Verry Idham HENYANSYAH
AKA "Ryan"
Classification: Serial killer
Characteristics: Openly homosexual - Jealousy - Rage
Number of victims: 11
Date of murders: 2006 - 2008
Date of arrest: July 15, 2008
Date of birth: February 1, 1978
Victims profile: Nanik Kristanti (28) and her daughter Silvia Ramadhani (3) / Agustinus Fitri Setyawan (28) / M Zainul Abidin alias Zaki (27) / Muhammad Aksoni (28) / Guruh Setyo Pramono (27) / Grady Gland Adam (24) / Muhammad Asrori / Vincentius Yudhy Priyono (30) / Ariel Somba Sitanggang (34) / Heri Santoso (40)
Method of murder: Hitting with a crowbar - Stabbing with knife
Location: Jombang, East Jave, Indonesia
Status: Sentenced to death on April 6, 2009
Verry Idham Henyansyah, also known as Ryan, is an Indonesian convicted serial killer. Verry confessed to killing 11 people and was sentenced to death by the Indonesia criminal court. Verry is awaiting execution at Kesambi Penitentiary in Cirebon. He was arrested in 2008.
This case achieved notoriety throughout Indonesia due to the gruesome nature of the murders. The body of one of the victims was found at the side of the road in Jakarta cut up into seven pieces and was skewered with a crowbar. Verry buried his victims' bodies in the backyard of his home in Jombang Regency in East Java.
After his arrest, he became known as the "singing serial killer" after entertaining the court officers, fellow inmates and media audience in his jail cell by singing a song from his upcoming album.
In February 2009, Verry released an autobiography titled The Untold Story of Ryan. In the autobiography, Verry indicated that he was formerly a Koran recital teacher and later became a male model.
Verry is openly homosexual and he confessed that most of his victims were also homosexual men. Verry admitted to killing one of his victims after the victim offered him money and a car to have sex with his boyfriend. However, in October 2010, he announced that he was planning to marry a female convicted drug dealer, Eny Wijaya, whom he had met in 2008 when they were both detained at the Jakarta Police Narcotics Detention Center. Eny Wijaya has released from Pondok Bambu Penitentiary around September 2010. One of his reasons for marrying Eny Wijaya despite him being homosexual is to fulfill his mother's wish that he be married to a woman.
Wikipedia.org
Singing Serial Killer Sentenced to Death
Blogs.discovery.com
April 22, 2009
Self-confessed Indonesian serial killer Verry Idham Henyansyah, 31, who also goes by the name of "Ryan," not only penned a gruesome tell-all autobiography called Confessions: The Untold Story of Ryan earlier this year, but he also recorded an album consisting of 12 pop songs entitled, My Last Performance, scheduled for release this month while the singer sits on Indonesia's death row.
Ryan, who typically dresses in black pants, a long white robe and a black Muslim skullcap, wrote the autobiography while in prison and it was reportedly released in February 2009. The former Koran recital teacher and would-be model has achieved a certain amount of prison popularity and is regularly visited by teenage girls who want their photo taken with him in his holding cell.
Although some people think that he is insane, he was found guilty in an Indonesian court of murdering and dismembering Hery Santoso and dumping his body parts, which he had placed inside a suitcase and a plastic travel bag, alongside a Jakarta road in 2008. Ryan, who had stabbed and bludgeoned Santoso to death, had cut Santoso's body into seven pieces in a murder that has been described as having been motivated by jealousy -- apparently Santoso had offered Ryan a car and cash as payment for sex with Ryan's boyfriend. One of the songs on Ryan's album, Please Understand, Beloved, was written for Ryan's boyfriend.
Santoso, however, was not the only person that Ryan has confessed to murdering. An additional 10 bodies, including that of a mother and her three-year-old child, were found buried in Ryan's parents' backyard in East Java last year, following his arrest for Santoso's murder. Although Ryan has confessed to murdering 11 people, the case involving Santoso was the first to have gone to trial. Just before entering the courtroom, he sang Please Understand, Beloved for the benefit of reporters, and announced that he was ready for any sentence as he hugged his parents. Prosecutors demanded the death sentence for Santoso's murder and dismemberment.
"His crime was sadistic and merciless," prosecutor Budi Hartawan Panjaitan said in arguing for a sentence of death. "He was fully aware and not hallucinating when he committed the murder and is not remorseful…there was some fear after each killing, but when nobody would find out he would do it again and again…he is not a psychopath. He knew what he was doing and knew the consequences. He wanted Hery Santoso to die and he planned for it…he cut the body into seven parts, stuffed them into a suitcase and a plastic travel bag and threw them away."
"His acts were sadistic and inhuman and caused deep sadness to the victims' families and anxiety in the community," the chief judge said at his trial for killing Santoso. "His acts show he does not value life, which is given by God."
Of course it was not surprising that the judge sentenced Ryan to death for Santoso's murder. He appeared calm as the sentence was read, and said afterward that "everyone has to die, and I'm ready." He smiled at reporters as he was led out of the courtroom.
"He is insane, so he should not be sentenced to death," his father said. "I'd never gone near him. I'd been slapped before."
An appeal of the sentence is certain. It is not clear yet, however, whether he will be tried on the other murders to which he has purportedly confessed. He will face a firing squad when, or rather if, his sentence is carried out. It was not immediately known where his book or CD could be purchased.
Indonesia's Gay Serial Killer Releases a Memoir and a Pop Album
Queerty.com
April 1, 2009
Verry Idham Henyansyah may soon be put to death. For murder. Many, many murders. Henyansyah, the gay Indonesian serial killer known best as "Ryan," is not going quietly. Though he faces a possible firing squad verdict handed down this month, the man responsible for the grisly murders of at least 11 people, including a mother and her toddler, is less focused on the end than he is being a creative artist. Indeed, behind prison bars, where he's been since his July arrest, Ryan has penned an autobiography and a pop album.
