Igor Suprunyuk was 19 years old when he and two former classmates were arrested in Dnipropetrovsk, an industrial city in eastern Ukraine, in July 2007. Within a day police said the young men had admitted to killing 19 people in barely a month. By the time the case reached trial the count had risen to 21. On February 11, 2009, the Court of Appeal of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast found Suprunyuk guilty of all 21 murders and sentenced him to life imprisonment. His friend Viktor Sayenko was convicted of 18 of the killings and also received a life term. The third young man, Oleksandr Hanzha, was convicted of robbery, not murder, and sentenced to nine years.
The court named a different main motive from the greed that prosecutors had suggested. In the words reported from the verdict, the main motive was a morbid or aggressive drive to assert themselves at any cost and to overcome their own fear. Ukrainian press called them the "Dnipropetrovsk maniacs." The court itself described Suprunyuk and Sayenko as serial killers. The Supreme Court of Ukraine upheld the life sentences in November 2009.
Suprunyuk did not accept the verdict. He gave statements against himself after his arrest, then withdrew them and said he was innocent, as did Sayenko. Their families insisted for years that the investigation had been botched and that the real killers were still free.
Suprunyuk was born in 1988 in Dnipropetrovsk, the city now called Dnipro. He grew up in Krasny Kamen, known in Ukrainian as Chervonyi Kamin, a residential district on the edge of the city. Viktor Sayenko lived in the same district. The two had been friends since childhood and went to School No. 96 together, where they were in the same class through the eighth grade, according to a Gazeta.ua report published a week after the arrests. Oleksandr Hanzha, the third young man arrested, had been in the same class.
At a press conference in Kyiv the day after the arrests, Deputy Interior Minister Mykola Kupianskiy said all three had studied in one class at one school. One worked as a security guard and the other two were unemployed, he said. Gazeta.ua reported that each of the young men owned a car. Kupianskiy described them as coming from ordinary families whose parents were well off and respected. Gazeta.ua reported rumors, which it did not confirm, that one young man's father worked in a district prosecutor's office and another's mother held a post in a district administration. Several later Ukrainian reports repeat versions of these claims; none confirms them from an official record.
Teachers' opinions of the three were read into the record at the verdict. According to Komsomolskaya Pravda in Ukraine, the school described Suprunyuk as an ideal friend, Hanzha as a positive personality and Sayenko as unremarkable. A 2021 Gazeta.ua retrospective, drawing on local Dnipro outlets, said Suprunyuk had been the leader of the group and had earlier had trouble with the law, and that local journalists believed influential family connections had kept one earlier incident from becoming a criminal case. A 2024 report by the Dnipro news site Dnepr.info said he had been accused in the eighth grade of beating other pupils and of vandalism. No court record of any juvenile case has been reported.
The verdict traced the killings back to cruelty to animals. Judge Ivan Senchenko told the court that the young men had first tortured and killed animals, many dogs and cats, before they turned on people, according to Komsomolskaya Pravda. Both Suprunyuk and Sayenko were convicted of cruelty to animals. A UNI wire report in April 2008 said police footage suggested the suspects had practiced on cats first. Later Ukrainian reports date the animal killings to about 2003 or 2004. Dnepr.info reported in 2024 that the young men had said the animal killings were meant to harden them so they could become mercenaries or hired killers.
Explaining himself to investigators, Suprunyuk said he had read on the internet that fear could be overcome by becoming used to it, the court was told. The judge linked that idea to the motive the court found: an attempt to overcome fear of beings stronger than themselves.
Robbery came before murder. A 2025 Telegraf chronology dates the group's first armed robbery to October 29, 2006, when two students were attacked, and a robbery by Suprunyuk and Hanzha in Dniprodzerzhynsk to March 1, 2007. The sister of one murder victim told a Dnipropetrovsk newspaper in 2008 that a man had reported being assaulted by Suprunyuk and Hanzha in Dniprodzerzhynsk, that the two had been detained and then released, and that the killings went on afterward. That account was hers; no report says it was tested in court. Radio Svoboda reported on the day of the verdict that prosecutors had opened three criminal cases against police officers for official negligence in the investigation.
