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| Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo |
“I am a mistake of nature, a mad beast…” – Chikatilo
Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo, a.k.a. “The Rostov Ripper“, was a Russian cannibalistic, pedophilic serial killer responsible for over four dozen murders that occurred between 1978 to 1990.
BACKGROUND of Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo
Chikatilo was born in the Ukrainian part of the USSR during Stalin’s regime. Due to the agricultural plans, starvation was rampant and stories about cannibalism circulated. At one point, Chikatilo was told by his mother, Anna, that his older brother, Stepan, was kidnapped, killed and cannibalized by starved neighbors, though the story has never been verified, nor has the claim that Chikatilo even had a brother. Both his parents were farm laborers who shared a single room hut with him, forcing him to also share a bed with them. A frequent bed wetter,Andrei Chikatilo was often beaten by his mother as punishment. It was discovered later in life that he had been born with a brain damage that affected his ability to control seminal and bladder emissions. When the war began, Chikatilo’s father, Roman, was drafted into the Red Army and the rest of the family was left in the crossfire of the German Blitz. In 1943, Anna Chikatilo gave birth to a baby girl. Given the timeline of her husband’s departure, the child was apparently conceived outside of marriage (some theorize that she was raped by a German soldier in front of Chikatilo). When the war ended, Roman Chikatilo was placed in a Russian prison camp for having surrendered in combat and Andrei forced to publicly denounce his father as a coward.
Chikatilo’s social awkwardness and self-hatred became worse during his adolescence years, when he turned out to suffer from chronic impotence. His condition affected his romantic life and ruined his first attempt at a relationship when he was 23. Awkward and withdrawn, he was generally a good student, though he failed his entrance exam to the Moscow State University. After finishing his compulsory military service, he became a telephone engineer in 1960. In 1963, he married a woman to whom he was introduced by his sister. Though they had a minimal sex life, they conceived a son and a daughter together. In 1971, Chikatilo earned a degree in Russian literature through a correspondence course and got a teaching position at a local school. Though he was often accused of child molestation, he managed to hold onto the job for almost ten years. In 1978, he accepted a new position in Shakty and moved there. While he lived alone there, waiting for his family to arrive, he began having pedophilic fantasies and would spy on children from a hut by the street. On December 21 the same year, he committed his first known C, abducting nine-year-old Yelena Zabotnova and stabbing her to death in the woods, ejaculating in the process. He had intended to rape her, but couldn’t achieve an erection due to his impotence.
KILLINGS ,CAPTURE AND EXECUTION OF ANDREI CHIKATILO
Over the following 12 years, Andrei Chikatilo committed over 50 known murders. Because reports of crimes like serial murder and rape were greatly suppressed by Soviet authorities in the state-controlled media, stories began taking a life of their own; among the rumors that circulated was that the victims were killed and mutilated by a werewolf. The murders weren’t publicized until August 1984, by which time Chikatilo had killed at least 30 people. He was suspected of killing Yelena Zabotnova and had been seen with her, but because another man confessed to the murder under torture and was consequently executed, Chikatilo was able to continue killing. In September 1984, he was arrested after soliciting a prostitute, having been seen approaching a number of women at the Rostov bus station. His briefcase was searched and found to contain a kitchen knife, a towel, a rope and a jar of petroleum jelly. Unfortunately, his blood type did not come back a match to the semen found on the bodies, forcing the investigators to release him. This has never been fully explained and is sometimes believed to have been the result of a clerical error. Other sources claim that it was because he was a non-secretor, which meant his blood type wouldn’t be determinable from his semen. Weeks after his arrest, he was expelled from the Communist party after being convicted of stealing from his workplace and sentenced to three months in jail.
In November 1990, Chikatilo was stopped and questioned when coming out of the area in which his final victim, Svetlana Korostik, was found. On November 14, the day after the remains were discovered, he was formally arrested and interrogated. Over the following two weeks, he confessed to a total of 56 murders, of which the investigators had only attributed 36 to him. The case went to trial on April 14, 1992. Chikatilo had to be placed inside an iron cage when on the stand to protect him from the family members of his victims. His behavior during the proceedings was bizarre, to say the least; twice he pulled down his pants, exposed himself and shouted that he was not a homosexual, he claimed to be pregnant and lactating at some points and alternated between boredom and anger. He also denied being guilty of several murders to which he had already confessed while confessing to unknown ones. When the prosecutor was about to deliver the final argument, Chikatilo broke into song and had to be removed from the courtroom. When he was brought in and offered a moment to speak, he said nothing. Though the defense tried to claim he was insane, a group of court-appointed psychiatrists disagreed. On October 14, 1992, Chikatilo was found guilty of 52 murders; 21 males and 31 females. On February 14, 1994, he was executed with a single shot to the head, his last words apparently being “Don’t blow my brains out! The Japanese want to buy them!”