Andrei Chikatilo
Encyclopedia
Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo was a Ukrainian
-born Soviet serial killer
, nicknamed the Butcher of Rostov, The Red Ripper or The Rostov Ripper who murdered a minimum of 52 women and children between 1978 and 1990. He was convicted of 52 murders in October 1992 (although he confessed to a total of 56 murders and was tried for 53 of these killings), and was executed in February, 1994.
Chikatilo was known by such titles as The Rostov Ripper and the Butcher of Rostov because the majority of his murders were committed in the Rostov Oblast
of the Russian SFSR.
of the Ukrainian SSR
. He was born soon after the famine
in Ukraine caused by Joseph Stalin
's forced collectivisation of agriculture. Ukrainian farmers were forced to hand in their entire crop for statewide distribution. Mass starvation ran rampant throughout Ukraine and reports of cannibalism
soared. Chikatilo's mother, Anna, told him that his older brother Stepan had been kidnapped and cannibalized by starving neighbors, although it has never been independently established whether this actually happened.
Chikatilo's parents were both farm labourers who lived in a one-room hut. As a child, Chikatilo slept on a single bed with his parents. He was a chronic bed wetter and was berated and beaten by his mother for each offense.
When the Soviet Union
entered World War II
, his father, Roman, was drafted
into the Red Army
and subsequently taken prisoner after being wounded in combat. During the war, Chikatilo witnessed some of the effects of Blitzkrieg
, which both frightened and excited him. On one occasion, Chikatilo and his mother were forced to watch their hut burn to the ground. In 1943, while Chikatilo's father was at the front, his mother gave birth to a baby girl, Tatyana. In 1949, Chikatilo's father, who had been liberated by the Americans, returned home. Instead of being rewarded for his war service, he was branded a traitor for surrendering to the Germans
.
Shy and studious as a child, Chikatilo developed a passion for reading: by his teens he was an avid reader of Communist literature and was appointed chairman of the pupils' Communist committee at his school. Throughout his childhood and adolescence, he was consistently a target for bullying by his peers.
During adolescence
, he discovered that he suffered from chronic impotence, worsening his social awkwardness and self-hatred. Chikatilo was shy in the company of females: his only sexual experience as a teenager was when he, aged 17, jumped on an 11-year-old friend of his younger sister and wrestled her to the ground, ejaculating
as the girl struggled in his grasp.
In 1953, Chikatilo finished school and applied for a scholarship at the Moscow State University
; although he passed the entrance examination, his grades were not good enough for acceptance. Between 1957 and 1960, Chikatilo performed his compulsory military service.
inside her vagina
with his fingers. In 1965, their daughter Ludmila was born, followed by son Yuri in 1969. In 1971, Chikatilo completed a correspondence course in Russian literature
and obtained his degree in the subject from Rostov University.
Chikatilo began his career as a teacher of Russian language
and literature in Novoshakhtinsk
. His career as a teacher ended in March 1981 after several complaints of child molestation against pupils of both sexes. Chikatilo eventually took a job as a supply clerk for a factory.
, a small coal mining
town near Rostov-on-Don
, where he committed his first documented murder. On December 22, he lured a 9-year-old girl named Yelena Zakotnova to an old house which he had secretly purchased; he attempted to rape
her, but failed to achieve an erection
. When the girl struggled, he choked her to death and stabbed her body, ejaculating in the process of knifing the child. Chikatilo then dumped Zakotnova's body in a nearby river. Despite evidence linking Chikatilo to the girl's death (spots of the girl's blood were found in the snow near Chikatilo's house and a witness had given police a detailed description of a man closely resembling Chikatilo whom she had seen talking with Zakotnova at the bus stop where the girl had last been seen alive), a 25-year-old named Alexsandr Kravchenko who, as a teenager, had served a jail sentence for the rape and murder of a teenage girl, was arrested for the crime and subsequently confessed to the killing. He was tried for the murder in 1979. At his trial, Kravchenko retracted his confession and maintained his innocence, stating his confession had been obtained under extreme duress
. Despite his retraction, he was convicted of the murder and sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment (the maximum possible length of imprisonment at that time). Under pressure from the victim's relatives, Kravchenko was retried and eventually executed for the murder of Yelena Zakotnova in July, 1983.
Following Zakotnova's murder, Chikatilo was able to achieve sexual arousal
and orgasm only through stabbing and slashing women and children to death, and he later claimed that the urge to relive the experience had overwhelmed him.
Chikatilo committed his next murder in September 1981, when he tried to have sex with a 17-year-old boarding school
student named Larisa Tkachenko in a forest near the Don River. When Chikatilo failed to achieve an erection, he became furious and battered and strangled her to death. As he had no knife, he mutilated her body with his teeth and a stick.
On June 12, 1982, Chikatilo encountered a 13-year-old girl named Lyubov Biryuk walking home from a shopping trip in the village of Donskoi. Once the path both were taking together was shielded from the view of potential witnesses by bushes, Chikatilo pounced upon Biryuk, dragged her into nearby undergrowth
, tore off her blue floral dress and killed her by stabbing and slashing her to death.
Following Biryuk's murder, Chikatilo no longer attempted to resist his homicidal urges: between July and December, 1982, he killed a further six victims between the ages of nine and nineteen. He established a pattern of approaching children, runaways and young vagrants at bus or railway stations, enticing them to a nearby forest or other secluded area and killing them, usually by stabbing, slashing and eviscerating
the victim with a knife; although some victims, in addition to receiving a multitude of knife wounds, were also strangled or battered to death. Many of the bodies found bore striation
s of the eye sockets. Pathologists concluded the injuries were caused by a knife, leading investigators to the conclusion the killer had gouged out the eyes of his victims. Chikatilo's adult female victims were often prostitutes or homeless
women who could be lured to secluded areas with promises of alcohol or money. Chikatilo would typically attempt intercourse with these victims, but he would usually be unable to get an erection, which would send him into a murderous fury, particularly if the woman mocked his impotence. He would achieve orgasm only when he stabbed the victim to death. His child victims were of both sexes; Chikatilo would lure these victims to secluded areas using a variety of ruses, usually formed in the initial conversation with the victim, such as promising them assistance or company; with the offer to show the victim a shortcut; a chance to view rare stamps, films or coins or with an offer of food or candy. He would usually overpower these victims once they were alone, tie their hands behind their backs with a length of rope, and then proceed to kill them.
police team, headed by Major Mikhail Fetisov, was sent to Rostov-on-Don
to direct the investigation. Fetisov centered the investigations around Shakhty and assigned a specialist forensic analyst, Victor Burakov, to head the investigation. Due to the sheer savagery of the murders, much of the police effort concentrated on mentally ill
citizens, homosexuals, known pedophiles and sex offender
s, slowly working through all that were known and eliminating them from the inquiry. A number of young men confessed to the murders, although they were usually mentally handicapped
youths who admitted to the crimes only under prolonged and often brutal interrogation. Three known homosexuals and a convicted sex offender committed suicide
as a result of the investigators' heavy-handed tactics. But as police obtained confessions from suspects, bodies continued to be discovered, proving that the suspects who had confessed could not be the killer the police were seeking; in October 1983, Chikatilo killed a 19-year-old prostitute, and in December a 14-year-old schoolboy named Sergey Markov.
. While walking with the boy, Chikatilo was seen by several witnesses who were able to give investigators a detailed description of the killer; when Ptashnikov's body was found three days later, police also found a footprint of the killer and semen and saliva
samples on the victim's clothing.
On May 25, Chikatilo killed a young woman, Tatyana Petrosyan and her 11-year-old daughter, Svetlana, in woodland outside Shakhty. Petrosyan had known Chikatilo for several years prior to her murder. By July 19, he had killed three further young women between the ages of 19 and 22 and a 13-year-old boy.
In the summer of 1984, Chikatilo was fired from his work as a supply clerk for theft of property. The accusation had been filed against Chikatilo the previous February and he had been asked to resign quietly but had refused to do so as he had denied the charges. Chikatilo found another job as a supply clerk in Rostov on August 1.
On August 2, Chikatilo killed a 16-year-old girl, Natalya Golosovskaya, in Aviators' Park and on August 7, he killed a 17-year-old girl on the banks of the Don River before flying to the Uzbekistan
capital of Tashkent
on a business trip. By the time Chikatilo returned to Rostov on August 15, he had killed a young woman and a 12-year-old girl. Within two weeks an 11-year-old boy had been found strangled, castrated and with his eyes gouged out in Rostov before a young librarian, Irina Luchinskaya, was killed in Rostov's Aviators' Park on September 6.
bus station. He was arrested and held. A search of his belongings revealed a knife and rope. He was also discovered to be under investigation for minor theft at one of his former employers, which gave the investigators the legal right to hold him for a prolonged period of time. Chikatilo's dubious background was uncovered, and his physical description matched the description of the man seen with Dmitry Ptashnikov in March. These factors provided insufficient evidence to convict him of the murders, however. He was found guilty of theft of property from his previous employer and sentenced to one year in prison, but was freed on December 12, 1984 after serving three months.
