Andrei Chikatilo

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Andrei Chikatilo

The Butcher of Rostov
Birth name: Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo
Alias(es): The Rostov Ripper, The Red Ripper
Born: October 16, 1936
Location: Yablochnoye, Ukraine
Died: February 14, 1994
Cause of death: Executed, (Gunshot to the head)
Number of victims: 53
Country where killings occurred: Russia Flag of Russia
Span of killings: December 22, 1978 through 1990
Date apprehended: November 20, 1990
Penalty: Death

Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo (Russian: Андрей Романович Чикати́ло) (October 16, 1936 – February 14, 1994) was a Ukrainian-born - Russian serial killer, nicknamed the Butcher of Rostov and 'The Red Ripper.' He was convicted of the murder of 53 women and children in the Russian Soviet Republic between 1978 and 1990.

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[edit] Early life

Chikatilo was born in the village of Yablochnoye in 1936. 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 had an older brother who died in the famine and whose corpse had been cannibalised by starving neighbors. Although it is not known if this story was true, there certainly were some instances of cannibalism during the famine. In World War II, Chikatilo witnessed some of the devastating and horrific effects of German bombing raids. Chikatilo had many fantasies of leading German captives into the woods and executing them, a fantasy that — although common of Soviet children at the time[citation needed] — had parallels with his murders.

With his father at war, the young Chikatilo had to share a bed with his mother. He frequently wet the bed, for which his mother brutally beat and humiliated him. His father, who was captured and imprisoned by the Nazis during the war, returned home a social pariah; in Stalinist Russia, surviving prisoners of war were viewed as cowards.

Chikatilo did well at school, but failed the entrance exam for 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 in adolescence was when he, aged 18, jumped on a 13 year old girl (his sister's friend) and wrestled her to the ground, ejaculating as the girl struggled in his grasp. This incident helped to foster in him a lifelong association between sex and violent aggression.

Chikatilo married in 1963, the marriage 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 obtain a girlfriend. Although he suffered from impotence and had a barely existent sex life, Chikatilo did father a son and daughter. He did this by ejaculating on his wife, and pushing the semen inside her with his fingers. In 1971, he completed 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 he remained in that profession, moving from school to school as complaints of indecent assaults dogged him. As a school master he became a paedophile who sexually abused his students, although he was never charged or arrested for his actions towards children. School authorities preferred to quietly fire him, as initiating formal investigations would have affected a given school's reputation. He eventually took a job as a clerk for a factory, using his many business trips around the Soviet Union to carry out his killings.

[edit] Murder spree begins

In 1978, Chikatilo moved to Shakhty, a small coal mining town near Rostov-on-Don, where he committed his first documented murder. On December 22, he lured a nine-year-old girl to an old house (which he had purchased in secret) and attempted to rape her. When the girl struggled, he stabbed her to death. He ejaculated in the process of knifing the child; from then on Chikatilo was only able to achieve sexual arousal and orgasm through stabbing and slashing women and children to death. Despite evidence linking Chikatilo to the girl's death, a young man, Alexsandr Kravchenko, was arrested, tried and executed for the crime.

Chikatilo lost his teaching job in 1981 and became a clerk at a local firm.

He did not murder again until 1982, but in that year he killed several times. Chikatilo established a pattern of approaching runaways and young vagrants at bus or railway stations, enticing them to a nearby forest, and killing them. In 1983, his murdering did not begin until June, but he murdered four victims before September. His victims were all women and children. The adult females were often prostitutes or homeless tramps who could be lured with promises of alcohol or money. Chikatilo would typically attempt intercourse with his adult female 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 inability to perform. He would achieve orgasm only when he stabbed the victim to death. His child victims were of both sexes; Chikatilo would lure them to secluded areas by promising them 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 such crimes were regarded as being common only in "hedonistic capitalist" nations. Consequently, parents had little knowledge of the growing body count and did not warn their children about the danger. As news of the savage killings leaked out during the 1980s, albeit with little official information, wild rumours spread through Ukraine, such as the idea that foreigners were killing Soviet boys in preparation for an invasion. Some murders were even attributed to werewolves.

Six bodies (out of 14) had been uncovered by 1983. A Moscow 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. The police effort concentrated on mentally ill members of the community 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 admitted to the crimes only under prolonged and often brutal interrogation. At least one suspect committed suicide in his cell while under arrest.

