RedHanded - Episode 212 – 3 Guys, 1 Hammer: The Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs

Episode Date: September 9, 2021

In July 2007, a blurry 8-minute long video shot on a mobile phone, titled “3 guys, 1 Hammer”, was uploaded to a shock video website. The video showed two men using a hammer and a screwdriver to brutally murder a terrified man. Once they finished, the two killers even posed next to the man's body doing a sieg heil; just another shot to add to their growing photo album of murder…See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah.

I'm Saruti. And welcome to a very snuggly, fluffy-sounding Red Handed because I've just got a new rug in my office. Oh, I still don't have a stool. If you're hearing rich, fluffy noises, it's because of this delicious rug that I can't wait to lie down on after we've done this. And if you hear pain and fear in my voice, it's because I'm standing. And also the pronunciations in this episode, my mouth can't do them. It's just like, no, no. Yeah. Our mouths have gone on strike, I'm afraid, this week.

Yes. My tongue is, it's just not capable of doing these gymnastics that are required. So forgive us in advance for what you're about to hear. We've tried very hard. We even got, and I know it's a Ukrainian case, but we only have a Russian correspondent. We got a Russian correspondent to voice note us how to say this. It made it worse, actually. Yeah, it did actually make it much worse. Sorry. So, maybe we can just edit her in saying it every time we say the name of the town. Maybe that's the solution. So, we'll see. Just like a hard cut her in saying it every time we say the name of the town. Maybe that's the solution.

So we'll see. Just like a hard cut to her saying it. We'll figure it out. So, formerly known as Dnipropetrovsk. Dnipro, as it's now known, is the fourth largest city in Ukraine, and it's home to almost a million people. However, despite the city's rich history, if you mention the name Dnipro, the one I said before, the word that follows immediately in most people's minds would be the word maniacs. And this is thanks to a series of brutal murders committed in the area by some teenage psychopaths over a three-week period in the summer of 2007. We're in the today times. Many of these killings were captured on film and they found their way online, often going viral on America's quote-unquote shock websites.

I had actually heard of this one. Yes. And then I had put it into the back of my mind cupboard where I put things that I don't want to think about. Absolutely. Speaking of shock websites, though, I remember back when we were at school, which would have been about this time, you know, I remember rotten.com, that kind of thing being just absolutely enormous. I never actually went on those websites. As weirdly morbid and gory as I am, I didn't. Did you? Or was it just the boys in the IT class? I didn't even know. I couldn't even name one because I didn't have boys at school. Oh, yeah, no. Rotten.com is the one that I remember the name of. I'm sure there were plenty

more. But it was like all the rage back then. I'm sure it still is now. We're just old and don't know. But yeah, it's probably much, much worse. So these videos that popped up on shock websites, probably just like Rotten.com, served as a sort of miserable motivation for other killers to try and take the video's top position in the online snuffverse. Most notably, they inspired notorious killer Luca Magnotta. And if that name sounds familiar to you, it's because he is, of course, the main protagonist? Central character? I don't know.

Subject? He's the guy. He's the guy in Don't Fuck With Cats. And this particular video inspired him to upload his grisly murders to the interwebs. And if you've seen Don't Fuck With Cats, you will know that a community of web sleuths attempted to take him down because of clutes in the videos. Clutes. Clutes. It's been a long morning. Yeah, it's just this really sad and horrible environment, isn't it, where they go

on these websites, they upload their own videos, and then the one that goes the most viral is like a trending page. It's like fucking YouTube. And then these other killers try and outdo each other by putting up more and more horrendous videos to get that infamy and notoriety. Like, what a terrifying place. And this isn't like the deep web or the dark web. This is just regular web that this was happening. And one video in particular, uploaded by the Dnipropetrovsk maniacs became a fan favourite and it was titled Three Guys, One Hammer. Now the name of this particular video, Nasty,

speaks for itself. It shows two boys beating an elderly man to death with pipes, hammers and a screwdriver before finally posing by his corpse with a celebratory sig-ile. Of course, of course they do. The main protagonists of this particular episode are three boys called Igor Suponyak, Viktor Sayenko and Alexander Hansa.

Now only two of these boys were in this particular video but all three will be very important. All three boys were just 19 years old when they were charged for their crime spree in 2007 but their sick behavior was apparent long before that and it's always easy to point the finger at the parents of such offenders but in this case it really is undeniable that if only their parents had been just a little bit more attentive, then at least 21 people wouldn't have had their lives taken in some of the most horrific ways imaginable. And isn't that just like, it's so shocking because I think people know of that video. But to think that these boys were 19. And yeah, spoilers, they kill at least 21 people.

Like that's unbelievable. It's very, like, Clockwork Orange, this whole story. That's what it feels like. So the three boys were born in 1988, so just a year older than me, and grew up together in Dnipro. Victor and Igor were born into wealthy families with very influential and very well-connected parents. In fact, Igor's father had spent several years as a private pilot of Ukraine's ex-president, Leonid Kuchma.

Both boys grew up wanting for nothing in a country where many at the time were surviving on the poverty line. Alexander, the third boy on the other hand, was raised by a hard-working single mother and grew up very modestly compared to his two friends. The three boys met at school and instantly became best friends, doing absolutely everything together all of the time. But as they got older, Victor and Igor began excluding the less privileged Alexander. And these two loved nothing more than causing a bit of trouble. It began with the two of them getting caught by police throwing rocks at passing trains. But despite the seriousness of the incident, the boys' parents didn't seem to care all that much. In fact, their parents were seemingly so busy

that they weren't really bothered about anything that the boys got up to. Growing up, Victor and Igor spent almost all of their time totally absorbed in the internet, something which was absolutely a luxury in Ukraine at the time. But soon enough, of course, mobile phones became commonplace in the pockets of every teenager in the country. And Victor and Igor, just like their mates, made sure to film and photograph everything they did. It's just that things they were doing were particularly troubling. Yeah, it's not water fights. No.

That seems to be the only thing I can remember filming. It's not the cinnamon challenge. No, oh God. No. Your worst nightmare. It's not the cinnamon challenge. Oh, God. No. Your worst nightmare. It actually is. Just cinnamon. Keep it the fuck away from me.

The devil's herb. So, Igor, Victor and Alexander attended the 96th secondary school in Dnipropetrovsk. Dnipropetrovsk. Dnipropetrovsk. I Feel like I'm having a very slow stroke? And at this school, they were not exactly the most popular kids. In fact, they were often bullied by older students. And following suit with the old cliche that hurt people, hurt people. The bully's victims, Victor and Igor, began tormenting anybody who was smaller than them.

