Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo (Андрей Романович Чикатило) was a Soviet serial murderer. He was dubbed the Butcher of Rostov, the Rostov Ripper, and the Red Ripper. Andrei Chikatilo was born on October 16, 1936, in the village of Yabluchne, Soviet Union. At the time of his birth, that part of Soviet Union was recovering from a severe famine.
Andrei Chikatilo later claimed that they had been crying hungry and not to have eaten bread until the age of 12, but sometimes grass or leaves. Chikatilo was repeatedly told by his mother Anna that prior to his birth, an older brother of his named Stepan had, at the age of four, been kidnapped and cannibalized by starving neighbors. We don’t know whether Stepan actually existed.
Chikatilo’s father Roman was conscripted into the Red Army. He would later be taken prisoner after being wounded in combat. Between 1941 and 1944, Chikatilo witnessed some of the effects of the Nazi occupation. He slept in the same bed with his mother. He was a chronic bed wetter, and his mother beat him because of that. In 1943 Chikatilo’s mother gave birth to a baby, Tatyana, but Roman wasn’t there at the time and, according to some sources, she was raped. This rape may have been committed in his presence. Chikatilo and his mother were forced to watch their own hut burn to the ground.
After the WWII there was a post-war famine, while Chikatilo was attending school. He fainted from hunger even in school. He was shy, wearing thick glasses, his myopia prevented him from reading the classroom blackboard, so he was a target of bullies. He was reading at home. Teachers said that he was an excellent student. Tatyana, Chikatilo’s sister, said that their father was a nice man, but the mother was dominant, harsh and physically and psychologically abused them.
As a teen, Chicatilo, an avid reader and great student, was passionate communist. At age 14, he was an editor of his school newspaper and chairman of the pupils’ Communist Party. He graduated in 1954 with excellent grades, although he had headaches because of his poor vision (myopia).
At the age of 17 he realized that he had chronic impotence. Chikatilo jumped upon an 11-year-old friend of his younger sister and wrestled her to the ground, ejaculating as the girl struggled in his grasp. Here it is evident that violence and sex was intertwined, or development of sexual sadism disorder. Otherwise, he was impotent.
Chikatilo applied for a scholarship at Moscow State University. Although he passed the entrance examination with good-to-excellent scores, he was rejected. Allegedly, other students performed better. He blamed his father for that, because he was labeled a traitor for being captured in 1943. He worked as a laborer for three months.
In 1955 Chicatilo enrolled in a vocational school with the aim of becoming a communications technician. The same year he met a girl and they started dating. After two failed attempts to have sexual intercourse, she left him.
Chikatilo moved to Nizhny Tagil where he undertook correspondence courses in engineering with the Moscow Electrotechnical Institute of Communication. He was drafted into the Soviet Army in 1957. He served Army for 3 years. His work record was unblemished, and he joined the Communist Party shortly before his military service ended in 1960. He was allegedly being ridiculed for not having relationship with women, and mocked that he was gay.
When he came back to his native village, he started a relationship with a woman. The woman asked her friend how to overcome Chikatilo’s inability to maintain an erection, but soon it became a gossip and everybody knew.
In 1961, he moved to Rostov-on-Don where he lived in a small apartment with his sister, Tatyana, and worked as a communications engineer. Tatyana married and wanted to help him find a wife.
Chicatilo claimed that they agreed she would conceive by him ejaculating externally and pushing his semen inside her vagina with his fingers. He had two children.
In 1964 Chikatilo chose to enroll as a correspondence student at Rostov University in 1964. He studied Russian literature and philology. He graduated in 1970. Chicatilo began working as a teacher of Russian language and literature. He is known to have entered the girls’ dormitory in the hope of seeing them undressed. On other occasions, he discovered adolescent pupils who boarded at the school engaged in sex. He later stated the sight of adolescents engaged in intercourse “disturbed” him as he was confronted with the sight of “children doing what I hadn’t done even when I was thirty years old.”
In May 1973, Chikatilo committed his first known sexual assault upon one of his pupils. In this incident, he swam towards a 15-year-old girl and groped her breasts and genitals, ejaculating as the girl struggled against his grasp. Months later, Chikatilo sexually assaulted and beat another teenage girl whom he had locked in his classroom. Teachers observed Chikatilo fondling himself in the presence of his students. He wasn’t held responsible for any of the incidents. Students complained a lot, so he was transferred to other school in 1974, forty-seven miles north of Rostov. By Chikatilo’s own admission, by the mid-1970s, his desire to view naked children drove him to loiter around public toilets, where he frequently spied on young girls. He also purchased chewing gum which he gave to female children he encountered in efforts to initiate contact and gain their trust. Chikatilo is known to have sexually assaulted at least three girls whom he encountered in this way. Chikatilo’s career as a teacher ended in March 1981 following several complaints of child molestation against pupils of both sexes. The same month, he began a job as a supply clerk for a factory based in Rostov. He travelled a lot.
Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo committed his first known murder in 1978. Chikatilo had a small, ruined and old hut. It was his secret.
On December 22, 1978, Chikatilo lured Yelena Zakotnova, a 9-year-old girl, to his hut. He attempted to rape her but failed to achieve an erection. When the girl struggled, he choked her and stabbed her three times in the abdomen, ejaculating while stabbing the child. He strangled her into unconsciousness before throwing her body into the nearby River. Her body was found beneath a nearby bridge two days later. All evidence pointed to Chicatilo. Spots of blood had been found in the snow close to a fence facing Chicatilo’s hut. Neighbors saw him in the house. Zakotnova’s school backpack had been found upon the opposite bank of the river at the end of the street (indicating the girl had been thrown into the river at this location); 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.
Despite these facts, a 25-year-old laborer named Aleksandr Kravchenko , who had previously served a prison sentence for the rape and murder of a teenage girl, was arrested for the crime. He had very strong alibi. He confessed under the extreme duress and was executed. In the past, law enforcement were using torture to get confession. Civilized societies have stopped using torture, because humanity and knowledge prevailed. People will say anything under torture, just to make the pain stop. Humane treatment and recognizing people as human beings with their rights have revealed many innocent, many executed people. Governments have the monopoly of using force and people must have basic human rights. At the end, it helps law enforcements as well, although they must employ all methods and techniques, to charge someone and it is not easy, but by doing it, they make sure that society is safe and right people in prison.
On September 3, 1981, Chikatilo murdered a 17-year-old, Larisa Tkachenko. She was standing at a bus stop as he exited a public library in Rostov city centre. He lured her to a forest. He forced mud inside her mouth to stifle her screams before battering and strangling her to death. Chikatilo mutilated the body with his teeth and a six-foot long stick. He also tore one nipple from Tkachenko’s body with his teeth before loosely covering her body with leaves, branches, and torn pages of newspaper. Tkachenko’s body was found the following day.
On June 12, 1982, Chikatilo murdered a 13-year-old girl, Lyubov Biryuk. He killed her by stabbing and slashing her to death as he imitated performing intercourse. Several striations were discovered upon Biryuk’s eye sockets.
Between July and September 1982, he killed a further five victims between the ages of 9 and 18. He usually murdered his victims by stabbing, slashing, mutilating, 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. He also gouged out their eyes. He inflicted majority of wounds prior to their death. He would achieve orgasm only when he stabbed and slashed the victim to death. Chikatilo’s child and adolescent victims were of both sexes.
On December 11, 1982, Chikatilo murdered a ten-year-old girl, Olga Stalmachenok. He stabbed her in excess of fifty times around the head and body, ripped open her chest and excised her lower bowel and uterus.
Police formed a team to solve the murders, but he stopped killing. Chikatilo did not kill again until June 1983, when he murdered a 15-year-old Armenian girl named Laura Sarkisyan. Her body was found close to an unmarked railway platform near Shakhty.
By September, he had killed a further five victims. The accumulation of bodies found 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 Soviet Union formally linked six of the murders thus far attributed to the same killer.
Newspapers didn’t report on the case.
Because of evisceration and brutality, experts believed it was a Satanic cult or mentally ill homosexual. Investigators checked all psychiatric ward, or those convicted of homosexuality or pedophilia.
In 1983, several young men confessed to the murders, although these individuals were often intellectually disabled 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.
Police got confession, but bodies continued to appear. In 1984, Chikatilo killed two women. The same year, he lured a 10-year-old boy, Dmitry Ptashnikov, he 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 both semen and saliva samples on the victim’s clothing. In May, he killed a young woman named Tatyana Petrosyan and her 10-year-old daughter, Svetlana. Tatyana Petrosyan had known Chikatilo for several years prior to her murder. By the end of July, he had killed three additional young women between the ages of 19 and 21, and a 13-year-old boy.
In 1984 Chikatilo was fired from his work and he found another job as a supply clerk in Rostov. In August Chikatilo killed a 16-year-old girl, Natalya Golosovskaya. Later that month he murdered a 17-year-old girl, Lyudmila Alekseyeva. Chikatilo mutilated and disembowelled her, intentionally inflicting wounds he knew would not be immediately fatal. His every crime was, needless to say, sadistic, but this one was a prolonged torture. He was trying to keep her alive while mutilating, stabbing her and derived a sexual gratification from her suffering. That is sexual sadism disorder. Other mental issues, disorders he most likely had are irrelevant comparing to sadism, specifically sexual sadism. Her body was found the following morning; her excised upper lip inside her mouth.
