Andrei Chikatilo

Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo or Андре́й Рома́нович Чикати́ло (born on October 16th 1936, dead on February 14th 1994 was a Russian serial killer, nicknamed the Rostov Ripper. He was convicted of the murder of 52 victims between children and women 1978 to 1990.

Early life

Chikatilo was born in the village of Yablochnoye in 1936. He was born with Hydrocephalus, which would later impair control of his bladder and seminal functions. His childhood was quite traumatic, particularly as the USSR was soon at war with Germany and Stalin's plans of agricultural collectivisation had recently caused a devastating famine. Chikatilo later heard rumours that he'd had an older brother who died in the famine and had been cannibalised by starving neighbors. Although it is not known if this story was true, there were some alleged instances of cannibalism during the famine. During World War II Chikatilo witnessed some of the devastating and bloody effects of German bombing raids. Chikatilo had many fantasies of leading German captives into the woods and executing them. With his father at war, the young Chikatilo had to share a bed with his mother. He frequently wet his bed and for that his mother brutally beat and humiliated him. He did well at school, but failed the entrance exam for the Moscow State University. After finishing national service in 1960, he moved to Rodionovo-Nesvetayevsky and worked as a telephone engineer. Chikatilo's only sexual experience as a teenager was when, aged 15, he leapt on a young girl and wrestled her to the ground, ejaculating as the girl struggled in his grip. This incident helped to foster in him a lifelong association between sex and violent aggression. Chikatilo married in 1963. The wedding was virtually arranged by his younger sister who set him up with one of her friends when she took pity on her brother's inability to get a girlfriend. Although he suffered from impotence and had a barely existent sex life, Chikatilo did father a son and a daughter. In 1971 he got a degree in Russian literature by a correspondence course and tried a career as a teacher in Novoshakhtinsk. He was a poor teacher, unable to command any respect from his pupils, but managed to work as teacher, moving from school to school as complaints of indecent assaults dogged him. He eventually took a job as a clerk for a factory, and he used the many business trips around the Soviet Union to carry out his crimes.

Murder spree

In 1978, Chikatilo moved to Shakhty and committed his first documented murder. On December 22nd he lured a nine-year-old girl to an old shed and attempted to rape her. When the girl struggled, he stabbed her to death. He ejaculated in the process of knifing the child, and from then on he was only able to achieve sexual arousal and orgasm through stabbing and slashing women and children to death. Despite evidence linking Chikatilo to this first killing, a young man, Alexsandr Kravchenko, was arrested and later tried and executed for the crime. In 1981 Chikatilo lost his teaching job and became a clerk at a local firm. He did not murder again until 1982, when he killed seven times. He established a pattern of approaching runaways and vagrants at bus or railway stations. A quick trip into a nearby forest was the scene for the victim's death. In 1983, he did not kill until June, but then he murdered four victims before September. The victims were all women and children. In the case of adult females, they were often prostitutes or homeless tramps who could be lured away with promises of alcohol or money. Chikatilo would usually attempt consensual intercourse with them, but would usually be unable to get an erection, which would send him into a murderous fury, especially if the woman mocked his inability to perform. He would achieve orgasm only when he stabbed the victim to death. The child victims were of both gender s, and Chikatilo would lure them away with his friendly, talkative manner and promising them treats, such as toys or candy. In the USSR at the time, reports of crimes like child rape and serial murder were often suppressed by the state-controlled media, as these crimes were regarded as only being common in hedonistic capitalist nations." Consequently, with little knowledge of the increasing body count, parents failed to warn their children to be wary of strangers. As news of the savage killings leaked out during the 1980s, albeit with little official information about the details, wild rumours spread among the communities in Ukraine, such as the idea that foreigners were killing Soviet boys in preparation for an invasion, and even talk of werewolves. Six bodies out of 14 had been uncovered. This brought a reaction from the Moscow police. A team led by Major Mikhail Fetisov was sent to Rostov-on-Don to direct the investigation. Fetisov focused the investigations around Shakhty and assigned a specialist forensic analyst, Victor Burakov, to head the investigation in that area. The investigation concentrated on the mentally ill and known sex offenders, 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 had only admitted to the crimes under prolonged and often brutal interrogation. At least one suspect hanged himself in his cell while under arrest.

When boys began to make up a majority of the later victims, a frequent ploy was to round up and interrogate homosexuals, the gay community being particularly clandestine in the USSR, in which homosexuality was illegal at the time. The police spread their search wider and wider. Over 150,000 people were interviewed and filed before this approach was abandoned. In 1984, another 15 murders took place. The police took to additional patrols and sited plain-clothes men at many public transport stops.