Can I just say before we move on their high school was literally called the 96th Secondary School. Yeah, welcome to the Soviet Union, baby. Have you heard anything more fucking Soviet? Yeah, exactly. Welcome to the post-Soviet bloc, Christ. Well, actually, no, it would have been very much

it would have been the Soviet bloc, wouldn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very much. Oh my God, that is so miserable. Give it a fun name of a racist president. Why not? It's just 96th Secondary School. Well, you know, people do love to worship those racist presidents.

We just need to keep them off the school. They really do. I don't know what my school's name meant, actually. That's a good question. Fern Hill. What does that mean? No idea. It means really super excellent.

You definitely can do chemistry A-level here. All of that is a lie. But yeah, it beats 96th secondary school. I'll give it that. Okay, so in the 96th school, this bullying campaign began with Igor savagely beating up a younger child at school and stealing his bike,

which then he gifted to his best friend in the whole world, Victor. This turned into a police matter, but Igor's parents easily squashed the issue with their powerful connections. Something, which we'll go on to see, they would do time and again, regardless of what their son had done. Sliding down that slippery slope of delinquency, a few months later, Igor found himself lying in hospital following a fun little stint of glue sniffing, which is very retro. Do kids still do this? I don't know. I don't know, but I have a very, very clear memory of being at Catholic primary school and some man coming in to sing to us about not taking drugs. And he had a whole bit about sniffing glue. And it's entirely

possible that I have misremembered this because I have recently learned that my memory lies to me often but I have a very specific memory of him explaining that if you huff glue it will freeze your windpipe and you'll die which I did just look up on the internet and I think that might be false I think it might be false I don't think glue fumes you know suddenly release sub-zero gases into your throat. But, you know, the message is the same. Don't huff glue. The message is the same, yes.

I remember he sang songs about not taking drugs and then he handed us pamphlets in the shape of his face. And inside the pamphlets were more reasons why you shouldn't take drugs. All good anti-drug messaging. Yeah, I mean, never touch the stuff. No, I was never a glue sniffer. I did like to put, obviously, you know, we'll put glue all over our hands and peel that off. That was just good, clean fun. I thought you were just going to be like, obviously, everyone just whiffs a bit of Tipp-Ex now and again. I mean, I was about to say, though, I definitely was a bit of a Tippex, petrol and magic marker sniffer. Petrol?

Every time we'd be in the car and go to the petrol station, I would just open the door and just take deep breaths. Oh, that doesn't count. I thought you meant actually over a petrol can. I have done that back in the day. I'm not going to lie. Oh my God. I know. My friend's dad had like a ride-on lawnmower that needed petrol or diesel or something. And he'd keep a can of it in his shed

and we'd go in there and just sometimes sniff it. Also mothballs. I really enjoy the smell of mothballs. But you're not sniffing them to get high, are you? Is there... No. Moving on. I haven't done enough sniffing, clearly.

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It really is. And, you know, as the right-wing extremist connoisseur that I am find a better one not better as in like better policies just find one that's more interesting and has been done less exactly let's go a bit more hipster right-wing let's find the one that's not cool yet you know let's find a crazy man or crazy woman we can follow who no one knows about you know let's all stop beating the fucking Adolf Hitler drum, shall we? It's boring. Or what you could do, I was going to save this for under the duvet,

but I can't control myself. And I also already told you this yesterday, but I just want to say anyway. Another route you could take is writing a musical about Mao Zedong called Into the Mind of Mao. Yes. Which I recently found out a friend of mine did at high school in Los Angeles, California, because he didn't want to write an essay.

So instead... I love it. And he can still do, he can still perform it. There have been voice notes sent of him, just Into the Mind of Mal. I think we should throw some money at it, honestly. I would pay to see it. Should we commission it?

Let's do it. Red Handed Productions Limited present Into the Mind of Mal. honestly. I would pay to see it. Should we commission it? Let's do it. Red Handed Productions Limited present Into the Mound of Mao. Absolutely. I can't wait. Applications open for the role of Mao Zedong. So, you know, send him our way. So coming back to Igor

and his fascination with beating the dead horse that is Adolf Hitler, he would even regularly take selfies. With, of course, the Hitler moustache drawn on with marker pen, which is quite a fun way to sniff that magic marker. And be a racist at the same time. Maybe that's how he discovered his love of Hitler. Maybe. Maybe. This is what happens.

Accidental marker whiffing. Glue sniffing leads to magic marker sniffing, which leads to racism. It's a well-established path. And that's what's happening, clearly. We all know the facts. We all know why we're here. So yeah, he draws on a little Hitler moustache with a marker pen, and he also started graffitiing swastikas everywhere he could. And I've said it before, and I'll say it again. One of my favorite things is to look at failed attempts of swastika graffiti because the racists do find it quite hard to draw swastikas, as I have discovered. And it's very funny. It is very funny. It is also, just in case anyone needs reminding,

it has been a couple of years since we covered this, if you have the Slack app on your phone, take it out for a second, have a quick peruse, and you will find that it looks exactly like a cock swastika. That is a swastika made out of cocks. You heard it here first. Look at your phone. I'm not lying. I don't lie to you. I'm an honest person. Facts is facts. So one day, Alexander told Igor and Victor how he had an overwhelming fear of blood. And Igor suggested he tackle his phobia in the same way they overcame their fear of heights, by facing it head on. That seems like a weird way to end that sentence, but I'm going to follow it up.

It wasn't long before this blood fear discovery that Victor and Igor had overcome their fear of heights by hanging off a balcony of a 14th floor apartment until their vertigo disappeared. I feel sick. Yeah, I hate that. Hate it. No thanks.

Undoubtedly, this rather extreme solution also triggered their thirst for adrenaline rushes, something which would become progressively more extreme as time went on, as it tends to do. Yeah, and also, we've obviously given the game away at the start by talking about the fact that definitely at least Igor and most likely Victor are definitely psychopaths and we've done a lot of research into this for the development of the book etc and another project working on where just how underactive the brain of a psychopath is and how that stimulation needs to be through the roof in

order for them to get the same kind of you know response normal response same kind of stimulus or effect that the rest of us would from a normal event if you see what I mean so like just sitting around watching tv isn't going to do it for them they need to go hang off a 14th floor balcony to feel some sort of rush, to feel something. We're pretty sure that in any other circumstance, a psychotherapist might say that facing your fear head on could be a positive approach for some things and not others. It depends what you're afraid of, I suppose. But Igor, being the budding psychopath that he was, decided that the very best way for Alexander to tackle his phobia of blood was to butcher a live animal. Casual. And unfortunately, live animals were in plentiful supply because there were hordes

of stray dogs running around the neighbouring forests. Before we get into the sad bit, a cute thing. Have you seen the YouTube videos of the dogs in Russia that commute? What? Oh, my God. I am so happy you haven't seen this because I'm going to send it to you. It's so much fun. So there is like, I don't know if it's Vice or it's somebody, but there's like a whole little mini documentary about it.