He had killed an unidentified young woman and a 10-year-old girl, Akmaral Seydaliyeva. Within two weeks, the nude body of an 11-year-old boy named Aleksandr Chepel was discovered strangled and castrated, with his eyes gouged out, just yards from where Alexeyeva’s body had earlier been found and on in September, Chikatilo killed a young librarian, 24-year-old Irina Luchinskaya.
He lured his victims to secluded area such as forests, parks…
In 1984, Chikatilo was observed by two undercover detectives attempting to talk to young women at a Rostov bus station. He was also committing acts of frotteurism. He was arrested. They found knife and Vaseline. He explained that most of his belongings were property of the company. Chikatilo was found guilty of theft of property from his previous employer and his membership of the Communist Party was revoked and he was sentenced to one year in prison. After serving three months, he was released.
But Chicatilo continued to torture and murder people. He cannibalized his victims, allegedly taking home organs and ate them.
Upon his release from prison in December 1984, Chikatilo found new work. In 1985 he murdered 18-year-old woman, named Natalia Pokhlistova. She was bound, stabbed thirty-eight times in her neck and chest, then strangled to death. Four weeks later Chikatilo killed another young woman, Irina Gulyaeva.
In November 1985, a special procurator, Issa Kostoyev, was appointed to supervise the investigation, which had by this stage expanded to include fifteen procurators and twenty-nine detectives assigned to work exclusively upon the manhunt. 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.
Dr. Alexandr Bukhanovsky described the killer as a reclusive man, aged between 45 and 50 years old, who had endured a painful and isolated childhood, and who was incapable of flirting or courtship with women. This individual was well educated, likely to be married and to have fathered children, but also a sadist who suffered from impotence and could achieve sexual arousal and release only by seeing his victims suffer. The murders themselves were an analogue to the sexual intercourse this individual was incapable of performing, and his knife became a substitute for a penis which failed to function normally. Bukhanovsky also argued 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.
Investigators did tentatively link the murder of a 33-year-old woman named Lyubov Golovakha – found stabbed to death.
In 1987, Chikatilo killed three times. On each occasion, the murder took place while he was on a business trip far away from the Rostov, because he knew they were looking for him. Oleg Makarenkov, a 12-year-old boy, and his body would remain undiscovered until 1991. In July, he killed a 12-year-old boy, Ivan Bilovetsky. On September 15, he killed a 16-year-old vocational school student, Yuri Tereshonok.
In 1988, Chikatilo killed three times, murdering an unidentified woman in Krasny Sulin in April and two boys in May and July, a 9-year-old boy named Aleksey Voronko and 15-year-old Yevgeny Muratov respectively. Muratov’s autopsy revealed he had been emasculated and had suffered at least thirty knife wounds. He killed a 16-year-old girl, Tatyana Ryzhova, in his daughter’s vacant apartment. He dismembered her body and hid the remains in a nearby sewer. Between May and August, Chikatilo killed a further four victims, three of whom were killed in Rostov and Shakhty, although only two of these victims were linked to the manhunt.
Several trains were also fitted with hidden cameras with the intention of filming or photographing a victim in the company of his or her murderer.
On January 14, 1990, Chikatilo encountered 11-year-old Andrei Kravchenko. His extensively stabbed, emasculated body was found in a secluded section of woodland the following month. Seven weeks after Chikatilo lured a 10-year-old boy, Yaroslav Makarov, from a Rostov train station to Rostov’s Botanical Gardens. His eviscerated body was found the following day.
Investigators were under huge pressure.
Chikatilo had killed three further victims by August 1990. On April 4, he lured a 31-year-old woman, Lyubov Zuyeva. Her body was not found until 24 August. On July 28, he lured a 13-year-old boy, Viktor Petrov, and killed him in Rostov’s Botanical Gardens: on August 14, he killed an 11-year-old boy, Ivan Fomin.
On November 6, 1990, Chikatilo killed and mutilated a 22-year-old woman, Svetlana Korostik.
He was noticed by an undercover officer named Igor Rybakov, who observed Chikatilo approach a well and wash his hands and face. When he approached the station, Rybakov also noted that Chikatilo’s coat had grass and soil stains on the elbows; Chikatilo also had a small red smear on his cheek and what appeared to be a severe wound on one of his fingers. To Rybakov, he looked suspicious. Rybakov stopped Chikatilo and checked his papers, but had no formal reason to arrest him. When Rybakov returned to his office, he filed a routine report, containing the name of the person he had stopped at the station and the possible blood smear observed upon his cheek.
On November 13, Svetlana Korostik’s body, the last victim, was found. Chikatilo’s name was among those reports, but it was familiar to several officers involved in the case because he had been questioned in 1984 and had been placed upon a 1987 suspect list compiled and distributed throughout the Soviet Union.
