He hid a GPS tracker in his toddler’s toy. That is how Yurii Muzyka hunted down his ex-girlfriend, Halyna Hoisan, before slaughtering her in front of their child. Now, the 34-year-old Ukrainian national is going away for a very long time. An Old Bailey judge handed him a life sentence on Friday. He must serve at least 30 years.
It was calculated. It was cold. On August 27 last year, Muzyka ignored a court order and kicked his way into Hoisan’s Greenwich flat. Their three-year-old daughter was right there. He did not care. He plunged a blade into the 29-year-old’s chest six times.
The wounds were precise. He had studied for this. Police later cracked his phone and found a digital hoard of obsession: 261 images of knives, 186 of human hearts and chests, 44 of masks, and 10 of spyware. He knew exactly where to strike to ensure she would not survive.
Then came the truly sick part. As Hoisan lay dying on the floor, Muzyka pulled out his phone and took photos of her. He even recorded audio of her final moments. When a man Hoisan had been dating fled the flat to find help, Muzyka turned the knife on himself, shoving it into his own stomach. He survived. She did not.
Hoisan, known to friends as Lina, had tried to escape him. She got a non-molestation order. She moved out. She tried to start over with someone else. It drove him mad. Back at Muzyka’s New Malden home, detectives found the empty knife box sitting on his kitchen table. Right next to it lay the court order telling him to stay away.
Judge Simon Mayo KC did not mince words during sentencing. He called the murder a product of pure jealousy and a sick need for control. He noted the sheer cruelty of robbing a little girl of her mother just days before her fourth birthday.
Hoisan’s mother, Svitlana, is left to pick up the pieces. In a statement, she spoke of the endless nightmare of imagining her daughter’s final, terrified moments. For her, there is no closure. Just a lifetime of wondering how a human being could descend into such absolute depravity.
