Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - “Terminator” Pt. 2 - Anatoly Onoprienko

Episode Date: April 29, 2019

By 1996, he settled down in a small village in Ukraine with his girlfriend, and was a loving father-in-law to her children. But the voices in Anatoly Onoprienko’s head would not let him rest. His ruthless, random violence launched the largest manhunt in Ukranian history--and even then, police could not put an end to the killer they called The Terminator. Sponsors! Ring - Get a special offer on a Ring Starter Kit available right now. Go to Ring.com/SerialKillers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Due to the graphic nature of this killer's crimes, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of murder and assault that some people may find offensive. We advise extreme caution for children under 13. December 1995. Heavy snow blankets a remote Ukrainian village. It's 20 below zero outside, and there's only one door open to the cold night air. In that doorway, part of a rundown apartment, a woman argues with her boyfriend. She begs him not to go out.

There's a killer on the live. it's not safe. Her boyfriend insists he has to leave for a business trip. He needs money to support her and her children, and besides, police are everywhere. He points as a police car and a military Humvee drive past. He promises his girlfriend he'll stay safe and only be gone for a couple of days.

He embraces her, and she finally lets him pass. As the man leaves, he grabs a heavy duffel bag, Stowed inside, under piles of second-hand clothing, are a homemade, sawed-off shotgun and a long, well-worn knife. The man gets in the car, confident his family will be safe while he's away. After all, the killer was pulling out of his driveway. Hi, I'm Greg Polson. This is serial killers on the podcast network. Every Monday, we dive into the minds and madness of serial killers.

Today, we continue our deep dive into the life of Anatoly Onoprienko, the Terminator of Ukraine. I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson. Hi, everyone. At Parcast, we're grateful for you, our listeners. You allow us to do what we love. Let us know how we're doing. Reach out on Facebook and Instagram at Parcast. And Twitter at Parcast Network.

And if you enjoy today's episode, the best way to help us is to leave a five-star review, wherever you're listening. It really does help. We also now have merchandise. Head to Parkast.com slash merch for more information. Last week, we examined Anatoly Onoprienko's early life and the series of events that led him to murder 52 people, including women and children, between 1989 and 1996. Anatoly was born in 1959 in the village of Lasky, Ukraine,

and had a troubled childhood. At the age of 30, he started to hear voices encouraging him to kill for Satan. Anatoly listened to the voices, perpetrating a string of home invasions and murders across Ukraine. He began escalating the scale of his murders in late 1995 at the age of 36. At this time, he also moved in with his girlfriend in the small town of Yavarev. This week will probe further into Anatoly's horrific killing spree and how, he came to hold the entire country of Ukraine hostage. We'll also cover the frantic manhunt conducted by the police, the largest in Ukraine's history.

In January of 1996, 36-year-old Anatoly Onoprienko was settling into a new chapter in his life. He lived in the small town of Yavariv Ukraine in an apartment with his girlfriend, Anna Kossack, and her two children. Though he had just met Anna, the pair had hit it all. quickly, so much so that Anatoly began to support her financially, since Anna had trouble making ends meet on a hairdresser's paycheck. Plus, moving in with Anna allowed Anatoly to leave his cousin. Prior to his move, Anatoly's cousin, Piotr had been growing more and more suspicious of Anatoly's frequent disappearances and the rifle he kept under his bed at all times.

But now that Anatoly had left Piotr's home, Piotr decided he may have been overreacting, and left it alone. Anatoly seemed much happier, and Anna didn't find his behavior odd in the slightest. Piotr was happy for Anatoly and encouraged him to marry Anna and start a family quickly. Anna thought the world of Anatoly. He lovingly interacted with her two children,

and while he could be occasionally cold, he always treated Anna with respect. He disappeared frequently, but explained to Anna that he was a traveling businessman. He always came back with money. So Anna thought nothing of it. But in reality, he was out hunting for victims. He had killed 19 people so far and wasn't planning on stopping.

Just a couple of weeks after he and Anna started living together, Anatoly took a business trip to the small town of Bratković. January 1996 was particularly cold, even by Ukrainian standards. Temperatures got as low as negative 40 degrees Fahrenheit, height, and power grids went down from the extreme temperatures. By traveling to remote villages during blackouts, Anatoly had found a convenient way of carrying out his crimes without worrying that the commotion would attract witnesses. He targeted families in homes on the outskirts of small towns.

