[12] According to Sayenko's taped confession, as Shram walked toward them, Suprunyuk struck her with the hammer he had been hiding under his shirt and hit her several more times after she fell.

[18] Two local children who had also witnessed the 14 July Mamarchuk attack, hidden in a tent just a few feet away, also provided a detailed description corroborating the one given by Lyakhov.

Suprunyuk sought advice on getting rid of their fears, which led the boys to stand on a balcony of their 14th-floor apartment for hours, hanging over the railing.

[30] Viktor Chevguz, Suprunyuk's original defense lawyer, left the case after reportedly being disappointed that his client's plea of insanity was not accepted.

Lawyers for the victims' families argued that the level of care taken by the killers during their crime spree meant that they were fully aware of their actions.

This was corroborated by a former classmate who claimed he often heard Suprunyuk was in contact with an unknown "rich foreign website operator" who ordered forty snuff videos and would pay much more money once they were made.

[17] Regional security chief Ivan Stupak rejected the claim that the murders were committed to make internet snuff videos, saying that there was no evidence of this.

Igor Sayenko became the most prominent figure on the defense, giving numerous interviews and taking a lead role in court proceedings.

Hanzha's attorneys based their defense on the fact that he never participated in the murder spree, and was involved only with a single incident four months before the killings began, in which two men were robbed in the nearby town of Dniprodzerzhynsk.

According to Sayenko, the tape constantly stops and restarts, showing the evidence obtained only after being picked up by investigators but never the actual moment of discovery.

In an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda, Igor Sayenko claimed that a fourth suspect named Danila Kozlov was initially charged with the murders.

Shram further stated that the investigators told her that Kozlov remains free because he "did not murder anyone", and when her attorney attempted to bring up the matter in court, the judge "asked him to sit down".

[37] Igor Sayenko continued to speculate on the influence of the families of the "real killers", claiming that he conducted an interview with an escaped victim who wanted his identity kept secret for fear for his life.

[13] The strategy of the defense team received some support from the victims' families, who were reportedly dissatisfied with the slow-moving legal process and an alleged cover-up by the investigators.

[39] The authorities in Ukraine strongly denied that a fourth person was involved in the killings who could still be at large and said that rumors of similar crimes taking place since the arrest of the three suspects were unfounded.

[22] The defense objected to the presentation, claiming that the evidence was obtained illegally and that the subjects shown in the video and the photographs were digitally altered to resemble the suspects.

[5] The court rejected all defense objections, accepted the prosecution's argument that the material was genuine, and showed the suspects in the act of murdering their victims.

Four days later, a local who saw one of Lyudmila's posters remembered seeing an abandoned Dnepr bike in a remote wooded area by a garbage dump.

[45] The video showing the murder of Sergei Yatzenko was leaked to a shock site based in the United States and dated 4 December 2008.

Ekaterina Levchenko, adviser to Ukraine's minister of the interior, was critical of the leak but admitted that control of videos on the Internet was "virtually impossible".

The lawyers for Sayenko and Suprunyuk announced their intention to appeal, saying that the authenticity of the photographic and video evidence was not established beyond a reasonable doubt.

Vladimir Suprunyuk claimed that Igor had been tortured to extract his confession, with the police covering his head and forcing him to inhale cigarette smoke.

[58] In April 2011, a poll found that nearly 60% of Ukrainians wanted the death penalty available for serial killings where the judicial error had been ruled out.

[59] Speaking at a press conference, Igor Sayenko and Vladimir Suprunyuk repeated their belief that the case was based on fabricated evidence.

A spokesperson for the prosecutor's office said that the decision to refer the case back to the appeal court was procedural, and they were confident that the verdict would be upheld.

It was titled Los maníacos del martillo (The Hammer Maniacs) and ran for 1 hour and 25 minutes as part of the investigative series Aquí en Vivo (Here, live).

The parents of Sayenko and Suprunyuk maintained the innocence of their children, while detectives involved in the case gave their recollections and repeated the lack of confirmation for the theory that the murder videos had been shot as snuff films for sale overseas.

From an anonymous source, the filmmakers obtained a longer and unedited version of the cellphone video showing the murder of Sergei Yatzenko on 12 July 2007.

Sayenko and Suprunyuk are seen standing at the woodland roadside next to their Daewoo Lanos taxi, waiting for a suitable victim to arrive and discussing what they are going to do.

Both were arrested after a video recording showing a female body being mutilated with a knife was found on a camera belonging to Lytkin's uncle, who had become suspicious.