But basically, in Russia, they've got like the suburbs, they've got the commuter train and then into like Moscow proper. And these dogs, they go into the suburbs to sleep because it's safer, it's quieter, all of this. And then they get on the commuter train with the commuters every day, go into Moscow like city center and spend all day scavenging, eating, doing whatever that they can get their jaws around. Going to work. The rat race. Yeah, the fucking rat race. And then they get back on the commuter train and go back to the suburbs to go to sleep at night. Isn't that cute? That is very cute.

That is very cute indeed. I'll leave a link to it. Because it's about to get really not fucking cute. It's about to get really fucking horrible. So prepare yourselves. Because before long, the boys were catching and massacring cats and dogs. And it became their absolute favorite thing to do. Together, they would spend their time torturing the defenseless creatures before hanging them from trees.

We don't do trigger warnings often on this show. Maybe don't listen to the next bit if you don't want to yell at me about animal abuse. Because they would hang these animals from trees and cut their stomachs open so that they would bleed out slowly. One day, they even fashioned a cross from a couple of planks of wood and crucified a fluffy white kitten on it, making sure to superglue its mouth shut so its wails wouldn't be heard by any passers-by. And of course, they made sure to film the entire thing on their phones,

and in this video, they can be heard cackling throughout. But as you might have already worked out, soon enough animal torture stopped satiating their sadistic appetite and they began to escalate. At age just 17 in 2005, all three of them sadistically beat two 15-year-old boys so badly that they were left with disfigured faces and broken bones. The boys' parents did what they could to press charges

against their son's attackers, but Igor's father pulled some strings and got the three of them off the hook. Have you heard of Pavlik Mozorov? In USSR times, there is this very, very famous story of Pavlik, and he's 13 years old, and he sees either his father or his uncle stealing from a grain store and he dobs them in and they die. They get killed and then the rest of his family chase him into the woods and kill him. And he is hailed as this like Russian hero because he did the right thing and he dobbed in his dad or his uncle to the state. And this was widely received until recently to be a true story. Now it is widely suspected by many that it

was propaganda, just a story just started and it spread. So it's interesting. Obviously, we're coming towards the tail end of the USSR and Ukraine. But it's interesting that our perception is like, oh, well, you know, it's probably always the parents or like the parents are like pulling strings and getting people off the hook and protecting their children, blah, blah, blah. When actually, in the USSR, the culture was actively the opposite. That is very interesting. You are welcome. So once they've got off the hook yet again, they managed to graduate high school,

and Victor went on to work as a security guard. Alexander hopped from job to job, but was mostly unemployed. As for Igor, who refused to enter the world of work, but to appease his dad, Igor started using his car as an unlicensed taxi. This was around the same time that Igor began exploring the darker side of the internet and became obsessed with watching Mexican cartel and terrorist execution videos. When he wasn't up all night watching snuff films, Igor would prowl the streets of

Dnipropetrovsk in his green Daewoo A Soviet car with Victor and Alexander, picking up unsuspecting people looking for a taxi. Once they had their victims in the car, the three boys would drive them to a remote area, beat them up and then rob them. Now you might be wondering why Igor and Victor would feel the need to rob people, seeing as they came from such affluent families. But the answer, as we've been alluding to so far in this episode, is simple. They loved the rush. And after two particularly brutal armed robberies in March of 2007,

Alexander was actually left a little bit shaken and decided to stop hanging out with Victor and Igor. He was terrified that the violent robberies were going to escalate to murder and he wasn't wrong. Just a few months later, Victor and Igor were cruising around in Igor's unlicensed taxi when they picked up a young couple. Like they'd done countless times before, they savagely beat the pair half to death and stole their valuables. The only difference this time was that they did it in broad daylight. It suddenly dawned on them that this time their victims had seen their faces and would easily be able to identify them to police.

So they decided that the couple had to die. These were their first murders, but by no means their last. They were just getting started. And I do wonder with Alexander, because obviously he checks out after these robberies get more and more brutal and he says it's because he's scared it will go to murder. But like someone who's willing to like beat somebody so sadistically and so savagely as they had been doing and torturing all the animals that he had been involved with, is it really because he was worried about the murder or is it because he was the only one who didn't have rich, influential parents? And did he think, they'll get away with this, but I won't

and I should stop hanging out with them? Maybe. It does make me think of Leopold and Loeb. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, affluenza. All day long. Yes, just this idea of they've already got everything they could need. They're so bored. And it's just like, what horrible fucked up shit can we do? And Igor is absolutely the ringleader.

And I think it'd be very rare to find like three boys who were all sadistic psychopaths who just happened to meet in the 96th secondary school or whatever. It is interesting why Alexander drops out after he had been involved with all the fucked up shit before. So on the evening of the 25th of June 2007, 33-year-old university teacher Yankaterina Echenko had a friend over for dinner at her house where she lived with her mother Natalia. After they'd eaten at around 10pm, Yankaterina offered to walk her friend home, which was just down the road. Natalia did the dishes and went to bed before Yinka Tarina returned. But the only thing is, Yinka Tarina never did return that evening. Natalia only found this out the following morning at about 4.30am,

when she walked by her daughter's bedroom and realised that her bed was empty and that it hadn't been slept in. She knew something wasn't right, and with alarm bells ringing in her head, Natalia stepped outside the apartment block, looking for Yekaterina, not even knowing where to look first. It didn't take long, however, for her to notice a group of elderly women huddled around something on the sidewalk. All of them had looks of terror on their faces.