Prosecutors charged that the series of killings began on March 3, 2007, on the highway between Novomoskovsk and Dnipropetrovsk. Obozrevatel and Komsomolskaya Pravda both reported that date from the prosecution case in 2008 and 2009. Telegraf named the victim in 2025 as Viktor Hatuniak, a 61-year-old pensioner, and said Sayenko was present but did nothing to help him. Other accounts, including Dnepr.info in 2024, put the first killing in late June 2007, which is when the city became aware that something was wrong.
On the morning of June 26, 2007, the body of a 33-year-old woman was found in the Kommunar housing estate, and about two hours later the body of a 35-year-old man was found nearby, Gazeta.ua reported in July 2007. The woman was Kateryna Ilchenko, known to her family as Katya. Her mother told Podrobnosti television that Katya had gone out to see a girl off and never came home. Komsomolskaya Pravda gave her age at the time of the verdict as 32. A 2026 report by Fraza.ua names the second victim of that night as Roman Tatarevych.
Over the following weeks bodies were found across the city and in the surrounding region. Police and prosecutors said the victims had nothing in common. "They were not interested either in age, or in social position," Kupianskiy said in July 2007. They included young people and pensioners, people with jobs and without them, women and teenagers, and people with no fixed home. Prosecutors said one victim was a 13-year-old child. The regional police chief, Ivan Stypak, said people had no reason to be afraid when the young men offered them a ride. Witnesses described the attackers to investigators as men of about twenty, short and slim, with dark hair and fashionable clothes, who moved around in a dark green Daewoo car with a taxi sign and on stolen mopeds, Fakty reported.
Olena Shram, called Yelena in Russian-language reports, was killed near her home on July 7, 2007, according to a 2008 report in Gorod.dp.ua that gave the dates of her death and Katya Ilchenko's. Her sister attended the trial and told the paper she would not rest until all three defendants had received life sentences.
Police and later the court described the method in the same terms: the victims were struck on the head, again and again, with hammers or metal bars. Kupianskiy said some of the victims were beaten so that they would be hard to identify. Some were robbed of money, phones, bank cards or jewelry. In other cases nothing was taken. Investigators quoted by Obozrevatel said the suspects told them the killings were committed for gain; Kupianskiy said the motive was hard to see and that the crimes looked to the suspects like hunting or entertainment. Prosecutors later said the last killing came on July 19, three days before the arrests.
Not every victim died. Prosecutors charged the defendants with 29 crimes in all, and Komsomolskaya Pravda reported that the group was held responsible for 21 murders and 8 robberies. Some of the people who survived attacks attended the trial and spoke to reporters.
By late July 2007 at least 2,000 police officers were working on the case, Kupianskiy said. Gazeta.ua reported that the search drew on officers across the region and that the Interior Ministry later sent a commission to Dnipropetrovsk. A 2021 Gazeta.ua account said police had at first not linked the deaths to a single group because the victims were so different from one another.
One survivor gave investigators the start of a description. A teenager who escaped from the attackers helped police draw composite sketches of the suspects, Gazeta.ua reported in July 2007. Police also watched shops that bought used goods. According to Gazeta.ua, officers first noticed the young men because they kept visiting consignment shops to sell used mobile phones.
The arrests came on July 23, 2007. Dnipropetrovsk regional police detained the three young men in the Krasny Kamen district, Obozrevatel reported in 2008, citing the prosecution; Kommersant and Komsomolskaya Pravda also give July 23. UNIAN reported the arrests the next day as having taken place "yesterday." Some later accounts, including a 2021 Gazeta.ua retrospective and a 2025 Telegraf chronology, give July 24.
Accounts of how the arrest happened agree on its core. The young men tried to sell a mobile phone taken from a victim at a pawn or second-hand shop. Gazeta.ua's 2021 retrospective said Suprunyuk and Sayenko were caught near the shop and Hanzha was detained while trying to get rid of stolen phones. Dnepr.info and Fraza.ua say police were able to trace the phone because its signal was picked up when it was switched on. Investigators said in 2008 that the suspects had tried to flush three victims' phones down a toilet, and that a plumber recovered them.
The day after the arrests, Kupianskiy told reporters in Kyiv that the young men had admitted to 19 murders. Gazeta.ua reported that two of them had quickly written confessions. Investigators later linked them to two more killings, bringing the count to 21, Kommersant reported.
Investigators assembled a case file of 39 volumes with 19 videocassettes, according to Obozrevatel and Fakty. Searches turned up a victim's earring and bank cards, Obozrevatel reported in April 2008. Fakty later listed the items police recovered as victims' bank cards, jewelry and phones, pawn receipts, metal pipes, hammers and brass knuckles.
