In mid-July 2008 the remains of a 40-year-old man were found in South Jakarta. Within days police had a name for him, Heri Santoso, and a suspect: Very Idham Henyansyah, a 30-year-old man from a village in Jombang, East Java, known to everyone as Ryan. He was arrested in Depok, just south of Jakarta, on July 15, 2008. When detectives questioned him about his hometown, he told them that he had also killed someone there.
That admission led police to his home village, Jatiwates, in the Tembelang district of Jombang regency. Over the following weeks they recovered ten bodies there. Families who had reported relatives missing, some of them months or more than a year earlier, came forward one after another. The Indonesian press called him the Jagal Jombang, the Jombang butcher, and the case filled the papers through the second half of 2008.
He was tried only for the killing of Heri Santoso. On April 6, 2009, the Depok District Court found him guilty of premeditated murder and sentenced him to death. His later legal challenges failed. The ten deaths in Jombang, which he admitted and police attributed to him, have not been reported as the subject of any trial. As of August 2021 he was still on death row and had not been executed.
His name is spelled several ways. Court and wire reports give it as Very Idham Henyansyah; other reports print Verry, Very Idam, Ferry or Feriansyah, and the surname as Heryansyah, Henyaksyah or Heniansyah.
Ryan grew up in Jatiwates, a village in the rice country of Jombang regency, the son of a couple the press identified by their first names. In October 2008 his mother, speaking to reporters at the Jakarta police headquarters, described a boy she had indulged. When he was in junior high school he asked her for a car, she said, and she sold a rice field to buy him a pickup truck, which was popular at the time. The truck later burned; she said she did not know how. She sold clothes door to door in the village and to students at Islamic boarding schools, and she rejected local rumors that she was a moneylender, saying she only sold clothes on credit.
Later reports filled in parts of his adult life. He had studied Islamic propagation, according to a prison official in Cirebon in 2012, and he was described in 2008 as a former teacher of Quran recitation. He was also an aerobics instructor who taught at a studio in Jombang, and a dancer: the same prison official said he had performed at Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, the cultural park in Jakarta, before his arrest. By 2008 he was living in Depok with a male partner, who was questioned and detained with him after his arrest.
Heri Santoso was 40 years old. His remains were found in South Jakarta on July 12, 2008, and his wife identified him. The Depok District Court later set out what had happened the day before. Heri had been with Ryan and Ryan's partner in an apartment in Depok on July 11. According to the court, the two men argued that evening. Ryan killed him there. The court found that the killing had been planned the day before. A forensic report from Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital in Jakarta, dated August 11, 2008, was part of the evidence.
Police at the time gave jealousy as the motive. Ryan later told reporters that part of the money he took from his victims had gone to his family in Jombang. When the case file was handed to prosecutors, police listed among the evidence a black bag belonging to Heri and a black car.
Ryan was arrested on July 15, 2008, at a house in Pesona Khayangan, a residential area of Depok. In questioning he said he had also killed a man in Jombang and buried him at home.
On Monday, July 21, investigators from the Jakarta regional police (Polda Metro Jaya) and the Jombang district police dug at the places he pointed out in Jatiwates. The work began at nine in the morning and went on for more than five hours. Instead of one body, they found four. Ryan had first said there was only one, Radar Mojokerto reported. By about four in the afternoon the remains had been placed in body bags and sent in three ambulances to the East Java police hospital in Surabaya for autopsy. The director of criminal investigation at Polda Metro Jaya, Senior Commissioner Carlo Brix Tewu, watched the excavation himself and said it followed from the Depok investigation.
Within two days the four were named. Hukumonline, citing police, gave three of them as Ariel Somba Sitanggang, Vincentius Yudi Triono and Guruh Setyo Pramono, known as Guntur; the fourth was known as Grandy and was described as a Dutch citizen. Detik gave Ariel's home as Cimanggis, in Depok, Guntur's as Nganjuk in East Java, and Vincent's as Solo. Later reports spell the names differently: Aril Somba Sitanggang, 34; Vincentius Yudhy Priyono, called Vincent, 30; and Grendy or Grady for the fourth man. Guntur's identity was at first uncertain. The police chief of Nganjuk, Adjunct Senior Commissioner Slamet Hadi Supraptoyo, told Detik on July 22 that his force had received no missing-person report for anyone of that name, that he had learned of the case from a news ticker on television, and that his officers would wait around the clock for any family to come forward.
