Vladislav Volkovich and Vladimir Kondratenko operated together in Kyiv in the first years of Ukrainian independence, in a case the local press called the Nighttime Killers.
Between 1991 and 1996 the pair killed sixteen people, fifteen men and one woman, in the parks, courtyards and stairwells of the city. They shot some with a .22 sporting rifle and beat or stabbed others with whatever was to hand, including stitching awls, bricks and iron bars. The inconsistency of method across the series is the main reason the killings were not connected for years.
Both were arrested in 1997. Kondratenko died in police custody on May 31 that year of an overdose of prescription medication, recorded as suicide and questioned at the time, which left Volkovich as the only man to stand trial.
He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in August 2000. Because his co-accused never came to trial, the division of responsibility between the two men was never established in court, and the sixteen killings are attributed to the pair rather than apportioned.