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Andrei Chikatilo: “I pray to God that there will be no more people like me on earth! Biography of Andrei Chikatilo (7 photos) - How was Chikatilo shot? Who did it.

Andrei Chikatilo is one of the most famous Soviet serial killers, who committed 53 proven murders from 1978 to 1990 (although the criminal himself confessed to 56 murders, and, according to operational information, the maniac committed more than 65 murders): 21 boys aged 7 to 16 years old, 14 girls aged 9 to 17 years old and 17 girls and women.

Alexander Kravchenko was mistakenly shot for the murder that Chikatilo committed. Nicknames: “Mad Beast”, “Rostov Ripper”, “Red Ripper”, “Forest Belt Killer”, “Citizen X”, “Satan”, “Soviet Jack the Ripper”. Although, according to some reports, Chikatilo surpassed Jack the Ripper in his atrocities.

Andrei Chikatilo - childhood

Andrei Chikatilo was born on October 16, 1936 in the Kharkov region of the Ukrainian SSR in the village of Yablochnoye (today the village belongs to the Sumy region). There is information that Chikatilo was born with signs of hydrocephalus. Until the age of 12, he suffered from bedwetting, for which he was constantly beaten by his mother.

In 1943, A. Chikatilo had a sister. His father Roman Chikatilo, who was at the front at that time, could hardly be the girl’s father. Therefore, it is possible that at the age of 6-7 years he could have witnessed the rape of his mother by a German soldier, with whom he lived in the same room in the territory of Ukraine then occupied by the Germans.

In 1944, Chikatilo entered first grade. When the famine began in 1946, he did not leave the house, fearing that he might be caught and eaten: his mother told him that during the famine, his older brother Stepan was allegedly kidnapped and eaten. There is also a version that the parents themselves ate the older brother during a famine. Subsequently, no documents about the birth and death of Stepan were found.

In 1954, Andrei graduated from high school and tried to enter the law faculty of Moscow State University, but did not pass the competition. However, he believed that he was not accepted into the university because of his father, a “traitor” and “traitor to the Motherland.”

In 1955, Chikatilo graduated from the Akhtyrka Technical School of Communications. After college, he entered the correspondence department of the Moscow Electromechanical Institute of Railway Transport Engineers.

From 1957 to 1960 he served in the army, his army service was in the troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and, according to other information, as a signalman in the Soviet troops in Berlin.

After the army he moved to the village of Rodionovo-Nesvetaiskaya, not far from Rostov-on-Don. There he got a job as an engineer at a telephone exchange.

In 1962, Chikatilo's sister Tatyana introduced him to her friend Faina (Evdokia), who became his wife in 1964. Immediately after the wedding, Chikatilo entered the correspondence department of the Faculty of Philology of Rostov University. In 1965, his daughter Lyudmila was born, and on August 15, 1969, his son Yuri, who later became a criminal. In April 1965, Chikatilo accepted the position of chairman of the district committee for physical education and sports. In 1970, already at the age of 33, he graduated from a pedagogical institute in absentia with a course in Marxism-Leninism and literature, and began working as a teacher of Russian language and literature (and then as a teacher) at boarding school No. 32 in Novoshakhtinsk.

In 1974, Chikatilo began working as a master of industrial training at the Novoshakhtinsky State Technical University No. 39.

In 1978, he and his family moved to Shakhty, where in September he began working as a teacher at State Technical University No. 33, and in December he committed his first murder.

The first murder of Andrei Chikatilo

On December 22, 1978, Chikatilo killed his first victim, 9-year-old Elena Zakotnova. The murder took place in house No. 26 (the so-called “hut”) on Mezhevoy Lane, which Chikatilo bought for 1,500 rubles secretly from his family and used for meetings with prostitutes.

On December 24, the mines, and the entire Rostov region, were shocked by a terrible discovery. Near the bridge over the Grushevka River, the body of a 9-year-old 2nd grade student at school No. 11, Elena Zakotnova, was found. As the examination showed, the unknown person performed sexual intercourse with the girl in ordinary and perverted forms, causing her vaginal and rectal ruptures, and also inflicted three penetrating stab wounds in the stomach. The girl's death, however, was due to mechanical asphyxia - she was strangled. The expert suggested that Lena was killed on the day of her disappearance (her parents contacted the police on December 22), no earlier than 18.00.

