Episode 656: The Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs Part I - Serial Spree

On the left. Why? Put your glare.

That's one of the cannibalism started.

Let's go.

“Alright, well, it's time for you all to come down with me and to buy one.”

Oh, whatever. Yeah. We've had too much nuance around here. We've had too much political awareness, too much growth. Yeah, yeah.

Too much context. Now it's time to take it all the way back. We're going to regress. That's right. Welcome.

It's the year 2010. Ooh. No cares at all. No cares at all. What?

A hernia. Yes. Pretty bad breakup that year.

That was rough, but besides that, it was utterly perfect.

It ended up in an apartment with two holes in the ceiling and black malls. Didn't even have a kitchen. That was a really rough year. But the porthole of the internet. Oh, it did look out in a darker world.

Yes indeed it did.

“And that's why we need to set the tone today.”

Rob with my true crime music. Sometimes boys will be boys. But some other times. Boys. They be maniacs.

No, yeah, man. Now the term maniac is thrown around pretty loosely these days. When we think of a maniac over here in the United States of America, it brings up the image of a person driving about five miles an hour faster than us. On the freeway.

Fuck the maniacs. Horal out, man. On the commercial, absolutely. The cutting prices on mattresses so carelessly. That you as a customer get worried about their bottom line.

But not crazy. Crazy Eddie. But seems overall you'll Eastern Europe. It means something else entirely. maniacs aren't funny in Eastern Europe.

Mm-hmm. They murdered children with construction tools. No humor here. So are these the screwy screwdriver boys? Yeah baby.

Welcome to last podcast on the left. Or were you going to take it? Welcome to last podcast on the left. My name is Henry Zipraowski. I'm your narrator here today.

“And I'm sitting here with the comedic mastermind Marcus Plus.”

Yeah, that's what I'm known for. My comedy. I'm excited because I've teed up Marcus to play the character. Sure. Yes.

I've been working on my Russian accent or Ukrainian accent as it were. They're pretty much. They're very, very similar. Cannot hear that. I mean, it's like the difference between like a Georgia accent and the North Carolina accent.

We can maybe tell the difference. But not over there. I would imagine a Ukrainian would not. I'm Ukrainian. I don't even know what we sound like.

You sound like this. Oh, from what I can tell. I'm real hungry. My dinner. Now, this is my attempt.

I completely wrote this script. This is my attempt for Henry Zipraowski to tell the terrible tale of the Denipropotrovsk maniacs. Oh, very nice. I've been practicing it in the bathroom.

Otherwise, no one has the hammer maniacs for our less Ukrainian and Clyde. Oh, that's not the wretched wrenches. No, no, no. That's the softball team.

The vicious faces. No, again. That's the lady soccer team. Now, name for the location of the majority of the crimes. Denipropotrovsk is an industrial city in central Ukraine.

In 2016, it was renamed a Deniprop, which is great for me. You did it, bro. Yes, because it was uncommunisted because it was originally named after a Russian soldier. So then they took all, like, all the Soviet stuff out. Yeah, it happens a lot in this area of the world.

Stalin, Grad, Lenin, Grad, et cetera, et cetera. Make a short, make a step. Now, 2007. Two teenage bullets.

Sometimes with the help of a third, go in a month long,

alleging spree ending in 21 victims. What brought this case to international attention was due to the boys' propensity to pictorialize their crimes on a cell phone. The videos of some such crimes were shown in court, and not intended for release.

But one piece of evidentiary video would get leaked to the internet. No one knows how. The uploader named it three guys, one hammer, and it depicted two thick-browed eastern European youths, giggling as they beat a man to death with a hammer,

and pulled his eyeballs out with the screwdriver. Oh, so they did you a screwdriver? Yeah, they got one in there. Yeah, and it's more popping them out than pulling them. Well, I guess it.

I'm the author here. Philips. I think it's whatever they get. People shared it all over the world. Fueled by the same morbid curiosity that birthed it.

Still, somehow this one video would go on to inspire a generation of edge lords on the internet,

generate several copycat crimes, and eventually be used by Vladimir Putin to validate his current invasion of Ukraine. Yeah, it is. I mean, this case is surprisingly central to the current world events. It's really weird when once I pop the hood on it,

you could explain a bit of it. It's it's bit complicated. But it's one of those where this was where when we see the term now as Americans that are maybe not up on the news, this idea of Putin saying we're going to denotsify Ukraine. This is one of the examples to use as some of the run-a-muck youth that just destroy the cities of Kiev and other such places.

I thought we weren't going to learn anything today. I'm sliding right in there. He got the history bug many years ago. He cannot get rid of it. Actually, I'm on a series of pills that keep Natalie from getting it. Now, this story has fascinated me. Since I first saw stills from three guys, one hammer is a more evil young man.

I'm certain I'm not the only one of you who saw as much of this video as I could handle as a young, morbid person. How many of us dared each other to look at an image that will forever be implacent in your mind? We didn't need to go to war, not in 2009. All I needed was my PC to see a man's hand turn just spaghettios by an industrial shredder. What was the image that comes up for first for you guys?

For me, it is a rotten dot com image.

“Do you remember when were they cut the snake open and there was the dead guy inside?”

Yes, that's the one for me. And that and also a guy getting his testicles and penis shoved into his mouth. Hey, something's got to be done with him. Eddie?

Well, I always liked the, I liked a lot of faces of death and traces of death.

Yeah, as a kid. And I remember faces, I don't remember the H.E. TV spaces of death. Amazing show. I liked, I think there was the one where the guy parachuted into the alligator pit that almost always cool. That's fun.

And then there was, you know, wrote a sketch based on that, didn't you? Yeah. Of course, we gave Michael. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. That's right. Yeah. And what was the other one that I always did? Oh, there's like the guys jumping off the building.

There was the people cutting open the guys. There was a lot of it that just haunted me. And then I stopped at all.

Like I didn't even enjoy rotten dot com because I was already out at a very young age.

Because I killed my eyes.

“Honestly, I wonder why more people weren't like us because I know I went deep into this.”

I interviewed three guys when hammered later on in life. I don't even know this existed. This was one of those when we were hyper online at a certain time period. From 2008 when this came out to 2010, when the formations of what made last podcast and a lot of jumped inside of our brains, this is by, this is a patch on that quilt.

Very big one. And it also says a lot about the internet at the time. Because it, you know, we don't know who put the video online. Don't not know. But the name definitely tells you that it was someone who was chronically online

because it's a reference to two girls one cup. Actually, Marcus. That's where you're wrong because the video is actually entitled Hot Bitches. I learned that it became two girls one cup though. That's packaging.

Yeah. It became everyone. Two girls one cup was called Hot Bitches. Hungry bitches. Hungry bitches.

Yeah. Yeah. It's because they were hungry for poop. Yeah. But it was yogurt as well.

It's just sour female dogs and dogs. It's shit. Thank you. Any good work. Except for my lovely girls.

I had to stop my dogs. Both of my dogs from eating raccoon shit yesterday. Be careful. They got worms in it. Yeah.

Have you tried it? The fans of its local. Now it's a natural childlike curiosity. Yeah. I stopped them to look at gore.

Right? It used to be flipping over rocks to see weird bugs. Or checking out a rotting animal skeleton. Yeah. It eventually evolved to kids collectively looking at a weird poured magazine.

And maybe devolving into some kind of okey cookie like situation. I feel that was more our father's generation, the okey cookie. I feel like millennials put that to bed.

“I think that it happened once, one time.”

By the time we were all 11 and everyone was like, whoa. Whoa. This is a poor piece. Yeah. We used muffins.

You got it. Because none of you were, I guess he bows before celiac disease was a thing. Yeah. Catch everything. Okay.

A little crevices. Explosion to extreme imagery. Increased exponentially. Once the millennial babies started surfing the worldwide web in the family computer room. By the time our generation hit the age to start getting dark with friends.

We were watching Tubgirl 2001. Hmm. Two girls, one cop also known as hungry bitches. 2007. Torture videos of soldiers and abugrade.

Love them.

Piles of cartel leaders, heads.

Yeah. And eventually, the internet would accept and crown the new kings of gore. The hammer maniacs.

“Now, you sure there were the leaders heads and not the guys underneath them?”