Police placed Chikatilo under surveillance on November 14. He was observed approaching lone young women or children and engaging 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 large jar, which he had filled with beer at a small kiosk in a local park before he 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. He offered no resistance as he was handcuffed and placed inside an unmarked police car.
Dr. Bukhanovsky was invited to assist in the questioning of the suspect. Bukhanovsky read extracts from his 65-page psychological profile to Chikatilo. Within two hours, Chikatilo burst into tears and confessed to Bukhanovsky that he was indeed guilty of the crimes for which he had been arrested. After conversing into the evening, Bukhanovsky reported that Chikatilo was ready to confess.
Chikatilo gave a full, detailed description of each murder on the list of charges, all of which were consistent with known facts regarding each killing. When prompted, he could draw a rough sketch of various crime scenes, indicating the position of the victim’s body and various landmarks in the vicinity of the crime scene.
When questioned as to why most of his later victims’ eyes had been stabbed or slashed, but not enucleated as his earlier victims’ eyes had been, Chikatilo stated that he had initially believed in an old Russian superstition that the image of a murderer is left imprinted upon the eyes of the victim. However, he stated, in “later years”, he had become convinced this was simply an old wives’ tale and he had ceased to gouge out the eyes of his victims.
In describing his victims, Chikatilo falsely referred to them as “déclassé elements” whom he would lure to secluded areas before killing. In many instances, particularly (though not exclusively) with his male victims, Chikatilo stated he would bind the victims’ hands behind their backs with a length of rope before he would proceed to kill them. He would typically inflict a multitude of knife wounds upon the victim; initially inflicting shallow knife wounds to the chest area before inflicting deeper stab and slash wounds – usually thirty to fifty in total – before proceeding to eviscerate the victim as he writhed atop his or her body until he achieved orgasm. Chikatilo had, he stated, become adept at avoiding the spurts of blood from his victims’ bodies as he inflicted the knife wounds and eviscerations upon them, and would regularly sit or squat beside his victims until their hearts had stopped beating, adding that the victims’ “cries, the blood and the agony gave me relaxation and a certain pleasure.”
Dr. Alexandr Bukhanovsky used Freudian psychoanalytic theory. Psychiatrists use psychoanalytic theory, but psychologists are trying hard to reject it. His psychological profile is a reminder to those who want to reject Sigmund Freud, that real understanding of human nature is practically impossible without Sigmund Freud.
Chicatilo reenacted his crimes by using dolls for that purpose.
He confessed murdering 56 women and children. Three of the fifty-six victims Chikatilo confessed to killing could not be found or identified, but he was charged with killing fifty-three women and children between 1978 and 1990.
Chikatilo was transferred to the Serbsky Institute in Moscow to undergo a 60-day psychiatric evaluation to determine whether he was mentally competent to stand trial. Chikatilo was analyzed by a senior psychiatrist, Andrei Tkachenko, who noted that Chikatilo had various physiological problems, which he attributed to prenatal brain damage. Examining Chikatilo’s history, Tkachenko observed a “steady but gradual descent into perversion” which had been compounded by biological and environmental factors, with his increasingly extreme acts of homicidal violence ultimately committed to relieve internal tension. Tkachenko concluded on October 18 that although he suffered from a borderline personality disorder with sadistic features, he was fit to stand trial.
In December 1991, details of Chikatilo’s arrest and a brief summary of his crimes were released to the newly privatized Russian media by police.
His trial was set to begin on April 14, 1992, charged with fifty-three counts of murder in addition to five charges of sexual assault against minors committed when he had been a teacher. Victims’ families were desperately crying, some fainted, while Chikatilo was sitting in a cage. His head was shaved. It was a rule.
Psychiatrists testified although solely in the capacity of a witnesses.
Chikatilo was found guilty and sentenced to death. On February 14, 1994, Chikatilo was taken from his death row cell to a soundproofed room in Novocherkassk prison and executed with a single gunshot behind the right ear.
In my opinion “Jack the Ripper” had the same psychological profile. His identity is unknown. But “Jack the Ripper” murdered his victims in 19th century and his victims were prostitutes. Back then, every woman without a husband was forced to prostitution to make ends meet. In 1978, when Chikatilo started murdering his victims, that wasn’t the case. If newspapers and television had informed people, parents would have protected their children and many young women wouldn’t have carelessly gone with a stranger. For them, it was more important to present a false picture that everything is perfect, that people are safe. Many children and women would have been saved. Prostitutes are targets of serial murderers because they have easy approach to them. For serial murderers the most important thing is to have easy access to victims. Studies showed that the US has higher mobility of people than other countries and access to gun is easy. That means, they move a lot from one state to another because of job opportunities. Every state has its own law enforcement. It is harder for police to trace someone who moved away or maybe didn’t. Social context is important to understanding why the authorities couldn’t catch him for so long.
