The noose for eight dead

The story of Olga Hepnarová and her victims. An ordinary day, 10 July 1973. On Prague's Obránců míru avenue (now Milady Horákové), a lorry suddenly swerves out of the column of passing cars and heads straight for a group of people waiting for a tram. Olga Hepnarová is behind the wheel. Starring: Boris Kapitančik, Zdislava Pechová, Aleš Slanina, Pavel Čeněk Vaculík, Petr Kubes, Markéta Bílková and Hana Briešťanská Twenty-two-year-old Hepnarová, a professional driver, confessed immediately after the act that she had intentionally driven into the people. Behind the Praga RN vehicle with the registration number AD 19-95 that she was driving, eight people lay dead and many were injured. She claimed it was her revenge on society for the way people had treated her throughout her life. Olga Hepnarová was sentenced to death for her crime. She was the last woman to be executed in Czechoslovakia. Author Roman Cílek pieces together her story, complementing it with the lives of her victims. Based on interviews and other authentic materials, he attempts to uncover the causes and background of her incomprehensible act. “It is, above all, a tragic story in which all the actors lost. Even the innocent ones: the dead, the fatally injured, and those left disabled by the tragedy on what was then Obránců míru avenue. The guilty one too: she herself. And her family. Even the social climate of the time, bound by the suffocating shackles of the Normalisation era,” writes Cílek, adding: “I also dare to think that in this case, neither psychiatry as the science of the sick human soul, nor justice as an instrument of enlightened righteousness, won. The story of Olga Hepnarová is not a guide to be repeated, but something quite the opposite: an urgent, almost pleading warning against a path that leads nowhere.” - Iveta Novotná A radio recording from 2026.