Anatoly Onoprienko 

On April 16, 1996, 37-year-old Anatoly Onoprienki was arrested at his girlfriend’s house in Zhitomir, Western Ukraine. His arrest ended “The Terminator’s” reign of terror in which he is reported to have murdered over 40 people.  It ended a manhunt involving 2, 000 police and more than 3,000 troops eventually leading to Onoprienko's arrest following an anonymous tip-off. Investigators fear the tally of victims may go even higher than 52 as a gap in murders seemed too long.

Onoprienki was found with a 12-gauge shotgun that could be linked to bullets found at one of the murder scenes. Also he was in possession of jewellery and electrical equipment belonging to several of his victims. Onoprienko’s girlfriend was wearing an engagement ring that he had stolen by cutting off one of his victim’s fingers.

Anatoly Onoprienki had worked as sailor and had studied forestry at university before his arrest. He was known to authorities and was on an outpaitent program of a local psychiatric hospital department.

When Onoprienki was arrested he quickly confessed to eight of the killings spanning the years 1989 to 1995, yet denied all of the other murders police linked to him. In total police believe Onoprienko may have killed up to 52 people equalling the tally of fellow countryman Andrei Chikatilo.

Onoprienki began his murderous campaign in 1989, where he and accomplice Serhiy Rogozin robbed and killed nine people. He later claimed that he had been hearing voices since the age of seven when his brother had sent him to an orphanage after his mother had died.

Onoprienko's first human victims were a couple, standing by their Lada car on a motorway: "I just shot them. It's not that it gave me pleasure, but I felt this urge. From then on, it was almost like some game from outer space."

He said he had derived no pleasure from the act of killing. "Corpses are ugly," he said with distaste. "They stink and send out bad vibes. Once I killed five people and then sat in the car with their bodies for two hours not knowing what to do with them. The smell was unbearable."

Onoprienki then continued his rampage alone in late 1995 where in the next six months he would murder 43 people. In March 1996, police began to panic as the number of bodies rose and soon a manhunt was launched across western Ukraine after eight families were brutally murdered in their homes. Many of Onoprienko’s victims lived in remote villages in the Lvov region near the border of Poland.

On one occasion he confronted a young girl who was huddled on her bed, praying. She had seen him kill both her parents.

"Seconds before I smashed her head, I ordered her to show me where they kept their money," he said.

"She looked at me with an angry, defiant stare and said, 'No, I won't.' That strength was incredible. But I felt nothing."

He blew the doors off homes on the edges of villages, gunning down adults and battering children with metal objects. He stole money, jewellery, stereo equipment and other items before burning down the houses.

Onoprienko’s blood lust climaxed with a three-month massacre in early 1996 where he began the systematic slaughter of families in the Ukrainian villages of Bratkovichi and Busk. Army and special forces where mobilised in the areas to try and assist those still living in the region a well as trying to catch the man dubbed “The Terminator”.

Police used a tactic of blockading the area trying to capture the killer, however Onoprienki easily slipped through the police trap and moved to nearby villages to continue his killing spree.

The murderer had a pattern and signature to his method. He would pounce on secluded houses on the fringes of villages. Before dawn Onoprienki would sneak into the house and round up the entire family before shooting them all dead with a 112-gauge shotgun at point-blank range. The house would then be set alight before “The Terminator” fled the scene. The killer would also murder anyone who crossed his path during his rampage. Onoprienki showed no remorse, as he wiped out entire families in cold blood, battering children and raping a woman after shooting her in the face.

At his trial in November 1998, Onoprienki stated he felt like a robot driven for years by a dark force, and argued he should not be tried until authorities determine the source of this force.

Hundreds of spectators watched the trial unfold and bayed for the killer’s blood. He had devastated many villages throughout the Ukraine and the towns’ people wanted their own revenge.

"Let us tear him apart," shouted a pensioner at the back of the court just before the hearing started, her voice trembling with emotion.

"He does not deserve to be shot. He needs to die a slow and agonizing death."

At his trial Onoprienki was silent. The court asked him if he would like to make a statement to which he replied with a shrug of his shoulders, and a quiet spoken

"No, nothing."

Informed of his legal right to object to the court's proceedings, he growled

"This is your law, I consider myself a hostage."

Asked to state his nationality, he said:

"None."