On October 8, 1984, the head of the Russian Public Prosecutors Office formally linked 23 of Chikatilo's murders into one case, and dropped all charges against the mentally handicapped youths who had previously confessed to the murders.
Following the September 6 murder of Irina Luchinskaya, no further bodies were found bearing the trademark mutilation of Chikatilo's murders and investigators in Rostov theorized that the unknown killer might have moved to another part of the Soviet Union and continued killing there. The Rostov police sent bulletins to all forces throughout the Soviet Union, describing the pattern of wounds their unknown killer inflicted upon his victims and requesting feedback from any police force who had discovered murder victims with wounds matching those upon the victims found in the Rostov Oblast. The response was negative.
and kept a low profile. He did not kill again until July 31, 1985, when he murdered a young woman near Domodedovo Airport, near Moscow
. One month later, Chikatilo killed another woman in Shakhty. Both victims were linked to the hunt for the killer.
In November 1985, a special procurator named Issa Kostoyev was appointed to supervise the investigation. The known murders around Rostov were carefully re-investigated and police began another round of questioning of known sex offender
s. The following month, the militsiya
and Voluntary People's Druzhina
renewed the patrolling of railway stations around Rostov. The police also took the step of consulting a psychiatrist
, Dr. Alexandr Bukhanovsky, the first such consultation in a serial killer investigation in the Soviet Union
. Bukhanovsky produced a 65-page psychological profile
of the unknown killer for the investigators, describing the killer as a man aged between 45 and 50 years old who was of average intelligence, likely to be married or had previously been married, but also a sadist who could achieve sexual arousal only by seeing his victims suffer. Bukhanovsky also argued, because many of the killings had occurred on weekdays near mass transportation and across the entire Rostov Oblast
, that the killer's work required him to travel regularly, and based upon the actual days of the week when the killings had occurred, the killer was most likely tied to a production schedule.
Chikatilo followed the investigation carefully, reading newspaper reports about the manhunt for the killer and keeping his homicidal urges under control; throughout 1986 he is not known to have committed any murders. In 1987 Chikatilo killed three times; on each occasion he killed while on a business trip far away from the Rostov Oblast and none of these murders were linked to the manhunt in Rostov. Chikatilo's first murder in 1987 was committed in May, when he killed a 13-year-old boy named Oleg Makarenkov in Revda
. In July, he killed another boy in Zaporozhye and a third in Leningrad
in September.
In 1988, Chikatilo killed three times, murdering an unidentified woman in Krasny-Sulin in April and two boys in May and July. His first killing bore wounds similar to those inflicted on the victims linked to the manhunt killed between 1982 and 1985, but as the woman had been killed with a slab of concrete, investigators were unsure whether to link the murder to the investigation. In May Chikatilo killed a 9-year-old boy in Ilovaisk, Ukraine. The boy's wounds left no doubt the killer had struck again, and this murder was linked to the manhunt. On July 14, Chikatilo killed a 15-year-old boy named Yevgeny Muratov at Donleskhoz station near Shakhty. Muratov's murder was also linked to the investigation, although his body was not found until April 1989.
Chikatilo did not kill again until March 8, 1989, when he killed a 16-year-old girl in his daughter's vacant apartment. He dismembered her body and hid the remains in a sewer. As the victim had been dismembered, police did not link her murder to the investigation. Between May and August, Chikatilo killed a further four victims, three of whom were killed in Rostov and Shakhty, although only two of the victims were linked to the killer.
On January 14, 1990, Chikatilo killed an 11-year-old boy in Shakhty. On March 7, he killed a 10-year-old boy named Yaroslav Makarov in Rostov Botanical Gardens. The eviscerated body was found the following day. On March 11, the leaders of the investigation, headed by Mikhail Fetisov, held a meeting to discuss progress made in the hunt for the killer. Fetisov was under intense pressure from the public, the press and the Ministry of the Interior in Moscow to solve the case: the intensity of the manhunt in the years up to 1984 had receded to a degree between 1985 and 1987, when Chikatilo had killed only two victims conclusively linked to the killer — both of them in 1985. By March 1990, six further victims had been linked to the killer. Fetisov had noted laxity in some areas of the investigation, and warned that people would be fired if the killer was not caught soon.
Chikatilo had killed three further victims by August 1990: On April 4, he killed a 31-year-old woman in woodland near Donleskhoz station, on July 28, he lured a 13-year-old boy away from a Rostov train station and killed him in Rostov Botanical Gardens and on August 14, he killed an 11-year-old boy in the reeds near Novocherkassk beach.
, Viktor Burakov — who had been involved in the hunt for the killer since 1982 — suggested a plan to saturate all larger stations in the Rostov Oblast with an obvious uniformed police presence the killer could not fail to notice, with the intention of discouraging the killer from attempting to strike at any of these locations, and to patrol with undercover agents smaller and less busy stations where his activities would be more likely to be noticed. The plan was approved, and both the uniformed and undercover officers were instructed to question any adult man in the company of a young woman or child and note his name and passport number. Police deployed 360 men at all the stations in the Rostov Oblast, and only undercover officers at the three smallest stations — Kirpichnaya, Donleskhoz and Lesostep — on the route through the oblast where the killer had struck most frequently, in an effort to force the killer to strike at one of these three stations. The operation was implemented on October 27, 1990.
On October 30, police found the body of a 16-year-old boy named Vadim Gromov at Donleskhoz Station. Gromov had been killed on October 17, 10 days before the start of the initiative. The same day Gromov's body was found, Chikatilo lured another 16-year-old boy, Viktor Tishchenko, off a train at Kirpichnaya Station, another station under surveillance from undercover police, and killed him in a nearby forest.
a 22-year-old woman named Svetlana Korostik in woodland near Donleskhoz Station. While leaving the crime scene, he was seen by an undercover officer. The policeman observed Chikatilo approach a well and wash his hands and face. When he approached the station, the undercover officer noted that his coat had grass and soil stains on the elbows. Chikatilo also had a small red smear on his cheek. To the officer, he looked suspicious. The only reason people entered woodland near the station at that time of year was to gather wild mushroom
s (a popular pastime in Russia). Chikatilo, however, was not dressed like a typical forest hiker; he was wearing more formal attire. Moreover, he had a nylon
sports bag, which was not suitable for carrying mushrooms.
The policeman stopped Chikatilo and checked his papers, but had no formal reason to arrest him. When the policeman returned to his office, he filed a routine report, containing the name of the person he had stopped at the train station.
On November 13 Korostik's body was found. Police summoned the officer in charge of surveillance at Donleskhoz Station and examined the reports of all men stopped and questioned in the previous week. Chikatilo's name was among those reports, and his name was familiar to several officers involved in the case, as he had been questioned in 1984 and placed upon a 1987 suspect list compiled and distributed throughout the Soviet Union. Upon checking with Chikatilo's present and previous employers, investigators were able to place Chikatilo in various towns and cities at times when several victims linked to the investigation had been killed. Former colleagues from Chikatilo's teaching days informed investigators that Chikatilo had been forced to resign from his teaching position due to complaints of sexual assault
from several pupils.
Police placed Chikatilo under surveillance on November 14. In several instances, particularly on trains or buses, he was observed to approach lone young women or children and engage them in conversation; if the woman or child broke off the conversation, Chikatilo would wait a few minutes and then seek another conversation partner. On November 20, after six days of surveillance, Chikatilo left his house with a one-gallon flask for beer
, then wandered around Novocherkassk, attempting to make contact with children he met on his way. Upon exiting a cafe, Chikatilo was arrested by four plainclothes police officers.
s concluded the wound was, in fact, from a human bite. Chikatilo's penultimate victim was a physically strong 16-year-old youth. At the crime scene, the police had found numerous signs of a ferocious physical struggle between the victim and his murderer. Although a fingerbone was later found to be broken and his fingernail had been bitten off, Chikatilo had never sought medical treatment for the wound. A search of Chikatilo's belongings revealed he had been in possession of a folding knife at the time of his arrest.
Chikatilo was placed in a cell inside the KGB headquarters in Rostov with a police informer, who was instructed to engage Chikatilo in conversation and elicit any information he could from him.