Natalia approached, completely unaware that she was about to find her daughter. Only she would be dead, lying in a pool of blood with her face almost completely eviscerated. At the time, no one knew what had happened, and the events of the night before would only become clear following Igor and Victor's confessions at a much later date. So what we're about to tell you, people didn't find out for quite a while. But apparently what had happened is that Yenka Tarina had walked her friend back to her place, and as she made her way back along the path that she'd walked a thousand times before, she noticed two young men standing in the shadows under the tree line. She was just a hundred meters from her house, so she just kept walking. As she moved past them,

one of the young men suddenly turned around and swung a hammer into the side of Yinkaterina's head. And in an instant, she was dead. Her body hit the floor and the men continued to smash her face with the hammer again and again and again. They emptied Yekaterina's pockets and ran off into the darkness. Their brains and bodies screaming with adrenaline, the boys decided that they weren't finished for the night. Not far away from where they murdered Yekaterina, just moments before, they came across a homeless man called Roman Taterovich, sleeping on a park bench just across the road from the building of the prosecutor's office.

With an ear-to-ear grin, Igor proceeded to smash the snoring 45-year-old's head in with his favourite yellow-handled hammer. Do you have a favourite hammer? I don't have a single hammer. Do you not? Not a single one? No, which makes me feel very unprepared for life now. Well, you can have one of mine. Oh. But not my favourite one. Not your favourite, obviously. My favourite one belongs to Frank McHugh Senior. Frank is my stepdad and it's his dad. And Frank is, I think, one of seven or eight, nine million children. So it's very old. It's very, very old and still very effective. Love it. Sustainable. Sustainability.

Yes. Hand me down, Hannes. If I ever choose to hammer someone to death, it's definitely with Frank McHugh Sr.'s hammer. Oh, but is that a good idea? Because it will stand out. I mean, it's never a good idea to hammer someone to death. No, you're right. Let's caveat the next bit I'm about to say with it's never a good idea to hammer somebody to death what i would say is if i were going to hammer somebody to death which of course i wouldn't i would go buy a really fucking generic hammer paying cash from like a bnq that's

like a billion of them are sold all the fucking time i wouldn't use an antique hammer hannah you're gonna get caught well you know they do call me Antique Hannah Hammer. But if you had been doing it in this particular scenario, you probably wouldn't have got caught, because as we'll find out, the police, like, haven't got a fucking clue what's going on. But that's, you know, we'll save that for in a little bit. So two murders in, the boys still weren't done for the night.

And so Igor and Victor set off to find their third victim. And 58-year-old Victor Pertsev was unlucky enough to cross paths with the pair near his home. They jumped on him and began to bludgeon him with a hammer that by now was dripping in blood and brain matter from the night's previous victims. This time, however, their brutal attack was interrupted by a woman who heard Victor's screams, and she shouted at Igor and killer Victor to leave him alone. Somehow, Victor Pertsev survived the ordeal, but was left with serious facial disfigurements and brain damage. Less than a week later, on the 1st of July, Igor and Viktor travel to Novomoskov, a town about 30 kilometers from the place that they are from.

Dnipropetrovsk. You're doing sterling work today, honestly. I feel like I'm just doing a racist caricature of a Ukrainian accent. Dnipropetrovsk. Sorry, I'm trying, guys. I mean, it's hitting my ear right, so. Thank you. Oh, I'll take that. That's a big compliment. Hannah's got very good ears. You know what?

They're prodigies. So they travel to Novomorskoye. And here, the pair murdered two more people, called Yevgenia Grishenko and Nikolai Surchuk. Staying true to their usual MO, they obliterated their victims' faces using the yellow-handled hammer. There isn't too much information out there on the specifics of these murders or their victims,

but we do know that Grishenko was just 15 years old. And at this point, Igor and Victor had callously murdered six people in pretty much the exact same way. Yet, somehow, either by willful ignorance or just plain incompetence, the police hadn't connected the murders. And so the people of Dnipropetrovsk didn't know that a couple of hammer-wielding homicidal maniacs were on the loose. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant.

When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season

of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mom's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me. And it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time,

if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Obviously, we've encountered poor police work many times in the past. But we do have to say this is particularly bad. That, yes, absolutely, serial killer investigations are some of the hardest investigations because they're killing people that are unconnected to each other, unconnected to them. They could be using different ways of doing it. These guys are doing exactly the same way in a very like geographically contained area. But the police are still like, sorry, what? And I think this behavior is possibly a bit of a hangover from

the USSR. Because during the time of the Iron Curtain, so between 1922 and 1991, when Ukraine was a part of the USSR, the entire region was essentially under a complete media blackout. And in particular, the state censored any and all news reports about murders. This meant that most people in what is now Ukraine and Russia, for example, and other former Soviet bloc nations, had no idea about the serial killers running around in their midst. The Russians claimed that the secrecy about killers, particularly serial ones, was to avoid inciting mass fear. But their refusal to acknowledge the very real existence of Soviet serial killers

was also, I think, a cultural and propagandistic one. I don't think the Russian government gave a shit about people not being scared. No, it's kind of their whole bag. Yeah, it is, isn't it? It's almost like that's exactly what they love to do, to control people. So, yeah.

It's almost like it's their number one tool to control so many millions and millions of people. It's almost like it's their favourite yellow-handled hammer. Who knew? So yeah, I think that they like to say that serial killers were a Western problem, a problem born of capitalism. The evils of capitalism lead to, you know, moral decay, the downfall of society, the breakdown of the family,

all of this, and therefore people become serial killers. And this was like a way for them to say there was no way that happy-clappy communism could lead someone to become a serial killer. So it's just like this cultural superiority by ignoring the serial killers that were absolutely, definitely running around killing people in the USSR. Would you like a completely unrelated fact about the post-Soviet bloc? Yes, please. So, people from the Czech Republic and people from Slovakia speak entirely different languages, but they can understand each other totally.

And I know this because I know a couple, one who is Czech and one who is Slovak. They'll be in restaurants speaking their own languages and people are like, what are you doing? It sounds like you're speaking different languages. And they're like, we are, but we can understand because it used to be Czech as Slovakia. That is very interesting. I did not know that. I love it. I love it.

Back to this quickly, though, because yeah, basically what the... Shut up. Shut up, Anna. Stop derailing the episode. I couldn't think of a proper segue to get back to what I was saying. Sorry. No, I really, I'm really just a complete loose cannon today. I really am. No, I'm thoroughly enjoying it. I have not slept very well. So my segue game is low.

I'm not going to lie. So no segue. Let me just get back to what I was talking about. So when the USSR would be confronted with multiple murders, typically they would just put these kind of serial murders down to being the work of a terrorist group or a cult so very like you know like animal farm and it's like oh what's the pig that they ostracize oh shit fuck it's gone but you know what you know the whole tactic of like the windmill would fall down and then they'd be like oh that pig came in and destroyed it and

just like creating this external enemy that's basically basically what they were doing. I'm impressed. I didn't think anyone had actually read Animal Farm. Oh, I really like Animal Farm. But I've like read all those books. I also really love like 1984 and I love a bit of dystopia. Big fan. Though I can't remember the name of the pig. Fuck, someone is yelling at me. It's like a really cutesy name.