Hi, everybody. I feel like there was a bunch of heads. Those couldn't all be leaders. Once we get into the finer details of that, what are we, you know, what are we doing? What are we legislating?

Yeah. But my main question in this series is why do some kids get repelled? And why do some kids say? Very few kids. But why do some of them say?

What if we made some? I think it really does go back to... Do a tour of a question. It's a god-in recruitment. We could answer it at the end.

All right. All right. You only asked a question and put a break in the script. But do a question. Yeah.

I assume that you wanted me to answer that question. To tee up. We were just getting in there. Now, whatever made sources for us. We were just getting in there.

One of our main sources for today's episode is Psycho.com. Sarah Killers on the internet by Eileen Ormsby, which is a pretty thick 60-page section on the crime. That's the most we could find in the English language. Yeah.

“Rachel Burke, who is our amazing, one of our fucking amazing researchers.”

She's fucking crushed it. Our research team did as much they could looking at articles from the Ukrainian press coverage. Most of the direct information is inconsistent. Due to the inconsistent reporting around it. Yeah.

The Ukrainian police were secretive and some of the reporting wildly sensational. We also used to 2010 Chilean documentary, Los Manayocos de la Marapillo.

And our incredible researcher, Rachel,

she filled my brains with context using a world of academic papers that I could not understand on my own. But she does. And that Chilean documentary. Yeah.

That one is in no way sensational. But the thing about the that one is that it's all in on the concept that they were hired by Ukrainian mafia to make snuff films. Yeah. Which isn't true.

Those kids couldn't meet a deadline if they wanted to. And what do we know about video editors? They meet that line. They have to. They have to.

But I don't think it was edited. It was all one take, right? This was edited down for the internet. True. Someone took the original 30 minutes of it and edited it into eight.

Really? They're like, this is the end. There's too much here.

You can cut this, lose that.

Too much context. Yeah. Yeah. Too much context. They're standing around.

They're literally like 20. We'll get to this next episode. But there's like 20 minutes of them just hanging out. Okay. The Chilean documentary was interesting.

I watched most of that. But it was like the funny part was that it was just they would only like translate every other sentence. Sometimes it's like one sentence over the course of like four minutes. It was like, I guess what they're saying.

But I was like happy with myself because there were some. I was like, I couldn't understand a lot. I couldn't understand some of the Spanish. Because they're saying like, my Niacos and more. They're like saying, like, more at the end.

They can say that much stuff. I understand. I get those. Yeah. No.

I know enough Spanish to understand what someone is talking about. But to not know exactly in what context they are speaking about it. Yes. They might have been saying that the many acos were awesome. I don't know.

They're not saying that because they're frowning. A lot of low tones. It's like boom. Like, you know, but they really like this idea that what comes up again and again

“in this case, which I think is not too dissemilar from other serial murders.”

But it's I think it's very specifically a strong part of this case. Is people warming there to be a reason. Yeah. Yeah. And there are some things.

There has to be a reason why when I honestly think they're doesn't. Now, there are kids, right? Oh, yeah. We're just getting right into it. Women college kids, you know.

Well, would you consider them tiny maniacs? No. Tiny maniacs. Three foot in under. Tiny maniacs have a heart of gold.

They just look rough and tiny maniac. You don't want them to watch your dog. But you'd pet them like one. Did I like kid kids? You know, they're I guess they would do it in 1920s.

Let me get into it. Let's meet our maniacs. It's not so easy, is it? No. I do this fuck.

Get there, you're getting at it, Russ. Get to it. Igor Supruneuk was unfortunately born on April 20, 1988. A fact that he would grow to be proud of an exploit for his own personal lore build. Teachers from his early years described him as a young Steven Miller.

The boy had a difficult character. Oh, yeah. Actually, Marcus, you take this place. The boy had a difficult character. I had the feeling that he was constantly defending himself.

Although no one had offended him. He was very complex. But pride not to show it. And notice his eyes. They were blue and cold.

Like a sickle's. They made my blood run cold.

[laughter]

“Igor and those looking to explain his behavior often blamed his many complexes on his inability to show up to class or engage in school society.”

But those around him noted his fengali-like hold on a couple of fellow losers.

One being his right hand-man in the Dnipro Hammer murders, Victor Sianko. Born two months before Igor, another petulant offspring of a doding mother and a well-connected father. Victor would grow obsessed with Igor, following him around like a puppy dog. These two boys shared a similar history. Both grew up in a world separate from many of their countrymen and didn't have to wait online for me garations to pay for groceries with coupons issued by the state.

Yeah, I have an upper middle class. It by American standards upper middle class to upper class. But definitely of the administrative class that was kind of a hold over from the Soviet Union, which, you know, in the Soviet Union, the administration holds all the power. And they got one. They were just like one or two steps above everybody else.

And in that fact, they lived an entirely different fucking world. Got you. They were born into world just shy of a decade since Ukraine voted for independence. And the fledgling state struggled to form its own identity. Now, I'm not going to do a full mark of style context, tsunami, or to all of you.

All right, because you could just end up taking this all the way back to the who-sars. If you fucking what? Right. And I know it's Smash, Smash, Club, Club, Basecon, stuff, more. Way more than I understand geopolitics.

But here's my little fucking sum up. Okay, all right. If you play risk, and you plan to win, right?

“And you know, some choke points are super crucial, right?”

But Jackie, she'd hold up in Australia because she was a fucking coward. She was afraid of a fight, right? Like kangaroo? Yes. Yeah, just like them.

Fuck fake deer. But sure. Home despots. No. That Ukraine is an extremely important base for closing off Europe, gaining entry into the Middle East.

And this might actually be true. And not even just for Rocks' solid risk strategy. Ukraine has been fought over like a laundry bag of K-pop under where since the beginning. And more often than not, it's people identify with surrounding nations like Russia, Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary, depending on where your family is from. And it's also geological as well.

Like if you're more on the western side of the Ukraine, you identify more with Poland. Yeah. And if you're on the eastern side, the new identify more with Russia. Even though the people in Ukraine, the less of them identify as Russian, then what the Russians want to make you think. Well, just the idea, or then it also conversely works that there's so many people that are connected, familiarly into Russia, that when they come to invade them, they're like, "I'm attacking my cousin."

And Russia's Ukraine is also a fucking massive country.

And here's Rachel Burke's amazing breakdown that actually maybe makes sense.

Many Ukrainian nationalists view Russia as a historical oppressor due to Russian domination in the 17th and 18th centuries, and the great famine of 1932 to 1933, which killed millions of Ukrainians. Other Ukrainians feel close ties to Russia because of shared history, language, culture, and widespread intermarriage, despite these differences, support for independence was broad. In the December 1991 referendum, for the 90% of voters supported independence, including majorities in every region. The Ukrainian state emerged quickly in 1991, through agreements between nationalists and the existing political elite, nationalists agreed not to overthrow the government, and exchange for a break from the Soviet Union,

and because independence had not come through revolution or a move of the ruling elite, many Soviet era power structures remain. This led to an ongoing political conflict, weak party systems, and policy technician. I didn't read it. Thank you, Rachel. It does make a lot of sense though. It does. Now, both down corruption ruled the land during this time of chaos, and the closer you were the governing body, the benefits were fucking great.

Yeah, it's really not that complicated. No, it's the way it works, and most countries around the world, that just the way humanity works, the more connected you are, the more likely you are to avoid consequences, and the harder it's going to be to actually bring you to justice. I mean, talking told me and taught me is that it's really good to keep up with friends. But I've seen told you.

Yeah. Oh, we built, you know, I built an AI chat file, so I could talk to a Mastery died. Yeah, I'm using drugs. I'm using rock. I have my Epstein bot.

I talked to him every day, and he encourages me to do all sorts of fucked up stuff. I love it.

“Does he do voice, or does he write like little email missives to you, like at the level of the mail?”

Yeah, it's all misspelled, but he does a great Gilbert. Yeah, I'm not glad. According to our American sources, Igor's father was a personal pilot to Leonid Koochman,

in office 1995 to 2005 Ukrainian Second President.

I know that. Yeah, you know.

It was shadowed by persistent allegations of government corruption and systemic censorship of the press. It says you and my paper and my papers.