The young men had also photographed and filmed some of their attacks on mobile phones and cameras, police said from the first day. Police seized the devices. The number of recordings varies between reports: Obozrevatel said in April 2008 that investigators had two films and five photographs from the days of the killings; Fakty later described about 100 photographs and three video episodes. What matters for the legal record is that they existed, that they were taken from the defendants' phones and computers, and that the court relied on them. Fraza.ua reported in 2026 that the defense challenged the recordings, that expert analysis found no sign of editing or digital forgery, and that the court admitted them as evidence.
A forensic psychiatric examination found all three young men sane, meaning able to understand and control their actions. Experts also carried out medical, DNA, immunological and cytological examinations of the victims' bodies and of items seized, Obozrevatel reported.
Suprunyuk did not hold to his early statements. By April 2008, when the indictment was ready, prosecutors said he denied guilt, though he had earlier given statements against himself. When the trial opened in June 2008, Kommersant reported, Suprunyuk had withdrawn his earlier testimony and denied everything, while Sayenko admitted only cruelty to animals. Gazeta.ua's 2021 retrospective and Dnepr.info both say that Suprunyuk later claimed his confession had been forced out of him. Radio Svoboda reported in 2009 that the defendants' parents said police had beaten confessions out of their sons.
The co-defendants also turned on each other. A lawyer for Sayenko said in 2008 that Suprunyuk had threatened his client and forced him to film. The same lawyer said Suprunyuk had told investigators that he enjoyed killing and would have gone on if the police had not stopped him, Obozrevatel reported, citing the newspaper Segodnya. Those were claims made by a co-defendant's lawyer, not findings of the court.
The prosecution sent the case to the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Court of Appeal, which tried it. As reported by Obozrevatel and Kommersant in April and June 2008, the indictment charged:
Suprunyuk with 21 premeditated murders with aggravating circumstances, robbery (eight counts according to Kommersant; Obozrevatel listed four armed robberies and two attempted murders), cruelty to animals and, in Obozrevatel's account, illegal possession of a firearm.
Sayenko with 18 premeditated murders with aggravating circumstances, robbery (five counts according to Kommersant, three according to Obozrevatel), cruelty to animals and illegal possession of a firearm.
Hanzha with one attempted murder and robbery. He was not charged with any of the killings.
Prosecutors said Suprunyuk and Sayenko each faced life imprisonment. Investigator Bohdan Vlasenko told reporters the suspects had said they wanted something to remember in their old age. A Russian television report quoted him in April 2008 as saying the police believed the killings had been a hobby.
The trial opened on June 9, 2008, before the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Court of Appeal. About 29 relatives of the dead came to the first hearing, Kommersant reported. The prosecutors, Veronika Titkova and Vladimir Seyn, told the paper that the motive was the hardest part of the case and would shape both the legal classification and the sentence; Titkova said the working theory was still greed. Relatives of five victims filed civil claims for 100,000 hryvnias each in damages; Obozrevatel had earlier reported that relatives of six victims planned such claims.
The first day set the pattern for the months that followed. The prosecution asked the court to call the defendants' parents as witnesses. Suprunyuk and Sayenko objected and asked that their parents be admitted as their defense counsel instead. The court refused, ruling that parents who had given evidence to investigators could not act as defenders. Suprunyuk's lawyers then asked the court to remove the prosecutor and the whole bench for bias. The court rejected that motion too. A lawyer for Sayenko said investigators had used improper methods. A representative of the victims' families, Larysa Dovhal, said the families would not allow the case to be closed and argued that Ukraine should not have abolished the death penalty. The mother of one victim told Kommersant she did not believe the right people were on trial.
Hearings stretched on through the summer and autumn. In September 2008 a session was moved to give a new lawyer for Sayenko time to read the file, Gorod.dp.ua reported. By then Sayenko's account had changed again; he said the group had been three people, not two, and his father, acting as his public defender, accused the prosecution of shielding others and said he had found a witness to the real killings. That witness did not speak to reporters, and no such evidence is recorded in the verdict as reported. Dovhal, for the families, said investigators had missed further episodes.
Prosecutors presented the photographs and recordings in court, Fraza.ua reported. Sayenko's and Suprunyuk's families continued to say the evidence was fabricated.