No, it's gone. It's gone. Never mind. Waffle? No. I'm going to Google it. Flower pot? Goggles?

Goggles the pig? That's what I'm going to call my pig. Sorrenti's dead. Oh, yeah. It's snowball. Snowball. Ah, goggles is better. Goggles the pig is going to welcome us into the 70s. Because in the 70s, the US were doing everything to label, identify and profile serial killers through the work of the FBI. The Soviets were still quite busy denying the existence of serial killers altogether. And this, of course, meant that the vast majority of the Soviet police force were also totally unaware of the phenomenon of serial killers, much less how to catch one.

Or in this case, three. Now, of course, you already know because you're supremely intelligent and you don't talk about goggles the pig. You know that the USSR fell in 1991. And this case takes place over 10 years later. But we can clearly see that the knock-on effect of the Soviet regime's censorship lived on. But let's leave behind global politics for just one second. Let's drag ourselves away and get back to our case, because the bodies are continuing to pile up,

and it was becoming harder and harder for the police to ignore the murders. Late on the 6th of July, three more people were bludgeoned to death. The first person to be killed that night was a young man named Igor Nekolod. He had recently been discharged from the army, and he was on his way home from a nightclub at around two o'clock in the morning. His mother discovered his body the following day. After smashing Nekolod's skull into small pieces, Victor and Igor continued their hunt

and set their sights on 28-year-old Yelena Shram, a night security guard walking home from her shift. Like Nekolod, Shram was less than five minutes from her home when she walked past two seemingly innocuous young men standing by the side of the road. Little did the single mother know that one of these men was concealing a hammer underneath his T-shirt, with his hand firmly gripping the yellow handle. Igor waited for Yelena to get within striking distance before pulling the hammer out

and burying the heavy steel head of the tool into the back of Yelena's skull. And then when she hit the floor, the two really got to work. According to the book Psycho.com by Aileen Ormsby, Yelena's mother later said there wasn't a part of her that was not destroyed. When we arrived at the morgue, we could not recognise her. Her family could only identify Jelena by her clothing, her hands and her hair. Their third and final victim that night was Valentina Hansa,

a mother of three and carer for her disabled husband. And you've likely already noticed that many of their victims have been women, children, homeless or generally more vulnerable members of society. And all of them were attacked by surprise and given no opportunity to defend themselves. This, of course, was planned. At a later date, Igor and Victor would admit that they specifically targeted those they perceived as weak and would actively avoid anybody larger or stronger than themselves.

They very much continue their whole bullying vibe from school. So the following day, after this particular rampage of attacks, 13-year-old Andrei Sidyuk and his friend 14-year-old Vadim Lyakov hopped on their bicycles with their fishing rods and made their way to the Samara River in a town about 30 minutes' drive away from Dnipropetrovsk. They set off around 3 a.m. before the sun rose, pedaling up the country road as they had together countless times before.

When they were about halfway to their favorite fishing spot, a green daewoo sped past them and pulled up on the side of the road a few hundred metres ahead. Two figures climbed out of the vehicle and menacingly stood there side by side, with their backs to the approaching boys. Fadim and Andre were so focused on all the fish they were going to catch that day that they didn't notice the strangeness of the situation and continued pedalling along the road. Then suddenly, the two strange men turned around and struck them with metal pipes. Andre caught a blow to the face and fell backwards to the ground as his bike rolled off ahead of him a few yards.

Somehow, thanks to his quick reactions, Vadim managed to avoid being hit and the terrified boy left his bike and his friend behind as he ran away as fast as he could. But Victor wasn't about to let him get away that easily. He jumped into his car and started driving after the 14-year-old boy. As Vadim ran, he could just about hear the sound of his friend's cries and the sound of the pipe crushing his skull over his own racing heartbeat and the sound of the engine behind him. Luckily Vadim had grown up in the area and he knew exactly where to hide. He ran off the side of the road and into a nearby wooded area and hid himself

behind a bushy tree doing everything he could to stay silent as he heard his attacker get out of the car and walk around searching for him. Fortunately for Vadim, after a few minutes of looking, Victor gave up and made his way back to Igor, who had by now crushed 13-year-old Andrei's skull. With some difficulty, Victor managed to pull Igor away from the boy's body and convince him that they needed to get away from the murder scene before they were him that they needed to get away from the murder scene before they were spotted. Badim eventually nervously made his way back to Andre, not knowing what he was going to find. To his shock, Andre was still alive, but only barely. He was trying

to speak but ended up just gurgling in his own blood. Badim did what he could to stop the bleeding before running in search of help. Andre was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. Just to make things worse, when the police arrived, they refused to listen to Vadim's story. Instead, they immediately treated him as their prime suspect. In fact, they didn't even let him phone his parents to let them know what happened. Instead, they actually arrested the traumatised 14-year-old and took him to the police station. Fadim pleaded with the officers,

giving them detailed descriptions of Andrei's murderers and explaining to them what had really taken place. But it all fell on deaf ears. Still wearing clothes stained with his dead friend's blood, Fadim was relentlessly interrogated. And according to his mother, he was even beaten. It was only when his mother threatened to take legal action against the officers that Vadim was allowed to go free.

It took some time, but after a few weeks, the police finally accepted Vadim's version of events and began connecting the dots between all the other similar cases that had taken place in the district over the previous few weeks. And using Vadim's description of the killers and their vehicle, the police called in the help of detectives from the capital, Kiev. But still, the police decided that it would be best to keep the fact that they had a couple of serial killers, or I guess maybe we should say spree killers because they do, like, kill in quick succession,

which is obviously the difference between a spree killer and a serial killer. There isn't as much of a cooling-off period. But whatever they were, the police decided that it would be best to still keep the fact of these two people running around with a hammer a secret. However, by now, with so many killings having taken place, the people of Dina Propetrosk knew that something was going on, and they were gripped with fear. As for Igor and Victor,

they were left a little shaken that they had allowed Vadim to escape, and so they decided it would be wise to lay low for a bit. But being insatiable spree killers, they were unable to quell their homicidal urges for longer than a week, and soon they were back to prowling the streets at night looking for more victims. It was on the 12th of July 2007 that the pair were parked up on the side of a dark, quiet, tree-lined street. They stood behind the car, having made sure to place their phones on the roof of the vehicle, ready to capture their murderous exploits on camera. They waited patiently, scouting out potential victims from afar,