“His presidency is most infamously linked to the 2000 murder of a journalist Georgie Gungadza,”

who was an investigative journalist and founder of the online outlet, Yukran Skaplab, known for exposing corruption among senior officials. Victor's father worked as a communications liaison for the regional prosecutor's office.

A powerful local arm of the prosecutor's general's office of Ukraine.

This will definitely come into play later on in the aftermath of the crimes. All of this is to say Igor and Victor grew up special. And boy, were they upset about it? They were. There was a third maniac, but he was definitely the zeppo of the group.

Underrated. Yeah, I know, but they have to say too. Same, same. Alexander Hansa, he would be tried alongside the other two, but he did not participate in the actual murder of any humans in this case.

He was different than the other boys. He grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, and Soviet style block housing, infested with rats, the size of dogs. They're small dogs.

I mean, they're cute. Sounds cute. Because they feel big palms. That's cute. Please, the size of rats.

That's the size of dogs. The dogs, the size of a man. Dogs, the size of a man. He was also raised by a poor single mother, nice. And we'll also see how this plays out in the aftermath of these crimes.

Victor Cienko, Igor Suprunyuk, an Alexander Hansa, met an elementary school and became close friends who did everything together. Some sources indicate they bonded together because they were afraid of bullies. No. Now, we see this narrative a lot when baby losers cause a lot of damage.

Baby because we want to believe there's a reason to kill 21 people with hammers and screwdrivers. Yeah, just like we wanted to believe there was a reason why two shitheads could kill 12 kids in Colorado. These are very much an entire Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold like couldn't be closer. Oh, man. It's almost a wonder one.

It's like just the Ukrainian version. Basically. I don't think Dylan and Eric could have done this. Well, I don't think they had the fortitude to go search in for function weeks. Episode two, we would find out it's because these boys were desperate to get their hands on a gun.

And they just couldn't. Yeah.

“I think Eric Harris could have Dylan Klebold.”

I don't think would have got. I don't think Dylan Klebold would have gotten this hands as dirty. But Eric Harris definitely could have. He had it on him. This one's definitely their both motivated.

Victor likes the beg off later on saying that, oh, I was just in it for like the thrills and the money already. But basically just the money or the practical side of it. But if you watched the videos or if you look at the pictures, you could see that's not the case. Yeah, he's having too much fun. He's really enjoying himself.

I mean, there are definitely stories in the past. We cover like this where you know, you got two people that are committing a bunch of murders.

And, you know, one person certainly never would have committed.

Like Carolina, if you get never would have committed a murder if she hadn't hooked up a trial stark weather. And Dylan, I do not think the Dylan Klebold would have committed any murders had he not hooked up with Eric Harris. No, he probably hopefully would have just committed suicide. Yeah, but trial stark weather definitely would have murdered people without Carolina and few get. The killer, definitely would have murdered someone without Dylan Klebold.

But I would say it did not take much to have Igor push Victor into his world. No, you did not take Victor Victor would have been someone who would have accidentally killed someone someday. Just being reckless. Well, also I just think that they were a little leave of fuckers. Because what makes more sense to me is that a neighbor described Igor as he always had success with the garals.

He was hiding something tall. As if Igor and Victor couldn't fit the forced flavored Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold profile more. The way our little evil fuckers put it, they were afraid of the bigger boys. They never got personally attacked by any of them. They just assumed that they would have problems with bigger, more aggressive boy men.

I mean, Ukraine's fold of them. Oh, yeah.

“And if you're running in the Ukraine, that's hard, right?”

You're your small one. I'm small as far as Ukrainians go, I'm weak. Yes. And if you were the largest baby born in the state of Florida at the time. Just Florida though, not Ukraine.

They're over there, they're like 40, 50 pounds. Yeah, yeah, they split a woman has to actually actively be split open to the sternum to give birth in Ukraine. Yeah. And then they slap it all together with just some kind of white cheese. Yeah, all Ukrainian babies have to be dehorned.

I actually cut, I had to cut all this out of the context just because I just figure that. It's really like you would lead a further discussion and anyone do this. So it's like, Igor then, he, I believe in turn, he became a bully to those smaller than him and taught Victor in Alexander to follow suit.

And on the fifth grade, the boys had their first known encounter with the law when they were caught

Now, this sounds like innocent childlike shenanigans.

Sure. Sure.

“I do think it's a partner remember that I don't mean to be the fun police here”

as that all it takes is one rock through removing train window to kill a person. One of the chances though. It happens a lot. It's a matter of fact, in 2017, five teenagers in Ohio and Michigan played a game that they called overpassing where they tossed large rocks from a highway overpass on such a road below.

Hitting a vehicle was called a dinger. And at one week, these scored dingers that resulted in the death of two people. Their parents also tried to call it shenanigans. But the justice system did not see it that way. Put the death.

Honestly, I think we're crushed. It was cool. Salem's died. There's a world of the difference of like throwing rocks at a train and dropping rocks from an overpass. From the hammer maniacs?

Yeah. Do you think that the difference is the fact for me maybe is that they were the hammer maniacs? Yeah. And that maybe it wasn't that innocent when it's the hammer maniacs? That's what I'm saying.

When it's the hammer, when it's other children. Yeah, because I've thrown plenty of rocks at trains when I was a kid. But in America, we don't really have that many passenger trains. You're just throwing rocks in industrial ways. See, that's what you're throwing at just fuck.

That's what I'm fine with. Yeah. If it just piles of just steel or whatever going through. They're throwing it in my passenger train. Yeah.

Okay.

“Try to throw the fucking rocks at the bright line dude.”

Bright line of kill here. Yeah. They'll come for the train is fucking angry there, man. I jumped the track. A back to the Ukraine.

When the police knocked on Victor's door and demanded compensation for the damage to the damaged train, which I guess something could do in Ukraine. The saying goes, they just paid up. Question their son about the incident. They're innocent, son told them,

"I go to make me do it." You do it. All right. Wait, wait. I mean, you gotta do the characters.

I'm sorry. You need to do it. I'm sorry. Does it himself? They're innocent, son told them.

"I go to make me do it." And they said, "No more Igor Victor." No more. But I love it, Victor. You're not a little maniac.

You're a little maniac. That does ask top girl what she thinks. That was my top girl impression. Yeah. I don't know what top girl is.

What's up? No, we got time. No, look up. Top girl right now. Why not?

This is a great for the episode. Mark just is doing it. Look up top girl.

You've never seen top girl.

Look up. Oh yeah. A diarrhea girl. That's different. Okay.

Okay. I didn't know she was called top girl. That's her official title. Yeah. A diarrhea girl's too long.

Yeah. That is true. Yeah. I'm fed enough with the diarrhea girl. Sorry.

Victor didn't listen though. All right. He didn't listen to his parents

“because he was infatuated with the peculiar and charismatic Igor.”

And his parents didn't enforce the rule. I wonder if he was attracted to the Unibrow. If you do look at pictures of Igor, he looks like the evil baby in the Simpsons. Like Maggie's.

Yeah. He's got like a furl-brow. He's fucking cool. He looks like a little lump. Igor and Victor had PCs from an early age.

This is just another example of their privilege lives. And politically correct. Yes. Yeah. Colin Quinn came to the house.

So they didn't get it. Then he would do tough crowd. And then it would ship them. Bill Marwood. Come on.

And then they did PC. Most of their classmates didn't have regular internet access at the time. And they were not unlike a lot of kids from this time period. They were, they loved surfing the net. Yeah.

All right.

We don't know the exact websites that they first encountered.

But we do know they were collectors of videos that circulated of murders committed by drug cartels and beheadings of journalists by terrorist organizations. We know this because during the investigation, it came out that Igor had a mass hundreds of them. With the Ukrainian news called.

Episodes of sophisticated torture abuse and murder taken from the internet. It was in a folder he shared with Victor called. There they are. Yeah. My mom was so mad.

I think about this, right? My mom was so angry about those lesbian school girls. And she had no idea I was being an ally. Yeah. No, that's right.

I was being that was like that's the equivalent. Me masturbating lesbian school girls when I was a kid was like the equivalent of me being out of pride for it. You were studying. I just wanted to know how to love them. Yeah.

