I’m putting this in the Pit due to the goriness of the subject matter and its high potential for Recreational Outrage.
I hadn’t heard anything about this case until very recently: the Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs. There was a previous thread on this topic last year, although it didn’t get much attention: Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs{RO} - The BBQ Pit - Straight Dope Message Board
The wikipedia article gives a lot of the details that have emerged during the trial. To summarize: in the summer of 2007, two teenagers committed a string of 21 murders in and around the Ukrainian city of Dnepropetrovsk. They would ambush individuals, and beat them to death with hammers, screwdrivers, and other blunt instruments.
They videotaped several of the murders, one of which shows the slow and agonizing death of a man named Sergei Yatzenko, who was attacked by these youths while on his way to visit his grandson. This particular video was leaked onto the internet late last year (apparently, they had videotaped several other murders of theirs, as well as their earlier experiments, which involved torturing and killing kittens–only Yatzenko’s murder has been leaked to the public, however).
I’ve read a description of that video’s contents, and have absolutely no desire to see it. It apparently shows this man, already severely beaten, getting his face smashed into a bloody pulp over the course of 6 or 7 minutes.
I decided to start this thread because a few days ago (Feb. 11th), the court came back with their sentences: life imprisonment for the two charged with the murders. [A third youth, a friend of the other two, was charged with armed robbery, and was sentenced to 9 years imprisonment. He was cleared of having any involvement in the murders (the armed robbery involved all three youths, but it had occurred some time before the other two boys embarked on their killing spree).]
I also wanted to start this thread because the case doesn’t seem to have attracted much media attention at all in the U.S. The other thread from December didn’t have quite as much information, either, so I thought this might serve as an update.