using a pair of binoculars, hoping for an easy victim. Suddenly, Victor spotted their target. A 48-year-old man, Sergei Yatsenko. And he was headed right towards them on a motorcycle. Sergei had already had two brushes with death. In 1990, he'd had a near-fatal crash on his tractor, which ended up with him pinned underneath and drowning at the bottom of a river. But miraculously, he was resuscitated and brought back to life. He went on to become a devoted and hard-working family man with two sons and a grandson who he loved dearly. But life wasn't done playing Sergei a bad hand, and he developed a cancerous tumour in his throat, which required him to undergo an

extremely dangerous surgery. But, as fate would have it, Sergei survived once again. Now still recovering from the operation, Sergei could barely speak. His voice was a mere whisper, but it didn't stop him caring for his disabled mother, his wife, and their four rescue dogs. He'd never been one to sit around feeling sorry for himself, and Sergei made sure to keep busy by accepting any job he could find, whether it was fixing a car or making deliveries on his motorcycle. And that night, Sergei told his wife that he was just popping out to fuel his bike up

and pay his grandson a little visit. Apparently, something happened halfway along the road. But exactly what happened, we don't know. All we do know is that Sergei left his motorbike at the side of the road and hopped onto a bicycle that he had with him. A bike on a bike. Double bike. Double bikes. The double bico. Double bico. Slowly, Sergei pedalled towards the two maniacs who had been watching him the entire time through their binoculars.

Igor was almost shaking with excitement with his yellow-handled hammer gripped firmly in one hand. At the last minute, Victor decided to pick up his phone and film what was about to unfold. Daydreaming about his giggling baby grandson, Sergei peddled past the green daewoo, when suddenly, a hammer smashed into his face, sending the unsuspecting man straight to the floor. Sergei lay there for a few moments,

choking on his own blood, as he listened to his two attackers laughing maniacally at his pain. As Victor blinded Sergei the entire time with the flash from his recording mobile phone, Igor brought the hammer down onto Sergei's face once again. This was when Victor grabbed a screwdriver and gleefully plunged it into Sergei's eyeball. again. This was when Victor grabbed a screwdriver and gleefully plunged it into Sergei's eyeball. Victor then began to repeatedly stab Sergei in his stomach, making sure to keep the dying man in shot of his phone's camera. All the while, Igor continuously slammed his hammer into Sergei's face, of which there wasn't much left at that point. The pair then dragged Sergei off the road and into the woods, where they watched on, and of course filmed on their phone, as Sergei somehow

survived for eight whole minutes. When they were sure he was finally dead, Igor looked at him and said, what a fucking day for you, huh? Igor and Victor then washed their weapons, faces and hair before throwing their tools into the trunk of their car. They were about to leave when Igor suggested that it would be a good idea to take a selfie with Sergei's mutilated corpse. So they put the phone camera on self-timer and posed with Sergei, doing, of course, the sea Kyleyle. When Sergei didn't come home that night, and his wife Lyudmila couldn't get through to him on his phone, she knew something

was terribly wrong. Just two days later, Igor and Victor killed yet again. This time, it was a 45-year-old woman on a moped called Natalia Mamchuruk. The pair were becoming increasingly callous with their murders. When they knocked Natalia off her moped, they dragged her into some bushes and crushed her skull. They didn't even care that there were numerous witnesses around. They're definitely devolving at this point because they go from doing the attacks at night to doing them in more city centres in daylight

and doing it in front of witnesses, like completely devolving. And I also wonder if it's an element of the other things weren't giving them the thrill anymore, like doing it on a quiet side road at night. There wasn't the thrill of maybe doing it where there were witnesses, where people could see them. And maybe the terror of those people was also giving them a bit of a kick? Yeah, totally. And once the people watching had got over the shock of what they'd just seen, they began to chase Igor and Victor, but unfortunately, the two men managed to outrun them.

When the witnesses gave descriptions of Natalia's killers to the police, the officers realised the details matched 14-year-old Vadim's report exactly. And almost immediately, the whole vibe of the area changed. Fear took hold. Parents stopped allowing their children to play in the streets and people stopped going to restaurants and nightclubs in the evenings. But the strangest thing for the locals was that even though they knew that there were two killers at large,

they still didn't see a single news story or a single police announcement about the murders. From the 14th to the 16th of July, four more bodies turned up in Dnipropetrovsk and all of them had their faces destroyed beyond recognition. But still the police did nothing and still there was barely any coverage of it in the news. And again, this is where we see that kind of, what were you talking about,

that hangover of the Soviet time of like the media censorship and the police not talking about it. It's baffling, I think, to us here, the idea that this many people would get their faces destroyed and murdered with a fucking hammer and that the media wouldn't be interested in covering it. Like that would be all that we wanted to talk about if it was happening here true but there have been many cases where it has been a complete detriment to the investigation also of course no absolutely there's been loads of cases

where like we've sat in these very boxes and said that they should have kept it all out of the press and i suppose there's two arguments isn't there because like if you aren't publicizing they're not going to know that you're onto them so they're going to kill more people on the one hand, but on the other hand, become more careless, maybe easier to catch than if they disappear. Oh, absolutely. And it's like whether it helps the police investigation or not is a fundamental issue.

I'm just shocked that the media aren't interested in doing it. But maybe they are being controlled by the police to stop them being able to report on it. But yeah, by this point, everyone knew what was happening, but still the police seemingly did nothing. And so Igor and Victor went on to kill 12 more people after this, each in the exact same manner. They eviscerated their victims' faces with blunt weapons,

sometimes hammers, sometimes pipes, and sometimes steel crowbars. And the brutality of their kills just kept getting worse. One of their victims was even a pregnant woman, who had a foetus ripped from her womb by the pair. After this, armed only with two fairly accurate artist's sketches and a list of stolen items that the killers had distributed to porn shops, the police finally decided to step up their investigation. Now, you'll be unsurprised to hear that the Ukrainian police make a lot of claims about how the pair were eventually caught. But due to the secretive nature of the police in Ukraine and inconsistencies in media reports, we just can't know for sure. But the official story is that on the 23rd of July 2007, the pair had attempted to pawn one of their victim's phones. And apparently, the second the

store owner turned the phone on, the police traced the signal to the shop and arrested the two young killers. Alexander Hanser was also arrested later that same day, and thorough searches of the boys' homes were conducted immediately. Before Alexander was arrested, however, it is reported that he flushed a bunch of stolen jewellery and phones down the toilet. But it was no good. Toilets never work. The items were later recovered. On the other hand, Igor's parents stopped the police from coming inside their house for a full 45 minutes and it's suspected that during this time they attempted to dispose of evidence from their son's room as well.