The next day, 21 November, formal questioning of Chikatilo began. The interrogation was performed by Issa Kostoyev. The strategy chosen by the police to elicit a confession was to lead Chikatilo to believe that he was a very sick man in need of medical help. The intention of this strategy was to give Chikatilo hope that if he confessed, he would not be prosecuted by reason of insanity. Police knew their case against Chikatilo was largely circumstantial
, and under Soviet law, they had ten days in which they could legally hold a suspect before either charging or releasing him.
Throughout the questioning, Chikatilo repeatedly denied that he had committed the murders, although he did confess to molesting his pupils during his career as a teacher. He also produced several written essays for Kostoyev which, although evasive regarding the actual murders, did reveal psychological symptoms consistent with those predicted by Dr. Bukhanovsky in 1985. The interrogation tactics used by Kostoyev may also have caused Chikatilo to become defensive; the informer sharing a KGB cell with Chikatilo reported to police that Chikatilo had informed him that Kostoyev had repeatedly asked him direct questions regarding the mutilations inflicted upon the victims.
to Chikatilo. Within two hours, Chikatilo confessed to 36 murders police had linked to the killer: although he denied two additional murders the police had initially linked to him. On November 30, he was formally charged with each of these 36 murders, all of which had been committed between June 1982 and November, 1990.
Chikatilo confessed to a further 20 killings which had not been connected to the case, either because the murders had been committed outside the Rostov Oblast, because the bodies had not been found or, in the case of Yelena Zakotnova, because an innocent man had been convicted and executed for the murder.
In December 1990, Chikatilo led police to the body of Aleksey Khobotov, a boy he had confessed to killing in 1989 and whom he had buried in woodland near a Shakhty cemetery, proving unequivocally that he was the killer. He later led investigators to the bodies of two other victims he had confessed to killing. Three of the 56 victims Chikatilo confessed to killing could not be found or identified, but Chikatilo was charged with killing 53 women and children between 1978 and 1990. He was held in the same cell in Rostov-on-Don where he had been detained on November 20, to await trial.
Chikatilo regularly interrupted the trial, exposing himself, singing, and refusing to answer questions put to him by the judge. He was regularly removed from the courtroom for interrupting the proceedings. On May 13, Chikatilo withdrew his confessions to six of the killings to which he had previously confessed.
In July 1992, Chikatilo demanded that the judge be replaced for making too many rash remarks about his guilt. His defense counsel backed the claim. The judge looked to the prosecutor and even the prosecutor backed the defense's judgment, stating the judge had indeed made too many such remarks. The judge ruled the prosecutor be replaced instead.
On August 9, both prosecution and defense delivered their final arguments before the judge. Chikatilo again attempted to interrupt the proceedings and had to be removed from the courtroom. Final sentence was postponed until October 14. As the final deliberations began, the brother of Lyudmila Alekseyeva, a 17-year-old girl killed by Chikatilo in August 1984, threw a heavy chunk of metal at Chikatilo, hitting him in the chest. When security tried to arrest the young man, other victims' relatives shielded him, preventing him from being arrested.
On October 14, the court reconvened and the judge read the list of murders again, not finishing until the following day. On October 15, Chikatilo was found guilty of 52 of the 53 murders and sentenced to death
for each offense. Chikatilo kicked his bench across his cage when he heard the verdict, and began shouting abuse. He was offered a final chance to make a speech in response to the verdict, but remained silent. Upon passing final sentence, Judge Leonid Akhobzyanov made the following speech:
Chikatilo was taken from the courtroom to his Novocherkassk prison cell to await execution. He did file an appeal against his conviction with the Russian Supreme Court, but this appeal was rejected in 1993.
On January 4, 1994, Russian President Boris Yeltsin
refused a last-ditch appeal
for clemency. On February 14, Chikatilo was taken from his death row cell to a soundproofed room in Novocherkassk prison and executed by a single gunshot behind the right ear.
Factual books
Four books have been written about the case of Andrei Chikatilo:
Fictional books
Child 44
, a novel by Tom Rob Smith
, draws heavily on the Chikatilo story, with the events set several decades earlier during the time of Joseph Stalin
and immediately thereafter.
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
-born Soviet serial killer
Serial killer
A serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...
, nicknamed the Butcher of Rostov, The Red Ripper or The Rostov Ripper who murdered a minimum of 52 women and children between 1978 and 1990. He was convicted of 52 murders in October 1992 (although he confessed to a total of 56 murders and was tried for 53 of these killings), and was executed in February, 1994.
Chikatilo was known by such titles as The Rostov Ripper and the Butcher of Rostov because the majority of his murders were committed in the Rostov Oblast
Rostov Oblast
Rostov Oblast is a federal subject of Russia , located in the Southern Federal District. Rostov Oblast has an area of and a population of making it the sixth most populous federal subject in Russia...
of the Russian SFSR.
Early life
Andrei Chikatilo was born in the village of Yablochnoye (Yabluchne) in modern Sumy OblastSumy Oblast
Sumy Oblast is an oblast in the northeastern part of Ukraine. The administrative center of the oblast is the city of Sumy.Other important cities within the oblast include Konotop, Okhtyrka, Romny, and Shostka....
of the Ukrainian SSR
Ukrainian SSR
The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic or in short, the Ukrainian SSR was a sovereign Soviet Socialist state and one of the fifteen constituent republics of the Soviet Union lasting from its inception in 1922 to the breakup in 1991...
. He was born soon after the famine
Holodomor
The Holodomor was a man-made famine in the Ukrainian SSR between 1932 and 1933. During the famine, which is also known as the "terror-famine in Ukraine" and "famine-genocide in Ukraine", millions of Ukrainians died of starvation in a peacetime catastrophe unprecedented in the history of...
in Ukraine caused by Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's forced collectivisation of agriculture. Ukrainian farmers were forced to hand in their entire crop for statewide distribution. Mass starvation ran rampant throughout Ukraine and reports of cannibalism
Cannibalism
Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...
soared. Chikatilo's mother, Anna, told him that his older brother Stepan had been kidnapped and cannibalized by starving neighbors, although it has never been independently established whether this actually happened.
Chikatilo's parents were both farm labourers who lived in a one-room hut. As a child, Chikatilo slept on a single bed with his parents. He was a chronic bed wetter and was berated and beaten by his mother for each offense.
When the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
entered World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, his father, Roman, was drafted
Conscription
Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
into the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
and subsequently taken prisoner after being wounded in combat. During the war, Chikatilo witnessed some of the effects of Blitzkrieg
Blitzkrieg
For other uses of the word, see: Blitzkrieg Blitzkrieg is an anglicized word describing all-motorised force concentration of tanks, infantry, artillery, combat engineers and air power, concentrating overwhelming force at high speed to break through enemy lines, and, once the lines are broken,...
, which both frightened and excited him. On one occasion, Chikatilo and his mother were forced to watch their hut burn to the ground. In 1943, while Chikatilo's father was at the front, his mother gave birth to a baby girl, Tatyana. In 1949, Chikatilo's father, who had been liberated by the Americans, returned home. Instead of being rewarded for his war service, he was branded a traitor for surrendering to the Germans
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
.
Shy and studious as a child, Chikatilo developed a passion for reading: by his teens he was an avid reader of Communist literature and was appointed chairman of the pupils' Communist committee at his school. Throughout his childhood and adolescence, he was consistently a target for bullying by his peers.
During adolescence
Adolescence
Adolescence is a transitional stage of physical and mental human development generally occurring between puberty and legal adulthood , but largely characterized as beginning and ending with the teenage stage...
, he discovered that he suffered from chronic impotence, worsening his social awkwardness and self-hatred. Chikatilo was shy in the company of females: his only sexual experience as a teenager was when he, aged 17, jumped on an 11-year-old friend of his younger sister and wrestled her to the ground, ejaculating
Orgasm
Orgasm is the peak of the plateau phase of the sexual response cycle, characterized by an intense sensation of pleasure...
as the girl struggled in his grasp.
In 1953, Chikatilo finished school and applied for a scholarship at the Moscow State University
Moscow State University
Lomonosov Moscow State University , previously known as Lomonosov University or MSU , is the largest university in Russia. Founded in 1755, it also claims to be one of the oldest university in Russia and to have the tallest educational building in the world. Its current rector is Viktor Sadovnichiy...
; although he passed the entrance examination, his grades were not good enough for acceptance. Between 1957 and 1960, Chikatilo performed his compulsory military service.