On July 23 police returned to the house and took away belongings of Ryan and of his victims. That night he was flown to Jakarta and held in the detention center at the Polda Metro Jaya headquarters. The next day thousands of people crowded into the village after a rumor spread that police would dig again. The village head, Mahmud, told them nothing was planned and asked them to go home; the crowd kept growing.
As the news spread, families in and around Jombang began to wonder whether their own missing relatives had known Ryan. By July 26 the Jombang police had received seven missing-person reports. One came that Saturday from a woman whose husband, Mochamad Aksoni, had left his home in Sidoarjo regency on November 21, 2007, riding a motorcycle, and had not come back. Police found a motorcycle matching his in a parking area in Sentul village, in Tembelang, where it had been left four months earlier and never collected. Another report concerned Zainul Abidin, from Dapur Kejambon village in Jombang.
The husband of Nanik Hidayati told the Jombang police that she had left home on April 2, 2008, with their younger daughter, Sylvia, then three years old. A text message that morning said she would be away for a month. She did not come back, and her family in Banyuwangi had not seen her. He had often heard his wife mention Ryan, who taught aerobics at a studio in Jombang where she exercised. Before they disappeared, the family heard, Nanik and her daughter had been seen with Ryan at a gold shop in Jombang. When news came on July 21 that a woman and a child might be among the bodies, his fear grew. "From the moment they went missing, we have always hoped they would come back," he said.
By July 28 the Jombang police chief, Adjunct Senior Commissioner M. Khosim, said police had narrowed the list to five more names who had been close to Ryan: Aksoni, Nanik, her daughter, Fauzin Suyanto and Agustinus Setyawan. The strongest suspicion was that Agustinus had been killed, the chief said, because he had reportedly driven Ryan to Jakarta and then dropped from sight. Ryan had denied any part in the disappearances of the other four, and in interrogation he mostly kept silent. "The key to uncovering the whole series of killings lies with Ryan," the police chief said, describing him as often uncooperative. Police found that Aksoni's motorcycle had been given by Ryan to his father in late June 2008; it had been stored at the home of a half-sibling. The father told police he had collected it from a repair shop in Sentul.
Further digging in Jatiwates over the following days brought the number of bodies found in the village to ten. In August 2015 Detik listed the dead as Vincentius Yudhy Priyono, 30; Guruh Setyo Pramono; Agustinus F. Setiawan, called Wawan, 28; Nanik Hidayati, 31; Sylvia Ramadani Putri, her three-year-old daughter; Aril Somba Sitanggang, 34; Muhammad Akhsoni, called Soni, 29; and Zaenal Abidin, called Zeki, 21, together with the man named Grady or Grendy. With Heri Santoso, the total reached eleven.
For days the village was a spectacle. On August 1, 2008, Detik found people coming from morning to night to look at the house, with vendors selling food and drinks and makeshift games for children. A local drink seller said it was busier than Independence Day. Young men charged for motorcycle parking and could make about 500,000 rupiah a day.
Ryan's account was tested repeatedly. After he was moved to East Java police custody, examiners from the police forensic laboratory in Surabaya gave him lie detector tests. After 30 questions their preliminary conclusion was that he was still holding back many facts, and the head of the laboratory, Senior Commissioner Bambang Wahyu Suprapto, said investigators would look further into his family relationships. Forensic investigators questioned his parents, who were treated as witnesses. Police also questioned seven other witnesses, six gravediggers and a domestic worker, and released them after two days. On August 6 he was flown back to Jakarta with his partner for a reenactment of the killing of Heri Santoso. The two were held in separate cells. The Jakarta police chief, Inspector General Adang Firman, said keeping them apart was an investigative tactic, not special treatment.
The last of the Jombang dead to be identified was Mohammad Asrori, known as Aldo, who ran a beauty salon in Kalangsemanding village, in the Perak district of Jombang. On August 28, 2008, the East Java police said DNA tests by national police headquarters had matched remains from Jatiwates to samples from his parents. When police had shown Ryan a photograph of Asrori earlier, he denied having killed him. Ryan later said Asrori had died in late 2006; Asrori's family said he had been missing since September 22, 2007.
