Rubel was born on December 25, 1980 in Estonia. He was a street child who slept in cellars and stairwells in Tallinn and inhaled petrol vapour, by his own account during every one of the killings.
Between September 1997 and June 1998 he killed seven people: Tonu Pold, forty-five; Aleksei Pavlov, thirty-four; Jevgeni Shelest, fifty; Vladimir Ivanov, forty-three; Olga Voronkova, fifty-three; Vladimir Kinzerski; and another. They were stabbed or struck with an axe. Most were adults living alone or drinking in the places he frequented, and the killings were for small amounts of money and drink. The seventh was Alice Siivas, fifteen.
He was sixteen when the series began and seventeen when it ended. Estonian law at the time set the maximum penalty for a minor at eight years' imprisonment regardless of the offence, and that is what he received. He was released from Tartu prison on June 8, 2006, aged twenty-five.
The sentence is the whole point of the case in Estonia, and it drove the revision of juvenile sentencing there. Seven killings and eight years is the arithmetic that has kept the case in the news at every subsequent reform. Nothing reliable is recorded about him after his release.