Support them. They're business women. But you were also looking at the same stuff that these kids were looking at the same time. Then I just jerk off, right? And I was fucking all the heat would leave and I'd go outside.

Yeah. I hate to see what these guys think sizzling is. Yeah. They show it later. And seven grade the boys started to level up.

Igor wanted them to be stronger.

He plumbed the internet for ways to overcome fear and figured they should face it head on. Both Victor and Igor were afraid of heights. Both of them in for some reason they were like. Police are going to know we're afraid of heights. Yeah.

And they're going to use that against us. And so I I wonder if this is some sort of like if it has something to do with the switch over from Soviet rule into, you know, like independent rule. If there was some sort of like classes thing going on where maybe they were listening to their parents saying, you know, the lower classes are going to take over. So we don't know what the like the whole system is out of wax. There's no daddies anywhere.

Yeah. Right. So like and all the daddies are super corrupt.

Yeah. So all the daddies are gone. The police are hyper corrupt. They're basically not existing mass of social systems are falling apart.

It's there's a lot of chaos. So we can see them being like, we need to be good for everybody's going to try to kill us. But also sometimes what do we know about the statement when all you have is a hammer. Everything looks like a nail. That's right. Also, you know, overcoming your fears is probably the most positive things these guys ever did.

I just wish that they had done it for something else like public speaking. Because instead of letting us, it's led to this. So in a scene almost directly out of the 90s evil boy thriller the Goodson great movie. Love that phenomenal. Kids seems Henry really.

Yeah, the evil one. Yeah, the evil one. Nice. Yeah, that was awesome. And it was Koli Colkan who we knew was evil.

Igor convinced Victor to spend hours standing on a balcony of a 14th floor apartment leaning over the railing and gazing straight down into the veritor and told their vertigo subsided and their fear of heights diminished technically like an exposure in CBT.

Yeah, they considered the face your fears method of resounding success.

Does it work like that? Yeah, CBT, that's what I do. Yeah. I write exposure.

“Things of like the worst thing you could possibly think of because I have OCD.”

One of the worst things that happens with OCD honestly is that you have a fret. You have a fretful thought, you have a upsetting thought. So then what you want to do constantly is comfort yourself saying, that can't happen. You intellectualize why that can't happen. But actually what you're doing is starting the cycle of anxiety again instead of just sitting with the bad result.

Sitting with the worst possible extent of your bad thought. Yeah. Another thing that you can do is use a funny voice to say your bad thought out loud and that kind of takes away. My wife does it really love me. You don't think this is going to take my feet.

Yeah, it works. Honestly, it does work. I am going to be framed for crime. I didn't convince me to spend the rest of my life in prison. It's fun to be.

It works. That's my CBT voice. It really goes work. It's really great. The next year, Igor beat up a kid stole his bicycle, which he later gave to Victor.

Although he caught the attention of the police, he wasn't charged. And the local rumor mill believe that this was due to his connected father.

And as the story always goes, Victor's parents once again forbade him from being friends with Igor.

I love Igor. You're the by the mind, you're going to go to the mind, you're going to go to the mind. All right. All right, but they still didn't supervise him closely. Or question is whereabouts.

So the two boys continue to see each other. Secret. The three boys, they began to terrorize the school. They would begin to specifically target younger, smaller boys and older people for physical assault. This pattern would continue into the murders.

They would vandalize property and openly huff glue on the street. But yeah. And that means a part of it. It was only like this could have been fine. They could just stay like this.

No one called the police because of Igor's father's connections. Igor would actually overdose on glue when the eighth grade. And it's very sad to have such a near miss. Couple of Ukrainian glue puffers.

“You know, I think it made his eyebrows grow towards each other.”

Maybe they tried to get rid of it and the glue was what kept us. Stop. Right there. It was all just him trying to shave his Hitler mustache off. All right.

Now this all came to a head in 2002 when a teacher accused the boys of committing Hooligan acts against her. Don't know what that means. Hooligan acts. I would imagine throwing things.

I think that would be against you, but also there's a little bit of. Because one I found interesting with all of these crimes is there's no sexual component. No. None.

And it's all just blatant murder. But I do feel like maybe in something in this or something about this reads to make because they almost gotten very big trouble for this thing. And we don't know what the details are. I think it involved something like pinning her down or doing something to the teachers

physically. She did something to her. Whatever it was. But stealing face charges. Igor was instead transferred to another school.

Alexander was sent to another school. Now has this problem?

“Has this ever ended a problematic relationship between teens?”

But in the kids. Has it ever done it? No.

Yeah.

I feel like that's what you do.

Because you're not listening to the teenager. You are listening to the teenager saying I'm going to kill everybody. What do you do? But literally like what do you do? How do you do?

“Were you asking me how do you deal with the homicidal like that?”

Not rhetorical. Yeah. Now you want my answer. Yeah. Four of the hardest questions.

Deposibly answer. Let's go. That's our school. Yeah, right? I don't know.

What was straight to war? I knew this Iranian fucking ground surge is really going to be good for something. Yeah. Yeah. Really don't want you found some losers.

Everybody needs a war. Every they really do. Being exiled from each other did nothing to stop their star cross love. Igor, Victor, and Alexander quickly descended into total depravity. They began to systematically torture animals to death as a group activity.

They would then film these torture sessions on Victor's phone. This is going to be real rough. Yeah. A lot of animal violence coming up. So when you think how long you think this is going to last the animal violence?

Probably like five minutes. The people want to skip that. Six weeks. I know. We got.

Just like when every five minutes. Just know. It's like we're just the reason why I'm describing this is you can really understand the total depravity of where these guys got to.

Yeah, because there's always a reason to kill a person.

Pretty much. Yeah. Got to go with 10. One of the videos shown in court to the horror of those attending depicted Victor, Igor, and Alexander.

Crucifying a kitten on a wooden cross they made in Victor or Igor's garage. They filled the kitten's mouth with glue to stifle its grams. Taking turns shooting at it with pistols loaded with robber bullets. The boys laugh and swear throughout the video. Enjoying the small creature's torment.

Criminalicious said that he could only evaluate the video with the sound turn off. I could but listen to the painful squeeals of puppies and kittens that were gutted alive. He said there were many videos of this nature. Maybe this newfound hobby gave Igor the confidence to blossom into a capital and Nazi.

“Now, I remember when I first joined theater, like I discovered theater and it was amazing,”

but really that just led me to Hawaiian church. Yeah. Not Nazi as well. No. But yeah, well, that was again, I was a character.

And at the time it was different. I was our racial explorations into different forms of the worlds of theater was a embracing, foreign cultures. That's why I played an Indonesian man. You barely crucified cats.

The only reason why I crucified them is with love. And we did it in the way Jesus did it with the real way. We're like the other guys that weren't Jesus didn't get nailed in. They just tied them. Yeah.

Yeah, that's mostly just it's not about bleeding the death. It's about starving them to death. You're right. And letting them slowly suffocate. Thanks, Marcus.

What happened to Bravest? I remember his last words. We're just out, out, out. So Igor took selfies of him and his little buddies. And they added Hitler moustaches and Microsoft paint.

This true. It's true. Many pictures, I guess. And unlike many high schoolers whose deaths were covered in the cool ass. Yeah, the slayer ass.

Yes. Yes. Stoosies, both. I looked it up. It's known as the slayer ass.

Cool ass. And the Stoosies. Which is funny. Okay. Igor and Victor like the uncool ass.

No, Nass. Swats go. The bad ass. It is a horrible ass. It's a bad ass.

Worst ass there is. Because there's two asses on top of each other. We talked about it in the Hitler. Oh, yeah. That's right.

That's right. So yeah, it's just so easy to draw. That's a problem. I mean, it's branding. Yeah.

That's why Target's great. These were not disciplined Hitler youths. I mean, imagine him or her extreme disappointment. Looking down from heaven. He apologized.

They toppled together a mean and lean version of hate ideology directly from the mall of racist trolled ends on the internet.

“And this is incredibly important to this whole thing.”

Because these are not ideological Nazis. These are edge lord Nazis. The only reason why they like Nazis and swastikas and Hitler and all that is because it's the worst thing there is. They read all this shit on the internet.