In Ukraine, multiple generations of the same extended family tended to live in a single home together. Anatoly preferred to attack family homes because it maximized the number of people he could kill at He waited outside the homes until nightfall before bursting in. He killed any men in the house who he viewed as his biggest threats first. Once Anatoly had killed the men, he turned his attention to the women, children, and elderly occupants. He typically used a knife for these kills. He enjoyed the rush of seeing his victim's blood spatter on his hands and clothing.

He wanted to see their expressions up close as the life drained out of them. In the nearby village of Bratcovici, Anatoly heard the voices demanding that he kill again. He dressed as a beggar and prowled the streets, searching for any opportunity to kill. A forester walking down the street cursed at Anatoly when he asked the man for spare change. Anatoly calmly asked for money again. The forester spat at him and turned away. Anatoly's eyes flashed, recalling the times he had been ignored and belittled by Unicester. uncaring strangers. Without another thought, Anatoly shot the man in the middle of the street.

This kind of violent hypersensitivity to insult is common in serial killers. Vanessa is going to take over on the psychology here and throughout the episode. Please note, Vanessa is not a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist, but she has done a lot of research for this show. Thanks, Greg. According to Dr. Catherine Ramsland, a forensic psychologist, Many mass murderers fail to digest life's insults and thus allow rage to build. Similarly, some serial killers have tended these same hot embers. They reportedly need to act and cannot hold back.

After being insulted by the forester, Anatole acted rashly and shot the man in the street, despite the risk. He rarely strayed from systematic methods of murder, but this time Anatoly felt he didn't have a choice. In his mind, the man had picked a fight by spitting and cursing at him, and Anatoly didn't back down from fights. Anatoly pulled the body to the side of the road and stole the forester's money and clothes. He kicked the naked corpse further into the ditch and continued down the street. His night had just begun. After killing the forester, he continued down the road and came upon a small house. The power was out, but a small fireplace illuminated a window.

looking into the living room. A man was standing in the window hanging new curtains. Anatoly couldn't resist such a clean shot. He fired through the window. The glass shattered and blood spattered the new curtains. Anatoly climbed through the window and pulled out a long hunting knife. He searched the rooms one by one until he found the man's wife and her younger twin sisters hiding in a bedroom.

Anatoly stabbed them with the knife. Then he searched the house for valuables. His eye was drawn to the woman's wedding ring. He tried to pull the ring off of her finger, but it was on too tightly. Instead, he sought off her entire finger with his knife. Anatoly later said that cutting off the finger had been easy, like cutting through butter. Anatoly pocketed the ring and calmly washed the blood off of his hands in the sink. He retrieved a can of gasoline from his trunk and set the house on fire.

He walked out of the burning house as calmly as if he were leaving work and caught a late-night train back to his home in Yavaree. Anatoly got home in the middle of the night and woke Anna up immediately. With the faint stench of death still on his skin, Anatoly proposed to his girlfriend with the stolen ring. Anna was overjoyed. Anatoly kissed her, then went to wash up before bed. Local police discovered the bodies of Anatoly's most recent victims the next day. Thanks to the similarities between the home invasions, the police finally linked these victims to Anatoly's last killing in the village of Malin committed weeks before in December of 1995.

Authorities in Malin initially assumed the family of four had been killed during a burglary gone wrong. But after finding five fresh victims in Brokowice killed in a similar manner, police now suspected they were dealing with a psychotic killer. Though detectives had made progress by identifying the culprit as a lone serial killer, bureaucracy got in the way of the investigation. After the fall of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, politics in Ukraine were chaotic and corrupt as the country adjusted to independence. The top brass of the Ukrainian police force encouraged the rank and file

to keep the connection between the crimes under wraps, they wanted to avoid local panic and damage to the police's reputation. The national government recently freed from the control of the collapsed Soviet Union went as far as to proclaim that no serial killers existed in Ukraine at all. According to Victor Coroll, a former member of the Ukrainian Criminal Investigation Department, quote, it was unacceptable for the political and criminal situation in the country at that time, end quote. So no newspapers reported that the crimes in Malin and Bratcovici were connected,

and the police were given strict orders not to reveal their suspicions while conducting the investigation. Despite the constraints, the search for the killer was still given the highest priority by police officers. They knew they were in a race

against time with a madman. In a moment, we'll see Anatoly continue to act out as the police close in. Now, back to the story. In January of 199, 96, 36-year-old Anatoly Onoprienko proposed to his girlfriend, hours after brutally murdering five people in a distant Ukrainian village.