When boys began to make up a majority of the later victims, a frequent (and ineffective) ploy was to round up and interrogate homosexuals, the gay community being particularly clandestine in the USSR, where homosexuality was illegal at the time. The police cast their net more widely. 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 posted plainclothesmen at many public transport stops.

[edit] Arrest and release

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Chikatilo was identified behaving suspiciously at a Rostov bus station. He was arrested and held. It was found he was 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 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-secretor 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]

As reported contemporaneously, the Soviet authorities involved were ignored and dis-assessed as to the theory of differing blood versus seminal fluid typing; and when later caught, tried, and convicted, these tests were not in fact done, as sufficient alternative evidence was regarded as complete, testing being expensive for these or DNA sequencing as of that date. No biological samples were taken or kept.

[edit] Later Murders and the Manhunt

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 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.

The discovery of more victims led a massive operation by the police, one branch of which involved a large number of the force patrolling train and bus stations as well as other public places around Rostov area. Major bus and train stations were patrolled by the police force wearing uniforms. Smaller and less busy stations were patrolled by undercover agents. The idea behind this was as follows: the police were hoping that after seeing numerous police force at large train and bus stations, the serial killer would rather attempt to find a victim at a smaller station, where the presence of police was not apparent. The operation also involved a large number of young female agents dressed like prostitutes or homeless people. They kept wandering aimlessly in and around stations as well as traveling extensively along the routes where dead bodies were found.

On November 6 Chikatilo killed and mutilated Sveta Korostik. While leaving the crime scene, he was stopped by an undercover policeman who was patrolling the Leskhoz train station and saw Chikatilo approaching from the woods. According to the policeman, he looked suspicious. First of all, the only reason for someone to go into the woods at that time of year was to gather wild mushrooms (a popular pastime in Russia). However, Chikatilo was not dressed like a typical forest hiker. He was wearing rather formal attire. Moreover, he had a nylon sports-bag, which was not suitable for carrying mushrooms. Secondly, his clothing was dirty and he had what looked like smeared blood stains on his cheek and ear. The policeman stopped Chikatilo and checked his papers. Having no formal reason for arrest, the policeman let him go. Had the policeman checked Chikatilo's bag, he would have found the amputated breasts of Sveta Korostik. When the policeman came back to his office, he filed a formal routine report, indicating the name of the person he stopped at the train station. Shortly after the encounter, the police found two dead bodies, 30 feet apart, near the train station Leskhoz. It was determined that one of the victims was killed around the date of the police report filed about this suspicious man near the Leskhoz station. It was the second time Chikatilo was indirectly associated with a murder of a child (the first one was in 1978, when a witness reported seeing a man whose description matched Chikatilo with a girl that was later found dead).

[edit] Arrest and confession

Even after the incident, the police still didn't have enough evidence for arrest and prosecution. However, Chikatilo was put on 24/7 watch by the police. He was constantly followed and videotaped by undercover agents. On November 20, 1990, Chikatilo left his house with a one gallon flask for beer (at that time, one could hardly buy bottled beer in Soviet Union; one could only buy beer from a mobile beer station or cafe selling beer by volume; but even this type of beer was hard to find). Chikatilo kept wandering around the city with the flask. He kept attempting to make contact with children he met on his way. Finally, he entered a small cafe where he bought 300ml of beer (the police force wondered why anyone would wander around the city for several hours just to buy 300ml of beer). The fact that he kept approaching children triggered the decision by the police force to arrest him when he exited the cafe.

Again, the police had 10 days to either charge Chikatilo with murders or to let him go. Upon arrest, the police uncovered another piece of evidence against Chikatilo. One of his last victims was a physically strong (although mentally challenged) 16 year old boy. At the crime scene, the police had found numerous signs of physical struggle between the victim and his murderer. One of Chikatilo’s fingers had a relatively fresh wound. Medical examiners concluded the wound was, in fact, from a human bite. In fact, his finger bone was broken. Chikatilo never sought medical attention for the wound.

The strategy chosen by the police force to make him confess was somewhat unusual for the police at that time. One of the chief interrogators kept telling Chikatilo that they all believed he was a very sick man and needed medical help. This gave Chikatilo hope that if he confessed, he wouldn't be prosecuted by reason of insanity. Finally a psychiatrist was invited to "help" Chikatilo (involvement of a psychiatrist during investigation was something the police had never done before). The psychiatrist was very sympathetic to Chikatilo's mental problems. After a very long conversation, Chikatilo confessed to the murders. Again, confession was not enough to prosecute him. Interrogators still needed hard evidence. Chikatilo volunteered to provide evidence - he showed buried bodies that the police hadn't discovered yet. And that was it - police had enough evidence to put him on trial. 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 the others because they were murdered far from Chikatilo's other hunting grounds, while others were not linked because they were buried and not found until Chikatilo led the police to their shallow graves.