The murder of a child, and even with particular cruelty associated with sexual violence, required immediate disclosure. One of the most experienced local detectives, senior investigator Adviser of Justice Izhogin, was assigned to the case. Local residents were passed through a fine sieve.

As it turned out later, Chikatilo lured the girl into the hut with promises of chewing gum. As he testified during the investigation, he only wanted to “play around with her.” But when he tried to undress her, the girl began to scream and struggle. Frightened that her neighbors would hear her, Chikatilo leaned on her and began to choke her. The victim's suffering aroused him and he experienced an orgasm.

Chikatilo threw the body of the girl and her school bag into the Grushevka River. On December 24, the body was found and on the same day, a murder suspect, Alexander Kravchenko, who had previously served 10 years for the rape and murder of his peer, was detained. Kravchenko’s wife gave him an alibi for December 22, and on December 27 he was released. However, on January 23, 1979, Kravchenko stole from his neighbor. The next morning, the police detained him and found the stolen goods in the attic of his house. A murderer and a drug addict were placed in Kravchenko’s cell, who beat him, forcing him to confess to the murder of Zakotnova. Kravchenko’s wife was informed that her husband was already in prison for murder, and she was accused of complicity in the murder of Zakotnova. The frightened woman signed everything that was asked of her.

On February 16, 1979, Kravchenko confessed to the murder of Zakotnova. At first he was sentenced to 15 years in prison, but the relatives of the murdered girl demanded a review of the case and the death penalty. As a result, Kravchenko’s case was sent for further investigation three times and, in the end, a death sentence was imposed. On July 5, 1983, 29-year-old Alexander Kravchenko was shot for the murder committed by Chikatilo. In 1990, the death sentence against Kravchenko was overturned.

However, the investigation also had one more suspect. On January 8, 1979, a certain Anatoly Grigoriev, 50 years old, a native of the city of Shakhty, hanged himself in Novocherkassk. On December 31, on the eve of the New Year, in the tram depot where he was an employee, Grigoriev, being very drunk, boasted to his colleagues that he had allegedly stabbed and strangled a girl about whom “they wrote in the newspapers.” The workers knew that “Tolya’s imagination awakens when he’s drunk,” and therefore no one believed him. However, Grigoriev apparently expected that these drunken revelations would still come back to haunt him. Arriving to his daughter in Novocherkassk, he was very worried, drank a lot, cried that he had not killed anyone, but had blamed himself in vain. After waiting for his daughter to go to work, Grigoriev hanged himself in the toilet.

The beginning of a killing spree

The first murder scared Chikatilo, and for 3 years he did not kill anyone. However, on September 3, 1981, he killed 17-year-old prostitute Larisa Tkachenko. Taking her into the forest belt, he tried to have sex with her, but he could not get aroused. When Tkachenko began to mock him, he beat her, bit off her nipple, filled her mouth with dirt and strangled her. The body was discovered the next day.

Almost a year later, on June 12, 1982, he killed 12-year-old Lyubov Biryuk. The killing spree began: in 1982, Chikatilo killed a total of seven children ranging in age from 9 to 16 years old. He most often met future victims at bus stops and train stations, under some plausible pretext (showing a shortcut, puppies, stamps, a video recorder, etc.) he lured them into a forest belt or other secluded place (sometimes the victims passed with the killer several kilometers - Chikatilo always walked ahead), unexpectedly attacked with a knife. Up to sixty stab wounds were found on the mutilated bodies of the dead; many had their noses, tongues, genitals, breasts cut off and bitten off, and their eyes gouged out (Chikatilo could not stand the sight of his victims). Among his victims were many tramps, alcoholics and the mentally retarded.

The first arrest of Andrei Chikatilo

1984 marked the peak of Chikatilo’s criminal activity - he killed 15 people, the total number of his victims reached 32. On August 1, he took the post of head of the supply department of the Rostov production association Spetsenergoavtomatika. The work involved constant travel around the country, which was very convenient for him. On August 8, he went on his first business trip to Tashkent, where he killed a woman and a 12-year-old girl.