And they read about all the horrible things the Nazis have done. Because it was out there back then. Of course. Well, it's like when I was as a boy, right? I loved villains.

Sure. I loved the empire. I loved all these things. And I remember being a little boy in being interested in history. And there are you could see as a little kid that type of imagery.

So it's so powerful and clear that when you're a weak little shit head,

you could see it. I do a little bit of a run up and later on in the script about this. But I do, I could see it's a childish impulse. Well, it's like fascism is childish too.

Daddy taking care of you and telling you what to do.

Yeah. But I think with these kids, it's more just that the UK punks kind of went through something similar that Nazi imagery, it is the worst most offensive thing there is. In Ukraine, especially like a former Soviet director is like when the Nazi's did, I mean, we talked about it in the Hemal series.

They did so many horrible things. So we're sticking in fingering. Yeah. It's sticking this fucking finger into it. Now Alexander, well, I call him the marty.

What's the word? What's the marty? From Captain Planet. No, the fucking pussy. No, no, I'm being silly.

Is that the guy heart? Yes. Yes.

That's why I put him as Alexander.

Marty. Okay.

“I actually thought it was a doomed thing, but that's what I think.”

Yeah, yeah. The Alexander hit a professed version to blood. They said he was so sensitive. He couldn't even wash a new baby kitten in case he scalded it with the water. In his friend, in this friend group, that shit wasn't going to fucking play.

Also, it's touched the water beforehand. You know, it's just like you get tell of it's too hot for it. It's so weird. Russia water touches you. Yeah.

He got one time. I was working at the non-man's the failure. The cheese steak restaurant. We had this guy. It wasn't that smart.

He worked in the basement, but he was really nice.

And there was one day we caught a bunch of mice from the glue trap. You know, and he's like, I came downstairs and he was just crying. And I was like, what happened? He's trying to feed the mouse, but he put boiling water on him because he was too stupid. And so because he was trying to dissolve the glue, but it didn't realize he just cooked the mice.

And he was just crying downstairs because he killed the mice.

“He accidentally became the hammer maniac.”

(laughter) This man's been, what's his name? Lini Baine. Yes. I just, I just wanted to see them run. (laughter)

He tried. He did. He honestly did. I tried to take it back. I tried to take it back.

I swear it's been like that, man. I, you know, this, I don't want this to be comical, but it's kind of fun. Thank you for that. It's been a hard day. And I want to say thank you.

So Igor extrapolated his fear destroying techniques to include animal torture. He suggested capturing dismembering the many stray dogs in the forest near Alexander's house. The group began capturing and slaughtering dogs and cats with regularity to get used to it. They skinned them alive and hung them from trees and disabouled them, where they would bleed to death slowly.

Many of the photographs that came out in the investigation documented the animal torture and the boys posing with the corpses, zig-hiling, making funny faces. You know, boy stuff. I mean, yeah.

“I mean, you make a joke, but that's what it looks like.”

Oh, yeah. You can't, it looks like they're on vacation. They took pictures of themselves, dogs hanging from nooses in the background. The walls covered in swaths because drawn in animal blood. Frazes, written on the forest, rock walls.

Kill everyone. Take everything. The lower you fall, the higher you will fly. Killing is just a tough way of making money. The pictures are haunting.

You see two dead-eyed boys in mid-Zig-Hile with Hitler Mossass's drawn on their hairless lips, giving off a vibe of a Halloween costume taken way too seriously in front of surreal violence. There will be no more animal murder. Just so you know, there will be no more animal murder mentioned in this episode. I just want to let you know what type of maniacs we're dealing with.

Just know what happened, a lot. Yeah. All of the Nazi imagery the boys use really helps us try to experts to try to explain away their behavior. It makes it much easier to say in response to bullying and school, these disaffected young men found confidence and fascist ideology

as if they have a brain in their head to fucking choose. Then you wouldn't have to say the more likely reason. They thought it made them look badass. Yeah. It's about self-esteem.

That's the whole thing's about self-esteem. Being frightening. And being frightened. Because that's where it all comes from. Yeah.

I'm not afraid. It wasn't long before the killing extended to human beings. They've been preparing for this for almost four years. One classmate was certain the goal of murder was intended from the balcony training days. As far back as seventh grade, a classmate Nikolai Partuch said that Egor developed

a new nonsense back in seventh grade. He decided to check whether he had enough mental strength to kill. In 2005, when the trio were around 17 years old, they attacked two 15 year old boys. This one was not caught on video. And there's been no motive discerned other than what they were called pure sadism.

The three boys mercilessly beat the two smaller boys, leaving them with concussions, broken bones, and permanently disfigured faces. Ah, see, I was like thinking it was like just like a little fun. No, they beat them.

The parents of the beaten boys tried to bring charges against the three. And a total shocker, Egor's father intervened. The police decided not to pursue charges due to their age. They were set free, but received a stern talking to by their parents. And isn't their disappointment enough?

Yeah! Right? It's so much worse than when they're angry. And so glad this episode ends like this. Yeah, wow.

And completed. He would go on to become the Egor we're going on to become a stand-up in Ukraine, and eventually the present. [laughter] Then came high school graduation. As we go on to whatever all the time we've spent together.

“Remember? I was at the vitamin C song, right?”

Yeah. I was more of a third-eye-blood.

"Go not graduate!" Well, you didn't graduate. Were you quit at high school? [laughter] Two point out.

Yeah, you did it. High school I made it happen. I'm proud of you. Oh, yeah, man. You're on the same level as the new Department of Homeland Security.

Oh, yeah. That's it. Yeah. That's cool. [laughter]

So they drifted off. No destination. Likely knowing their time is quite a quote "normal" citizens would soon come to an end. Victor and Rold, part-time the dinner props roughs Iron and steel Academy. You dabble as a rentacop.

The Iron and steel Academy? Yeah, but you wouldn't do learn with like metal energy. I think that's literally like welding. Yeah, that's true. I know.

It's just a very... Oh, you don't... [laughter]

Well, do the idea where they make Colossus?

[laughter] Yes. That's where he's from. I just want to be normal man. I can't.

Could make me some kind of woodman. Or some kind of fluffy mind. Alexander, he drifted between odd jobs, briefly working at a safe pastry chef, construction worker, but remained unemployed for most of the time.

I wonder why. Construction worker probably should have been great. I mean, unfortunately, you know, he was on discipline. Igor became immediately would be known.

“I think on the internet, we call them a neat.”

Right? Because he just showed little interest in work or school. In any form of urgency and finding a job. But his parents did buy him a day-wool lanos as a birthday present. Known for its fuel efficiency, day with shuttered his doors in 2002, more like it sort of absorbed into Chevy, according to Grock.

[laughter] Glad you asked Grock about day-wool. Yes, all I do. They're fine cars. They were fine, and then they seem to be, again,

very good fuel efficiency. And I love a car. I love a green car. My mom had a ego. It sucked.

Yeah, bet. You go slow. See, this is when Igor and Victor began to inhale. Goar videos on the internet. In 2006, it 2007 websites like goornet.com, rotten.com,

Lesb-my-hat, bestgoer.com, snuffx.com, where to use a phrase, crushing it. Yeah. These websites hosted videos going from household and industrial accidents,

although they'd leaked torture videos from spheres of war. Homemade cartel movies, depicting pyramids of bloody heads, and in my opinion, Igor had the long-term plan. Victor thought the gore was cool and all, but Igor watched it like it was instructional.

Igor was inspired. He saw the unemotional way people were tortured and murdered. He saw the flatness of the human body, as a glistening, bubbling mechanical pile of meat. He saw the limp way, the body fell, spirit gone.

Not traumatic in the movies, subtle. And so, so quick.

“You know, who does death seems better than anybody in media?”

South Park. Oh, yeah. Just a-- Yeah. The immediate death?

Yeah. They're just that little-- Yeah. And they're dead. Yeah.

They always scared the fuck out of me.

Yeah. And the death, South Park does the better anyway. Private Ryan does it occasionally. And they're first in it. And just like, you seem to get shot three times.

And they're just like, not a human anymore. Yeah. They're terrified. Good acting. Yeah.

But there are some-- it's-- it's-- he saw that viciousness, mm-hmm. That meaninglessness and felt strong. Just like other shitheads before him, Igor looked into the black mirror of the laptop screen.