But they didn't do a particularly good job of getting rid of all of the evidence because reports claim that there wasn't a single item of clothing from Victor or Igor's wardrobe that wasn't bloodstained. They also found the yellow-handled hammer, stolen jewellery, computer storage devices with photos and videos of the murders, and even newspaper clippings of their crimes that Igor had collected. Fuck's sake, imagine being like an absolute, just like murdering, spree-killing maniac, but you still have time to do like a fucking scrapbook. What? I never thought about it like you still have time to do, like, a fucking scrapbook. What?

I never thought about it like that. No time to wash my clothes, but time to do a bit of scrapbooking. Pass me the Pritt stick. I need to sniff it and then glue it. Oh, no, Pritt stick's a waste of time. Don't sniff that. Do you remember how copy decks used to smell like fish?

Oh, my God. At my dance school, we used to put on false eyelashes with copy decks. Yeah. Stop. Yeah. Oh, my God. decks used to smile like fish oh my god at my dance school we used to put on false eyelashes with copy decks yeah stop yeah oh my god that's horrendous i mean it worked did i ever tell you about the time that my brother super glued his eyes shut no please do while we're on the topic of uh eyes and glue this is the perfect moment for this little anecdote. And I got the blame. I got the blame for this. That is like a perfect summation of growing up in the Barla household for Saruti. Anyway, we're not here to listen to my trauma. Basically, I bought a little tube of superglue to fix like a heel on my shoe. Ever cheap,

ever sustainable, fix the heel with superglue, not buying new shoes. And I just left it out on the table. And my brother, I think he must have been about 10 or 12 at this point, picked up a pen. And why? Why would you do this? Stabbed the superglue like tube and it sprayed like a bunch of fucking glue up into his face. And thankfully, he shut his eye at the exact right moment. But it super glued his eye shut from the outside. Oh, my God. I know.

I know. I know. And then, obviously, if he had had his eye open and it had gone into his eyeball, he would have lost his eye. He'd, like, have a fucking glass eye now. Thankfully, he didn't. But, like, obviously, my parents were... Well, I say obviously. For some reason, my parents were very annoyed with me that I had bought super glue.

Yeah, we had to take him to A&E, and they basically were like, yeah, this is going to be really tricky. And, like, we don't actually know if the damage has been done to his eye or not until we can open it. Basically, I had to use a bunch of, like, chemicals that they gave us to just get rid of the superglue off, like, the thinnest skin on your body.

Ooh, I know. I know. It's bad. It's bad. He's fine now. Can confirm. I see him most days. He's fine. Right. So, the newspaper clippings are not the only thing that they found. Not only did they find the newspaper clippings are not the only thing that they found. Not only did they find the newspaper clippings, they found the bloody clothes. And they also found, just to round it off, a copy of Mein Kampf. Of course they did. No one has any imagination. This is so embarrassing.

Into the mind of man. Now, it didn't take long for the three young men to confess everything to the police. But it is interesting and worth noting that press photographs show that Alexander was the only one of the three who had visible signs of bruises to his face following the police interrogation. I think it's probably not a stretch to say that the only reason he's got a bruised face is because he was the only one from a poor family who wasn't going to sue the fuck out of the police department. So when police asked Victor why he had killed, he responded, Igor. Igor liked to kill.

When police asked Igor what he felt during the murders, he responded, what do you feel when you cut a sausage? Ah. Yeah. And then when they asked Victor why they filmed the killings, he said, to remember. Victor and Igor both confessed to 19 murders that they had committed in the space of a month, but eventually all three of them were charged with 21 murders, eight attempted murders, slashed armed robberies,

and one count of animal cruelty. Alexander pleaded with police. He told them that he'd stopped hanging out with Igor and Victor ages ago, after March of 2007. But he did confess that he'd been involved in two armed robberies. Police also arrested a fourth person, one of Igor's close childhood friends called Daniel Kozlov. Igor's neighbours told police that they had witnessed him on numerous occasions getting into Igor's Green Daewoo late at night, accompanied by Victor. When questioned, he told police that Igor and Victor had told him they'd murdered a couple back in June after a robbery, and even showed him photos and videos of the killing. Danil claimed that they

had tried to get him to join in on their killing sprees, but that he had refused. Hammering people to death, just say no. Just say no. It's that simple. So in exchange for this information, police provided Danil with immunity and he was never charged with a single thing, although many people suspect that he was involved in at least one murder and that's the problem with this case. Alexandra and Daniel say you know that they weren't involved at all and it was just Victor and Igor but like we just don't know. There is so much like misreporting, no reporting and false information about this case that we really only have the official story, the quote-unquote official story, to go with. So we just don't know. It's also worth noting that Danil was also from a rather powerful family in

Ukraine. So is this why he's given quite an easy ride and given a little plea deal to escape? Who knows? According to the book Psycho.com, which is one of the few books that talks about this case in any sort of depth, there have been reports that Daniel either killed himself shortly after testifying against his friends in court or that he was sent far, far away by his parents in order not to sully the family name any further. And just the fact that this is a case that happened in 2007 and we don't even know what happened to Daniel shows you how fucking secretive everything is. During the trial, the parents of the three young men defended them relentlessly. Alexander ended up only being charged with two counts of robbery

and explained that the only reason he had got some of the murder victim's possessions was because Igor and Victor had gifted them to him. What do you think? What's the verdict on Alexander here? Is that it? Just a Marge Simpson? Yeah. I'm just like, why? If he stopped hanging out with these guys and he knew what they were up to, why would he take gifts off them? And why would they give it to him? They're not like kindly guys. And he stopped hanging out with them. They'd be like, fuck you. I don't know. I think he's involved. Yeah, I'm going'd be like, fuck you. I don't know. I think he's involved.

Yeah, I'm going to marge him as well. I don't know. It doesn't make sense. And his mother doesn't tend to agree with us as usual. She said he's a kind boy. He couldn't hurt a cat, let alone a person. Except he definitely did. Except those animals that he definitely did hurt. As for Igor and Victor, many people were terrified that the powerful parents would simply be able to pull some strings

and pay the right people to get their sons off the hook. And under a slightly different state of affairs, this certainly would have been how it went down. But because of the plethora of photos and videos taken by the psychopaths themselves, documenting every heinous act that they committed, it made it absolutely impossible for their families to use their influence to free them.