[edit] Imprisonment

Special precautions had to be taken while keeping Chikatiko in prison. Violent and especially sexual crimes against children are "taboo" in Russian underworld. Prisoners accused of raping and/or killing children in Russian prisons are "cast down" (опущены) to "untouchable" (опущенный) status, abused, and sometimes killed by their cell mates. The problem was complicated by the fact that some of the relatives of Chikatilo's victims worked in the prison system. There was a high probability of Chikatilo being executed in his cell before the trial.

While in his cell, Chikatilo was put under 24/7 video surveillance. While the suspect often acted bizarre in front of his investigators, his behavior inside the cell (when he thought nobody was watching) was absolutely normal. He ate and slept well. He exercised every morning. He extensively read books and newspapers. Chikatilo also spent a lot of time writing letters and complaints to his family, government officials, and the mass media.

Writing was a passion of Chikatilo to which he remained faithful to the end of his life. While being employed as a school teacher, he wrote articles for local newspapers. The articles largely dealt with the questions of ethics and morality. Chikatilo often wrote anonymous complaints to government officials on his supervisors and co-workers, complaining about him being mistreated and denied the necessary freedom and authority to implement his ideas in the workplace. While in cell, he read about the call of a popular magazine for nominations for the “investigator of the year” award. He wrote to the magazine, nominating his investigators for the award.

[edit] Trial and execution

He went to trial on April 14, 1992. Despite his odd and disruptive behavior in court, he was judged fit to stand trial. During the trial he was famously kept in a cage in the center of the courtroom; it was constructed for his own protection from the relatives of the deceased. The trial had a very disturbing atmosphere. The relatives kept shouting threats and insults to Chikatilo, demanding the authorities to release him so that they could execute him on their own. There were many incidents of relatives fainting when the names of the victims were mentioned. The police guards inside the court room had to suppress what looked like an emerging riot several times.

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. When given a chance to speak, Chikatilo delivered a rambling speech, blaming the regime, certain political leaders, his impotence (even removing his trousers at one point) and defending 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 Ukrainian famine, which occurred in 1932–1933.) At one point he claimed that he had done a favor to society by cleansing it of worthless people (many of Chikatilo's victims were young prostitutes, alcoholics, run-away teenagers or simply "troubled" youth).

He was executed by firing squad (shot in the back of the head) on February 14, 1994 after Russian president Boris Yeltsin refused a last ditch appeal by Chikatilo for clemency.

[edit] Andrei Chikatilo in popular culture

  • The events served as a loose inspiration for an episode of CSI:Crime Scene Investigation; "Bloodlines", where a serial rapist/killer initially is set free because his blood didn't match his semen.
  • The 2004 song "Ripper von Rostow" by German black metal band Eisregen describes Chikatilo's murder of Sveta Korostik.
  • The TV crime drama Criminal Minds episode "Machismo" has a scene where Chiktilo's murders are briefly discussed amongst the BAU agents who are on the way to solve a series of murders in Mexico.
  • In Spawn issues 164 and 166, the warehouse Spawn resides in is called "Chikatilo Imports", named after the infamous killer.
  • The rumour of his brother being cannibalized was another inspiration for fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter[citation needed].
  • In the dystopian alternate history story 'For All Time', Chikatilo becomes absolute ruler of the Soviet Union in the mid 1970s following a crippling nuclear exchange with Communist China. His bloodthirstiness and brutality as a ruler outweigh that of Josef Stalin, and drive the country towards nuclear civil war in the early 1980s.
  • The play 'Mindgame' by Anthony Horowitz mentions him in passing.

[edit] References

  • Peter Conradi. «The Red Ripper: Inside the Mind of Russia’s Most Brutal Serial Killer». 1992. ISBN 0440216036
  • Richard Lourie. «Hunting the Devil. The Pursuit, Capture and Confession of the Most Savage Serial Killer in History». 1993. ISBN 0060177179
  • Robert Cullen. «Killer Department, or Citizen X». 1993. ISBN 1857972104
  • NTV (1997). «Criminal Russia: The trail of Satan». A documentary on Chikatilo's case produced by a leading Russian TV channel.
  1. ^ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/forensic-science/message/6541

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Chikatilo"
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