Saw Baby Natsy and embraced it. That's what black mirror thing is. Yes. Yes. [laughter]

Fish is a mess. Passage of a child like violence go hand in hand. But he needed a sheep to make himself a shepherd. And Victor was the perfect spineless shit stained of volunteer. It's right.

It took me like five years before I realized like, oh, oh, black mirror. Yeah. It's the phone screen. I didn't realize. That's cool though.

Yeah, right? It hurts people at write sometimes. I see what they think. Everyone's in well. Okay.

Now everyone's in surprising young man. Igor used his new gift for mommy to make money as an unlicensed taxi.

He's green day woo. Now I do find interesting. I've had Rachel look up.

“The concept of the unlicensed taxis in Ukraine.”

And it's very. I guess it's extremely easy. It's like. It's very run to the mill. It's a part of their lives.

Not many people have cars. So it's more often for people to carpool like within small towns. And actually picking up an unregistered taxi is a thing that people do quite often. But it's before things got because there's no regulatory boards. And the ones that were official were extremely expensive.

So they kind of reverted to taking care of themselves. But unlicensed taxi not a fake taxi. It's an unlicensed taxi. Yeah. But it's still a fake taxi.

Yeah, it's just some guys. But yeah, I give it right. But 95% of them weren't the hammer maniacs. Sure. Yeah.

They're the guys hanging outside the Hollywood bull. It was like, it was going to be a horse. Yeah. It happened. It was like enough a part of their lives.

Yeah.

“Because at first it was like, what does that even mean?”

And then it was like, Oh, no. It's actually was a very regular part of their lives. Yeah. It's the guys that bother you when you go off the plane at JFK. Yeah.

Now, it might have been a response to his get a job or else. Ultimatum.

But his parents were really never all that serious.

Igor's new job provided perfect cover for their favorite past time. Robbing and beating people. It became a nightly ritual attacking strangers and stealing their phones while it's a jewelry. Often they pick up a passenger and aid in Igor's car pretending to be a taxi cap. Drive them out in the middle of Bumfuck know where.

Rob them beat them and then leave them stranded. Imagine how much money they would have made if they were like a nicer car. I mean, they could have done a lot. Victor got a car. They made enough money for them both to have a car and then both of them were pooling the money.

And then they buy a truck and the next thing you know, that's a transport unit. Next thing you know, they're working for the brand new show business entity that have taken over Romani. I don't think these guys had foresight. No.

I don't know if they can't too sight. So Igor and Victor, they didn't need the money. As their parents were willing to provide them with whatever they desired. They did it for fun. Alexander on the other hand, you can't get cold feet.

He didn't come from wealth or family connections. Ursula had choose to keep his feet warm. Why?

This has been always a problem.

I'll kill you. He was lower class than Igor of Victor. If you got caught, his life was over. If we're not get this get out of jail free card like the other boys got to two brutal arm robberies on March 1, 2007, Alexander finally felt extremely uneasy enough about all the reckless assaults

that he would later admit he finally broke away from them before the murders officially began. I had a bit of a hard time and researchers tracking down what the actual very first murder was. It's always a problem with serial killers. Well, not always always, but a lot of times, yeah, you just don't know. Because it's hard because they, because one side is, there's some official stuff.

There's a bunch of chaotic stuff in the reporting.

“And then they're also like, you have to listen to these two maniacs fucking version of the story.”

Yeah, that's the whole Ted Bundy thing like the only living survivor. You have to trust them. Are you choose to trust them? Can that's a weird technical question? Please.

Are these guys serial killers or street killers? Well, that's a very good question. I would go straight up to serial killer because of how long it was. But the style. It's like a serial killers that used spree killing.

Yeah. Well, I mean, the definition of a serial killer. Normally it has a sexual component sometimes.

Not always, but it's two or more murders with a cooling off period in between.

Yeah. And these guys, they did have cooling off periods. Well, they got caught and basically they're only cooling off period. So we don't know whether or not it was just going to go right back to it or not. Yeah.

Also, it's like, if they would have been able to get guns, they probably would have been spree killers. Because they would have just been a running guns situation. Yeah. It's funny, technically. But also they, they just talked about how easy it would have been for them if they had guns.

And they were really, very lamented. They were very sad. They couldn't get their hands on some stuff. They should have came to America. So the first murder it would become their standard method occurred early in June of 2007.

Igor and Victor picked up a young man and a woman in their makeshift taxi. It was the middle of the day. Most of their other crimes were done at night. They took them way out of town outside where they normally operate. Driven by the, what they called these sets of complications.

Igor and Victor freaked out. After robbing and beating them within an inch of their lives and broad daylight, they worried that victims had had a clear view of their face or the car. Things that they could have planned for, unless the plan was to murder them from the beginning. Eliminating the witnesses was the next logical step they claimed.

They were found beaten to death on the side of the road. Due to have hazard investigation, these would not be included as part of the official kill count.

Many. During the pre-trial phase, the boys would actually claim that there was a previous murder.

“They said that they were sitting on a fence near a branch of McDonald's, the previous November,”

when they decided to rob a drunk guy. Igor hit him in the back of the head with a rock and went through his pockets. I felt the scope burst. He said he died. He died. He died like fifth. You know what you bite with parole?

The filthy police parole. Now we think we're having a fucking thing. You're creating this guy, Paraguay, too. But Polish wants a filthy. No, no, no, no. It's a filthy dirt.

Literally. It's good to do it.

The first thing I do love you, creating you food.

I do, I honestly, I do that. I have a specific. Yeah, that's a lot. Also, carcuma. Carcuma's Polish.

But how different does the foods? Not much different. I... Side stories help you. The first thing they call the counted murder

was a policeman named Vadim Bodam. He had taken his girlfriend to a recreational center on the evening of June 24, 2007. And so, we can do crank. You're a creation center.

He held Igor's green day. Can we call it a sleigh, woo? Yeah, okay. Thank you. Yes.

Talk it. And how did people know? Is it like, did they paint taxi on the side?

“Well, what they do is like, honestly, I guess they watch for you driving.”

And they'll pull over and ask you. You want to drive? Yeah. People just stand on the side of the road. What's different over there?

Yeah. It's very loose. And they also, it's extremely small town. And everybody knows each other. And it's also because...

I think the time because things had fallen apart on the top side. Like on the federal level, things were falling apart. Yeah. And people were forced to take care of each other. Also, I imagine it's horrible because how many people got bludgeoned to death.

And we're just left out in the middle of nowhere. And they couldn't find who did it. It makes me feel like there's probably just happened occasionally. The thing is that so many were found in this single run. So many bodies were found that it's...

I don't know if they could have killed more. Like, literally, I don't know if the boys could have killed more people. Even in the time period they had. Yeah. Because they killed so many people in such a short amount of time.

At first, police treated this as a car accident.

And not that he had been robbed. Because he wasn't robbed. He'd still had his wallet and his pocket. His skull was deformed. And it was right next to a road.

Making it possible. He was struck many times by a tiny car directly on his face. After a more thorough investigation of the sea, bloodstains were found on the grass. And it became clear that it was a homicide.

Detectives around it up buddy and friends got his timeline for the night minus 20 minutes. They also heard about the green day woo for the very first time. This clue would sit unred in a report until after Igor and Victor got arrested. And lots of issues with the local police. I can clumsyly sum them up, or I can insert our brilliant,

researchers explanation. Clumsy. Okay. Other pubs. All right, lack of funding.

Truly lack of funding. Because the up top, right, which created a brain drain. Because they couldn't pay the cops. So the good cops left. Took over by corrupt cops.

And the corrupt cops came into play. Because they would take money on the side. To do crimes will also be in a police officer. So it was like a whole thing. Because you're not paying them enough to be good cops.

Yeah.

“And I think another thing with the corrupt cops is if they find a murder like this.”

Very violent murder. I think it's a lot of times it is in their best interest to not pursue it. Because if they start pursuing it, who knows where it's going to lead? Of course it might lead them directly to say a mob boss.

You know, someone who they're on their direct payroll. They see a murder or someone. Oh, this guy got beat to death with a hammer. Who usually kills people like that? Who usually kills people really brutally.

