For over 12 years, Andrei Chikatilo ravaged the community of Rostov, Russia. Frustrated with his impotence, he took out his anger on innocent women and children; no one was safe. After a major investigation, authorities finally arrested him in 1990. His trial was sensational and several family members of victims fainted upon hearing the details of his heinous crimes. Chikatilo was executed in 1994.
Biography
Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo was born on October 16, 1936 in Yablochnoye in what is now Ukraine, then the Soviet Union. At that time, Ukraine was still suffering from the famine that had occurred years earlier due to the collectivization of agriculture. His mother told him that his older brother Stepan had been slaughtered and eaten by hungry peasants. It has never been determined whether this actually happened. The situation became even worse when the Soviet Union went to war with Germany. In addition to poverty and lack of food, Chikatilo suffered from chronic bedwetting. Something for which his mother constantly scolded and humiliated him. In 1942 his father left for the front. In 1943 his mother gave birth to his younger sister Tatjana. His father was captured by the Germans and spent years as a prisoner of war. He was released in 1949 and instead of being honored for his military service, he was labeled a traitor for allowing himself to be captured by the Germans. As a result, Chikatilo was bullied and ridiculed at school.
During his adolescence, Chikatilo discovered that he was impotent. His only sexual experience at that time was when, at the age of 15, he tried to push an 11-year-old girl to the ground and ejaculated during the struggle. This caused him to be bullied even more and made him feel even more humiliated. It laid the foundation for his association of violence with sex. After high school he took an entrance test for Moscow University. He failed the test and between 1957 and 1960 he served his military service near Rostov, Russia.
After his military service, Chikatilo settled in Rostov and got a job there. His sister moved in and introduced him to a girl Fayina. He would marry her in 1963. Despite his impotence, the couple had two children. Chikatilo would later claim that he pushed the sperm in with his hands to get his wife pregnant. In 1965 his daughter Ludmila was born and son Yuri followed in 1969. In 1971, Chikatilo completed a degree in Russian and tried to get a job as a teacher. However, he was quickly dismissed from each school after complaints about indecency with young children. Eventually he managed to get a permanent job at a school in Shakhty near Rostov.
Crimes
On December 22, 1978, Chikatilo murdered his first victim. 9-year-old girl Lena Zakotnova was lured into an abandoned barn where Chikatilo tried to rape her. When he failed to get an erection, he flew into a rage and strangled the child and inflicted many stab wounds. During the attack Chikatilo ejaculated. This would be his only way to be satisfied. Witnesses had seen Chikatilo, but for unknown reasons his wife provided him with a watertight alibi. A 25-year-old young man who had been convicted of rape a year earlier was arrested instead. After several days of questionable interrogation techniques, the boy confessed. He was indicted and, although he later retracted his statement, he was executed in 1983.
Perhaps because he was almost caught, there have been no murders in the three years since that can be attributed to Chikatilo. Due to constant accusations of fornication, he was fired from his job as a teacher in 1981. He went to work in a factory in Rostov. This required Chikatilo to travel every day by public transport, which provided him with many opportunities to meet children and young women. On September 3, 1981, Chikatilo attacked his next victim; Larisa Tkachenko. He tried to rape her, strangled and stabbed her and tried to silence her by stuffing sand and leaves down her throat. A pattern emerged where Chikatilo would approach his victims at bus or train stations and then lure them into the woods. There he tried to rape them, after which he mutilated them with a knife and/or strangled them. He also gouged out the eyes of his first victims, believing that an imprint of his face would remain on his victims’ eyes.
Chikatilo killed again in June 1982 when he attacked the 13-year-old girl Lyubov Biryuk and stabbed her to death. From that moment on he no longer tried to control his murderous urge and between July and December 1982 he murdered 6 more victims. It was not difficult for the police to link all these murders and they feared that a serial killer was at work. A large study was set up that focused mainly on known sex offenders and the mentally ill. Through rather brutal interrogation techniques, the police obtained many confessions. It all had no effect; during 1984, 14 more victims were found. The police decided to keep an eye on all train stations and Chikatilo was arrested because he was behaving suspiciously. His blood group turned out not to match the blood type that could be deduced from the semen found on victims’ bodies. The police did not know at that time that Chikatilo belongs to a small group whose blood type can only be determined from blood. Since there was little further evidence, they had to release him. He spent 3 months in prison for other minor crimes.
His arrest had deterred Chikatilo for a while and he decided to proceed more cautiously. He found work in another city and his next murder was in July 1985 when he murdered a woman near Moscow. Shortly afterwards he murdered another woman near Shakhty. The police, frustrated by the lack of success, decided to seek help from a psychiatrist. This drew up a perpetrator profile. At the same time, the murders also seemed to stop and during 1986 there were no murders attributed to Chikatilo. In 1987, Chikatilo murdered three boys. He killed them while he was on a business trip and they were not linked to him. He now also stayed away from train stations, because he knew they were closely watched. In 1988 he murdered three more victims, two of which were linked to Chikatilo. The following 2 years saw another 19 victims. The pressure on the police became enormous to finally catch the murderer. A major operation was set up. Major train stations would be filled with uniformed police to deter the killer. The smaller train stations were then monitored by plainclothes officers. Finally on November 6, 1990, Chikatilo’s suspicious behavior was noticed as he had just returned from the murder of his last victim. A few days later the body was found and Chikatilo was arrested. He confessed to 56 murders and led police to bodies of victims that had not yet been found. Ultimately, 53 victims were confirmed and he was charged with murder.