The identification exposed a miscarriage of justice. In September 2007 a body had been found in a sugarcane field in Bandar Kedungmulyo, in Jombang, about 35 kilometers from Ryan's village. Local police decided it was Asrori and charged three young men from his village with his murder. In May 2008 the Jombang District Court convicted two of them, I.K. and D.E.P., and sentenced them to 17 years and 12 years in prison. D.E.P. was 17. The third, M.S., was still on trial.
After Ryan's confession, a police DNA test showed that the body in the cane field was not Asrori's but that of Fauzin Suyanto, a Jombang man missing since September 2007. On October 6, 2008, defense lawyers asked the Jombang court to free their clients, presenting the DNA result and Ryan's confession. Asrori's relatives would not accept the remains from Jatiwates at first, and police buried them in Surabaya. Fauzin's family collected his remains for burial.
In November 2008 the East Java police chief, Inspector General Herman Surjadi Sumawiredja, wrote to the prosecutors and the court asking that the two convicted men be released. "We apologize for the error," he told reporters in Surabaya. He said everyone involved in the first investigation would be investigated and tried under civilian law, and that the two men had a right to compensation and to a public declaration of their innocence. The East Java police set up a team from its legal, professional standards and criminal investigation divisions to examine claims that the three men had been pressured into confessing. Police also arrested a man in Kediri over Fauzin's death after he went to a police station in Sidoarjo to pay the tax on Fauzin's motorcycle. On November 25, 2008, the Jombang District Court released M.S. on bail after 199 days in custody; the two convicted men had taken their case to the Supreme Court. Ryan himself had been questioned during the original cane-field inquiry, according to the East Java police, and had been let go for lack of evidence.
From the start, the case raised the question of whether Ryan was mentally fit to stand trial. On July 24, 2008, the head of the national police criminal investigation agency, Bambang Hendarso Danuri, said Ryan would be examined. The national police spokesman, Abu Bakar Nataprawira, explained the stakes: under Article 44 of the Criminal Code, a person found to be mentally ill cannot be held criminally responsible, while a personality disorder does not by itself remove responsibility. Yusti Probowo Rahayu, head of the Indonesian forensic psychology association, told Hukumonline that people with psychopathic traits generally understand what they are doing.
The examination took place on July 29, 2008. According to the Depok court record, it found no disorder of orientation, memory or reasoning and no hallucinations or delusions. It did find serious personality problems, including manipulative aggression, rule-breaking and lying without remorse, and it concluded that he was psychologically fit to be held legally responsible.
On November 4, 2008, prosecutors declared the Heri Santoso case file complete, and on November 12 police handed Ryan and the evidence to the Depok district prosecutor's office. He arrived smiling, in a white cap. "I sincerely accept any punishment, including the death penalty," he told reporters, and he apologized to the victims' families. Because the prison in Bogor where he was first to go was full, he was held in a new prison at Pondok Rajeg, in Cibinong. He told reporters there that he missed his mother and was praying at night and fasting on alternate days.
The indictment's main charge was premeditated murder under Article 340 of the Criminal Code, which carries a maximum penalty of death. Reports of the alternative counts differ. Police and prosecutors in November listed theft resulting in death and assault resulting in death; at a hearing in December, Detik reported the alternatives as murder followed by another offense, ordinary murder and theft resulting in death.
The trial began at the Depok District Court in late 2008. His lawyer, Kasman Sangaji, asked for the Depok case to be joined with the Jombang killings. The prosecutor Apreza Darul Putra refused on December 17, 2008, saying his office had received a case file only from the Jakarta police, none from the East Java police, and so had no grounds to try the Jombang deaths in Depok.
On April 6, 2009, the court found Ryan guilty of the premeditated murder of Heri Santoso and sentenced him to death. In its reasons, as later analyzed in the Diponegoro Law Journal, the court found every element of Article 340 proved and no mitigating factors. As aggravating factors it cited his admission of a series of killings in Jombang, the number of victims, the brutality of the crime and the grief of the families, in particular the young children left without a father.
The death sentence was not overturned. By August 2015, Detik reported, every legal remedy open to him had been used, and he remained among the prisoners convicted of murder who were waiting for execution.
In 2010 Ryan was held at Kesambi prison in Cirebon, West Java. In October of that year he planned to marry a woman there; the prison allowed a religious marriage contract but not a celebration, and with reporters crowding outside the wedding was postponed. Detik reported that his story had drawn foreign media and that a documentary about him had been broadcast abroad on the Crime and Investigation Network.