Marriage and teaching career
In 1963, Chikatilo married a woman to whom he was introduced by his younger sister. The couple had a son and daughter. Chikatilo later claimed that his marital sex life was minimal and that, after his wife understood that he was unable to maintain an erection, he and his wife agreed that in order that she could conceive, he would ejaculate externally and push his semenSemen
Semen is an organic fluid, also known as seminal fluid, that may contain spermatozoa. It is secreted by the gonads and other sexual organs of male or hermaphroditic animals and can fertilize female ova...
inside her vagina
Vagina
The vagina is a fibromuscular tubular tract leading from the uterus to the exterior of the body in female placental mammals and marsupials, or to the cloaca in female birds, monotremes, and some reptiles. Female insects and other invertebrates also have a vagina, which is the terminal part of the...
with his fingers. In 1965, their daughter Ludmila was born, followed by son Yuri in 1969. In 1971, Chikatilo completed a correspondence course in Russian literature
Russian literature
Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia or its émigrés, and to the Russian-language literature of several independent nations once a part of what was historically Russia or the Soviet Union...
and obtained his degree in the subject from Rostov University.
Chikatilo began his career as a teacher of Russian language
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
and literature in Novoshakhtinsk
Novoshakhtinsk
Novoshakhtinsk is a mining city in Rostov Oblast, Russia, located on the border with Ukraine. Population:...
. His career as a teacher ended in March 1981 after several complaints of child molestation against pupils of both sexes. Chikatilo eventually took a job as a supply clerk for a factory.
Beginning of the murders
In September 1978, Chikatilo moved to ShakhtyShakhty
Shakhty is a city in Rostov Oblast, Russia, located on the southeastern spur of Donetsk mountain ridge, northeast of Rostov-on-Don. Its population was 240,152 per the preliminary results of the 2010 Census; up from 222,592 recorded in the 2002 Census....
, a small coal mining
Coal mining
The goal of coal mining is to obtain coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content, and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United States,...
town near Rostov-on-Don
Rostov-on-Don
-History:The mouth of the Don River has been of great commercial and cultural importance since the ancient times. It was the site of the Greek colony Tanais, of the Genoese fort Tana, and of the Turkish fortress Azak...
, where he committed his first documented murder. On December 22, he lured a 9-year-old girl named Yelena Zakotnova to an old house which he had secretly purchased; he attempted to rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
her, but failed to achieve an erection
Erection
Penile erection is a physiological phenomenon where the penis becomes enlarged and firm. Penile erection is the result of a complex interaction of psychological, neural, vascular and endocrine factors, and is usually, though not exclusively, associated with sexual arousal...
. When the girl struggled, he choked her to death and stabbed her body, ejaculating in the process of knifing the child. Chikatilo then dumped Zakotnova's body in a nearby river. Despite evidence linking Chikatilo to the girl's death (spots of the girl's blood were found in the snow near Chikatilo's house and a witness had given police a detailed description of a man closely resembling Chikatilo whom she had seen talking with Zakotnova at the bus stop where the girl had last been seen alive), a 25-year-old named Alexsandr Kravchenko who, as a teenager, had served a jail sentence for the rape and murder of a teenage girl, was arrested for the crime and subsequently confessed to the killing. He was tried for the murder in 1979. At his trial, Kravchenko retracted his confession and maintained his innocence, stating his confession had been obtained under extreme duress
Duress
In jurisprudence, duress or coercion refers to a situation whereby a person performs an act as a result of violence, threat or other pressure against the person. Black's Law Dictionary defines duress as "any unlawful threat or coercion used... to induce another to act [or not act] in a manner...
. Despite his retraction, he was convicted of the murder and sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment (the maximum possible length of imprisonment at that time). Under pressure from the victim's relatives, Kravchenko was retried and eventually executed for the murder of Yelena Zakotnova in July, 1983.
Following Zakotnova's murder, Chikatilo was able to achieve sexual arousal
Sexual arousal
Sexual arousal, or sexual excitement, is the arousal of sexual desire, during or in anticipation of sexual activity. Things that precipitate human sexual arousal are called erotic stimuli, or colloquially known as turn-ons. There are many potential stimuli, both physical or mental, which can cause...
and orgasm only through stabbing and slashing women and children to death, and he later claimed that the urge to relive the experience had overwhelmed him.
Chikatilo committed his next murder in September 1981, when he tried to have sex with a 17-year-old boarding school
Boarding school
A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers and/or administrators. The word 'boarding' is used in the sense of "bed and board," i.e., lodging and meals...
student named Larisa Tkachenko in a forest near the Don River. When Chikatilo failed to achieve an erection, he became furious and battered and strangled her to death. As he had no knife, he mutilated her body with his teeth and a stick.
On June 12, 1982, Chikatilo encountered a 13-year-old girl named Lyubov Biryuk walking home from a shopping trip in the village of Donskoi. Once the path both were taking together was shielded from the view of potential witnesses by bushes, Chikatilo pounced upon Biryuk, dragged her into nearby undergrowth
Undergrowth
Undergrowth usually refers to the vegetation in a forest, which can obstruct passage through the forest. The height of undergrowth is usually considered to be 0.3 – 3 m . Undergrowth can also refer all vegetation in a forest, which isn't in the canopy....
, tore off her blue floral dress and killed her by stabbing and slashing her to death.
Following Biryuk's murder, Chikatilo no longer attempted to resist his homicidal urges: between July and December, 1982, he killed a further six victims between the ages of nine and nineteen. He established a pattern of approaching children, runaways and young vagrants at bus or railway stations, enticing them to a nearby forest or other secluded area and killing them, usually by stabbing, slashing and eviscerating
Evisceration
An evisceration is the removal of the eye's contents, leaving the scleral shell and extraocular muscles intact. The procedure is usually performed to reduce pain or improve cosmesis in a blind eye, as in cases of endophthalmitis unresponsive to antibiotics...
the victim with a knife; although some victims, in addition to receiving a multitude of knife wounds, were also strangled or battered to death. Many of the bodies found bore striation
Striation
Striations means a series of ridges, furrows or linear marks, and are used in several ways* Glacial striation* Striation , a striation as a result of a geological fault* In medicine, striated muscle...
s of the eye sockets. Pathologists concluded the injuries were caused by a knife, leading investigators to the conclusion the killer had gouged out the eyes of his victims. Chikatilo's adult female victims were often prostitutes or homeless
Homelessness
Homelessness describes the condition of people without a regular dwelling. People who are homeless are unable or unwilling to acquire and maintain regular, safe, and adequate housing, or lack "fixed, regular, and adequate night-time residence." The legal definition of "homeless" varies from country...
women who could be lured to secluded areas with promises of alcohol or money. Chikatilo would typically attempt intercourse with these victims, but he would usually be unable to get an erection, which would send him into a murderous fury, particularly if the woman mocked his impotence. He would achieve orgasm only when he stabbed the victim to death. His child victims were of both sexes; Chikatilo would lure these victims to secluded areas using a variety of ruses, usually formed in the initial conversation with the victim, such as promising them assistance or company; with the offer to show the victim a shortcut; a chance to view rare stamps, films or coins or with an offer of food or candy. He would usually overpower these victims once they were alone, tie their hands behind their backs with a length of rope, and then proceed to kill them.
Investigation
Chikatilo did not kill again until June 1983, but he had killed five more times by September. The accumulation of bodies and the similarities between the pattern of wounds inflicted on the victims forced the Soviet authorities to acknowledge that a serial killer was on the loose: on September 6, 1983, the public prosecutor of the USSR formally linked six of the murders thus far committed to the same killer. A MoscowMoscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
police team, headed by Major Mikhail Fetisov, was sent to Rostov-on-Don
Rostov-on-Don
-History:The mouth of the Don River has been of great commercial and cultural importance since the ancient times. It was the site of the Greek colony Tanais, of the Genoese fort Tana, and of the Turkish fortress Azak...
to direct the investigation. Fetisov centered the investigations around Shakhty and assigned a specialist forensic analyst, Victor Burakov, to head the investigation. Due to the sheer savagery of the murders, much of the police effort concentrated on mentally ill
Mental illness
A mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern generally associated with subjective distress or disability that occurs in an individual, and which is not a part of normal development or culture. Such a disorder may consist of a combination of affective, behavioural,...
citizens, homosexuals, known pedophiles and sex offender
Sex offender
A sex offender is a person who has committed a sex crime. What constitutes a sex crime differs by culture and by legal jurisdiction. Most jurisdictions compile their laws into sections such as traffic, assault, sexual, etc. The majority of convicted sex offenders have convictions for crimes of a...
s, slowly working through all that were known and eliminating them from the inquiry. A number of young men confessed to the murders, although they were usually mentally handicapped
Mental retardation
Mental retardation is a generalized disorder appearing before adulthood, characterized by significantly impaired cognitive functioning and deficits in two or more adaptive behaviors...
youths who admitted to the crimes only under prolonged and often brutal interrogation. Three known homosexuals and a convicted sex offender committed suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
as a result of the investigators' heavy-handed tactics. But as police obtained confessions from suspects, bodies continued to be discovered, proving that the suspects who had confessed could not be the killer the police were seeking; in October 1983, Chikatilo killed a 19-year-old prostitute, and in December a 14-year-old schoolboy named Sergey Markov.