Hanzha took a different course. Gazeta.ua, citing Interfax-Ukraine, reported on the eve of the verdict that he had admitted his guilt in two crimes, a robbery and the infliction of grievous bodily harm, apologized to a victim in the courtroom, said he had nothing in common with the other two defendants, and asked for leniency for helping the investigation. Suprunyuk and Sayenko, by the same report, denied any involvement.
The judges began reading the verdict on February 10, 2009. The case file had grown to 39 or 40 volumes, and the reading took two days. Komsomolskaya Pravda said the judgment ran to about 150 pages. On the first day Podrobnosti reported that the prosecutor had asked for life sentences for Suprunyuk and Sayenko and 14 years for Hanzha; Gazeta.ua, citing Interfax-Ukraine, gave the prosecution's request for Hanzha as 15 years.
On February 11, 2009, the court announced its decision. Presiding judge Ivan Senchenko read the sentences while the defendants stood with their heads down and listened in silence, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported.
The court found that in 2007 Suprunyuk and Sayenko together killed 18 people in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, among them women, teenagers and elderly people, and that Suprunyuk alone killed three more, Podrobnosti reported. That made 21 murders for Suprunyuk and 18 for Sayenko. Both were also convicted of robbery and cruelty to animals. The evidence included photographs and video of the killings found on the defendants' mobile phones and computers.
Both men were sentenced to life imprisonment with confiscation of property. Hanzha was convicted of robbery and sentenced to nine years. Komsomolskaya Pravda reported that the court took his sincere confession and remorse into account.
The court called Suprunyuk and Sayenko serial killers. Podrobnosti reported the court's finding as an aggressive drive to assert themselves at any cost and to overcome their own fear; in its report of the first day of the reading, it gave the phrase as morbid self-affirmation. Fraza.ua, writing in 2026, said that the court did not find that the recordings had been made for sale, a theory that had circulated in the press from early on.
Komsomolskaya Pravda described the scene in the courtroom. The mother of Katya Ilchenko called out that she wanted the killers to lose the will to live. Someone in the hall said it was a pity the death penalty had been abolished. A man who had survived one of the robberies told the paper he agreed with the sentences and that Hanzha was less to blame than the other two. Representatives of the victims told the Novyi Most news agency they were satisfied with the verdict.
Lawyers and relatives of the convicted men said Suprunyuk and Sayenko did not admit guilt, that the evidence had been fabricated, and that they would appeal to the Supreme Court of Ukraine. The verdict could be appealed through the regional court to the Supreme Court within one month.
The third defendant is Oleksandr Hanzha, as major Ukrainian outlets name him, spelled Aleksandr Ganzha in Russian-language reports. He was charged with robbery and one attempted murder, admitted a robbery, and was convicted of robbery only. Fakty reported that he did not take part in the murders. He served his nine-year term. Strana reported on April 9, 2019, citing a Dnipro television channel, that he had been released. A 2021 Gazeta.ua retrospective gives his release as 2018.
Viktor Sayenko, Suprunyuk's childhood friend, was convicted of 18 murders, robbery and cruelty to animals, and sentenced to life imprisonment with confiscation of property. He has a separate page on this site. Strana reported in 2019 that he had been moved to a prison in Kryvyi Rih.
The families pressed their case in public. In June 2009 the parents of the two men sentenced to life held a press conference at the UNIAN news agency under the title "Parents of life-term prisoners in the case of the Dnepropetrovsk maniacs: who is guilty in actual fact?" Sayenko's father had acted as his son's public defender at one stage, and the defense argued throughout that the investigation had been carried out improperly.
The appeal to the Supreme Court of Ukraine did not go straight through. Fraza.ua reported in 2026 that in 2009 the Supreme Court sent certain procedural questions back for further consideration and that the appeal court reviewed the materials again. On November 24, 2009, the Supreme Court upheld the life sentences of Suprunyuk and Sayenko, according to Gazeta.ua and Fraza.ua. A 2025 Telegraf feature said the sentences had been upheld three times; it gave no dates, and no other report describes three separate rulings. The reports do not give the text of the Supreme Court ruling.
Ukrainian law in force in 2018, as described by a Ukrainian appeal court press release in an unrelated case, offered life prisoners no ordinary route to release; after 20 years a prisoner could petition the president for clemency. No petition by Suprunyuk has been reported.
