"The Terminator"
For the people of the Ukraine the mass murders would start on christmas eve 1995 in a small village called Garmania, a man his wife, and their two children were killed with a sawn off double barrell shot gun, items of their clothes and jewelry stolen and then the house burned down. Five nights later in Bratkovychi another family of four would be killed items again stolen and the house set alight. During the next three months there were eight similar attacks in two villages, in which 28 people died and one woman was raped. Throughout the months the pattern he chose was to shoot the men, stab the women and bludgeon the children.
There was mass panick, and a huge man hunt, bigger than that for Andrei Chikatilo. Until one day the police were tipped off about a man who visited the region to see his girlfriend. When the police made their routine inquiry Onoprienko instantly made a grab for his case, the police knocked him to the ground and arrested him, in the case they found the weapon, and around the apartment other evidence.
Onoprienko confessed to 52 murders, he turned out to be an ex mental patient. To him murder was "like ripping up a duvet." nothing more. Onoprienko claimed that he took no pleasure in the killings, on the contrary he would feel quite detatched afterwards. He said he was embodied by a higher power, this higher power gave him orders to kill (Though the theft and rape suggests otherwise). And even those he hated he would not kill unless told to do so.
Onoprienko like Chikatilo sat in a metal cage at his trial, after finding out that he had been diagnosed as a schizophrenic and after release from the mental hospital the murders began he was given the death penalty anyway. However the Ukraine had a moratorium on Capital punishment and despite the Ukranian Presidents efforts to lift it for this one case Anatoly Onoprienko may never be executed.