The killings continue
In January and February 1984, Chikatilo killed two women in Rostov's Aviators' Park. On March 24, he lured a 10-year-old boy named Dmitry Ptashnikov away from a stamp kiosk in NovoshakhtinskNovoshakhtinsk
Novoshakhtinsk is a mining city in Rostov Oblast, Russia, located on the border with Ukraine. Population:...
. While walking with the boy, Chikatilo was seen by several witnesses who were able to give investigators a detailed description of the killer; when Ptashnikov's body was found three days later, police also found a footprint of the killer and semen and saliva
Saliva
Saliva , referred to in various contexts as spit, spittle, drivel, drool, or slobber, is the watery substance produced in the mouths of humans and most other animals. Saliva is a component of oral fluid. In mammals, saliva is produced in and secreted from the three pairs of major salivary glands,...
samples on the victim's clothing.
On May 25, Chikatilo killed a young woman, Tatyana Petrosyan and her 11-year-old daughter, Svetlana, in woodland outside Shakhty. Petrosyan had known Chikatilo for several years prior to her murder. By July 19, he had killed three further young women between the ages of 19 and 22 and a 13-year-old boy.
In the summer of 1984, Chikatilo was fired from his work as a supply clerk for theft of property. The accusation had been filed against Chikatilo the previous February and he had been asked to resign quietly but had refused to do so as he had denied the charges. Chikatilo found another job as a supply clerk in Rostov on August 1.
On August 2, Chikatilo killed a 16-year-old girl, Natalya Golosovskaya, in Aviators' Park and on August 7, he killed a 17-year-old girl on the banks of the Don River before flying to the Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan , officially the Republic of Uzbekistan is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia and one of the six independent Turkic states. It shares borders with Kazakhstan to the west and to the north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to the south....
capital of Tashkent
Tashkent
Tashkent is the capital of Uzbekistan and of the Tashkent Province. The officially registered population of the city in 2008 was about 2.2 million. Unofficial sources estimate the actual population may be as much as 4.45 million.-Early Islamic History:...
on a business trip. By the time Chikatilo returned to Rostov on August 15, he had killed a young woman and a 12-year-old girl. Within two weeks an 11-year-old boy had been found strangled, castrated and with his eyes gouged out in Rostov before a young librarian, Irina Luchinskaya, was killed in Rostov's Aviators' Park on September 6.
Arrest and release
On September 13, 1984, exactly one week after his fifteenth killing of the year, Chikatilo was observed by an undercover detective attempting to lure young women away from a RostovRostov
Rostov is a town in Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia, one of the oldest in the country and a tourist center of the Golden Ring. It is located on the shores of Lake Nero, northeast of Moscow. Population:...
bus station. He was arrested and held. A search of his belongings revealed a knife and rope. He was also discovered to be under investigation for minor theft at one of his former employers, which gave the investigators the legal right to hold him for a prolonged period of time. Chikatilo's dubious background was uncovered, and his physical description matched the description of the man seen with Dmitry Ptashnikov in March. These factors provided insufficient evidence to convict him of the murders, however. He was found guilty of theft of property from his previous employer and sentenced to one year in prison, but was freed on December 12, 1984 after serving three months.
On October 8, 1984, the head of the Russian Public Prosecutors Office formally linked 23 of Chikatilo's murders into one case, and dropped all charges against the mentally handicapped youths who had previously confessed to the murders.
Following the September 6 murder of Irina Luchinskaya, no further bodies were found bearing the trademark mutilation of Chikatilo's murders and investigators in Rostov theorized that the unknown killer might have moved to another part of the Soviet Union and continued killing there. The Rostov police sent bulletins to all forces throughout the Soviet Union, describing the pattern of wounds their unknown killer inflicted upon his victims and requesting feedback from any police force who had discovered murder victims with wounds matching those upon the victims found in the Rostov Oblast. The response was negative.
Later murders and the manhunt
Upon his release from jail, Chikatilo found new work in NovocherkasskNovocherkassk
Novocherkassk is a city in Rostov Oblast, Russia, located on the right bank of the Tuzlov River and on the Aksay River. Population: 169,039 ; 170,822 ; 178,000 ; 123,000 ; 81,000 ; 52,000 ....
and kept a low profile. He did not kill again until July 31, 1985, when he murdered a young woman near Domodedovo Airport, near Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
. One month later, Chikatilo killed another woman in Shakhty. Both victims were linked to the hunt for the killer.
In November 1985, a special procurator named Issa Kostoyev was appointed to supervise the investigation. The known murders around Rostov were carefully re-investigated and police began another round of questioning of known sex offender
Sex offender
A sex offender is a person who has committed a sex crime. What constitutes a sex crime differs by culture and by legal jurisdiction. Most jurisdictions compile their laws into sections such as traffic, assault, sexual, etc. The majority of convicted sex offenders have convictions for crimes of a...
s. The following month, the militsiya
Militsiya
Militsiya or militia is used as an official name of the civilian police in several former communist states, despite its original military connotation...
and Voluntary People's Druzhina
Voluntary People's Druzhina
Voluntary People's Druzhina variously translated as Voluntary People’s Guard, People’s Volunteer Squads, People's Volunteer Militia, etc. were voluntary detachments for maintaining public order in the Soviet Union similar to the Neighborhood Watch...
renewed the patrolling of railway stations around Rostov. The police also took the step of consulting a psychiatrist
Psychiatry
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities...
, Dr. Alexandr Bukhanovsky, the first such consultation in a serial killer investigation in the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. Bukhanovsky produced a 65-page psychological profile
Offender profiling
Offender profiling, also known as criminal profiling, is a behavioral and investigative tool that is intended to help investigators to profile unknown criminal subjects or offenders. Offender profiling is also known as criminal profiling, criminal personality profiling, criminological profiling,...
of the unknown killer for the investigators, describing the killer as a man aged between 45 and 50 years old who was of average intelligence, likely to be married or had previously been married, but also a sadist who could achieve sexual arousal only by seeing his victims suffer. Bukhanovsky also argued, because many of the killings had occurred on weekdays near mass transportation and across the entire Rostov Oblast
Rostov Oblast
Rostov Oblast is a federal subject of Russia , located in the Southern Federal District. Rostov Oblast has an area of and a population of making it the sixth most populous federal subject in Russia...
, that the killer's work required him to travel regularly, and based upon the actual days of the week when the killings had occurred, the killer was most likely tied to a production schedule.
Chikatilo followed the investigation carefully, reading newspaper reports about the manhunt for the killer and keeping his homicidal urges under control; throughout 1986 he is not known to have committed any murders. In 1987 Chikatilo killed three times; on each occasion he killed while on a business trip far away from the Rostov Oblast and none of these murders were linked to the manhunt in Rostov. Chikatilo's first murder in 1987 was committed in May, when he killed a 13-year-old boy named Oleg Makarenkov in Revda
Revda
Revda may refer to:*Revda, Sverdlovsk Oblast, a town in Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia*Revda, Murmansk Oblast, an urban-type settlement in Murmansk Oblast, Russia*Revda River, a river in Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia...
. In July, he killed another boy in Zaporozhye and a third in Leningrad
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
in September.
In 1988, Chikatilo killed three times, murdering an unidentified woman in Krasny-Sulin in April and two boys in May and July. His first killing bore wounds similar to those inflicted on the victims linked to the manhunt killed between 1982 and 1985, but as the woman had been killed with a slab of concrete, investigators were unsure whether to link the murder to the investigation. In May Chikatilo killed a 9-year-old boy in Ilovaisk, Ukraine. The boy's wounds left no doubt the killer had struck again, and this murder was linked to the manhunt. On July 14, Chikatilo killed a 15-year-old boy named Yevgeny Muratov at Donleskhoz station near Shakhty. Muratov's murder was also linked to the investigation, although his body was not found until April 1989.
Chikatilo did not kill again until March 8, 1989, when he killed a 16-year-old girl in his daughter's vacant apartment. He dismembered her body and hid the remains in a sewer. As the victim had been dismembered, police did not link her murder to the investigation. Between May and August, Chikatilo killed a further four victims, three of whom were killed in Rostov and Shakhty, although only two of the victims were linked to the killer.