It's an angry man. Yeah. Or can I try to kill me in my family? Exactly. So let's just say.

Tiny car. It's interesting because like you bring that up.

Because there's a great Chris rock bit that I always go back to when I hear about this.

He always talks about how he thinks cops should be paid more. Because we get what we pay for. Yeah, sure. You know, and it's like, of course, they're fucking corrupt and doing everything. Because they need to be.

Yeah, I mean, it's they needed to survive in this world in their own perverse way. And it's also, there's a lot of blown out here. They also, there's kind of like a Soviet concept of the ideology of communism. Also puts this whole thing on top of the investigation. Because they believe that serial murder is impossible in a socialist society.

They think that it only happens in capitalism. Because then you got to kill everybody. Yeah, he was a crap.

You could tell I got a body kind of what 53 because they're for so long.

“They refused to believe that this man was murdering people in the Soviet Union.”

And they just didn't investigate it and put it together. This is all of these things make it super fucking complicated. Yeah. Oh, what's going on? But this is not Soviet.

Like, this isn't Soviet era anymore, but still that thought. It's been a hint there. Nothing truly changed because I found it interesting because Rachel showed me. Because it was a non-violent revolution because it was an actual election. And they also had no way of like kicking out all the bad guys that were in charge.

So yeah, sure, we changed everything. We changed the flags and we changed the uniforms. But it's the same guys. Yeah. And these killers, they were Ukrainian.

But the way they killed people, it almost seems like they were Russian. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. But then shouldn't people take more time with what they like. The night of June 25th, 2007, would mark the beginning of their highly concentrated reign of terror.

The first victim of the night was 33-year-old professor named Yakaterina Ilchenko.

After dinner with her mother and her best friend at home, Yakaterina offered a walker friend the short distance home. Her mother would do the dishes and go to sleep. When she awoke at 430 a.m., her mother checked Yakaterina's bed only to find an empty. That's when she came upon a group of older women standing outside her home around her daughter's body. Yakaterina lay in a pool of blood.

Her hands up as if protecting herself from something. But as Natalia told reporters, "They had her last night, face, only part of it." It's nothing funny about that. Not a goddamn thing, funny about it.

Yeah, well, I was on my knees. I was walking her friend home. Yakaterina had returned immediately. She was less than 100 meters from home when she came upon the two young men hiding amongst the trees. Igor spun around, struck her on the side of the head with a hammer, he had hidden in a plastic bag.

The blow killed her instantly. But Igor continued to hit her with the hammer until there was practically no face left at all. They stole her cell phone and ran away giggling into the night. Pumped with a adrenaline, the boys wanted to kill again as soon as possible. Two hours later, they saw 35-year-old Roman Tatatorovich drunkenly passed out on a park bench right across the street from the local prosecutor's office.

Igor attacked him, bringing the hammer down on him over and over again until every bone in this face was crushed. You would be discovered by unsuspecting early morning walkers. The worst kind of walker. All right. After Roman, they attempted one more murdered around out the night.

Fifty-eight-year-old Victor Pertsev was standing outside his housing estate. They began hitting him, but a woman saw through the window of a nearby hair salon and started screaming. Disgared the boys away. So Pertsev was left in a pool of blood. But alive.

The giggling is what's interesting to me. They give off very much a vibe, almost like a Beavison butt-head vibe. I do.

But of course, they've never seen Beavison butt-head.

“Which is that's what's fascinating about it because they have no idea what Beavison butt-head is.”

When I re-watch three guys one hammer, the thing that really does stick with me and I'll start with the second episode is they gave up. It's the joy. Yeah. It's the joy they have. It's the true utter total excitement.

They were just, this is their favorite thing. They are living their dreams. Yeah. Like this was in a Jeffrey Dahmer thing. They didn't have to psych themselves up. This was the fun part. Yeah.

I just imagined they had to have been covered in blood. You know, there's a whole thing on that. There's a whole thing on that. Oh yeah. Yes.

They were.

Six days later, July 1st, 2007, the second full night of hammer murders.

They drove 20 miles out of town to Nova Moskovsk for a change in scenery. There they found their next two victims. Yavgenia, Grischenko and Nikolai Surchuk. Very little is known about the victims or direct details of the incident itself, but they were bludgeoned so brutally with a hammer or pipe that their skulls were split open.

Five days later, July 6th, 2007, three victims in one night, all in close proximity. During the day, Victor, he had spent some QT with an unnamed girlfriend until Igor called him for their murder date. This is one of the factors that shows me that they were not fucking helpless little nerds. No. All right.

Because at this time, they're like, they're 1819. And just like they're American prototypes, Eric Harris and Dillon Kleobold.

“They were somehow, they had, they were nerds, right?”

But somehow they had girlfriends and money in all this fall of the shit. Now, Harrison Kleobold, they were in two things that nerds. That nerds enjoy, but that does not make one a nerd. No. No.

Yeah. That's crazy to me. I honestly, that's wild.

“You just, I think that when I was looking at that,”

imagine just going on a date to the mall, buying your girlfriend something, and then later that night, dropping her off her home, and then going in your day would pick up your boy, then just bludgeoning people to death all night, pretend it like it didn't happen.

And then kissing her again tomorrow at school? Hey, you was at work. Yeah. I mean, the distance between these murders. I mean, it's kind of a combination of spuy killing and serial killing.

Yeah. But for them, it's like, it really, like, I don't even know if like spuy killing really applies because they just want more. They just want more, all the time, give it to me again, give it to me again. Yeah.

And spuy killing really has like a point. Yeah. There's usually, like, there's, there's, they're doing it for some reason. And I think it really is that if you're training like one person being a serial killer, and two people being a serial killer together, because if you got a buddy turning and going, you want to do another one.

Like a personal loan might say no. They're dare in each other. Yeah.

First, it's like being in a bar.

I mean, a buddy saying your buddy says one, one more drink. Yeah. And you're like, good fucking hell.

“So first was a young soldier recently discharged from the military.”

Yeah, you got it. No, it should vote. He came home late after an idea up with friends. His mother found him in the morning. His body lying in the front of the door is face unrecognizable with the rest of his skull and pieces.

Right around the corner from that, they found their second victim, almost immediately after the first. Security guard Yelena Schrom was walking home after finishing her shift early. She was almost home when Igor smacked her with a hammer and hidden under her shirt. As soon as she was within striking range.

As with the other victims, Igor continued to hammer her while she was on the ground. Igor and Victor took the clothes from the baggling. Yelena was carrying to clean the hammer of her blood. Later, Yelena's mother would say, Better because not that part of her attack was not destroyed.

When we arrived at the morp. We could not recognize her. Thank you, smiggle. You're not a sister. Have to rely on her clothes.

Hands and her hair to identify her. And directly down the street would become victim number three. Valentina Hansa. No relation. Valentina would befall the same exact fate as Yelena.

So, all right. So, what are we up to now? Like, that's like 10 kids, like 10 murders. Right now, this is at this will be seven murders. Okay.

This will be seven over three nights.

And not including the first person that they later.

Not include Donald. No. Or the other two. So, technically, could be 10. Wow.

Yes. No, it is up. It's a lot. And it's like, that's a part of why this, when, as soon as I started getting into this case,

“I think at first, we all thought maybe the three guys won hammer thing was just like a moment.”

Yeah. I think that's how I thought of it. I thought of it. In tow we started getting into. I didn't know that they killed any more than just one person.

Same. No, it was a massive cereal. I did not know that it was a whole life of it, of a, of a young life of it. Did they film all of them or just a couple of them? It seems that what they did was a lot of pictures.

And then there were ones that we know that there are videos of. We're shown in court. So, they did mostly pictures of animal torture that kitten video. There's apparently a couple of other videos. Lots of, most of that was pictures.

Then there's the famous video. And then they think there's at least four more videos. But some of them were attacks and not murders. One of them was that we'll be shown in court. They did video of a woman that survived the attack.

There was also another video of a murder that they showed in court as well. It was on that Chilean documentary. Yes. Yes. Yeah.

It's almost like they needed the third person to hold the camera.

Well, they did itself. Well, part of it was them talking about how difficult it would be to murder with one hand. Yeah. And by this point, the third guy is already fucked off. Yeah, he's not.