Once he was alone the next morning, he opened his duffel bag to examine the items he had taken from the scene of the murder. Anatoly had liked to steal ever since he was a teenager. He took something from the scene of each of his crimes. Often jewelry or electronics, he could easily pawn. but he especially liked to take old clothing. Like other serial killers, Anatoly enjoyed using these trophies

to remind himself of his murders. In the encyclopedia of murder and violent crime, Nicole Mott writes, quote, When the offender keeps this kind of souvenir, it serves as a way to preserve the memory of the victim and the experience of his or her death, end quote. Anatole didn't just keep the trophies to himself.

He gave many articles of clothing in jewelry to his girlfriend and family members. Seeing Anna wear an engagement ring he had taken from a victim was exhilarating. Dr. Scott Bonn, a criminology professor, writes, When a killer sees the trophy being worn by his wife, girlfriend, or mother, it becomes part of his secret game. While Anatoly celebrated his engagement and distributed his ill-gotten trophies, police across Ukraine were scouring the country for the mysterious kids.

killer. They searched police records for unsolved crimes, which resembled the latest murders, but due to the political instability in the country, records did not go back very far. Despite orders to keep the details of the investigation secret, rumors circulated around Ukrainian villages regarding the increased police presence. Officers had been informed of the murderous habits and monitored towns vigorously at night, investigating every sound and disturbance. After a week, Local and international media got a hold of the details of the latest killings and its link with previous murders. They called the unknown killer The Terminator, highlighting the systematic, almost robotic method of murder. The public began to fear the nameless killing machine, and people stopped going out at night, but nothing could deter Anatoly.

He loved the publicity and was certain it was his destiny to become a legendary killer. The voices had told him this, and now their predictions were coming true. And besides, he still had the cover of darkness and the uncommonly cold winter on his side. But in the face of the increased police presence in towns, Anatoly strayed to the highways. He decided to return to the method of murder he used to commit his first killings six years ago in 1989. Back then, he held up drivers on the roads at night with his partner, Sergei Ragozin. This time he would work alone. On January 6, 1996, just four days after killing five people in Bratcovici and his subsequent engagement to Anna Kossack, Anatoly left home to carry out his new plan.

He stopped three cars that night. In each case, he drove until he found a car alone on the road and swerved in front of it, forcing it to stop. Then he held the driver at gunpoint and shot anyone in the car. To avoid attracting too much attention by leaving vehicles in the middle of the highway, Anatoly drove his victim's cars off the side of the road near the tree line. He killed a total of four people before the sun rose. The victims were a soldier, a cook, a taxi driver, and an unidentified woman, all headed home after a late night of work. Over the next two weeks, Anatoly stayed in Yavariv with Anna.

They planned their wedding and threw a small party with friends and family. Those who attended the party found Anatoly to be exuberant. He seemed elated to be marrying Anna. In reality, he was happy for another reason. Finally, after years, Anatoly's crimes were being recognized. The press coverage he had expected years before had finally materialized. And to him, it amounted. to adulation. Anatoly read every headline with grim satisfaction. Like other killers, he craved

attention and recognition for his crimes. According to Dr. Scott Bonn, a major motivator for some killers is the expected notoriety. He writes, these killers murder to create terror, gain notoriety, and demonstrate intellectual superiority. Anatole did consider himself superior to the police who pursued him, who he characterized as foolish and out of their depth. He laid low and enjoyed the media coverage until January 17, 1996, when he was again called up by the voices in his head to kill. By now, Anatoly saw no end to his mission. He resolved to continue terrorizing the country as long as he could

before police finally hunted him down. He left Anna and her kids to go on another business. trip. He ended up in a small village of few hours away from his home. He arrived a couple of hours before dawn and quickly located a house on the outskirts of town. Anatoly crept around the perimeter of the home, peeping in the windows to determine who was inside. He saw five people, including two adults and three children, sleeping in two rooms. Returning to his tried and true modus operandi, Anatoly tossed pebbles at the parents' bedroom window. After some rustling, Anatoly heard one of the adults walked toward the door.

