The other attacker is seen stabbing Sergei in the eye and abdomen with a screwdriver.
The video shows Sergei’s final moment, as he is struck with the hammer one last time to ensure his death.
The video itself lasts over four minutes with Sergei going in and out of consciousness, and one of the men smiling at the camera. The video also shows the men walking out of the woods and to their car while they calmly discuss their crime. One such comment expresses surprise that Sergei continued to breathe, even after the screwdriver was plunged into his exposed brain.
In the video the killers are seen washing their hands, and the hammer with a water bottle as they laugh.
Investigators found photographs in which the suspects attended the funerals of their victims. In the photos they can be seen smiling and “flipping off” the coffins and gravestones.
Other photos showed them posing alongside mutilated animal corpses.
Altogether, the prosecution had gathered over 300 photographs and 2 videos – which were ultimately shown in court. Some of the photos were captioned, “The weak must die. The strongest will conquer.” Police even found newspaper clippings from the crimes in Suprunyuk’s apartment.
Altogether, the three men were charged with involvement in 29 separate incidents, including 21 murders.
Suprunyuk was charged with 21 counts of murder, 8 robberies, and 1 count of animal cruelty.
Sayenko was charged with 18 counts of murder, 5 robberies, and 1 count of animal cruelty.
Hanzha was charged with 2 counts of robbery.
All three men confessed quickly – though Suprunyuk later withdrew his confession. Their trial began in June 2008, with both Sayenko and Hanzha pleading guilty, while Suprunyuk pleaded not guilty. Apparently Suprunyuk was hoping for an insanity plea – and when that was not accepted his lawyer, Viktor Chevguz, left.
Viktor Sayenko’s father, Igor Sayenko, took the lead as their defense attorney.
Hanzha’s attorneys argued that their client had only been involved with a single incident, months before the killings began – a robbery in which he admitted his guilt.
The defense’s primary tactic was to attack the prosecution. They argued illegal searches, improperly kept records, and even problems during questioning. Igor Sayenko questioned the video taken during the search of the suspect’s apartments. The video itself repeatedly stopped and started, showing evidence obtained only after being picked up by investigators, but never the moment it was discovered.
They also argued that the men in the murder video were not their clients.
Sayenko also argued that a fourth suspect, Danila Kozlov, was initially charged with the murders. Tatiana Shram, the sister of victim Elena Shram, said in an interview that she had even seen Kozlov’s name mentioned in court documents. According to Shram, investigators told her that Kozlov remained free because “he did not murder anyone”.
According to Igor Sayenko, several suspects were arrested, and released due to pressure from their families, and two of the investigators involved were fired. He argued that three suspects arrested, two men and one woman, supposedly attacked police and were booked under the names of Sayenko and Suprunyuk, but were not actually the men on trial.
“But these details are being covered up,” he said in court. “The investigators claim that this did not happen. But there are people, officers in Militsiya, who on July 19, 2007, received reports that those three were arrested. […] But, alas, it turned out that the persons arrested had powerful parents. So the information was quickly suppressed, and instead, my son and two of his friends were railroaded. I also believe that the girl arrested on that day has since left the country and is now in Germany.”
He even argued that the prosecution withheld information that would have exonerated their clients.
In defense of his son, Sayenko argued that Viktor had a “psychological dependence” on Suprunyuk, whom they called the ring-leader. He claimed that Suprunyuk repeatedly threatened Sayenko and Sayenko feared for his life. Sayenko testified that he was in constant fear of Suprunyuk since the 7th grade.
Shockingly, even some of the victims’ families supported the defense’s arguments. They believed the police were involved in cover-ups, and were unhappy with the slow-moving legal process.
In the end, none of these arguments mattered. The prosecution had solid evidence, from blood stained clothing, to the photographs and video recordings of the murders.
Unfortunately, capital punishment was outlawed in Ukraine in February 2000, having been deemed unconstitutional. This left the prosecution asking for life imprisonment for both Sayenko and Suprunyuk, and 15-years hard labor for Hanzha.
On February 11, 2009, Viktor Sayenko and Igor Suprunyuk were found guilty of premeditated murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Suprunyuuk was found guilty of 21 murders, Sayenko 18. Regarding the robbery charges – they each received 15 year sentences. They were also found guilty of animal cruelty
Hanzha was found guilty of robbery and given 9 years in prison. “If I had known the atrocities that they were capable of committing, I would have not gone near them at gunpoint,” he said.
The parents of Sayenko and Suprunyuk maintained their belief that their sons were innocent. Vladimir Suprunyuk claimed that his son had been tortured to extract his confession. He claimed police had covered his head and forced him to inhale cigarette smoke.
Igor Sayenko claimed that his son was being used as a scapegoat, and the crimes were actually committed by the relatives of senior officials.
Both men argued that the sentence for Hanzha was too lenient.
An appeal was made on behalf of Sayenko and Suprunyuk, but it failed On November 24, 2009, the Supreme Court of Ukraine upheld the life sentences.
Hanzha did not appeal his nine-year sentence.
As of April 2019, Alexander Hanzha had been released from prison. As far as is known, he is currently married with two children.
So why did they do it? Some claimed it was for money. A former girlfriend claimed the men planned to make 40 separate videos. A claim corroborated by a former classmate who said he had overheard Suprunyuk in contact with an unknown “rich foreign website operator” who ordered 40 snuff videos and would pay them well.
Others claimed it was solely for entertainment sake.There was never any direct evidence of this. The Deputy Interior Minister, Nikolay Kupyanskiy said, “For these young men, murder was like entertainment or hunting.”
Looking for more serial killer stories? Check out this one about Russian serial killer, Sergey Golovkin.
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