Strana reported in April 2019 that Suprunyuk was being held in the block for life-sentenced prisoners at the Dnipropetrovsk pretrial detention center, where conditions were reported to be harsher. Telegraf reported in April 2025 that Suprunyuk and Sayenko were still serving their life sentences in different penal institutions. Fraza.ua wrote in August 2026 that reliable current public information about where they are held was not available, and that there was no basis for saying either man had been freed.
In early September 2024 Russian outlets and social media accounts spread a story that the two men had signed contracts with the Armed Forces of Ukraine under the program that lets some prisoners serve at the front, and had then deserted with their weapons. Ukrainian fact-checkers rated it fake. Detector Media's disinformation project reported on September 4, 2024, that the National Police told Ukraine's Center for Countering Disinformation that the persons named were not wanted and that the information about an escape was untrue. The center said people convicted of murdering two or more people were barred from signing such contracts and leaving prison. Dnepr.info described the story the next day as a Russian psychological operation meant to spread panic. No Ukrainian official source has reported that Suprunyuk left prison.
How many people were killed. The court convicted Suprunyuk of 21 murders. On the day of the verdict Radio Svoboda reported that the three defendants had been convicted of nearly 30 crimes including 23 murders; that figure does not match the court's findings as reported by Podrobnosti, Novyi Most and Komsomolskaya Pravda, which all give 21. Strana in 2019 and Telegraf in April 2025 wrote of 22 dead. At the arrest police spoke of 19. The court's figure is 21.
When the killings began. Prosecutors dated the first murder to March 3, 2007. Several later accounts treat the night of June 25 to 26, 2007, as the start of the series. Both dates appear in reliable reporting.
Who led. The court found Suprunyuk responsible for every one of the 21 murders and for three in which Sayenko had no part. Gazeta.ua's 2021 account describes him as the leader. Sayenko's lawyer said in 2008 that Suprunyuk forced Sayenko to take part. That was a defense claim.
Connected families. Reports that the young men's parents held official posts, and that family influence protected them earlier, appeared from the first week and are still repeated. Gazeta.ua said in 2007 that it could not confirm them. No official source has confirmed them.
The motive. Prosecutors at first described the motive as greed. Police spoke of hunting or a hobby. The court found a drive for self-assertion and the overcoming of fear. The theory that the recordings were made to sell was reported in the press but, as reported by Fraza.ua, was not the court's finding.
Innocence claims. Both men retracted their confessions. Their parents said the confessions had been beaten out of them and that others were responsible. The courts rejected those arguments at trial and on appeal. A victim's sister told a local paper in 2008 that another man, whom she named, had known about the crimes; investigators told her he had not killed anyone. He was never charged.
Police failures. Radio Svoboda reported that prosecutors opened three negligence cases against police officers over the investigation. The outcome of those cases was not reported.
1988: Igor Suprunyuk born in Dnipropetrovsk.
About 2003 to 2004: killing and torture of animals later cited by the court.
October 29, 2006: first armed robbery attributed to the group, according to a 2025 Telegraf chronology.
March 3, 2007: first murder in the prosecution case, on the Novomoskovsk to Dnipropetrovsk highway.
June 26, 2007: bodies of Kateryna Ilchenko and a man found in the Kommunar district; the main series of killings begins.
July 7, 2007: Olena Shram killed near her home.
July 19, 2007: last killing in the prosecution case.
July 23, 2007: Suprunyuk, Sayenko and Hanzha arrested in Krasny Kamen.
July 24, 2007: Deputy Interior Minister Kupianskiy announces that the suspects have admitted 19 murders.
April 2008: indictment completed; Suprunyuk charged with 21 murders, Sayenko with 18, Hanzha with attempted murder and robbery.
June 9, 2008: trial opens at the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Court of Appeal.
February 10 to 11, 2009: verdict read; Suprunyuk and Sayenko sentenced to life imprisonment with confiscation of property, Hanzha to nine years for robbery.
June 2009: the convicted men's parents hold a press conference in Kyiv disputing the verdict.
November 24, 2009: Supreme Court of Ukraine upholds the life sentences.
2018 or 2019: Hanzha released after serving his sentence (Strana report April 9, 2019).
September 4 to 5, 2024: Ukrainian police and fact-checkers reject a Russian claim that the two men had joined the army and escaped.
April 2025: Telegraf reports both men still serving life sentences.