First arrest

Chikatilo was identified behaving suspiciously at a Rostov bus station. He was arrested and held. It was found he was under suspicion for other crimes, which gave the investigators the legal right to hold him indefinitely. Chikatilo's dubious background was uncovered but provided insufficient evidence to convict him of the murders. He was found guilty on other matters and sentenced to one year in prison. He was freed in December 1984 after serving three months. It was later revealed that Chikatilo had been originally ruled out as a suspect in the murders because his blood type was tested as different from semen samples left by the killer. The forensic scientists later claimed that Chikatilo must be a unique individual whose blood type differed between a blood sample and a semen sample. No other scientists at that time took this theory seriously and it was generally regarded that the samples had been mixed up or the tests simply botched. Unfortunately, this theory of non-secretors proved true some time later after his final arrest when it was found out that "a secretor status refers to blood protein antigen/[antibody markers, which were used in the "classical" serological methods of blood identification in the days before the advent of DNA analysis. "Secretors" secrete these bloodmarkers into their other body fluids (saliva, tears, sweat, milk, etc.) while "non-secretors" do not. Therefore, the blood type of a "secretor" can be determined by testing body fluids other than blood, but would need actual blood to confirm the blood type of a non-secretor.About 80% of the population are secretors, and about 20% are non-secretors. Secretor status is of rapidly diminishing relevance today. Few labs (in the USA at least) do antigen/antibody analysis anymore, because DNA methods are so much more definitive. Secretor status is irrelevant in DNA analysis." [1]

Chikatilo found new work in Novocherkassk and kept a low profile. He did not kill again until August 1985, when he murdered two women in separate incidents. He is not known to have killed again until May 1987 when, on a business trip to Revda in Ukraine, he killed a young boy. He killed again in Zaporozhye in July and in Saint Petersburg/Leningrad in September.

The moribund police investigation was revived in mid-1985 when Issa Kostoyev was appointed to take over the case. The known murders around Rostov were carefully re-investigated and there was another round of questioning of known sex offenders. In December 1985, the police renewed the patrolling of railway stations around Rostov. Chikatilo followed the investigation carefully, and for over two years he kept his desires under control. The police also took the step of consulting a psychiatrist, the first such consultation in a serial killer investigation in that country.

In 1988 Chikatilo resumed killing, generally keeping his activities far from the Rostov area. He murdered a woman in Krasny-Sulin in April and went on to kill another eight people that year, including two victims in Shakhty. Again there was a long lapse before Chikatilo resumed killing, murdering seven boys and two women between January and November of 1990.

Capture and trial

The discovery of one of the bodies near Leskhoz station led to increased police patrols. On November 6 Chikatilo killed and mutilated Sveta Korostik. He was stopped by police returning from the woodland scene of the crime but allowed to go. However, a report on this suspicious encounter returned Chikatilo's name to the investigation. On November 20, 1990, after police again observed his suspicious behaviour, he was arrested and interrogated. Between November 30 and December 5, Chikatilo confessed to and described 56 murders. Three of the victims had been buried and could not be found or identified, so Chikatilo was not charged with these crimes. The number of crimes Chikatilo confessed to shocked the police, who had listed only 36 killings in their investigation. A number of victims had not been linked to others because they were murdered far from Chikatilo's other hunting grounds, whilst others were not linked because they were buried and not found until Chikatilo led the police to their shallow graves. He went to trial on April 14, 1992. Despite his odd and disruptive behaviour in court, where he was famously kept in a cage in the center of the courtroom, he was judged fit to stand trial. The trial ended in July and sentencing was postponed until October 15 when he was found guilty of 52 of the 53 murders and sentenced to death for each offence. Chikatilo defended himself by pointing to his childhood experiences in the notorious famine which took place in Ukraine in the 1930s. (However, it should be noted that Chikatilo's birth in 1936 occurred after the Holodomor, the Ukrainian famine, which occurred in 1932-1933.) He was executed by a shot to the back of the head on February 14, 1994.

Popular culture

Literature

The childhood story of Andrei Chikatilo bears striking similarities with that of Hannibal Lecter from Thomas Harris novels, in that both experience a sibling being cannibalised during a famine.

Music

The 2004 song Ripper von Rostow by German Black Metal band Eisregen describes Chikatilo's murder of Sveta Korostik.

TV

The events served as a loose insipiration for an episode of CSI:Crime Scene Investigation, where a serial rapist/killer initially is set free because his blood didn't match his semen.

Movies

A movie, Citizen X, was made in 1995 about the investigation of the "Rostov Ripper" (as Chikatilo was nicknamed in the press) murders. It starred Jeffrey DeMunn as Chikatilo, with Stephen Rea

as Viktor Burakov and Donald Sutherland as Mikhail Fetisov.

The 2004 film Evilenko (starring Malcolm McDowell and Marton Csokas) was loosely based on Chikatilo's murder spree.

Interesting Facts

[Chikatilo was found legally sane and sentenced to die for the 53 deaths ww.fortunecity.com/roswell/streiber/273/chikatilo_mo.htm]
[He also frequently erupted during the proceedings with wild statements, including a claim that he was pregnant and the guards had been beating him in order to injure his unborn child www.geocities.com /verbal_plainfield/a-h/chikatilo.html]
Andrei, a committed communist, denounced his father's "betrayal" of the motherland, but was still teased and taunted at school because of it.
He was not a sadist
Chikatilo was a late bloomer in terms of the norm for serial murder
As he said though his own words, Andrei was nothing short of a monster, a “ mistake of nature”
While he was on trial, his gory descriptions, psychotic behavior and litany of horrors gave the Soviet public their first taste of serial mayhem
As the judge left the room, the brother of one of Chikatilo's victims threw an iron bar at Chikatilo.
His trial, which took place after the fall of communism, saw the monster secured in a large cage in the courtroom as the parents of the victims wept, fainted, and hurled invectives at the seemingly mild mannered man. They had a good reason to be angry.

External information

Part of this article consists of modified text from Wikipedia, and the article is therefore licensed under GFDL.