Criminal activity
While in the Zolotono region, Pavlo started a horse stealing gang After an unsuccessful attempt to steal four horses from his bandit comrade Andriy Gorlenko, he was arrested and spent a year in prison until all the horses were found. [2]
Upon his release, Pavlo almost immediately went to the regimental prison in the city of Pryluky after another unsuccessful theft in the winter of 1739. While in prison, he offered his candidacy for the position of executioner, since there were no one willing to take this job, but during Lent he managed to escape and return to a criminal lifestyle.
After escaping from prison, Matsapura went to the well-known Romanykha farm where he met with six other thieves. After consulting, the gang went to Nizhynskyi Shlyakh, where they ambushed ten merchants who were transporting vodka. Seven were killed, and three managed to escape. The bodies were buried in the snow, and the money and goods were divided between the bandits, after which the latter decided to sit out in the farms until Easter on April 6.
According to Matsapura, while asking the victims where the money was hidden, the bandits tortured them by roasting their feet with burning wood chips.
Soon, four Cossacks joined Matsapura's gang - Ivan Taran, Mykhailo Makarenko, Denys Hrytsenko, Martyn Revytskyi and Vasyl - an educated relative of the latter, who was taught to read and write. Having five carts to transport the loot, the gang set off "to rob people", as written in the investigation materials. They decided to rob near the village of Mokiivka, and they chose the high mound Telepen as an observation point .
The gang's new victims were five merchants: three were killed and two were ransomed, as a result of which the bandits managed to get five carts and five barrels of vodka. After that, they killed a boy, a cowherd in the steppe, because he recognized Matsapura. For the same reason, a similar fate befell two more shepherds.
A couple of days later, another woman was caught, raped, and killed by Matsapura himself on the Nosivskyi Road. But this time, the gang decided to taste human flesh, and one of the bandits, Martyn Revytsky, cut off the victim's caviar and "took it in a cart" to cook it when he arrived at the Telepen grave.
A few days later, the gang caught another victim - a very young girl. She, like many others, was tracked down from the top of the Telepen mound. By this time, the gang had grown to 16 people. Before killing and eating, the unfortunate girl, as before, was raped.
But soon the bandit den on Telepna became very noticeable. Rumors spread around the area about numerous disappearances of people. After several more attacks on merchants who were carrying vodka, the company dispersed, and Matsapura himself went to the Shelykhivshchyna farm, where he was caught after another petty theft. [2]
Execution
On September 30, 1740, Pavlo was found guilty for "For eating human flesh, which even unholy barbarians do not do, by virtue of the specified rights of the Little Russians, he will impose a cruel death penalty on the same grave of Telepne, near which the robbery was committed. Namely - Matsapure, who was the leader of those robberies... cut off his fingers and toes and cut off his ears and nose, impaled alive. His comrades - Myshchenko, Pyvnenko and Pashchenko, who followed his evil deeds, quartered, cut off their heads and put them on wheels next to him, and put some of them on stakes for the fear of others." On December 22, 1740, Pavlo and the gang were led to a remote area and decapitated by the executioners. [2]
