The Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs
please if i got anything wrong, correct me. This one is kind of shit so i apologize.
Perpetrators: Viktor Sayenko and Igor Suprunyuk (Alexander Hanzha as an accomplice)
Location: Dnipro (previously Dnepropetrovsk), Ukraine
Timeframe: June 25 to July 16, 2007
Weapons: hammers, knives, pipes, screwdrivers, and other blunt objects.
Punishment: Life in prison (Suprunyuk and Sayenko), 9 years in prison (Hanzha).
Charges: Murders, Animal cruelty, and robbery.
The Dnepropetrovsk maniacs a ukranian serial killer duo who killed 21 people in under 1 month in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine (now called Dnipro). The boys, Viktor Sayenko and Igor Suprunyuk had a third accomplice named Alexander Hanzha who did not participate in the killings.
Viktor Igorevich Sayenko [🇺🇦: Віктор Ігорович Саєнко] was born on May 6th, 1988 in Dnepropetrovsk, Dnepropetrovsk Oblast, Ukraine. His father worked in a prosecutors office. As a child, he was mocked for his attachment to Suprunyuk, often called “Boy-girl”. His parents believed he was incapable of causing harm, even after his arrest. His father actually protested the fact that Viktor was arrested. He was said to be popular with girls and a neighbor said that he liked animals, especially small ones. He would work in security and took up higher education before his arrest. He was studying “Metallgury” which is the study of metals, how to produce them, their engineering, etc.
Igor Volodymyrovych Suprunyuk [🇺🇦: Ігор Володимирович Супрунюк] was born on April 20th, 1988 in Dnepropetrovsk, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Ukraine. His father was a pilot, working personally for the Ukrainian president. His mother worked at the district state administration. Igor was said to be an aggressive boy who caused a change in his friends. He was defensive, charismatic, and insecure. He did not care for school. In secondary school, Igor had been kicked out of his past school due to the fact he beat a younger student. This led to him being alone and he would rarely talk to teachers. Igor was a taxi driver later on, despite the fact he did not have the proper identification to be one. In 2006, The three would rob people on these taxi rides. Alexander would stop helping them with these due to the fact that Suprunyuk and Sayenko became more violent while robbing. They beat people with blunt objects such as metal pipes, later swapping these for hammers.
Oleksandr Oleksandrovich Ganzha [🇺🇦: Олександр Олександрович Ганжа] also to as Alexander Hanzha was born on February 16th, 1988 in Dnepropetrovsk, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Ukraine. He worked a lot, picking up any side work he could to make money. He would assist Sayenko and Suprunyuk in robberies but would later distance himself from them due to their increasingly violent behaviors. He claims to have only robbed 2 men in the taxi cab robberies.
The three boys had been friends their whole lives and attended school together at School 96. Igor did not originally attend the school, but later moved. In the fifth grade, they were in trouble for throwing rocks at trains. They were able to walk free due to the fact that Suprunyuk's father worked for the president. After this, the boys, Sayenko and Hanzha, were not meant to hang around with Suprunyuck. They continued to be friends despite that.
Igor and Viktor decided that in order to get stronger, they had to face their fears. They would dangle off high buildings to face a fear of heights. Alexander had a fear of blood and hurting animals even by accident. He refused to bathe his cat because he was afraid he would hurt it. This led to them torturing and killing animals to help him get over this fear. The pair would photograph themselves alongside the dead animals and on occasion would draw swastikas and even in one case Igor drew a hitler mustache on himself using the blood of these animals. The pair would beat the people with blunt objects when they would rob them, but found that victims would resist so they swapped to using hammers. Suprunyuk used the car his parents got for him, a green Daewoo Lanos, as a taxi and then would rob the people he picked up. Everyone knew he tortured animals, yet nobody spoke up. At 17, Suprunyuk stole a bike from.a young girl and sold it to Sayenko. Sayenko claims he had no idea about it being stolen, which was likely a lie. In 2006, Igor hit a homeless man with a rock in the head while Sayenko watched. They stole around 4 cents from him. He assumed he had killed the man but there is no evidence he actually did. He knew that he could kill if he wanted to by this point.
40 people 40 videos: the pair would claim that they were hired to make 40 murder videos in exchange for a large sum of money. Igor had met a man online who offered this deal to him
Igor’s girlfriend claimed they had joked about it before, but she did not believe they were serious.
“We will be rich when we kill 40 people.”
Since they killed animals, they were fine with the decision to begin killing people. There is no proof that they were actually in touch with anyone, but it is a claim often made.
June 25th, 2007: The pair murdered a young woman, aged 33, named Yekaterina Ilchenko. The pair killed her outside of her own home. She was walking home from her friend's apartment when Igor hit her with a hammer, killing her. She was found the next morning by her mother. Later the same night, a sleeping man named Roman Tatarevich was killed by the pair in a similar fashion. The pair had disfigured him terribly. He was also found the next morning. The pair used to remove the victim's shoes and place it next to the corpse. They stopped after a few times.
July 1st, 2007: Yevgenia Grischenko and Nikolai Serchuk were killed by the pair in Novomoskovsk, Ukraine.
July 6th, 2007: three people were killed by the pair. Egor Nechvoloda, while walking home from a nightclub, was hit by the pair and they cut him with metal. He was found in the morning by his mother near their apartment building on Bohdan-Khmelnytsky Street. He had recently been discharged from the army.