Hoisted by their own petard, there. Both Igor and Victor's faces were clearly visible in the videos because they are fucking stupid. And also, of course course not to mention their voices can be heard and they can be heard laughing but this still didn't stop their parents insisting that the videos had been edited in with special effects it's a deep fake it's a 2007 deep fake video series of deep fake videos i'll fucking give it a rest and of course these claims were quickly shut down by a special

effects expert who pointed out that such editing would have required a Hollywood special effects team an entire year to make this series of videos. And among the many disturbing photos of the two posing next to the corpses of their victims were also photos of the two boys sticking their middle fingers up at the gravestones of their victims. Apparently, it wasn't enough for Igor and Victor to kill. They had even attended multiple funerals of their victims to taunt them even after death. And one of the photos, in true Hitler-esque form, had the words, the weak must die, the strongest will win, sprawled across it. The courtroom, which was filled with both the victims and the perpetrators' families, were played the disgusting snuff films

the pair had made. Notably, Igor's mother remained stone-faced throughout the entire process, and even told one of the grieving mothers of her son's victims, This is unbelievable. She said, I wonder where he gets it from. I mean, she sounds like such a warm mother, a warm, nurturing mother. One of the most challenging things for everybody, not just the police, was to try and figure out what exactly the fuck the pair's motivations had been in this spree killing.

The police had quickly dismissed the notions that the killings were all simply violent robberies. And it was when somebody with access to court records leaked eight minutes of footage from the merciless killing of Sergey online that one of Igor's former classmates came forward with some information. She told police that she remembered once overhearing Igor and Victor talking about how they wanted to make 40 snuff films to sell to some foreign millionaire. I just recently watched 8mm for the first time.

Have you seen it? I don't know what it is, but I really hope it's not a snuff film. No, it's not a snuff film. It's a Nicolas Cage film about a snuff film. Oh, a snuff within a snuff. Fantastic. Double snuff. Tandem snuff.

Maybe I need to re-watch it. I was very tired when I watched it. It's fine. But basically, it's just this idea, like, how rare snuff films actually are are because you need a lot of money to commission them, blah, blah, blah. And these guys, well, maybe they just don't want to work because, you know, Igor is definitely a psychopath. He didn't want to get a job. He just thought, I'll drive my car around like an unlicensed taxi. But maybe an easy way for me to get rich quick and appease my parents is to make 40 snuff films and sell them to millionaire perverts. Possibly.

So the police and a number of journalists attempted to follow this lead, but got nowhere. Meanwhile, the video of the murder of Sergei titled Three Guys, One Hammer had gone viral online, racking up millions of views. Without much of a leg to stand on, Igor and Victor attempted to plead insanity, but a psychiatrist's evaluation reported that they were fit and sane enough to stand trial.

You know how there's only five photographers and the rest are perverts? Yes, I remember. Do you think there's only five millionaires and the rest are perverts? I think they're all perverts. It's a prerequisite. You have to just keep your bank account at 999999. To avoid being a pervert. Yeah, as soon as it tips over into that million.

Pervotown. I mean, I welcome it one day. One day. One day we shall live to be perverts. When it was Victor's turn to take the stand, he turned on Igor. At the behest of his father, he claimed that he was

a victim of a kind of Stockholm syndrome and was terrified Igor would kill him if he refused to take part in the killings. Neither the judge nor the jury were buying any of his shit. And when Igor was on the stand, he simply remained silent, smirking now and then while his videos were played on a TV. Finally, the court concluded that the pair had killed simply to get their own sick thrills and for nothing more. On 11 February 2009, Igor Soprnyuk and Viktor Sayenko were found guilty on all charges of animal cruelty, capital murder and robbery.

They were both handed life sentences. And of course, their families appealed. But thankfully, the Supreme Court upheld their sentences. As for Alexander, he was found guilty of robbery and given nine years in jail. And it seems like he accepted his fate. Reports from Dnipro State say that he was released in 2016 and is now 31 years old and married with two children. The only information about how Igor and Victor are doing now were statements given by

their mothers, who said that their sons are being treated well in prison. Igor apparently also told reporters that he planned on setting up a website based on the case. And the horror didn't end there because sadly these murders went on to inspire two copycat killers in 2011. They were 19-year-old Artyom Anufreef and 20-year-old Nikita Lipkin, now known as the Academy Maniacs. They murdered six people using a mallet and a knife. They were caught and arrested after their uncle discovered a video of them killing a woman on his video camera. It's reported they committed the murders after reading about Igor and Victor's case online.

In 2013, Artyom was sentenced to life in prison and Nikita was given 24 years. So maybe there is a reason to keep out the press. Yeah, because the legacy lives on. But then, you know, these guys are bypassing the press, going straight to rotten.com, Ukrainian rotten.com or whatever they're using. So yeah, this case, I don't think it's that well known. I think a lot of people have heard of the video Three Guys, One Hammer. I think that was like a super famous video. I agree. I especially think because they do talk about it in Don't Fuck With

Cats. It's very connected to the Luca Magnnotta case, which is obviously very famous. So I think people are aware of that video, but not of this case. So hopefully you've learned something new here. And the kind of devastating legacy it left behind because of all the copycat killers it inspired, which is horrific. Murder meets fucking Big Brother. There you go. That's what this is. Murder meets two girls, one cup times teenagers times the 2000s times post-Soviet bloc equals what you just listened to. Plus the Great

British Break-Off because it's a competition. It's all in there. It's all smashed together in a horrible fucking murder pie made of hammers. I don't know. I am tired. And that was very emotionally draining to try and remember how to say that fucking word so many times I'm glad we'll never have to do it again there you go guys that is the case of the town we don't want to say is maniacs hope you enjoyed it if that's the right word whether you did or you didn't please have a think about purchasing the book and if there are any live show tickets left I don't know by this point if there are but if there are head on over to the links in the episode description and all over social media and be sure to grab yourself some. And if you would like to become a patron to help support the show, but also get your hands, eyes, ears, other orifices on a shit ton of extra delicious red-handed content, you can do so now. We will have Under the Duvet immediately after this

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Come on over to Patreon for more content. Bye. Bye. We do. So yeah, we'll be back next week. Come on over to Patreon for more content. Bye! Bye! You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years.

I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness. And inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes.

And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today.