He positioned himself on the side of the door. First, the man of the house peeked out into the night. Seeing no one, he opened the door wider and called out. Anatoly sprang from his hiding place and shot the man point blank in the chest. Then he ran into the house, brandishing his knife. He found the woman in her children's bedroom. Anatoly murdered them all. He grabbed some clothing and valuables from the house and ran back to his car to get gasoline and burn the evidence.

As he stepped outside, Anatoly saw two dark figures walking around the back of the house. He drew his gun and went after them. The figures were a young railroad worker and an older retired man. They had been driving by when they heard the gunfire and went to investigate. They saw Anatoly coming, but were unarmed. They tried to threaten him. but Anatoly killed them before they could finish speaking. He dragged their bodies into the house and set it ablaze.

Worried the noise had attracted more people, he left in a hurry and without bothering to dispose of the witness's cars. Anatoly drove away from the flaming house, relieved. He had narrowly avoided leaving witnesses alive. When the authorities arrived at the charred remains of the house hours later, Anatoly was long gone. Interestingly, Anatoly later said that he regretted having to kill the potential witnesses, as he only intended to kill the occupants of the houses he specifically selected.

This small show of empathy may not be as empty as it sounds. A 2013 study conducted in the Netherlands showed that psychopathic individuals are capable of feeling empathy when asked to try. The finding suggested that their capacity for empathy may simply be repressed, rather than missing entirely. So while Anatoly did not feel guilty about his actions, he also killed according to a plan and did not relish extra spontaneous violence, the grand exception to this,

being the man who provoked him in the middle of the street. Ultimately, Anatoly blamed his phantom voices for most of his actions. He killed to fulfill his destiny and so claimed to feel empathy for the unnecessary deaths of those who stumbled upon his crimes, scenes while he was still present. Despite these later claims, Anatoly had no true limit to the people

he was willing to kill. He saw his mission from Satan as an indefinite game of cat and mouse between himself and the authorities. He relished watching them struggle to apprehend him as he narrowly slipped by time and time again. By the end of January, 1996, Anatoly had killed a total of 35 innocent people. What was more, the entire country was putting itself on voluntary lockdown, staying inside after dark and calling police at the slightest disturbance. It was the kind of fear Anatoly had long hoped to instill in a world that he believed had scorned him. Meanwhile, the police force was woefully underfunded and lacked the manpower necessary to protect the many small villages around Ukraine. Anatoly would need to need to be able to be able to be. Anatoly would need

to watch his back, but ultimately, the likelihood of him getting away with his crimes was extremely high. And after only two weeks, he longed to kill again. This time he resolved to go farther east to ensure he could find a remote village that was far away from any places he had previously hit. He traveled to the town of Fostiv in the Kievska-Oblast region and invaded the home of a woman named Marasina. Marasina was being visited by a man named Zagranichni that night. Zagranichni had arrived after Marasina put her two children to bed. He and Marasina sat at the dinner table and talked long into the night. Anatoly watched the house for some time before he got a good view of Zagranichny through the window. A few hours after midnight, Zagranichni

finally stood up from the table to leave Marosina to bed. He opened his mouth to spend. He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could get the words out, he suddenly collapsed to the floor. Anatoly had gotten the shot he was waiting for. Marusina screamed as Anatoly jumped through the window. She ran to protect her two children in the next room. Anatoly stopped her in the doorway and stabbed her twice. He killed the children and set the house on fire. On the way back to Yavarev, Anatoly reflected on his night's work. would never be completely satisfied. Anatoly felt pleased with himself for now.

