Igor Suprunyuk, Viktor Sayenko, and Alexander Hanzha were all born in the early months of 1988. They came from largely stable backgrounds and attended Secondary School 96 in Dnipro, Ukraine.
Suprunyuk’s father was a ranking officer and flew for former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma. Viktor Sayenko’s father was a well-known lawyer. Hanzha’s father was a local prosecutor in Dnipro.
Unlike the majority of serial killers, the trio did not have any documented history of abuse. Their mothers were reportedly doting.
Viktor Sayenko and Alexander Hanzha became friends at a very young age. Igor Suprunyuk moved to the area and joined the duo in third grade.
The three were described as handsome and sociable at first. They had no trouble getting girls and made friends easily. These conditions seem so far removed from their eventual trajectory as a friend group.
Initially, the trio bonded over getting up to no good in the streets, but according to later testimony, they discovered they shared similar fears. These included a fear of heights and of being bullied. So the boys decided to work together to overcome their worst nightmares.
To cure a phobia of heights, the boys climbed onto the balcony of a 14th-floor apartment and hung on the railing for hours at a time. Suprunyuk and Sayenko then learned that Hanzha had a fear of blood. Their offer to assist is where things took a dark turn for the trio.
Suprunyuk suggested the best way to conquer his fear was to torture and kill animals. In 2003, when they were 15, the boys began capturing stray dogs. They would take them to remote wooded areas, hang the dogs from trees, and disembowel them.
The trio also took photographic evidence of their violent acts, and this was later used against them at their trial. In several of the photos, the boys could be seen drawing swastikas in blood and carrying out Nazi salutes.
They mimicked Hitler, placing sticks or toothbrushes across their upper lip to imitate his famous moustache. Neighbourhood cats also became a target. They would video themselves gutting, burning, and hanging puppies and kittens.
Two years later, in 2005, Suprunyuk beat up a local boy and stole his bike. He was known to be the more violent of the three and prone to losing control. He would later sell the bike to Sayenko. Both Suprunyuk and Sayenko were taken into custody, but they did not go to jail because of age restrictions.
Teachers recalled that Suprunyuk came from a wealthy family, so they mostly allowed him to do whatever he wanted because he was largely untouchable. Suprunyuk lagged academically, but was charismatic and disruptive in class.
He was also a very strong influence on Sayenko and Hanzha, who were mild- mannered, and quiet before they met him.
All three boys finished school in 2005. Hanzha was the one who did not have much money, like the other two boys. He went to culinary school, but did not finish because his father passed away. After that, Hanzha did all sorts of jobs, like working on construction sites, to support his family.
However, the company Hanzha was working for closed down in May 2007, leaving him jobless. After high school, Sayenko went to a school that taught about metals. He also worked as a security guard, but only part-time. Suprunyuk had no job, but he drove a taxi without a license.
He then got an idea and enlisted the help of his two friends, Sayenko and Hanzha, to rob passengers.
Though Hanzha did not take well to a life of crime. He participated in the first two robberies but declined to do so in the third.
The Murder of the 21
Both Suprunyuk and Sayenko escalated quickly in their violence following the departure of their friend Hanzha from the dynamic. Investigators later hypothesised that the killing of puppies and kittens was probably an internal test Suprunyuk had set for himself to see if he had what it took to kill a person.
Others say it was an extreme case of boredom, and that the boys decided to push their depravity to the limit. Suprunyuk’s girlfriend claimed the boys were very much into video games.
On one of the chat forums, Suprunyuk supposedly got in contact with a rich foreign website operator who egged them on and placed an order for 40 murder videos.
Regardless, Sayenko and Suprunyuk were fully invested in the next move to kill people in July 2007. Their first victim a 33-year-old woman, named Yakaterina Ilchenko.
Yakaterina was walking home after having tea at her friend’s home. She walked past the two men, and then she was attacked. Sayenko claimed they were out for a walk themselves, but Suprunyuk was carrying a hammer. As Yakaterina walked past him, Suprunyuk spun and struck the side of her head with his hammer.
It was only a single blow, but it killed the young woman. This first murder would be considered tame considering the ones that followed. Yakaterina’s body was discovered by her mother at 5.00 am, the following morning.
After killing the woman, the two were still not done. Within an hour, they. Killed Roman Tatarevich, a 35-year-old man. He was asleep on a bench not far from where the first crime happened. They hit Tatarevich’s head with heavy objects. This caused skull fractures and badly damaged his face.
Suprunyuk and Sayenko kept on killing people a few days later. On July 1, Evgeniya Grischenko, 15, and Nikolai Serchuk, 56, were found dead in Novomoskovsk. Both were beaten to death with hammers. The attackers mostly hit their faces.
Police noted neither was sexually abused. They did take their cellphones and other valuable things.
21- year-old Egor Nechvoloda had been discharged from the army and was heading home after a night out. Sayenko and Suprunyuk attacked and bludgeoned him with a hammer. His mother found the body near their apartment complex the following morning.
That night, Sayenko and Suprunyuk also killed Elena Shram. She was a 28-year-old night guard. Sayenko said Shram walked towards them on Kosiora Street. Suprunyuk then struck her multiple times with a hammer that he had been hiding under his clothes. She fell down without a fight.
Shram had been carrying a bag filled with clothes, which the two picked up. They used the clothes to clean the blood of the hammer, and then threw the bag out. Their last victim that night was Valentina Hanzha.
