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Ukrainian Police Arrest Three 19-Year-Olds Over a Month of Killings in Dnipropetrovsk

Officials said 19 people of all ages were killed, most by blows to the head, and that some attacks were filmed on a mobile phone. Two of the friends confessed.

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Two police composite sketches of young men issued during the 2007 Dnipropetrovsk investigation

For a month in the summer of 2007, people were found beaten to death almost daily in and around Dnipropetrovsk. On July 23, police arrested three 19-year-old school friends from the city.

Viktor Sayenko and Igor Suprunyuk confessed almost immediately, and investigators began checking whether their friend Alexander Hanzha was involved. At a news conference in Kyiv the next day, Deputy Interior Minister Mykola Kupiansky said 19 killings since late June in the Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia regions were attributed to them. The victims ranged from young people to pensioners, and most were struck on the head with hammers or metal bars. "In some cases, they filmed their crimes," Kupiansky said. He said the motive was hard to determine, as the killings seemed like hunting or entertainment to them. Nearly 2,000 police officers took part in the search.

The three had been in the same class at school, and all came from well-known local families. Police noticed them because they often sold used mobile phones at secondhand shops, and a teenager who escaped from them helped compile sketches of the suspects.

At their trial, Sayenko and Suprunyuk faced 27 charges, including 21 murders, and denied them. Hanzha was tried only for two robberies. When the verdict reading began on February 10, 2009, prosecutors were seeking life sentences for Sayenko and Suprunyuk. Among the dead was Kateryna Ilchenko, whose mother said she was certain the two men were responsible.

Officials said in July 2007 that the killings began in late June, while Interfax-Ukraine reported in 2009 that the crimes were committed between April and July 2007.

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