He had earned a break, and the decision couldn't have come at a better time. When he got back home, he was confronted by his fiancé, Anna. Anna wanted Anatoly to spend more time with her children, so they could get to know their new stepfather better. Anatoly knew his relationship with Anna helped him avoid public suspicion, so he agreed. He wanted to maintain the relationship as long as possible.

especially with the police investigation ongoing. He stayed home with Anna and her children for three weeks. His wife to be was delighted, and so were her kids. But on February 19, 1996, Anatoly left again, insisting he had to make some extra money to pay for the wedding. He traveled to the town of Olavsk and targeted a family of four in an old wooden house. He burst through the window just before bedtime and shot the man of the house. along with his teenage son.

Then Anatoly grabbed a hammer from the counter and bludgeoned the boy's mother to death. As he attacked the mother, her teenage daughter jumped on Anatoly and tried to stop him. He threw her to the ground and demanded money from her. When the girl refused, Anatoly killed her with the hammer too. Just eight days later,

despite the increasing police presence in southern Ukraine, Anatoly broke into the home of the Bodnarcuk family. in the village of Molina. He shattered the downstairs window at night and stood at the foot of the stairs with his gun ready. Sergei Bodnarchuk came downstairs with an axe. He saw Anatoly on the stairs and charged, but not quickly enough.

Anatoly shot him, grabbed the axe and hid next to the bottom step. After a few minutes, Galena, Sergei's wife, came down to see what had happened. Anatoly struck her with the axe. He went upstairs to the children's bedroom and killed two young girls, aged seven and eight, also with the axe. Anatoly searched the house quickly, but found little. The family was poor, and the only trinket of any value was a gold chain around Galena's neck, a wedding present from Sergei.

Anatole was unnerved that Sergei had come down the stairs prepared with a weapon in hand. He thought Galena might have called the police while he waited for her at the foot of the stairs. He took the chain from Galena's neck and left in a hurry without burning the house. Back at home, Anatoly gave the gold chain to Anna as a present. He waited eagerly for the next news report of his crimes. He was giddy with anticipation to see what the police would do in the face of the continued killings. The police were at the ends of their ropes. Politicians and head investigators chastised younger detectives and officers on patrol in the victimized towns.

After the killings in Molina, the Ukrainian National Police authorized an even larger force, 2,000 investigators to root out the Terminator once and for all. The largest manhunt in Ukrainian history had officially begun. When we return, the police close in. Now, back to the story. By mid-February, 1996, Anatoly Ono Prienko had killed 48 people in San Francisco. small villages throughout Ukraine. The police were everywhere, questioning potential witnesses and tracking down leads.

The problem was there wasn't a lot to go on. In general, Anatoly didn't leave behind much evidence. Police knew he struck at night, in a random pattern, and always used the same double-barrel shotgun, but had little apart from that. The rising panic across Ukraine only added to the problem. People called the police at the slightest noises and gave false reports. of suspicious characters lurking at night. Local news stations ran stories on the Terminator every night,

and the fact that 29 people had been killed in two months was publicized widely. People put bars on their windows and treated strangers and even family members with suspicion. The situation was rapidly getting out of hand, and the police were forced to chase down dozens of false leads. The Ukrainian National Guard was called in to help keep the peace. Schools were shut down and soldiers joined police on nightly patrols. A 24-hour radio station was even set up to broadcast updates on the manhunt. It was like the entire country of Ukraine was on lockdown.

Anatoly stayed under the radar for a month after killing the Bodnarchuk family in February. He studied the patterns of the military patrols around his village and observed when and where the cars were commonly searched. By the middle of March 1996, he was ready to kill again. But a few days before he planned to strike, Anatoly turned on the news and was surprised to see that police had captured a suspect in the famous Terminator case. Police had followed the chip of an elderly woman in the town of Horodok. She had a history of untreated mental illness, but police were desperate for leads. The woman, a Mrs. Cherevko, claimed she had seen a suspicious man walking.

around the village at night. The man was a 26-year-old auto mechanic by the name of Yuri Mazola. Police entered Mazola's home without a warrant. They found a gun in his apartment. And when Mazola angrily protested that it was none of the police's business what he used the gun for, authorities became convinced Mazola was the man they had been searching for. They took Mazola to an investigative holding facility and questioned him. He denied committing any crimes and threatened the police with lawsuits.

