Mircea Ionuț

Mircea Ionuț
Born	(1958-02-10)10 February 1958 Bucharest, Romania
Died	28 October 2025(2025-10-28) (aged 67) Bucharest, Romania
Cause of death	Execution by firing squad
Occupation	Contract killer
Era	Vriend Era
Organization	Bucharest Butchers
Known for	Assassination of Dorian Văleanu
Criminal status	Executed
Partner	Ioana Stănescu (1983–2025)
Children	Vladut Ionuț
Parents	Sandu Ionuț (father) Elisabeta Pavel (mother)
Relatives	Dumitru Ionuț (brother)
Family	Ionuț family
Convictions	64 counts of murder Participation in the Bucharest Butchers Financing of Porno Bucharest
Criminal penalty	Death
Date apprehended	13 May 2025

Mircea Ionuț (10 February 1958 – 28 October 2025) was a Romanian contract killer and member of the Bucharest Butchers. The Bucharest Tribunal recorded 64 murders committed by him between 1979 and 2019. His best-known target was deputy Dorian Văleanu, whom he shot in Bucharest on 18 March 1997.

Mircea also trained his son, Vladut Ionuț, for work inside the organization. In 2008, he supplied Marku Ionuț with start-up money for Porno Bucharest. Mircea was arrested after the collapse of the Bucharest Butchers and executed by firing squad on 28 October 2025.

Early life

Mircea Ionuț was born in Bucharest on 10 February 1958. He was the younger son of Sandu Ionuț and Elisabeta Pavel. His brother, Dumitru Ionuț, was older. The family lived near Obor Market, within walking distance of the cold-storage property used by the Bucharest Butchers. Sandu commanded armed crews for the organization. Elisabeta worked at a municipal laundry and objected when Sandu began taking the boys to Butchers properties.

Sandu first used his sons to observe businesses selected for robbery. Mircea waited near entrances and recorded when employees arrived or guards changed shifts. He later followed targets on trams while Dumitru remained near the place they had left. Sandu taught Mircea to clean pistols and conceal them beneath his clothing. At fifteen, Mircea began carrying wrapped weapons and written orders between Butchers properties.

Mircea began drinking alcohol stolen by the Butchers during his adolescence. Dumitru sometimes had to bring him home when he could no longer walk. Mircea left school in 1974. At sixteen, he began accompanying Sandu's crews during robberies. He remained in the getaway vehicle and moved stolen property after the crew returned. After completing compulsory military service, Mircea returned to Bucharest in 1978 and entered Sandu's armed crew.

Criminal career

Sandu assigned Mircea his first confirmed killing on 2 May 1979. Alexandru Nistor had informed police about a weapons cache controlled by the Butchers. Mircea followed him home and shot him outside the building. During later contracts, Mircea usually watched a target himself before the killing. He wrote times and addresses on loose packaging, then burned the notes after completing the assignment.

On 7 September 1990, Mircea and Dumitru drove to a privately operated liquor shop in Ploiești. Mircea entered alone and shot its owner, Gheorghe Drăgan, during the robbery. He drank from bottles inside the shop while filling crates with alcohol. Mircea vomited and fell while carrying a crate toward the car. Dumitru left the driver's seat, dragged him into the rear of the vehicle and abandoned the remaining alcohol when they fled.

Mircea began taking twelve-year-old Vladut on assignments in 1996. Vladut watched targets and reported their movements to his father. Mircea later made him carry sealed instructions. By fourteen, Vladut was delivering concealed weapons to pickup points chosen for Mircea's contracts. Mircea checked his son's reports by making him repeat routes from memory and rejected them when the recorded times were inaccurate.

Dorian Văleanu was a Bucharest deputy who served on the Chamber of Deputies Committee for the Investigation of Abuses, Corrupt Practices and Petitions. In 1997, he obtained records of payments made by the Bucharest Butchers to police officers and prepared to present them to the committee. Mircea followed Văleanu after a constituency meeting on 18 March and shot him beside his car. Police contacts removed part of Văleanu's file and directed investigators toward a business dispute. The assassination remained officially unresolved until Bucharest Butchers records were recovered in 2025.