On January 14, 1990, Chikatilo killed an 11-year-old boy in Shakhty. On March 7, he killed a 10-year-old boy named Yaroslav Makarov in Rostov Botanical Gardens. The eviscerated body was found the following day. On March 11, the leaders of the investigation, headed by Mikhail Fetisov, held a meeting to discuss progress made in the hunt for the killer. Fetisov was under intense pressure from the public, the press and the Ministry of the Interior in Moscow to solve the case: the intensity of the manhunt in the years up to 1984 had receded to a degree between 1985 and 1987, when Chikatilo had killed only two victims conclusively linked to the killer — both of them in 1985. By March 1990, six further victims had been linked to the killer. Fetisov had noted laxity in some areas of the investigation, and warned that people would be fired if the killer was not caught soon.
Chikatilo had killed three further victims by August 1990: On April 4, he killed a 31-year-old woman in woodland near Donleskhoz station, on July 28, he lured a 13-year-old boy away from a Rostov train station and killed him in Rostov Botanical Gardens and on August 14, he killed an 11-year-old boy in the reeds near Novocherkassk beach.
The snare
The discovery of more victims sparked a massive operation by the police; as several victims had been found at stations on one rail route through the Rostov OblastRostov Oblast
Rostov Oblast is a federal subject of Russia , located in the Southern Federal District. Rostov Oblast has an area of and a population of making it the sixth most populous federal subject in Russia...
, Viktor Burakov — who had been involved in the hunt for the killer since 1982 — suggested a plan to saturate all larger stations in the Rostov Oblast with an obvious uniformed police presence the killer could not fail to notice, with the intention of discouraging the killer from attempting to strike at any of these locations, and to patrol with undercover agents smaller and less busy stations where his activities would be more likely to be noticed. The plan was approved, and both the uniformed and undercover officers were instructed to question any adult man in the company of a young woman or child and note his name and passport number. Police deployed 360 men at all the stations in the Rostov Oblast, and only undercover officers at the three smallest stations — Kirpichnaya, Donleskhoz and Lesostep — on the route through the oblast where the killer had struck most frequently, in an effort to force the killer to strike at one of these three stations. The operation was implemented on October 27, 1990.
On October 30, police found the body of a 16-year-old boy named Vadim Gromov at Donleskhoz Station. Gromov had been killed on October 17, 10 days before the start of the initiative. The same day Gromov's body was found, Chikatilo lured another 16-year-old boy, Viktor Tishchenko, off a train at Kirpichnaya Station, another station under surveillance from undercover police, and killed him in a nearby forest.
Surveillance
On November 6, 1990, Chikatilo killed and mutilatedMutilation
Mutilation or maiming is an act of physical injury that degrades the appearance or function of any living body, usually without causing death.- Usage :...
a 22-year-old woman named Svetlana Korostik in woodland near Donleskhoz Station. While leaving the crime scene, he was seen by an undercover officer. The policeman observed Chikatilo approach a well and wash his hands and face. When he approached the station, the undercover officer noted that his coat had grass and soil stains on the elbows. Chikatilo also had a small red smear on his cheek. To the officer, he looked suspicious. The only reason people entered woodland near the station at that time of year was to gather wild mushroom
Mushroom
A mushroom is the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus, typically produced above ground on soil or on its food source. The standard for the name "mushroom" is the cultivated white button mushroom, Agaricus bisporus; hence the word "mushroom" is most often applied to those fungi that...
s (a popular pastime in Russia). Chikatilo, however, was not dressed like a typical forest hiker; he was wearing more formal attire. Moreover, he had a nylon
Nylon
Nylon is a generic designation for a family of synthetic polymers known generically as polyamides, first produced on February 28, 1935, by Wallace Carothers at DuPont's research facility at the DuPont Experimental Station...
sports bag, which was not suitable for carrying mushrooms.
The policeman stopped Chikatilo and checked his papers, but had no formal reason to arrest him. When the policeman returned to his office, he filed a routine report, containing the name of the person he had stopped at the train station.
On November 13 Korostik's body was found. Police summoned the officer in charge of surveillance at Donleskhoz Station and examined the reports of all men stopped and questioned in the previous week. Chikatilo's name was among those reports, and his name was familiar to several officers involved in the case, as he had been questioned in 1984 and placed upon a 1987 suspect list compiled and distributed throughout the Soviet Union. Upon checking with Chikatilo's present and previous employers, investigators were able to place Chikatilo in various towns and cities at times when several victims linked to the investigation had been killed. Former colleagues from Chikatilo's teaching days informed investigators that Chikatilo had been forced to resign from his teaching position due to complaints of sexual assault
Sexual assault
Sexual assault is an assault of a sexual nature on another person, or any sexual act committed without consent. Although sexual assaults most frequently are by a man on a woman, it may involve any combination of two or more men, women and children....
from several pupils.
Police placed Chikatilo under surveillance on November 14. In several instances, particularly on trains or buses, he was observed to approach lone young women or children and engage them in conversation; if the woman or child broke off the conversation, Chikatilo would wait a few minutes and then seek another conversation partner. On November 20, after six days of surveillance, Chikatilo left his house with a one-gallon flask for beer
Beer
Beer is the world's most widely consumed andprobably oldest alcoholic beverage; it is the third most popular drink overall, after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of sugars, mainly derived from malted cereal grains, most commonly malted barley and malted wheat...
, then wandered around Novocherkassk, attempting to make contact with children he met on his way. Upon exiting a cafe, Chikatilo was arrested by four plainclothes police officers.
Final arrest
Upon arrest, Chikatilo gave a statement claiming that the police were mistaken, and complained that he had also been arrested in 1984 for the same series of murders. A strip-search of the suspect revealed a further piece of evidence: one of Chikatilo's fingers had a flesh wound. Medical examinerMedical examiner
A medical examiner is a medically qualified government officer whose duty is to investigate deaths and injuries that occur under unusual or suspicious circumstances, to perform post-mortem examinations, and in some jurisdictions to initiate inquests....
s concluded the wound was, in fact, from a human bite. Chikatilo's penultimate victim was a physically strong 16-year-old youth. At the crime scene, the police had found numerous signs of a ferocious physical struggle between the victim and his murderer. Although a fingerbone was later found to be broken and his fingernail had been bitten off, Chikatilo had never sought medical treatment for the wound. A search of Chikatilo's belongings revealed he had been in possession of a folding knife at the time of his arrest.
Chikatilo was placed in a cell inside the KGB headquarters in Rostov with a police informer, who was instructed to engage Chikatilo in conversation and elicit any information he could from him.
The next day, 21 November, formal questioning of Chikatilo began. The interrogation was performed by Issa Kostoyev. The strategy chosen by the police to elicit a confession was to lead Chikatilo to believe that he was a very sick man in need of medical help. The intention of this strategy was to give Chikatilo hope that if he confessed, he would not be prosecuted by reason of insanity. Police knew their case against Chikatilo was largely circumstantial
Circumstantial evidence
Circumstantial evidence is evidence in which an inference is required to connect it to a conclusion of fact, like a fingerprint at the scene of a crime...
, and under Soviet law, they had ten days in which they could legally hold a suspect before either charging or releasing him.
Throughout the questioning, Chikatilo repeatedly denied that he had committed the murders, although he did confess to molesting his pupils during his career as a teacher. He also produced several written essays for Kostoyev which, although evasive regarding the actual murders, did reveal psychological symptoms consistent with those predicted by Dr. Bukhanovsky in 1985. The interrogation tactics used by Kostoyev may also have caused Chikatilo to become defensive; the informer sharing a KGB cell with Chikatilo reported to police that Chikatilo had informed him that Kostoyev had repeatedly asked him direct questions regarding the mutilations inflicted upon the victims.
Chikatilo's confession
On November 29, at the request of Burakov and Fetisov, Dr. Aleksandr Bukhanovsky, the psychiatrist who had written the 1985 psychological profile of the then-unknown killer for the investigators, was invited to assist in the questioning of the suspect. Bukhanovsky read extracts from his 65-page psychological profileOffender profiling
Offender profiling, also known as criminal profiling, is a behavioral and investigative tool that is intended to help investigators to profile unknown criminal subjects or offenders. Offender profiling is also known as criminal profiling, criminal personality profiling, criminological profiling,...
to Chikatilo. Within two hours, Chikatilo confessed to 36 murders police had linked to the killer: although he denied two additional murders the police had initially linked to him. On November 30, he was formally charged with each of these 36 murders, all of which had been committed between June 1982 and November, 1990.
