Monsters can be found everywhere. Some monsters are far more dangerous than others. This particular monster was truly, truly a beast.
Anatoly Onoprienko was born on July 25th, 1959 in the village of Lasky in the Ukraine. At the time, the Ukraine was part of the USSR – or, the Soviet Union. He was born into a loving family – his father was a decorated World War II veteran, his mother was kind and caring, and he had an older brother who played with him.
All of this would change when Onoprienko turned four.
His mother passed away, and his father wasn’t capable of caring for the young child. Instead, he sent him to stay with relatives. The relatives – his aunt and grandparents – were either unwilling or unable to care for him. They sent him to an orphanage in the village of Pryvitne.
Meanwhile, his older brother stayed with their father. Onoprienko resented this, and his resentment consumed him well into adulthood.
He drifted. He worked when and where he could, and he bided his time.
In the 1980s, Onoprienko met Sergei Rogozin at the gym he frequented. They quickly became friends, and hatched plans to make money. They’d burgle houses. They’d sneak in at night, steal what they could, and leave before the families were alerted to their presence. Somewhere along the way, simple burglary wasn’t enough anymore.
In 1989, a particular incident ended the friendship between Onoprienko and Rogozin. They entered a house, burgled it, and then things took a turn. Onoprienko shot and murdered the entire family inside – two adults and eight children. Afterwards, for reasons unknown, Onoprienko and Rogozin parted ways, never to see each other again.
In that same year, Onoprienko set out to burgle a vehicle. He also shot the family of five sleeping inside and then torched the vehicle to get rid of the evidence.
Onopriekno was quickly turning from monster burglar, to beastly murderer.
The incidents were reported to police, but they found them difficult to investigate. 1989 was the fall of the USSR, and police forces were spread paper thin as they tried to adjust. There simply wasn’t enough manpower.
After torching the vehicle, Onoprienko laid low. He did not commit and burglaries or crimes – that are known of – for six years. No one knows what he was up to for those six years. And it is highly unlikely that anyone will find out.
On December 24th, 1995, Onoprienko struck again. He robbed a secluded home near the village of Garmarnia. Then, he shot and killed the family of four iniside the home with a sawed-off double-barrelled shotgun. Then, as with the car six years prior, he torched the home to get rid of the evidence.
On January 2nd, 1996, Onoprienko found another home, and shot and murdered the family of four inside. He also murdered a pedestrian who was near the home, in order to eliminate any witnesses.
Not long after that, on January 6th, 1996, Onoprienko changed things up a little. While walking along the Berdyank-Dnieprovs’k highway, he stopped three separate vehicles, and killed the passengers and drivers inside – four in total.
On January 17th, 1996, Onoprienko went back to his old M.O. He found a secluded home, broke in, murdered the family of five inside, and then torched the home to cover up the evidence. On this occasion, he also shot and murdered two witnesses to cover his tracks.
On January 30th, 1996, Onoprienko shot and killed four people in the Fastiv, Kyivs’ka Oblast region of the Ukraine.
On February 19th, 1996, Onoprienko found himself in Olevsk, Zhytomyrs’ka Oblast. He broke into a home, shot and killed the father and son, and then attacked the wife, murdering her with a hammer. He demanded money and goods from the daughter, who refused to give into his demands. He attacked her with the same hammer, murdering her in the same way he’d murdered her mother.
On February 27th, 1996, Onoprienko found a secluded home in Malina, Lvivs’ka Oblast. He shot the parents dead, then attacked the two young daughters, murdering them with an axe. As he was leaving, he attacked the neighbour with an axe in order to get rid of him as a witness.
On March 22nd, 1996, Onoiprienko attacked his last home. He shot the family of four inside, and then set the house ablaze to hide the evidence.
In total, Onoprienko mass murdered 52 people.
As Onoprienko was terrorizing the Ukraine, he created a media firestorm. No one had any idea who was responsible for these attacks. They didn’t even know if it was the work of one person, or multiple people who simply copied each other. Consensus was that it was one man – and that man was given a nickname: The Beast of the Ukraine.
The attacks all seemed to follow a sort of pattern. Onoprienko would target secluded and isolated houses in small villages. He would scope them out, then proceed to break in, steal money and valuables, murder anyone in sight, and then set the home on fire to hide his tracks.
The Beast was stopped in March. The Secret Service of Ukraine (SBU) had established a task force set to find the Beast who’d been terrorizing the country.
They were led to a 26-year-old man named Yury Mozola. They were convinced he was their Beast. For three days, six members of the SBU interrogated and tortured Yury. He would never admit to being the one responsible for the attacks. After three days, Yury died as a result of the torture. Seven individuals were later tried and sentenced to prison terms for the roles they played in Yury’s death.
Undeterred, the SBU continued their search. Their search lasted 17 days. Pyotr Onoprienko reached out to the SBU and turned in his cousin, Anatoly Onoprienko. Pyotr had found a stash of weapons in his home – weapons that weren’t supposed to be there.
The SBU taskforce quickly set about apprehending Anatoly Onoprienko.
When he was arrested, he was found with a number of weapons which matched those used in the mass killings. They also found items that had been taken from the victims’ homes.
At first, Onoprienko denied being involved. Then, he decided he wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. He happily confessed to all 52 murders between 1989 and 1996. He was proud of what he’d done. He claimed he resented the happy families. How dare they have what he never did? He wanted them to suffer as he’d suffered. Anatoly Onoprienko wanted to destroy what he believed to a farce – the farce of the happy family.
On November 23rd, 1998, Onoprienko was deemed fit to stand trial in the City of Zhytomyr.
Over the course of the four month trial, over 99 volumes of evidence were presented to the court, and more than 400 witnesses came forward to testify.
Sergei Rogozin, then 36, was also caught and tried for the part he played in the first mass killing in 1989. He was found guilty, and sentenced to 13 years in prison.
Onoprienko never took the stand at his trial, but he kept saying that he felt no remorse for what he’d done.
On March 31st, 1999, Anatoly Onoprienko was found guilty of murder. He was sentenced to death by shooting, as per Ukrainian criminal code.
Onoprienko would escape his death sentence.
Ukraine had every intent to join the Council of Europe. In order to do so, they decided to abolish capital punishment. Some thought that the case of Anatoly Oniprienko would be an exception. It was not. His death sentence was commuted to life in prison.
On August 27th, 2013, Anatoly Onoprienko died in prison at the age of 54.
The Beast of the Ukraine would no longer be able to terrorize the country.
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Sources:
11 Awful Facts About the “Beast of the Ukraine” – Amanda Sedlak-Hevener – Ranker
Anatoly Onoprienko – Crime & Investigation
Anatoly Onoprienko Wikipedia page