across 43-year-old Tatyana Luksts. He invited her on a walk and to have a drink in the forest, but when he asked to have sex with her, she rebuked him. Angered, Balan raped and strangled the woman, then threw her body into a small hole underneath a tree and sprinkled it with leaves. Luksts' family attempted to convince local authorities to look for her, but they were initially apprehensive about doing so. In January of the following year, a local woman walking on the street noticed that some dogs were fighting over something - upon closer inspection, she saw that it was a human head. The woman reported it to the police, and after a search, officers eventually located a pair of severed legs. It was ascertained that these belonged to Luksts' corpse, which by that time had been ravaged by stray dogs. Panic, rapes, and final murder The recent disappearances and the discovery of Luksts' remains caused panic around the Fastiv Raion, with many residents fearing that a serial killer was active in the area. Authorities initially dismissed this notion, claiming that there was no conclusive evidence that this was the case and that Luksts' cause of death was still under investigation. Out of desperation, family members of the missing women contacted self-proclaimed psychics to help locate them, while Nikolay Korolenko threatened to find his wife's murderer and kill him himself if police did not do anything. Through the following year, there were at least three rapes that were reported in the Fastiv area, all of which were later linked to Balan. The first of these occurred sometime during the spring, when he attacked a 48-year-old woman in the forest and choked her into unconsciousness - likely believing she had died, Balan left soon afterwards. Later on in the summer, he robbed and raped an 18-year-old girl near the Krasny Oktyabr power plant, but left her alive for unknown reasons. Balan also raped a 60-year-old woman, but little information is available on this case. On August 15, Kornienko was unexpectedly visited by her landlord, 56-year-old Valery Korunchuk, who told her that he had gotten into a bitter argument with his wife back in Kyiv and needed a place to stay. Balan and Korunchuk would frequently bicker and drink over the next couple of days, until one day they both went to the nearby forest in Kaznivkii. Once there, Balan