Chikatilo confessed to a further 20 killings which had not been connected to the case, either because the murders had been committed outside the Rostov Oblast, because the bodies had not been found or, in the case of Yelena Zakotnova, because an innocent man had been convicted and executed for the murder.
In December 1990, Chikatilo led police to the body of Aleksey Khobotov, a boy he had confessed to killing in 1989 and whom he had buried in woodland near a Shakhty cemetery, proving unequivocally that he was the killer. He later led investigators to the bodies of two other victims he had confessed to killing. Three of the 56 victims Chikatilo confessed to killing could not be found or identified, but Chikatilo was charged with killing 53 women and children between 1978 and 1990. He was held in the same cell in Rostov-on-Don where he had been detained on November 20, to await trial.
Psychiatric evaluation
On August 20, 1991, after completing the interrogation of Chikatilo and having completed a re-enactment of all the murders at each crime scene, Chikatilo was transferred to the Serbsky Institute in Moscow for a six-day psychiatric evaluation to determine whether he was mentally competent to stand trial. Chikatilo was analysed by a senior psychiatrist, Dr. Andrei Tkachenko, who declared him legally sane on October 18. In December 1991, details of Chikatilo's arrest and a brief summary of his crimes were released to the newly-liberated media by police.Trial and execution
The trial of Andrei Chikatilo was the first major event of post-Soviet Russia. Chikatilo stood trial in Rostov on April 14, 1992. During the trial, he was kept in an iron cage in a corner of the courtroom to protect him from attack by the many hysterical and enraged relatives of his victims. Chikatilo's head had been shaven — a standard prison precaution against lice. Relatives of victims regularly shouted threats and insults to Chikatilo throughout the trial, demanding that authorities release him so that they could kill him themselves. Each murder was discussed individually and, on several occasions, relatives broke down in tears when details of their relatives' murder were revealed; some even fainted.Chikatilo regularly interrupted the trial, exposing himself, singing, and refusing to answer questions put to him by the judge. He was regularly removed from the courtroom for interrupting the proceedings. On May 13, Chikatilo withdrew his confessions to six of the killings to which he had previously confessed.
In July 1992, Chikatilo demanded that the judge be replaced for making too many rash remarks about his guilt. His defense counsel backed the claim. The judge looked to the prosecutor and even the prosecutor backed the defense's judgment, stating the judge had indeed made too many such remarks. The judge ruled the prosecutor be replaced instead.
On August 9, both prosecution and defense delivered their final arguments before the judge. Chikatilo again attempted to interrupt the proceedings and had to be removed from the courtroom. Final sentence was postponed until October 14. As the final deliberations began, the brother of Lyudmila Alekseyeva, a 17-year-old girl killed by Chikatilo in August 1984, threw a heavy chunk of metal at Chikatilo, hitting him in the chest. When security tried to arrest the young man, other victims' relatives shielded him, preventing him from being arrested.
On October 14, the court reconvened and the judge read the list of murders again, not finishing until the following day. On October 15, Chikatilo was found guilty of 52 of the 53 murders and sentenced to death
Death Sentence
Death Sentence is a short story by the American science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the November 1943 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and reprinted in the 1972 collection The Early Asimov.-Plot summary:...
for each offense. Chikatilo kicked his bench across his cage when he heard the verdict, and began shouting abuse. He was offered a final chance to make a speech in response to the verdict, but remained silent. Upon passing final sentence, Judge Leonid Akhobzyanov made the following speech:
Chikatilo was taken from the courtroom to his Novocherkassk prison cell to await execution. He did file an appeal against his conviction with the Russian Supreme Court, but this appeal was rejected in 1993.
On January 4, 1994, Russian President Boris Yeltsin
Boris Yeltsin
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999.Originally a supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin emerged under the perestroika reforms as one of Gorbachev's most powerful political opponents. On 29 May 1990 he was elected the chairman of...
refused a last-ditch appeal
Appeal
An appeal is a petition for review of a case that has been decided by a court of law. The petition is made to a higher court for the purpose of overturning the lower court's decision....
for clemency. On February 14, Chikatilo was taken from his death row cell to a soundproofed room in Novocherkassk prison and executed by a single gunshot behind the right ear.
List of victims
| Number | Name | Sex | Age | Date of Murder | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yelena Zakotnova | F | 9 | December 22, 1978 | Chikatilo's first victim. Accosted by Chikatilo while walking home from an ice-skating rink. |
| 2 | Larisa Tkachenko | F | 17 | September 3, 1981 | Approached by Chikatilo while waiting for a bus back to her boarding school. |
| 3 | Lyubov Biryuk | F | 13 | June 12, 1982 | Biryuk was abducted while returning from a shopping trip in the village of Donskoi. |
| 4 | Lyubov Volobuyeva | F | 14 | July 25, 1982 | Killed in an orchard near Krasnodar Airport. Her body was found August 7. |
| 5 | Oleg Pozhidayev | M | 9 | August 13, 1982 | Chikatilo's first male victim. Pozhidayev was killed in Adygea. His body was never found. |
| 6 | Olga Kuprina | F | 16 | August 16, 1982 | Killed in Kazachi Lagerya. Her body was found October 27. |
| 7 | Irina Karabelnikova | F | 19 | September 8, 1982 | Lured away from Shakhty station by Chikatilo. Her body was found September 20. |
| 8 | Sergey Kuzmin | M | 15 | September 15, 1982 | A runaway from a boarding school. Kuzmin's body was found at Shakhty station in January, 1983. |
| 9 | Olga Stalmachenok | F | 10 | December 11, 1982 | Olga was lured off a bus while riding home from her piano lessons in Novoshakhtinsk. |
| 10 | Laura Sarkisyan | F | 15 | After June 18, 1983 | Sarkisyan was from Armenia. Her body was never found. |
| 11 | Irina Dunenkova | F | 13 | July 1983 | Dunenkova's body was found in Aviators' Park, Rostov, on August 8, 1983. |
| 12 | Lyudmila Kushuba | F | 24 | July 1983 | Killed in woodland near a Shakhty bus station. Her body was found March 12, 1984. |
| 13 | Igor Gudkov | M | 7 | August 9, 1983 | Gudkov was Chikatilo's youngest victim. He was the first male victim linked to the manhunt. |
| 14 | Valentina Chuchulina | F | 22 | After September 19, 1983 | Chuchulina's body was found November 27, 1983 in woodland near Kirpichnaya station. |
| 15 | Unknown woman | F | 18–25 | Summer, 1983 | Chikatilo claimed he encountered this victim while she tried to find a "man (client) with a car." |
| 16 | Vera Shevkun | F | 19 | October 27, 1983 | Killed in a mining village near Shakhty. Her body was found October 30. |
| 17 | Sergey Markov | M | 14 | December 27, 1983 | Disappeared while returning home from work experience. His body was found January 4, 1984. |
| 18 | Natalya Shalapinina | F | 17 | January 9, 1984 | Shalapinina had been a close friend of Olga Kuprina, killed by Chikatilo in 1982. |
| 19 | Marta Ryabenko | F | 45 | February 21, 1984 | Chikatilo's oldest victim. She was killed in Aviators' Park, Rostov. |
| 20 | Dmitriy Ptashnikov | M | 10 | March 24, 1984 | Lured from a stamp kiosk by Chikatilo, who pretended to be a fellow collector. |
| 21 | Tatyana Petrosyan | F | 32 | May 25, 1984 | Murdered together with her daughter outside Shakhty. She had known Chikatilo since 1978. |
| 22 | Svetlana Petrosyan | F | 11 | May 25, 1984 | Svetlana saw Chikatilo murder her mother before he chased her and killed her with a hammer. |
| 23 | Yelena Bakulina | F | 22 | June 22, 1984 | Bakulina's body was found August 27, in the Bagasenski region of Rostov. |
| 24 | Dmitriy Illarionov | M | 13 | July 10, 1984 | Vanished in Rostov while on his way to get a health certificate for summer camp. |
| 25 | Anna Lemesheva | F | 19 | July 19, 1984 | A student who disappeared on her way to visit a dentist. She was killed in Shakhty. |
| 26 | Svetlana Tsana | F | 20 | July 1984 | Originally from Riga Riga Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,... . Her body was found September 9 in Aviators' Park, Rostov. |