Process
Chikatilo was declared sane and fit to stand trial. The trial began on April 14, 1992. Chikatilo was kept in a cage to protect him from victims’ relatives who wanted to kill him themselves. According to custom, his head was shaved, which gave him an even more devilish appearance. Chikatilo regularly interrupted the process by shouting, showing his gender, or singing. The judge was clearly already convinced of his guilt and on October 15, 1992 he was found guilty of 52 of the 53 murders. He was sentenced to death for each murder. On February 14, 1994, Chikatilo was executed by a shot behind the ear.
List of victims
|
# |
Name |
Age |
Date of murder |
|
1 |
Yelena Zakotnova |
9 |
December 22, 1978 |
|
2 |
Larisa Tkachenko |
17 |
September 3, 1981 |
|
3 |
Lyubov Biryuk |
13 |
June 12, 1982 |
|
4 |
Lyubov Volobuyeva |
14 |
July 25, 1982 |
|
5 |
Oleg Pozhidayev |
9 |
August 13, 1982 |
|
6 |
Olga Kuprina |
16 |
August 16, 1982 |
|
7 |
Irina Karabelnikova |
19 |
September 8, 1982 |
|
8 |
Sergey Kuzmin |
15 |
15 September 1982 |
|
9 |
Olga Stalmachenok |
10 |
11 December 1982 |
|
10 |
Laura Sargsyan |
15 |
18 June 1983 |
|
11 |
Irina Dunenkova |
13 |
July 1983 |
|
12 |
Lyudmila Kushuba |
24 |
July 1983 |
|
13 |
Igor Gudkov |
7 |
9 August 1983 |
|
14 |
Valentina Chuchulina |
22 |
September 1983 |
|
15 |
Unbekende vrouw |
18-25 |
summer 1983, she was found on October 28, 1983 |
|
16 |
Vera Shevkun |
19 |
October 27, 1983 |
|
17 |
Sergey Markov |
14 |
December 27, 1983 |
|
18 |
Natalya Shalapinina |
17 |
January 9, 1984 |
|
19 |
Marta Ryabenko |
45 |
February 21, 1984 |
|
20 |
Dmitriy Ptashnikov |
10 |
March 24, 1984 |
|
21 |
Tatyana Petrosyan |
32 |
May 25, 1984 |
|
22 |
Svetlana Petrosyan |
11 |
25 May 1984 |
|
23 |
Yelena Bakulina |
22 |
June 22, 1984 |
|
24 |
Dmitriy Illarionov |
10 |
July 10, 1984 |
|
25 |
Anna Lemesheva |
19 |
July 19, 1984 |
|
26 |
Svetlana Tsana |
20 |
Julie 1984 |
|
27 |
Natalya Golosovskaya |
16 |
August 2, 1984 |
|
28 |
Lyudmila Alekseyeva |
17 |
August 7, 1984 |
|
29 |
Onbekende vrouw |
20-25 |
8-11 August 1984, vermoord in Tashkent |
|
thirty |
Akmaral Seydaliyeva |
12 |
13 August 1984, vermoord in Tashkent |
|
31 |
Alexander Chepel |
eleven |
August 28, 1984 |
|
32 |
Irina Luchinskaya |
24 |
September 6, 1984 |
|
33 |
Natalya Pokhlistova |
18 |
July 31, 1985 |
|
34 |
Irina Gulyayeva |
18 |
August 27, 1985 |
|
35 |
Oleg Makarenkov |
13 |
May 16, 1987 |
|
36 |
Ivan Bilovetskiy |
12 |
July 29, 1987 |
|
37 |
Yuri Tereshonok |
16 |
September 15, 1987 |
|
38 |
Onbekende vrouw |
18-25 |
1-4 April 1988 |
|
39 |
Alexey Voronko |
9 |
May 15, 1988 |
|
40 |
Yevgeniy Muratov |
15 |
July 14, 1988 |
|
41 |
Tatyana Ryzhova |
16 |
March 8, 1989 |
|
42 |
Alexander Dyakonov |
8 |
11 May 1989 |
|
43 |
Aleksey Moiseyev |
10 |
June 20, 1989 |
|
44 |
Helena Varga |
19 |
August 19, 1989 |
|
45 |
Alexey Khobotov |
10 |
August 28, 1989 |
|
46 |
Andrey Kravchenko |
eleven |
January 14, 1990 |
|
47 |
Yaroslav Makarov |
10 |
March 7, 1990 |
|
48 |
Lyubov Zuyeva |
31 |
April 4, 1990 |
|
49 |
Viktor Petrov |
13 |
July 28, 1990 |
|
50 |
Ivan Fomin |
eleven |
August 14, 1990 |
|
51 |
Vadim Gromov |
16 |
October 17, 1990 |
|
52 |
Viktor Tishchenko |
16 |
October 30, 1990 |
|
53 |
Svetlana Korostik |
22 |
November 6, 1990 |
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