Authorities were determined to get Mazola to confess. When he refused their questioning, they started to beat him. After two days, Mazola still refused to admit to the murders. Police tortured Mazola by depriving him of sleep and food. They burned him with an iron, broke his ribs, and even shocked him using a car battery. After the third day of torture, Mazola died. Police tried to cover up the cause of Mazola's death, but remained confident that he was the culprit

and couldn't imagine there would be backlash for killing a man responsible for the deaths of 48 innocents. Anatoly could have stopped his killing spree there and might have gotten away with it. Police had tortured and killed an innocent man, forcing him to take the blame for Anatoly. But Anatoly didn't want to stop. Like other killers, Anatoly was captivated by his own mystique.

Dr. Scott Bond notes, pervasive news media coverage of real-life serial killers transforms them into celebrity monsters. Dr. Jack Levin, a researcher at Northwestern University, adds, becoming a popular celebrity is an important part of the motivation that inspires serial killers to continue committing murder. Anatole was making the world. fear him, just as he always wanted, and voices still spoke to Anatoly. They told him that no matter what, he had to keep going. Anatoly waited only a few days after the death of Mazola to make his next move in March 1996. Since Mazola's capture, police patrols were still in operation, but in a reduced capacity compared to a couple of weeks prior. Anatoly again left Yavarib in the

morning and traveled to a small town several hours away. He took his time in selecting his next targets, aware that this crime would plunge the country back into fear and chaos. He wanted to make sure the police knew he was the killer, so that a copycat could not be blamed. Anatoly envisioned this latest killing as the ultimate way to mock the police. He had been lucky, it was true. No witnesses had ever managed to escape from him, and he had never been pulled over with his gun in his car, despite the ubiquitous police presence. But Anatoly had also never stopped planning. He felt he had been one step ahead of police for seven years since his first kill in 1989.

He wanted them to know that no matter how many officers they assigned to search for him, they would never catch him in the act. Anatoly eventually settled on a house occupied by the Novosad family of four. He burst through their window while the family was in. bed and shot the father when he came out of the bedroom to investigate the noise. He killed the man's wife next, followed by their two young children. The children were still sleeping in the next room when Anatoly came in. One of them was a three-month-old infant. Anatoly soaked the house in gasoline and lit it on fire, still committed to destroying as much

evidence as possible. He drove home that night and slept soundly next to Anna. The next morning, the press and the police were in a frenzy. Media publicized not just the latest murders, but reminded viewers of the death of Uri Mazzola days before. The Ukrainian police were under fire from all levels of government. Citizens called for the head of the police to resign and for the indictment of the officers involved in the arrest of Mazzola. Authorities reacted by restoring the 24-hour military patrols.

Weeks earlier, police had identified. the gun Anatoly used by analyzing the bullet holes in the walls of the burned houses. They now made the information public and encouraged people to call in if they knew of anyone owning a gun matching the description. Anatoly laid low and watched all of this unfold with glee. March turned to April, 1996, with police still desperately searching for any new clues. In early April, police got a call from a man in the small village of Yavarev. The man claimed that he had seen someone stowing a shotgun in a duffel bag while leaving an apartment building.

That someone was Anatoly Ono Prienko. But police proceeded with caution. After falsely accusing Mazola, they knew they couldn't be too aggressive when capturing a suspect. Investigators were also afraid of the suspect's potential reaction. Considering his history of systematic slaughter, they had good reason to fear the culprit would refuse to come quietly. Police questioned Anatoly's neighbors about him. They learned his fiancé had recently gone out of town for an Easter trip to visit her family. They also learned that Onoprienko was not likely to open the door to strangers. Investigators moved quickly and quietly. 12 officers

sealed the exits to Anatoly's apartment complex and blocked the surrounding roads. They waited until the evening when Anna was supposed to return home. They hoped Anatoly would assume Anna was at the door when they knocked and would open it without trouble. And sure enough, when they knocked, Anatoly opened the door calmly. Officers were surprised to see such a small, thin man in front of them. By now they had imagined the killer as some kind of demon. They forced the door open and swarmed inside. Anatoly lunged for a pistol on the kitchen counter,

but officers wrestled it away and held him down. The pistol matched the description of a gun stolen from, one of the crime scenes. Police turned the apartment upside down, searching for evidence of Anatoly's guilt. They didn't have to look hard. In the closet, there were articles of clothing and valuables taken from all of the crime scenes. Anatoly claimed he was keeping the items for an unidentified friend. While police continued to search, Anna Kazak returned home. Anna was confused and frightened by what she found. She insisted that Anatoly couldn't be a killer. He had been good to her and her children. She claimed he wasn't capable of hurting anyone.