28 year old Yelena Shram was hit by Igor with a hammer on Kosiora Street. She had asked to go home from work early that night. She held a bag of clothing that they cleaned their weapons with before throwing away. She worked as a nightguard. Her face was mutilated. A man who knew Yelena had heard it happen but did not see it.
They then murdered a mother of 3 by the name of Valentina Hanzha. She is not related to Alexander.
July 7th, 2007: They murdered a 14 year old boy named Andrei Sidyuk in Pidhorodne, Ukraine. The boy was fishing with his friend, 14 year old Vadim Lyakhov, who had been able to escape the pair. He was blamed for Sidyuk's death since it was unclear there was a serial killer car going on. He was beaten and questioned by police, causing kidney damage. Lyakhov told his story and they eventually listened to him. He gave a description of the maniacs.
July 9th: they killed a man, unnamed.
July 10th: no murder because they “felt sorry for a woman walking with her baby.”
3 guys, 1 hammer: on July 12th, 2007, the pair murdered a man by the name of Sergei Yatzenko, a 48 year old throat cancer survivor. The cancer had caused him the inability to scream and he was now disabled. He was working on getting his voice back. The man had left the house to visit his grandchild. On the path he would take, igor and viktor had set up their camera. They began filming a video later leaked titled 3 guys 1 hammer. The video shows the two boys, Suprunyuk and Sayenko, standing around, pacing near Igor's car. The boys talked for a moment before they struck the man on his bicycle. The video shows Igor attack and mutilate him using a hammer and Viktor behind the camera shoves a screwdriver in his stomach, eye, and brain. He was not found until four days later. The end of the video shows Igor cleaning up, pouring water from a water bottle onto the weapons and his hands, which he runs through his hair and face. The two laugh.
His wife and a stranger found his body. The stranger allegedly saw his abandoned bicycle and he called Sergei's wife. They walked and looked around before finding the corpse. The video was leaked to the internet on December 4th, 2008.
July 14, 2007: The pair killed Natalia Mamarchuk, a 45 year old woman, in Diyovka. She rode her scooter through the woods. They hit her over the head with a hard object. They then stole her scooter. They got chased but nothing happened. 2 boys saw the pair and would later help the police identify the two.
A 70 year old woman named Lydia Mikrenischeva was attacked by the pair on an unknown date. She was hit and lost consciousness on film. They followed her and took photos before doing it. Dogs barked, causing the two to run. She needed reconstructive surgery on her face due to the beating.
The maniacs continued to kill, ending off their kill count at 21. They began to mutilate corpses and torture more heavily. They cut a fetus from a pregnant woman's corpse, gouged out eyes, they stole a man's golden tooth, and the victims were violently killed to the point that they were unable to be recognized. These killings are not documented the same as the previous victims.
After they realized they had to hunt down a pair of serial killers, the police made sketches using the description of the men given by Vadim Lyakhov. 2 boys who saw the attack that killer Natalia Mamarchuk also gave a description of the men. Rumors spread around the area to not go out at night. The police gave sketches to pawn shops and worked with them to track down the maniacs, since stolen items began to turn up in these shops. On July 23rd, 2007, Igor and Viktor attempted to sell a cellphone to a pawn shop. This led to the police being alerted and the two were later arrested. Viktor was caught while heading to work and Igor was arrested while on a walk alone. Alexander Hanzha was later arrested as he was involved in some crimes as well. Hanzha was beaten badly by the police, which caused his confession.
Viktor Sayenko was represented by his father in court after they found out the assigned lawyer had just completed law school. His father was not a lawyer, which led to pushbacks in the trial. Viktor Sayenko was charged with 18 counts of murder, 5 counts of armed robbery, and 1 count of animal cruelty. Igor Suprunyuk was charged with 21 counts of , 8 counts of armed robberies, and 1 count of animal cruelty. Alexander Hanzha was charged with 2 counts of armed robbery from a robbery on March 1st, 2007. They confessed to their crimes.
Igor decided to void his confession by claiming it was forced out of him and it was false. He pleaded not guilty on a plea of insanity, which was declined. Viktor and Alexander plead guilty to their charges. A fourth person by the name of Danila Kozlov was apparently aware of the murders, but did not participate in any killings, so Kozlov walks free. Viktor's defense attempted to claim that he had a dependence on suprunyuk and was too scared of him to say no. Viktor testified to this in court, claiming that he had been afraid of Igor since the seventh grade. Viktor had lied many times during the investigation. Igor's lawyer dropped out of the case.
In court, numerous videos were shown. A video of them torturing a white kitten was shown. The evidence to convict them was all there. Photos from the funerals where they were blatantly disrespectful, animal torture photos, etc. Despite this, people tried to claim it was fabricated. That is false. They attempted to claim that Igor and Viktor were not the men in the video. Igor began to lie his way through the trial. Upon the videos and photos being shown in court, they were shown to be 100% guilty. The boys, minus Alexander, were given life in prison. Alexander was given 9 years in prison.
The Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs would help to inspire the Academy Maniacs, two boys from Irkutsk who committed similar murders with similar objects and recorded it on two occasions. One video and one audio.
Igor and Viktor are likely still rotting in prison, despite rumors that they had escaped through the Ukrainian war. Alexander Hanzha is married with 2 children now and is living a normal life.