On September 14, 1984, at the Rostov Central Market, because of suspicious behavior, he was detained by the district inspector, police captain Alexander Zanosovsky, and his partner Shaikh-Akhmed Akhmatkhanov. Chikatilo tried to meet girls, pestered them on public transport, and a prostitute had oral sex with him right at the bus station. A knife, a jar of Vaseline, a bar of soap and two coils of rope were found in his briefcase (for some reason all of this was returned to Chikatilo or, according to other sources, simply lost). They took his blood for analysis, and his blood type turned out to be second.

The group of sperm that was found on the corpse of one of the victims was the fourth. Later this circumstance will be explained by the fact that Chikatilo allegedly had the so-called. “paradoxical excretion”: his blood was of the second group, and his bodily fluids were of the fourth, and this provided him with a kind of alibi. After the trial, Chikatilo will appear in the media as a “paradoxical highlighter” - a person with an extremely rare feature of the body (“one in several million”). In fact, the analysis of the detected sperm gave an incorrect result due to the microbial contamination of the material.

Chikatilo was released without conducting a more detailed investigation or analysis. However, he was soon expelled from the CPSU, of which he had been a member since 1960, and sentenced to a year of correctional labor under Article 92 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR for theft of a battery. But he was released on December 12, 1984. In January 1985, Chikatilo moved with his family to Novocherkassk and there he got a job as an engineer at the Novocherkassk Electric Locomotive Plant. Later he became the head of the metals department of this plant, and in 1990 he transferred to the external cooperation department of the Rostov Electric Locomotive Repair Plant, where he worked until his arrest.

After his first arrest, Chikatilo killed 21 more people.

Operation "Forest Belt"

Time passed, and the killings in the forest belts continued. Therefore, in December 1985, Operation Forest Belt, under the control of the CPSU Central Committee, began - perhaps the largest operational event ever carried out by Soviet and Russian law enforcement agencies. During the entire operation, more than 200 thousand people were checked for involvement in a series of murders, 1062 crimes were solved along the way, information was accumulated on 48 thousand people with sexual deviations, 5845 people were put on special registration, 163 thousand vehicle drivers were checked. Military helicopters were even used to patrol the railway tracks and surrounding forest belts. The search for the killer cost the state approximately 10 million rubles in 1990 prices.

The meeting held by the regional prosecutor's office on this case in Rostov-on-Don in April 1987 was attended by the deputy head of the investigation department of the USSR Prosecutor's Office V. Nenashev and the deputy prosecutor of the RSFSR Ivan Zemlyanushin. It opened with the words: “The Lesopolos case is under control at all higher authorities, as well as at the Central Committee of the CPSU. There is no more important matter in the country than the Forest Belt.”

The special task force dealing with the case of the forest belt killer was headed by Viktor Burakov, who turned to psychiatrist Alexander Bukhanovsky with a request to draw up a psychological portrait of the criminal. Bukhanovsky immediately rejected theories that the killer was mentally ill, marginalized or homosexual. In his opinion, the criminal was an ordinary, unremarkable Soviet citizen, with a family, children and work (one of the killer’s nicknames was “Citizen X”).

Police officers dressed in civilian clothes constantly rode trains as bait. The Taganrog - Donetsk - Rostov - Salsk highway was controlled throughout its entire length by police officers. Chikatilo, being a vigilante, himself participated in this operation and was on duty at train stations, “helping” the police catch himself. Sensing increased surveillance, he became more cautious and did not kill anyone in 1986.

The killings continued in 1987, when on May 16 he killed 13-year-old Oleg Makarenkov, whose remains were only discovered in 1990, after Chikatilo's arrest. The corpses of children were found regularly, even in the center of Rostov, in Aviator Park and the Botanical Garden. He also killed in other cities of the USSR, where he went on business trips - in Zaporozhye, Leningrad, Moscow. The leadership of the investigation was taken over by Issa Kostoev, who held the position of deputy head of the investigative unit of the RSFSR Prosecutor's Office.

In September 1989, Kostoev visited the serial killer Anatoly Slivko, sentenced to death, in the Novocherkassk prison in the hope that he would help the investigation. But Slivko, repeating the previous mistake of the investigation, only pointed out that murders in forest belts are most likely committed by two people: one “specializes” in boys, the other in girls and women. “It’s no use,” he said. - This is impossible to calculate. I know it from myself.” A few hours after the interview with Kostoev, Slivko was shot.