But when police questioned Anna about the dates of Anatoli's business trips and the pile of guns in his duffel bag, she had no answer. All the while, detectives continued to bring out more stolen jewelry and weapons from the depths of Anatoly's closet. In the end, 122 items in the apartment were identified as being taken from crime scene. Anatoly's collection of trophies had been discovered. After the search, authorities brought Anatoly in for a long interrogation. After a full day of grueling questioning, Anatoly finally cracked. Convinced there was no way out of this current situation,

he admitted to committing all the murders, including the 13 he had committed in 1989. Anatoly wanted to take credit for every horrible thing he had ever done. As James Allen Fox, a professor of criminology, writes, serial killers like Anatoly seek to prove they deserve the superstar status to which they've been assigned. Anatoly's lust for notoriety led him to admit to murders he wasn't even suspected of. Anatoly put the blame for his murderous urges on the voices he heard and blamed his father for abandoning him as a young child.

He said that he had learned orphans were more likely to be criminals, and so he had embraced what he saw as inevitable. He targeted family homes because he wanted to punish the parents of happy families who experienced what he had missed out on. He claimed that he hadn't really wanted to kill any children, but couldn't bear the thought of turning them into orphans like himself. Anatoly was evaluated by a team of psychiatrists. After extensive questioning, they came to the conclusion that Anatoly committed the murders

for the thrill and sense of power they gave him. They felt he was only blaming the voices to escape punishment and questioned whether he had heard them at all. The team of psychologists judged him competent to stand trial. Anatoly didn't protest, but continued to insist his actions were the fault of the voices.

According to psychologist, Dr. Joni Johnston, serial killers are 16% more likely to plead insanity compared to other criminals, but are less likely to be successful. We don't know for sure whether Anatoly heard voices, but psychologists judged the murders to be too well-planned to have been committed by someone who was not in control of their actions. Anatoly went to trial in 1998.

The courtroom was thronged with people, determined to get a firsthand glance at the famous monster. In the end, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Many wanted him executed, but Ukraine had outlawed Captain. punishment the previous year. He was sent to a maximum security prison in Jotomer, Ukraine. In 2013, he died there when his heart failed at the age of 54. Anatoly Ono Prianco was one of Eastern Europe's deadliest serial killers. He killed 52 men,

women, and children, claiming 33 of his victims in a span of only three months. He instigated Ukraine's largest ever manhunt and plunged the entire country into pandemonium. The Terminator's evil remains unmatched. Thanks again for tuning in to serial killers. We'll be back Monday with a new episode. You can find more episodes of serial killers, as well as all of parcasts, other podcasts. On Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, CastBox, 2. Soon-in or your favorite podcast directory.

Several of you have asked how to help the show. And if you enjoy the show, the best way to help is to leave a five-star review. And don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Parcast. And Twitter at Parcast Network. We'll see you next time. Have a killer week. Cereal Killers was created by Max Cutler. It's a production of Cutler Media and is part of the Parcast Network.

It is produced by Max and Ron Cutler. Sound design by Paul Leveskind, with production assistance by Ron Shapiro and Paul Mahler. Additional production assistance by Carly Madden and Maggie Atmar. Cereal Killers is written by Terrell Wells and stars Greg Paulson and Vanessa Richardson. Do you want to hear something? Spooky. Some monster, it reminded me of Bigfoot. Monsters Among Us is a weekly podcast featuring true stories of the paranormal. One of the boys started to exhibit demonic possession.

Stories straight from the witnesses' mouths themselves. Something very snake-like lifted its head out of the water. Hosted by me, your guide, Derek Hayes. Somehow I lost eight whole hours. Listen now on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence.

I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bed, and there was a full of blood. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 is out now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.