When Judge Dmitry Lipsky said this was impossible, Onoprienko rolled his eyes and replied:

"Well, according to law enforcement officers, I'm Ukrainian."

Onoprienko's co-defendant Sergei Rogozin, accused of helping in the first nine murders, did speak and proclaimed his innocence.

Onoprienki had his lawyers attempt to use the insanity defence, rambling inanely during police interviews about conspiracies against him by the CIA and Interpol, unknown powers and future revelations. However psychiatrists ruled him fit to stand trial.

"I perceive it all as a kind of experiment," Onoprienki said of the conspiracies against him. "There can be no answer in this experiment to what you're trying to learn."

Onoprienki was found guilty and sentenced to death but he will not be executed because Ukraine has pledged as a member of the Council of Europe to suspend capital punishment and eventually ban it.

After his trial Onoprienki said:

"I have never regretted anything and I don't regret anything now."

Still complaining of the conspiracies of higher powers and powers on earth out to murder humanity. Claiming to have special hypnotic powers and saying he had information "nobody, not even the president" had access to, he said he had received "permission" to kill from another world, but did not explain those reasons which drove him to destroy his victims.

"I love all people and I loved those I killed. I looked those children I murdered in the eyes and knew that it had to be done," he said. "For you it's 52 murders, but for me that's the norm."

He said he would have been prepared to kill his own son.

Though Onoprienko has remained completely silent during court hearings, when it comes to the media he’s naturally verbose. The daily newspaper “Fakty” published an long interview with Onoprienki from his jail cell in Zhytomyr where he was quoted saying

"Naturally, I would prefer the death penalty. I have absolutely no interest in relations with people. I have betrayed them."

The misunderstood killer added that he was shaken by people's indifference to his crimes. As he slaughtered his victims in one village,

“people screamed so loudly that they could be heard in neighbouring villages. But nobody came to help them. Everybody went into hiding, like mice."

During an interview with a London Times reporter Onoprienki reminisced about the murders he had committed.

"The first time I killed, I shot down a deer in the woods,"

he said, in a flat monotone, as if reading from his curriculum vitae.

"I was in my early twenties and I recall feeling very upset when I saw it dead. I couldn't explain why I had done it, and I felt sorry for it. I never had that feeling again."

"To me killing people is like ripping up a duvet… Men, women, old people, children, they are all the same. I have never felt sorry for those I killed. No love, no hatred, just blind indifference. I don't see them as individuals, but just as masses."

Onoprienko's crimes have caused such revulsion in Ukraine, however, that the Ukrainian president is considering temporarily lifting a moratorium on capital punishment that was imposed on March 1997, in accordance with the rules of the Council of Europe, to execute him. The alternative, to commute the serial killer's sentence to 20 years in jail, would outrage most Ukrainians.

Telling a reporter after his sentence:

"To me it was like hunting. Hunting people down,"

"I would be sitting, bored, with nothing to do. And then suddenly this idea would get into my head. I would do everything to get it out of my mind, but I couldn't. It was stronger than me. So I would get in the car or catch a train and go out to kill."

Some experts view the fact that he grew up without parents and was given up to an orphanage by his elder brother as a clue to his destruction of entire families. Strangely, his most vicious spree coincided with the time when he moved in with the woman he intended to marry and with her children - towards whom, she claimed, he was always very loving.

Onoprienko, however, claimed he was possessed. "I'm not a maniac," he said, without a hint of self-doubt. "If I were, I would have thrown myself onto you and killed you right here. No, it's not that simple. I have been taken over by a higher force, something telepathic or cosmic, which drove me.

"For instance, I wanted to kill my brother's first wife, because I hated her. I really wanted to kill her, but I couldn't because I had not received the order. I waited for it all the time, but it did not come.

"I am like a rabbit in a laboratory. A part of an experiment to prove that man is capable of murdering and learning to live with his crimes. To show that I can cope, that I can stand anything, forget everything."

Onoprienki insists he should be executed claiming

"If I am ever let out, I will start killing again," he said. "But this time it will be worse, 10 times worse. The urge is there.

"Seize this chance because I am being groomed to serve Satan. After what I have learnt out there, I have no competitors in my field. And if I am not killed I will escape from this jail and the first thing I'll do is find Kuchma (the Ukrainian president) and hang him from a tree by his testicles."

Bibliography

Various news articles

Photos from Police file

Page by Korey Sifuentes