Kelly Cochran. Killer.

TERMINATOR : THE TRUE STORY OF ANATOLY ONOPRIENKO

I'm an angel who was attending a school of Satan. Some will call me schizophrenic or even Hitler or other terrible things. That's okay with me. - Anatoly Onoprienko

CHAPTER ONE

Anatoly Onoprienko was born in the village of Lasky in Zhtomyr Oblast in the Ukraine on July 25th, 1959. His father, Yuri Onoprienko, was a World War II hero for the Soviet Union but according to Anatoly he was abusive and an alcoholic.  He also had a younger brother who was thirteen years older than him. 

His mother died when he was four years old and his father sent him to live with his grandparents and aunt. The grandparents subsequently sent him to an orphanage. 

Onoprienko became bitter at his family and father for sending him to the orphanage. His older brother was allowed to stay in the family home while he was sent away.

I remember my father and brother staring at me, Onoprienko said recalling his youth. Staring at me saying, 'let's send him to an orphanage.' I don't blame them but I'm horrified by their memory. I remember their voices.

It is unknown why Anatoly was sent to the orphanage alone while his brother remained in the care of his father.  His grandmother stayed with him for the first few days there,  helping him to adjust. She would eventually leave but would visit often and bring care packages of food.

A shy and quiet young boy, he did manage to make friends inside the orphanage. He would play soccer and other sports. His grades began to decline, however, as he entered the college of forestry at age fourteen.

Teachers noted a shift in his personality and became concerned. He began drinking Vodka like his father and became involved in petty thefts.

Onoprienko left the college of forestry at the age of seventeen, still unsure of what to do with his life. He joined the army in 1976 and it is here where he mastered the use of firearms. Instead of becoming a good soldier, however, he became even more alienated.

When I was twenty years old I called myself stupid because I couldn't understand people, Onoprienko recalled. If they were smart then I must be stupid.

Onoprienko was discharged from the army then became a sailor. He gained employment on a cruise ship in Odessa and where he would often steal money from cabins.  Despite his anti-social temperament, Onoprienko had a handful of girlfriends that he would try to impress with gifts purchased with money he had stolen.

One waitress on the cruise ship caught his eye and the two began dating. She would remain his girlfriend for three years and she would give birth to his first child. Onoprienko would take a stab at being a father for awhile but discovered that it wasn't for him.

Without a word, he left his girlfriend and his baby. Onoprienko would never see them again.

I had a unique destiny, Onoprienko said. I had to go out and find it. I felt restless at home. Stifled. Married life wasn't for me. I needed something more.

That something more would be crime and murder.

CHAPTER TWO

Onoprienko's criminal activity would increase in 1989, Ruslan Moshkovsky (Onoprienko's attorney) said. The USSR was collapsing and no one was responsible for anything.

Onoprienko's first murder would start with his landlady.

He broke into her apartment with the goal of stealing a few pieces of jewelry. The landlady, however, came home and demanded to know what he was doing in her house.

Onoprienko panicked and shot the woman dead.

He ran out of the apartment and continued on with his life as usual. Because the police resources were so stretched out, Onoprienko was never even questioned in the murder and the crime would remain unsolved.

Onoprienko would team up with a fellow petty thief, Sergei Rogozin, and the duo would break into various residences around Kiev.

Returning home from a night of thievery, the two spotted a car pulling a trailer late one night. Onoprienko sped in front of the vehicle, blocking its route then jumped out of his car with a sawed-off shotgun in hand.

A young couple was inside and Onoprienko fired upon them without warning. 

What are you doing? Rogozin screamed.

Shut up!

I thought we were just going to rob them.

Onoprienko sprang up in Rogozin's face, caressing his cheek with the barrel of his shotgun. If you don't shut up...If you say anything, I will kill your entire family and make you watch. Do you understand?

Rogozin could only nod his head in agreement.

Onoprienko then buried the bodies of the couple and set fire to their car. 

A month later, the two thieves gunned down another couple using the same method. Onoprienko would speed in front of the car and stop. His victims caught unaware and defenseless, Onoprienko would spring out of his car and blast away.

Rogozin would say nothing and just take whatever valuables he could find off the victims.

Onoprienko would continue accumulating his victims in this manner. He would stop families on abandoned roads and kill everyone inside. Even children.

The home burglaries continued as well with Rogozin. Onoprienko killed a family of ten people when he and Rogozin were caught in the midst of robbing their house. Two adults and eight children were killed by the duo. Onoprienko then ceased all ties with Rogozin.

He was a kind, intelligent man, Rogozin would say later of Onoprienko. He wasn't greedy. He seemed good-natured. I cannot say anything bad about him.

CHAPTER THREE

Onoprienko kept a low profile for a few years, moving in with a distant cousin. There are six years in his life that are unaccounted for. Some say he spent some time in a mental institution while others insist that he may be responsible for more crimes in and around the former Soviet Union.  He tried to get asylum in Western Europe but failed, returning to his native Ukraine.

He worked in Germany and Austria, Dmitry Lipsky, the trial judge said. During our interrogation we asked if he had killed anyone there. He denied it. He said he had only committed a robbery.

At the very beginning, I had an option to commit suicide, Onoprienko said. And to stop this mission to kill. But then with the passage of time there was an order from above that I cannot kill myself. I'm supposed to live and keep doing what I'm doing and finish this game.

Onoprienko would return to the Ukraine in 1985 and begin a killing rampage the likes of which his country had never seen.  He had anticipated that his crimes on the highway would become the stuff of legend. Instead, they were forgotten in a bureaucratic quagmire.

Not only were his crimes unknown to the general public, no one was even investigating them.

The Soviet Union had collapsed and his native state, the Ukraine, was now an independent country.  

When he came back, Moshkovsky said. And realized that everything had been forgotten and no one was looking for him, he embarked on his second killing spree.

Like a shark circling around a minnow of fish, Onoprienko moved from town to town surveying the lay of the land. He visited some relatives who were hunters and stole a shotgun from them.

Onoprienko would saw off the barrel of the gun in order to cause maximum damage. He wanted not only to kill again but to gain notoriety for the