| Andrei Kiyko | |
| Birth Name: | Andrei Olegovich Kiyko |
| Alias: | "The Sosnovsky Maniac" "The Sosnovsky Ripper" |
| Birth Place: | Leningrad, RSFSR (present-day Saint Petersburg, Russia) |
| Conviction: | Murder x3 Attempted murder x3 Robbery involving sexual assault and rape x9 |
| Sentence: | 22 years imprisonment (2008) 25 years imprisonment (2023) |
| Victims: | 3+ |
| Beginyear: | 2004 |
| Endyear: | 2007 |
| Country: | Russia |
| States: | Saint Petersburg |
| Apprehended: | June 2008 |
Andrei Olegovich Kiyko (Russian: Андрей Олегович Кийко; born 1985), known as The Sosnovsky Maniac (Russian: Сосновский маньяк), is a Russian serial killer and rapist who assaulted at least fifteen women in Saint Petersburg from 2004 to 2007, three of whom were fatally injured.
Originally convicted of two murders and sentenced to 22 years, he confessed to one more in 2022, for which he was given an additional 25-year sentence.
Little is known about Kiyko's early life. Born in Saint Petersburg in 1985, his parents divorced when he was five, after which his mother was granted full custody of him.[1] At some point during his childhood, Kiyko suffered a severe head injury, which he later claimed caused him to experience visual hallucinations of a female silhouette carrying a lantern and clacking with heels to pursue him. Due to this, he was unable to sleep and would often walk aimlessly around the city.[1]
This aspect of his personality was completely unknown to his mother due to her working the night shift, as well as to his friends and acquaintances, who simply regarded him as a friendly and calm man. Despite this, they noted that he seemingly had issues talking with women, frequently struggling to find interesting topics to talk about.[1] He was also regarded well by his teachers, but some of them later noted that he seemingly enjoyed watching others fight, as he got along with hooligans and was always present as a spectator in brawls.[2]
Starting sometime around early 2004, Kiyko began accosting random women he came across in Sosnovsky Park, asking them to go on walks with him. While he would occasionally steal their personal items and money, he later claimed that he only enjoyed the "process of the chase", and supposedly lost interest in the victim shortly after interacting with them.[1]
As time went on, however, he grew more and more violent, resorting to physically attacking and raping his victims, which now also included minors. If a victim tried to resist him, Kiyko would either kill them or run away if the circumstances were against him.[1] He was meticulous and very careful when perpetrating his crimes, wearing condoms to prevent catching venereal diseases and never sold things like phones to random buyers, fearing that they would remember him, and instead gave them to acquaintances.[2] Most of his known attacks occurred in Sosnovsky Park, with victims sometimes being brought back to his mother's apartment or attacked at a bus stop on Prospekt Morisa Toreza.[2]
Local authorities have stated that they believe Kiyko's victims may number in the hundreds, as he accosted, assaulted, raped and even murdered on a frequent basis until his arrest. Due to this, his true number of victims is unclear, and the following list consists solely of his confirmed attacks:
The investigation into the sudden uptick of attacks and rapes in the area lasted about a year and a half. From the very beginning, investigators believed that they were perpetrated by a single offender, as most victims described their assailant as a very slender Russian man who appeared to be in his late teens or early 20s.[2] At one point, one of the operatives decided to further look into the case of the girl who had drowned in the pond, finding that her former classmate - Andrei Kiyko - had reportedly arranged to meet with her on the day she was found dead.[2]
After a closer look into the girl's death revealed that she had likely been murdered, and with victims' testimonies regarding the layout of the rapist's apartment, Kiyko was swiftly arrested.[2] Not long after, he willingly started confessing to his crimes, attributing a total 14 attacks to himself - 9 robberies, three attempted murders and two murders.[3]
Before he could be put on trial, Kiyko was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation at the Saint Petersburg Psychiatric Hospital No. 6, which concluded that he was insane. Unsatisfied with the results, Justice Elena Volkova ruled that he should be re-examined at the Serbsky Center in Moscow - the results from this ruled that Kiyko was sane, but suffered from unspecified health issues.[2]
Eventually, he was put on trial for the cases to which he had confessed. While family members demanded that he be given a life sentence, prosecutor Natalya Kuznetsova took into account Kiyko's illness and willing confession, and instead demanded 25 years imprisonment. In the end, he was found guilty for a majority of the charges and sentenced to 22 years imprisonment.[3] Upon hearing the verdict, the mothers of the deceased victims expressed that while they felt disgust whenever they looked at Kiyko, they were still satisfied with the verdict and wanted to move on.[2]
In June 2022, news sites reported that Kiyko had spontaneously confessed to a third murder dating back to 2005.[5] In said confession, he claimed that on April 25, 2005, he accosted a 27-year-old woman named Tatyana at Sosnovsky Park, using his usual method of threatening at knifepoint. However, she resisted him too heavily, which supposedly forced him to strangle her and discard the body within the park's confines.[6]
Soon afterwards, Kiyko was charged with this murder and brought to court in Saint Petersburg.[6] He eventually recanted his confession, claiming the police had extracted it from him by force, but as he had provided details only the killer could know, he was found guilty and given an additional 25-year sentence to be served concurrently with his previous one.[6]