Olga Hepnarová - Czech Women, Timeline and Life

Olga was born on June 30, 1951, in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Her father worked as a clerk in a bank, and her mother was a dentist. .

She tried to commit suicide at the age of 13, by overdosing on medicine. Her attempt was a result of all the bullying she had to face in school. She started developing serious psychological problems because of the bullying. She was hospitalized in Opařany for a while.

The doctors were unable to diagnose her problem completely. She had various unhealthy traits, such as nicotine addiction, detachment, vomiting, and apathy. However, one of the psychiatrists diagnosed her with schizophrenia.

She took up jobs at various places but was mostly fired within a few days. In the end, she started working as a truck driver.

It was around this time that she began to explore her sexuality. Her sexual orientation was not too clear, as she seemed to like both men and women.

Olga was clearly lonely, depressed, and isolated. She was desperately in need of a lover or a friend who would understand her, but sadly, she could not connect with anybody. Soon, she started hating the world and planned to take a drastic step.

On July 10, 1973, she drove her truck into a group of 25 people who were waiting for a tram in Prague. In her first attempt, she avoided ramming into the people on the pavement. However, this was not because she had changed her mind. Apparently, she felt that the number of people standing by the street at that time was not as much as she had expected. She wished to kill more people.

In her second attempt, she rammed the truck into the people standing on the pavement, who were clueless about the impending danger. Her truck collided with 25 people. Three of her victims died immediately. Three more victims died later the same day, and two more succumbed to their injury a few days later. Six others were badly injured, and six more people suffered minor wounds. Most of the victims were aged between 60 and 79 years.

After committing the mass murder, Hepnarová stopped at the end of the street. She did not try to escape or move from her seat. She waited for the police to come and arrest her soon.

Before the attack, she even sent out letters to two newspapers, namely, ‘Svobodné slovo’ and ‘Mladý svět,’ stating her intention of killing as many people as possible. She wrote how much she hated the world and her family and how badly she wanted to teach the world a lesson. This was her way of directing her hatred toward society.

The letter was, however, received two days after the mass murder. The letter read: “I am a loner. A destroyed woman. A woman destroyed by people... I have a choice – to kill myself or to kill others. I choose TO PAY BACK MY HATERS. It would be too easy to leave this world as an unknown suicide victim. Society is too indifferent, rightly so. My verdict is: I, Olga Hepnarová, the victim of your bestiality, sentence you to death.”

Olga had already stated her intention of killing as many people as possible with her truck. She avoided driving her truck into the people on the pavement the first time, as she felt there were not enough people to kill.

The second time, however, she drove the truck over a slope, to accelerate the speed and to increase the number of deaths. She was found to be fully aware of her actions, and psychologists declared she was not suffering from any mental ailments.

On April 6, 1974, Olga was sentenced to death by the ‘City Court,’ for mass murder. The decision of the court was affirmed and upheld by the higher courts, including the ‘Supreme Court.’

The gravity of her crime was such that even the erstwhile prime minister of the country, Lubomir Strougal, refused to pardon her. On March, 12, 1975, she was executed by short-drop hanging at ‘Pankrác Prison.’

According to writer Bohumil Hrabal, Olga had collapsed before her execution and had to be dragged to the gallows. She was vomiting and defecating before she was executed. Her execution disturbed the executioner to such an extent that he quit his job after executing her. He claimed the way he had to fight her in order to execute her was terrible. However, there are no official records of the same.

The Czech film ‘I, Olga Hepnarová’ was based on Olga’s life. The movie was released in 2016 and was screened at the ‘66th Berlin International Film Festival.’ Actor Michalina Olszańska played ‘Olga’ in the movie. The film received mixed reviews.

The book ‘Oprátka za osm mrtvých’ by Roman Cílek, which narrated Olga’s life and the mass murders she committed, was published in 2001.