| 27 | Natalya Golosovskaya | F | 16 | August 2, 1984 | Vanished on a visit to Novoshakhtinsk Novoshakhtinsk Novoshakhtinsk is a mining city in Rostov Oblast, Russia, located on the border with Ukraine. Population:... , where she was to visit her sister. |
| 28 | Lyudmila Alekseyeva | F | 17 | August 7, 1984 | A student lured from a bus stop by Chikatilo, who offered to direct her to Rostov's bus terminal. |
| 29 | Unknown woman | F | 20–25 | August 8–11, 1984 | Killed in Tashkent Tashkent Tashkent is the capital of Uzbekistan and of the Tashkent Province. The officially registered population of the city in 2008 was about 2.2 million. Unofficial sources estimate the actual population may be as much as 4.45 million.-Early Islamic History:... by Chikatilo while on a business trip to the Uzbek SSR city. |
| 30 | Akmaral Seydaliyeva | F | 12 | August 13, 1984 | A runaway from Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, also killed by Chikatilo in Tashkent. |
| 31 | Aleksandr Chepel | M | 11 | August 28, 1984 | Chepel was killed on the banks of the Don River Don River (Russia) The Don River is one of the major rivers of Russia. It rises in the town of Novomoskovsk 60 kilometres southeast from Tula, southeast of Moscow, and flows for a distance of about 1,950 kilometres to the Sea of Azov.... , near where Alekseyeva had been killed. |
| 32 | Irina Luchinskaya | F | 24 | September 6, 1984 | A Rostov librarian, killed by Chikatilo in Aviators' Park, Rostov. |
| 33 | Natalya Pokhlistova | F | 18 | July 31, 1985 | Lured off a train by Chikatilo near Domodedovo Airport, Moscow Oblast Moscow Oblast Moscow Oblast , or Podmoskovye , is a federal subject of Russia . Its area, at , is relatively small compared to other federal subjects, but it is one of the most densely populated regions in the country and, with the 2010 population of 7,092,941, is the second most populous federal subject... . Her body was found August 3. |
| 34 | Irina Gulyayeva | F | 18 | August 27, 1985 | Killed in a grove of trees near Shakhty bus station. Her body was found the following day. |
| 35 | Oleg Makarenkov | M | 13 | May 16, 1987 | Killed in Sverdlovsk, Ukraine, Chikatilo led police to his remains after his arrest. |
| 36 | Ivan Bilovetskiy | M | 12 | July 29, 1987 | Killed by Chikatilo on a business trip to Zaporizhya, Ukrainian SSR. His body was found July 30. |
| 37 | Yuri Tereshonok | M | 16 | September 15, 1987 | Lured off a train in Leningrad Oblast Leningrad Oblast Leningrad Oblast is a federal subject of Russia . It was established on August 1, 1927, although it was not until 1946 that the oblast's borders had been mostly settled in their present position... . Chikatilo led police to his remains after his arrest. |
| 38 | Unknown woman | F | 18–25 | April 1–4, 1988 | Killed near Krasny Sulin train station. Her body was found April 6. |
| 39 | Aleksey Voronko | M | 9 | May 15, 1988 | Voronko was killed near a train station in Ilovaisk, Ukraine: the Rostov–Ukraine rail route. |
| 40 | Yevgeniy Muratov | M | 15 | July 14, 1988 | The first victim killed near Rostov since 1985. Muratov's body was found on April 10, 1989. |
| 41 | Tatyana Ryzhova | F | 16 | March 8, 1989 | A runaway from Krasny Sulin, she was killed in Chikatilo's own daughter's apartment. |
| 42 | Aleksandr Dyakonov | M | 8 | May 11, 1989 | Killed in Rostov city centre the day after his 8th birthday. His body was found July 14. |
| 43 | Aleksey Moiseyev | M | 10 | June 20, 1989 | Killed in the Vladimir region, east of Moscow Moscow Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent... . Chikatilo confessed to this murder after his arrest. |
| 44 | Helena Varga | F | 19 | August 19, 1989 | A student from Hungary Hungary Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The... who had a child. She was lured off a bus and killed in a village near Rostov. |
| 45 | Aleksey Khobotov | M | 10 | August 28, 1989 | Vanished from outside a theater in Shakhty. Chikatilo led police to his remains after his arrest. |
| 46 | Andrey Kravchenko | M | 11 | January 14, 1990 | Lured from a cinema by Chikatilo. He was killed in Shakhty. Kravchenko's body was found February 19. |
| 47 | Yaroslav Makarov | M | 10 | March 7, 1990 | Lured from a Rostov train station by Chikatilo. He was killed in Rostov botanical gardens. |
| 48 | Lyubov Zuyeva | F | 31 | April 4, 1990 | Lured off a train near the Donleskhoz station near Shakhty. Her body was found August 24. |
| 49 | Viktor Petrov | M | 13 | July 28, 1990 | Killed in Rostov botanical gardens; a few yards from where Makarov had been murdered. |
| 50 | Ivan Fomin | M | 11 | August 14, 1990 | Killed at Novocherkassk municipal beach. His body was found August 17. |
| 51 | Vadim Gromov | M | 16 | October 17, 1990 | A student from Shakhty. Gromov vanished while riding the train to Taganrog. |
| 52 | Viktor Tishchenko | M | 16 | October 30, 1990 | Killed in Shakhty. Tishchenko fought hard for his life; he was the victim who bit Chikatilo's finger. |
| 53 | Svetlana Korostik | F | 22 | November 6, 1990 | Chikatilo's last victim. Her body was found November 13 in woodland near Donleskhoz station. |
Chikatilo in Media
In film- The film, Citizen XCitizen XCitizen X is a made-for-TV film, released in 1995, which covers the investigation of the Soviet serial killer Andrei Chikatilo, who was convicted in 1992 of killing 53 women and children between 1978 and 1990, and the efforts of detectives in the Soviet Union to capture him.-Synopsis:The film...
, based on Robert Cullen's book The Killer Department, was made in 1995 about the investigation of the "Rostov Ripper" murders. Citizen X starred Jeffrey DeMunnJeffrey DeMunnJeffrey DeMunn is an American theatre, film and television actor.-Life and career:DeMunn was born in Buffalo, New York, the son of Violet and James DeMunn. Stepson of noted actress Betty Lutes DeMunn...
as Chikatilo, with Stephen ReaStephen ReaStephen Rea is an Irish film and stage actor. Rea has appeared in high profile films such as V for Vendetta, Michael Collins, Interview with the Vampire and Breakfast on Pluto...
as Viktor Burakov, Donald SutherlandDonald SutherlandDonald McNichol Sutherland, OC is a Canadian actor with a film career spanning nearly 50 years. Some of Sutherland's more notable movie roles included offbeat warriors in such war movies as The Dirty Dozen, , MASH , and Kelly's Heroes , as well as in such popular films as Klute, Invasion of the...
as Mikhail Fetisov, and Max von SydowMax von SydowMax von Sydow is a Swedish actor. He has also held French citizenship since 2002. He has starred in many films and had supporting roles in dozens more...
as Dr. Alexandr Bukhanovsky.
- The 2004 film EvilenkoEvilenkoEvilenko is a 2004 Italian drama-thriller film very loosely based on the Russian serial killer Andrei Chikatilo. The film was directed and written by David Grieco. It stars Malcolm McDowell, Marton Csokas and Ronald Pickup...
, starring Malcolm McDowellMalcolm McDowellMalcolm McDowell is an English actor with a career spanning over forty years.McDowell is principally known for his roles in the controversial films If...., O Lucky Man!, A Clockwork Orange and Caligula...
and Marton CsokasMarton Csokas-Early life:Csokas was born in Invercargill, New Zealand. His mother, a nurse, is of Irish and Danish descent; his Hungarian-born father, also named Márton Csókás, worked as a mechanical engineer...
, was loosely based on Chikatilo's murders.
Factual books
Four books have been written about the case of Andrei Chikatilo:
- The Killer Department, written by Robert Cullen (ISBN 1-85797-210-4)
- Hunting The Devil, written by Richard Lourie (ISBN 0-586-21846-7)
- The Red Ripper, written by Peter Conradi (ISBN 0-86369-618-X)
- Comrade Slayer: Andrei Chikatilo and his victims, written by Mikhail Krivich and Olgert Olgin (ISBN 0-45001-717-6)
Fictional books
Child 44
Child 44
Child 44 is a thriller novel by British writer Tom Rob Smith, and features disgraced MGB Agent Leo Demidov, who investigates a series of gruesome child murders in Stalin's Soviet Union....
, a novel by Tom Rob Smith
Tom Rob Smith
Tom Rob Smith is an English writer. The son of a Swedish mother and an English father, Smith was born and raised in London.Smith studied at St. John's College, Cambridge, following his graduation in 2001 he received the Harper Wood Studentship for English Poetry and Literature and continued his...
, draws heavily on the Chikatilo story, with the events set several decades earlier during the time of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
and immediately thereafter.