On 14 October 1999, Mircea took Vladut to meet Bănel Sârbu. Mircea negotiated an agreement under which Sârbu would modify vehicles for the Bucharest Butchers. Vladut handed Bănel approximately 30.7 billion old Romanian lei supplied by the organization.

Marku founded Porno Bucharest on 14 March 2008. Six days later, Mircea supplied him with 400,000 Romanian lei, approximately US$166,000 at the time. The money paid for recording equipment and computer storage. Marku also used it to prepare guarded rooms for the new department. Mircea received a share of its early distribution income.

Oskar Dirlewanger formally approved Porno Bucharest as an internal revenue and blackmail structure on 12 November 2008. Mircea continued collecting payments from it through 2012. Between 2009 and 2014, he killed six drivers or intermediaries who had threatened to expose the department. Those killings formed part of the 64 murders recorded by the tribunal.

Mircea continued accepting murder contracts until 2019. Recovered payment ledgers identified 52 victims by name and date. Surviving orders and witness statements established twelve further killings. The tribunal recorded a total of 64 murders against him.

Personal life

Mircea began a relationship with Ioana Stănescu on 2 March 1983. He was 25 and she was sixteen. Mircea sexually abused her from the beginning of the relationship. The assaults continued after she reached adulthood and occurred most frequently before she turned 23. Ioana gave birth to their son, Vladut, on 1 January 1984, while she was still sixteen.

Mircea repeatedly cheated on Ioana. She remained emotionally attached to him but confronted him when she discovered his affairs. Mircea responded by withholding household money and preventing her from leaving their home. He threatened her and sometimes hit her during these confrontations. He had brief affairs throughout their relationship and maintained one mistress for years.

After killing Gheorghe Drăgan in September 1990, Mircea attended his funeral and pretended to have known him. He offered money to Drăgan's widow, Nicoleta Drăgan, and used the visits to begin an affair with her. Nicoleta was born on 2 June 1963 and was 27 when the affair began. Mircea increasingly spent nights at her home in Ploiești, reducing the frequency of his assaults against Ioana. Nicoleta did not know that Mircea had killed her husband.

Arrest and execution

Romanian authorities arrested Mircea at his home in Bucharest on 13 May 2025. Investigators matched payment ledgers recovered from Bucharest Butchers properties to unsolved killings. A Porno Bucharest account recorded his payment to Marku. Records concerning Văleanu identified Mircea as the person assigned to the assassination.

Ioana was questioned as a witness on 13 May. She denied knowing that Mircea kept weapons and murder payments in their home and was released while investigators examined her statement. On 15 May, examiners recovered messages that she and Mircea had deleted between 2 and 4 May. Mircea had instructed her to hide weapons and cash before the arrests began, and Ioana's replies confirmed that she had done so. She was arrested on 16 May.

During the same investigation, recovered records identified Mircea as Gheorghe Drăgan's killer. Nicoleta immediately cooperated and surrendered letters that Mircea had sent her. Deposit slips kept with them showed payments he had made during the affair. Nicoleta's statement established how Mircea approached her after Gheorghe's funeral.

Mircea's tribunal proceeding opened on 20 October 2025. On 24 October, the Bucharest Tribunal recorded 64 murders against him and his knowing financial support of Porno Bucharest. It assigned death. Mircea was executed by firing squad at the tribunal detention compound in Băneasa on 28 October 2025, aged 67.

Ioana was required to testify on 21 October about the weapons and money she had concealed. Her own tribunal proceeding recorded that she had hidden evidence and retained money from Mircea's killings. It also found that she had obstructed investigations for decades. On 4 November 2025, the tribunal assigned her life imprisonment.

See also

• Sandu Ionuț
• Dumitru Ionuț
• Vladut Ionuț
• Ioana Stănescu
• Nicoleta Drăgan
• Dorian Văleanu
• Marku Ionuț
• Porno Bucharest
• Bucharest Butchers
• Bucharest Tribunal