Yeah, he's out of it. Yeah. But who knows? Maybe they were looking for a third, truly. The following day, July 7th, 2007.

Two children. 13 year old Andre Sudyik and 14 year old Vadim Leyakov. We'll come extra early to go fishing. Who's 3 a.m. Still dark outside when they sat out on their bikes.

They pettled along the Denipa River. A green day woo taxi. Stop. What? Slay woo.

I think. Sorry. The slay woo. Yeah. It stopped at short distance ahead of them.

And Victor got an e-gorked out of it. Standing to the side of the dark row with their backs to the approaching boys. The two young boys decided to try and pedal past the menacing. The menacing figures as quickly as possible. But as they approached Victor and Igor, they turned in swung heavy pipes filled with sand, knocking them off their bikes.

Andre was immediately knocked unconscious. But 14 year old Vadim quickly got up and started running. Vadim knew these woods. He'd been playing in them since he could walk. He managed to hide amongst the trees, even while being frantically searched for by Victor.

Still pounding the prone boys' body with the pipe. He got Igor to leave the scene. I'll be it reluctantly. The Dean lay in the dirt until he was sure his attackers were gone. And he went to his young friend's side.

Andre was still breathing. He was trying to talk that it came out as unintelligible gurgling. Vadim tried to stem some of the bleeding with his t-shirt and places jacket under Andre's head for comfort before heading to a busier road to try and flag someone down for help.

Finally, a car stopped for the blood-spattered kid and agreed to take the boys to the hospital.

Andre was pronounced dead on arrival. Can't believe it. Finally, the police are here. They could go into the chase these maniacs because they're fresh off the case right there. But no.

Instead, they immediately pin their murder on 14 year old Vadim. God damn it.

“So, this is the thing they immediately took this child, right?”

Because they were just like, "You'll do it." You'll do the one. They pulled him into interrogation room for days. They threatened him with detention and notorious Ukrainian child prison. Child prison.

A child prison. I looked it up. I was like, "Hey, they tried to call it like a juvenile center and then you look at it and it's just a passel." They did evil passel. They finally let him go when they couldn't beat a confession out of the child.

But it wasn't for lack of trying. But he provided the police with descriptions of the two hammer-wielding teenagers. And was finally released to his mother only after she threatened to go to the public prosecutor. No, no, no. Hammer's are for building things.

You do not kill people with hammer. No, but obviously you are murdered. One of these friends from Kandopis of wood. These friends from Kandopis of wood. These friends from Kandopis from Kandopis.

We all know how crazy fishermen are. Believe what I will. Now, you figure by this point, they've ridden a major investigation. Eight people murdered. Same method.

All of them 20 kilometers of each other. Another two weeks. But there wasn't. Authorities refused to link the crimes together. Essentially boiling it down to a series of wrong place, wrong time incidences.

The problem was their faces were there. When the hammers were swinging down. And yes, I understand that it is their fault. Yeah, it's the problem with Ukraine.

There's always just hammers flying through the air at all times.

I want my supposed to do keep faces out of all my hammers. I will say they were there.

“Usually if you're looking for like someone like they all have the same type of victim, right?”

Like it's always like a woman or a gay guy. You know, it's always, but this is like they're just killing randomly. It's crimes of opportunity, but there really was. There is a through line in the fact that it is vulnerable people. It is people alone.

It's people old. And all of their faces are smashed. Yeah. There's a hint. And they're attacking them by surprise.

Yeah. So I guess there was like a military guy in a cop. Yes, but they got him by surprise. He was hammered. Both of them were hammered too.

They looked for drunk guys as well. Double hammered. Yeah. Wow. See, there was no announcement about the murders.

Or the potential dangers of street colors still on the loose. But words spread among the locals. That two psychos were running around hammering people to death with total impunity. It was the community that coined the title, the dinner prop, It's rough, maniacs.

However, it looked like the pressure finally had built up enough. The police could no longer ignore what was happening into Negro.

“I think it was because literally he started killing kids.”

Yeah. And once they killed the kid and they went through all of this shit and torture to kid and beat the fucking shit out of a kid in order to try to extract a confession from them, they realized we might want to do something about this. Yeah.

I love them. Kids get killed. I have a favorite. I say three, you were just throwing my guns. Throw them at the guns.

See, the similarities with the crimes, the close proximity and the new details from body, him describing two young men with hammers and a green day who started to turn up the heat. Focked a Polish news organization was actually the first to report on similar crimes and don't abrupt it throfts. On July 17th.

They didn't go all the way to call them serial killings yet. That would take the big premiere.

And that's where we'll pick up next week with an incredible behind-the-scenes look at

the making of Igor and Victor's number one hit three guys one hammer. Now, they hit they'll put them on the map and into the hearts of minds, children, everywhere with their conclusion on our series about the Hammer Maniacs. Thank you, Casey. [laughter]

And the big, your Victor's number one hit. [laughter] Put 'em on the map and into the hearts and buy the children everywhere. Let's take it away back when all the way to 2008 with those three guys. And that'll one.

Still a little hammer. [laughter] Well, thank you for letting me lead this. This has been great. This is really fun.

Here's interesting. Yeah.

And our new head.

I'm not rush more of evil.

Oh, god. Yes. No, we're in it. And what a famous head it is. Oh, it is an interesting shape.

One isn't it? Yes, it is indeed.

“But, you know, it's nice that we got the little bit of synchronicity that we had with this one”

is I don't have to worry about who clavicular is. You know about this whole thing? You heard about this? You know, you need to get back to work. Yeah.

You need to be writing scripts. You shouldn't be on a social media. No, I'm not on social media. This is just something that's been a huge story. Isn't he just a model?

These are the looks maxing guys. It's a model.

He's been smashing his own face with a hammer recently.

I haven't read any of the stories and I don't know what any of it's about. I just know that a man in clavicular is smashing his own face with a hammer. Why does he finish the job? Clavicular manslaughter. You, that should be his fucking album news.

It also makes those topical. It's the dust. And that's all we do here. All we do here. Accidental synchronicities.

It doesn't matter.

“Dude, go to patreon.com/laskpodguessonleft.”

Pay for ad-free episodes and to see last stream on the left. Live every Tuesday 5 p.m. We have streamed. We have changed the time officially to 5 p.m. We want to watch the stream live.

Yeah, so it's a little better for you. East Coast is out there.

And it's better for us old fox.

We get to eat. Because we're sick of being a hangarator in the streams. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a fucking bastard. Yeah, all right.

So we're ready to come and go and see it. I'll eat your fucking shit and LP on the left. Own social, fuck, stupid social media. And go tell colivicular to pump our shell. I'm going to you to not come for all the horses.

Shit someplace underneath LP and romance. See no dogs and space podcasts. LP and TV. The foreign report. Who's the be?

And then come see us on tour. Last podcast and left. Comfort tickets. That's right.

“Tonight we're going to be an Indianapolis of the Egyptian road.”

Come on out. You fuck her. And one slippery noodles going to be inside of you and me, my friend. Really? That sounds like you're going to take me.

Only at the slippery noodles. Then after that, April 25th, Cincinnati, May 29th, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. June 27th, Grand Rapids, Michigan, July 17th. Tulsa, Oklahoma, July 18th, Oklahoma City. That's a maroon.

Tomorrow night. We're going to be in the wonderful. Bam. I can't fucking. That's going to be Henry and I.

I do inside stories that I can't be club. It's going to be a lot of fun. We're going to get. Chubby. We are.

We are. I made sure that they were going to get food for us. I also got us up. A big old state house reservation in India as well. And then I got us up more stake there.

And stuff work. And now I'm sick. Supposed to get my blood done and stuff. But we're just not. I'm just going to keep pushing off.

Every single time is a good restaurant. Yeah, yeah, that's the thing. Let us know where the best restaurants and all of your horrible towns are. We can't wait. We can't.

We're going to eat. Yes. Well, hell sweet Satan, everybody. Oh, no. King.

Hell. You know what? Hell Rob. Well. Yeah.

We know Rob. I don't think I've ever held you before. Yeah. You deserve more. Hell.

Yeah. You held him like an unlicensed taxi cab. Yes. Oh. You're my little slew.

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