She was not a relation of their friend. 53-year-old Valentina was killed in her own home. She was a wife and a mother to three children. In the same fashion, they beat her face with a hammer.
The next day, Suprunyuk and Sayenko attacked two 14-year-olds, Andrei Sidyuk and Vadim Lyakov, from a nearby village. The difference is that this assault happened in broad daylight as the pair went fishing.
Sidyuk was hit and killed by blunt force trauma to the head. This was likely done with a hammer. Lyakhov, though, managed to escape the initial blows and ran into the woods. Angered by his escape, Suprunyuk allegedly screamed at Sayenko to get back in the car and run the boy down.
Lyakhov hid in the bushes until the two looking for him gave up. This was not the end of his problems, unfortunately. When Lyakhov got to the hospital, the police came and interrogated him, hitting him in hopes he would confess.
After determining he was innocent, Lyakhov helped the police make a sketch of the men who attacked them.
Suprunyuk and Sayenko continued on their spree and even recorded a video of their acts. On July 12, they ambushed a man named Sergei Yatzenko. He was a 48-year-old retiree with throat cancer.
Yatzenko was riding a motorcycle when Suprunyuk and Sayenko attacked him. They hit him repeatedly with a hammer and stabbed his eyes with a screwdriver. The teens filmed the entire act while laughing.
This became known as the ‘3 Guys 1 Hammer Video’ that went viral on the dark web. Yatzenko was found after four days. His body had evidence of mutilation even after being in the summer heat.
The duo went on to kill thirteen more people in a span of four days. Victims seemed to be chosen at random. They appeared to select according to vulnerability and opportunity. Many of the victims were mutilated and tortured. Suprunyuk and Sayenko would gouge out their eyes while they were still alive.
In one case of a pregnant woman, they cut the fetus out of her womb. No sexual assaults were ever recorded, even in the later victims. But they were robbed of all their valuables. These were pawned off to second-hand shops in the area, and therein lay the break the police needed.
Investigation and Arrest
During the final spree, Suprunyuk and Sayenko waylaid 45-year-old Natalia Marmachuk. She was driving a scooter through the woods in Diyovka. Both of them knocked her down, beat her to death and then drove off in her scooter. The act was witnessed by many locals, though, who tried to chase them.
Though two children, who were closer to the attack, gave a detailed description, which matched the sketches given by Lyakhov. A task force was immediately set up to track down the killers. This was led by Criminal Investigator Vasily Paskalov, based in Kyiv.
The investigation was also kept as secret as possible, with all information relating to the murders being kept within the task force. Though police were silent, people remained on high alert and completed their tasks by evening.
Sketches of the killers were carefully and selectively distributed to the local pawn shops. These shops identified many of the stolen items.
A week following the murder of Marmachuk, the two decided to sell some of their accumulated stolen possessions. Suprunyuk tried to sell a mobile phone that belonged to one of his victims. When he turned it on, the police zeroed in on the device’s location.
They found and arrested Sayenko and Suprunyuk while they were still trying to sell the phone. Police were also concurrently conducting a raid at Hanzha’s home, and found him trying to flush cell phones down the toilet.
A Staggering Amount of Evidence
At the trial, Ukrainian police presented 60 videos and photographs they seized as evidence after the boys were arrested. The police did not want these things shared with the public because they feared it would inspire others to become copycats.
The three were charged with 28 counts, including murder, armed robbery, and being cruel to animals. At first, all three confessed following their arrests, but Suprunyuk recanted his admission. He pleaded not guilty at trial.
Sayenko and Hanzha pleaded guilty to the crimes. Sayenko’s father, Igor, represented his son as part of the defence team.
He claimed police officers had beaten the admissions out of them. The prosecution rebutted by giving video footage evidence of the crimes. They also released the photographs of the boys in their earlier years, torturing animals.
In February 2009, Igor Suprunyuk and Viktor Sayenko were found guilty of premeditated murder. The courts sentenced the two to life in prison. Alexander Hanzha was given nine years in prison for his participation in the crimes.
Suprunyuk and Sayenko’s legal team filed an appeal, but the Supreme Court of Ukraine denied it in 2009.
Aftermath
The parents of Viktor Sayenko and Igor Suprunyuk became vocal figures following the sentence. They repeated their belief that their sons were innocent of the crimes. Suprunyuk’s father, Vladimir, stated that Igor was tortured to extract the confession.
He claimed police covered his son’s head and made him inhale cigarette smoke. Vladimir also spoke at a press conference, citing irregularities in the investigation.
On the other side, the families of the victims were left with deep frustration and grief. The leaked video showing the murder of Yatzenko became a source of significant distress.
Families argued for the right to remove this footage from the internet. Ekaterina Levchenko, the adviser to Ukraine’s minister of the interior, criticised the leak but admitted that controlling such footage on the internet was not possible.
Viktor Sayenko and Igor Suprunuk served in high-security facilities in the country. There were unconfirmed reports that, in September 2024, the two escaped amid the chaos of the war, but these have been debunked. Both men still have active life sentences.
Hanzha served nine years in prison before being released in 2019. He lives a normal life, with a wife and two children. Hanzha has spoken about his time with Sayenko and Suprunyuk, saying, “If I had known the atrocities that they were capable of committing, I would not have gone near them at gunpoint.”