If his serial killer status wasn't enough for notoriety, living as an openly gay Muslim in these parts would be. And now he stands to profit from his fame, with the book and record, something American killers don't get to do.
In his memoir The Untold Story of Ryan, the 31-year-old, who hasn't denied the allegations against him, invites you into his childhood. He says was "a good boy who graduated at the top of his class from both elementary school and high school, and who went on to become a Koran studies teacher — ironically he also dated his first Koran studies teacher, a man, for nine years from the age of 20," reports the Jakarta Globe. "He also related forays into the modeling and the fitness industries — he was an aerobics instructor — and his sporting interests." Profits of the book, which has an initial print run of 4,000, will go to Ryan's mother, he says. A frightening scenario, given the disturbing material in the book:
The book features a map of the backyard of the family home in rural East Java, which Ryan drew himself. In between a septic tank, a chicken coop and a fish pond are shown the graves of 10 of Ryan’s alleged victims, marked with letters that correspond with their names in the margin of the map.
Ryan writes that he killed some of his victims in a rage, which they provoked.
“Zaky and Aksony [two of the victims] did not only strike me with hurtful words, but their hands groped my vital [sex] organ so that I would date them. I hated their acts. Especially when my homosexuality was used as a reason for them to satiate their lust,” he wrote.
Four of his victims, three men and a woman, Ryan wrote, came to his house and attempted to seduce him into having sex with them, which infuriated him and led to their deaths. Ryan claimed that he fought both verbally and physically with some of his victims. But he also said in “Untold Story” that he couldn’t clearly remember all of his crimes.
After narrating the first five murders, he wrote: “If you ask me why I had the heart to kill those five, I cannot explain it with certainty because I really cannot remember all of it clearly.”
The penultimate chapter of Ryan’s jailhouse autobiography includes a detailed account of the last murder, that of Heri Santoso at Ryan’s apartment in Depok, West Java Province. “After regaining consciousness, apparently the red color that I saw was a pool of blood and the pieces of meat around me were pieces of a human body,” he wrote.
And then there's his record My Last Performance, tracks of which he happily sang for an AFP reporter.
Remorse for his crimes was the motivating force behind the album, which he recorded in prison, Henyansyah told AFP.
"I write the songs for people I love. 'Forgive Me Mother' is for my mother. Another song, 'Sun,' is about lovers missing each other because they are separated until they die," Henyansyah said.
Of the gruesome murders, Ryan adds:
Henyansyah said he killed Santoso, whose body was found on the Jakarta roadside, after Santoso offered him money and a car to have sex with his boyfriend.
"I can't explain how it happened. I was furious and jealous. I only realised he was dead after I saw cut-up pieces of his flesh on my lap… the blood, the bad smell," Henyansyah said from his prison cell.
"Suddenly I was gripped with extraordinary fear. All I wanted to do was to get rid of him," he said.
According to Henyansyah, it was often jealousy or the unwanted romantic overtures of others — and the accompanying offers of money or reward — that drove him to kill.
He said he killed one young woman after she attempted to seduce him, then killed her young daughter because she was a witness.
"Most of (the victims) were gay men like me. They made me feel cheap. I got angry, we fought and I accidentally killed them," he said.
"Not all gay men are promiscuous. Love is very important to me. It makes me furious when people say there's no such thing as loyalty in the gay world.
All of which reminds us of a certain other gay killer in the news, who, now that the crime has been committed, hopes for fame and fortune.
Alleged Serial Killer Ryan Goes on Trial, Faces Death
Ajeng Anggraini - The JakartaGlobe
November 27, 2008
Depok, West Java Province. Alleged serial killer Verry Idham Henyansyah went on trial here on Wednesday for the first of 11 murders he stands accused of committing since 2006. The defendant, known nationwide as Ryan since gaining national fame following his arrest, is charged with the murder of a man whose mutilated body was found in Jakarta in July.
The discovery of Heri Santoso’s body led police to Ryan’s 10 other alleged victims, whose severed bodies were buried in the garden of his parents’ home in Jombang in East Java Province.
Ryan allegedly killed most of his victims by hitting them with a crowbar.
The serial murder case has captivated the country, with lurid details of the investigation making front page news for several weeks.
“The crime is punishable by death,” prosecutor Budi Hartono Panjaitan said during the trial in the District Court of Depok, south of Jakarta.
The indictment, read by four members of the prosecuting team, alleged that the murder was premeditated as Ryan had prepared the weapons prior to inviting Heri to his rented house in the Margonda area of Depok on July 11.
“Ryan was ready with a knife and a 51-centimeter long metal bar before the victim arrived at the house,” Budi said. “Also, there was Ryan’s sudden need to meet Heri after not being in contact with him for some time.”
Ryan, wearing a white embroidered Muslim shirt, a skull cap and a green scarf, said he understood the charges and would make a written response. He was seen wiping away tears from his eyes several times during the opening hearing.
Ryan’s lawyers said he would face separate charges for the murders of the victims found in Jombang.
Prosecutors said that after killing Heri and cutting his body into seven pieces, Ryan stole his victim’s possessions, including a car, credit and ATM cards, a cellular phone and a laptop.
Ryan’s defense team, headed by Kasman Sangaji, said they were surprised by the prosecutions’ allegations that Heri’s murder was premeditated.
“That’s a fatal error. The prosecutors have made this allegation based on assumptions and public opinion,” Kasman told reporters after the hearing. However, Kasman did not object to other allegations made by the prosecution as Ryan had already confessed to murdering Heri.
Swidya, head of the panel of judges, adjourned the hearing until next week to give Ryan’s lawyers time to prepare their defense.
