Tallinn baseball-bat killer seeks early release from Estonian court
Vyacheslav Bayuk, sentenced to 20 years for a brutal 2009 murder in central Tallinn, has appealed to Estonia's Supreme Court for conditional early release with electronic monitoring after lower courts rejected his request.
Former cook Vyacheslav Bayuk (43), nicknamed the "bat killer" by Estonian media, has filed an appeal with the Supreme Court seeking early release from prison along with electronic monitoring. In the latter half of June, Harju County Court denied his request for conditional early release, and Tartu Circuit Court subsequently upheld that decision. The Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the appeal.
The crime
Bayuk became widely known in the summer of 2010 when he was charged with the brutal murder of meteorologist Krista Odakivi near Schnelli Pond in Tallinn. The case that shook the country occurred in the early morning of November 23, 2009, when an unknown man suddenly attacked a woman from behind as she walked to work, striking her repeatedly with a baseball bat as well as with his hands and feet. The badly beaten woman was taken to hospital, where doctors found a closed blunt head injury with multiple skull fractures, cerebral shock, extensive bruising and abrasions, a broken elbow, and other injuries. She died on November 25.
Just minutes after attacking Odakivi, the same man assaulted another woman with the bat as she climbed the Patkuli stairs on Toompea hill. She escaped the worst outcome by chance — when two schoolgirls appeared at the scene, the attacker dropped the bat and fled.
Conviction
On March 21, 2011, Harju County Court found Bayuk guilty of aggravated murder, attempted murder, an earlier rape, and drunk driving, sentencing him to 20 years in prison. Later that year, the Supreme Court declined to hear his lawyer's cassation appeal.
Bayuk has now spent nearly 16 years behind bars. Since October 2023 he has been held in an open prison, which currently allows him to work at an auto repair shop. If he serves his full sentence, he would not be released until autumn 2030.