In February 2012 he performed a Cirebon mask dance at Kesambi to welcome the director general of corrections, Sihabudin, after a month of rehearsal. A prison official said he was a skilled dancer who took part in religious activities and played badminton and volleyball, and that his state of mind was hard to read. When reporters approached him after the dance, he ran into the prison clinic and shut the door.
In August 2015 Detik counted him among the prisoners convicted of murder who were still waiting for execution. All his legal remedies had been used, the paper said, and he was being held in Cirebon.
By 2021 Ryan was held at Gunung Sindur prison in Bogor regency. In August of that year his lawyers said he had been assaulted there by Bahar bin Smith, a Muslim preacher also serving a prison term. Kasman Sangaji said the dispute began over money: Ryan had saved about 10 million rupiah sent by his family over his years in prison, and the preacher had borrowed from him. When he was refused repayment, Ryan took money from the preacher's cell, and he was later confronted and attacked after leaving the mosque. He was treated at the prison clinic. Another lawyer, Benny Daga, took photos and videos to the national police criminal investigation agency. The preacher's lawyer, Aziz Yanuar, called it a misunderstanding. The Directorate General of Corrections released photos of the two men with the warden, Mujiarto, as evidence that they had made peace. On August 26, 2021, Kasman Sangaji said no police report would be filed: "Everyone has shaken hands and forgiven each other."
The forensic psychologist Reza Indragiri of the University of Indonesia, asked by Kumparan about the clash, said the choice of a death sentence over life imprisonment showed that the court had judged Ryan's risk of reoffending to be very high. He also noted that long waits on death row leave victims' families waiting for justice that does not arrive.
The count of eleven victims rests on Ryan's own admissions and on the police identifications of the remains in Jatiwates. Only the killing of Heri Santoso was tried. Some later reports describe him as convicted of all eleven killings; the court record cited in the Diponegoro Law Journal concerns one victim, with the Jombang admissions considered as aggravating factors.
The dates of the Jombang deaths are uncertain. Ryan placed the death of Mohammad Asrori in late 2006, while Asrori's family said he went missing in September 2007. Kumparan in 2021 gave the span of the killings as 2006 to 2008.
The names and ages of the victims vary between reports. The fourth man found on July 21, 2008, is named Grandy, Grendy or Grady, and in 2015 Detik listed both Grady and Grendy as separate victims while leaving out Mohammad Asrori, whom police had identified by DNA in 2008. Aksoni's age is 27 in a 2008 report and 29 in 2015.
2006 (his account): Death of Mohammad Asrori in Jatiwates, Jombang, by Ryan's later statement; Asrori's family said he went missing on September 22, 2007.
September 2007: A body found in a sugarcane field in Jombang is wrongly identified as Asrori's.
November 21, 2007: Mochamad Aksoni leaves home in Sidoarjo and is not seen again.
April 2, 2008: Nanik Hidayati leaves home in Jombang with her three-year-old daughter.
May 2008: Two Jombang men are convicted of murdering Asrori and sentenced to 17 and 12 years.
July 11, 2008: Heri Santoso, 40, is killed in Depok.
July 12, 2008: His remains are found in South Jakarta.
July 15, 2008: Ryan is arrested in Pesona Khayangan, Depok.
July 21, 2008: Four bodies are recovered in Jatiwates, Jombang.
July 23, 2008: Ryan is returned to Jakarta police custody.
July 29, 2008: Psychological examination finds him fit to be held responsible.
August 28, 2008: East Java police announce that DNA has identified Mohammad Asrori among the Jatiwates dead.
October 6, 2008: The Jombang District Court hears new evidence in the Asrori case.
November 4, 2008: The Heri Santoso case file is declared complete.
November 12, 2008: Ryan is handed to Depok prosecutors.
November 2008: The East Java police chief apologizes and asks for the release of the two wrongly convicted men; on November 25 the third man is released on bail.
December 17, 2008: Prosecutors refuse to join the Jombang deaths to the Depok trial.
April 6, 2009: The Depok District Court sentences Ryan to death for the premeditated murder of Heri Santoso.
After 2009: His appeals fail.
October 2010: A planned prison wedding at Kesambi, Cirebon, is postponed.
August 2015: Detik reports him still awaiting execution in Cirebon.
August 2021: His lawyers report an assault at Gunung Sindur prison, Bogor; the dispute is settled on August 26.