Andrei Chikatilo - psychological portrait

The psychological portrait of the murderer from the forest belt, compiled by Bukhanovsky, took 62 pages of typewritten text. Bukhanovsky himself called the portrait “prospective.”

According to him, the offender did not suffer from psychosis or mental retardation. Outwardly and in behavior, he was a completely ordinary person: his victims trusted him. He considered himself talented, although he had no special abilities. He had a plan to track down and lure victims, but he often improvised.

He was heterosexual, and for him boys acted as “symbolic objects” on which he may have taken out the grievances and humiliations he suffered in childhood and adolescence. He was a necrosadist who needed to watch people die and suffer in order to gain sexual gratification. To render the victim helpless, he first hit her on the head. He was physically well developed and tall. The numerous stab wounds he inflicted were his way of “penetrating” (in a sexual sense) the victim.

The blade acted as a penis, making back-and-forth movements in the wound, but not coming out of it completely. Therefore, most likely, he was impotent. He blinded his victims because he was afraid of their gaze. He kept the severed body parts as "trophies" or perhaps ate them. By cutting off boys' genitals, he tried to make them more like women or to vent his anger at his own sexual inadequacy.

His age ranges from 25 to 50, but most likely he was between 45 and 50 years old - the age at which sexual perversions most often develop. Even if he was married, his wife was not particularly demanding of him and allowed him to be away from home often and for long periods of time. Perhaps he had his own vehicle ( Chikatilo did have a car, but he did not use it when he committed murders), or his work involved travel. He might stop killing for a while if he sensed danger, but he wouldn't stop until he was caught or died.

Andrei Chikatilo - execution

In 1990, Andrei Chikatilo killed 8 more people. He committed his last murder on November 6. The victim was 22-year-old prostitute Svetlana Korostik. Having killed her, he left the forest, and near the Donleskhoz railway station he was stopped by police officer Igor Rybakov, who asked to show documents, due to the fact that in this area people usually went for mushrooms, and Chikatilo’s clothes were not suitable for a mushroom picker. Since the policeman did not have a formal basis for the arrest, after recording his name, he released Chikatilo.

A few days later, Korostik’s body was discovered near the same station. The medical examiner established the date of the murder - about a week ago. Having checked the reports of the police officers on duty at that time, Kostoev drew attention to the name of Chikatilo, who had already been detained in 1984 on suspicion of involvement in murders in forest belts. On November 17, external surveillance was established for Chikatilo. He behaved suspiciously: he tried to meet boys and girls, and appeared in places where corpses were found.

Chikatilo was arrested on November 20, 1990. That day, after taking time off from work, he went to the clinic to get an x-ray of his finger, which one of the victims bit through during the struggle. The finger turned out to be broken. Chikatilo returned home, then went to the kiosk for beer, taking a three-liter can as a container, which he carried in a net bag for vegetables. On the way back from the beer stall, he was detained by operatives.

According to one of the detectives who took part in the operation to detain Chikatilo, everyone was surprised that “Chikatilo seemed to be such a healthy man, and he bought a little beer - there was about half a liter in a 3-liter can.” During a search in his house, they found 32 kitchen knives (it is still unknown whether they were used for the murders) and shoes, the print of which matched the print found near the corpse of one of the victims.

During the search, Andrei Chikatilo’s organs were not found, which he took with him; perhaps he ate them. His wife said that when he went on a business trip, he took a saucepan with him. Chikatilo was interrogated for ten days, but he did not confess to anything. There was no direct evidence against him, and his period of detention was already expiring. Then Kostoev turned to Bukhanovsky for help, and he agreed to talk with the killer. After talking with a psychiatrist on November 30, Chikatilo confessed to the murders and began testifying. He was accused of 36 murders, but he confessed to 56. The investigation could not prove three murders.

His trial, which began on April 14, 1992, took place in the Rostov House of Justice. Chikatilo tried to portray madness: he shouted, insulted the judges and those present in the hall, exposed his genitals, and claimed that he was pregnant and lactating. But a forensic psychiatric examination, carried out three times, showed his full sanity. On October 15, he was sentenced to death (the multi-page sentence began to be read on October 14 and was completed only the next day). The number included in the verdict is 52 murders, since in one episode the court considered the evidence base to be insufficient. In addition, Chikatilo was charged with several cases of child molestation.

While on death row, Chikatilo wrote numerous complaints and requests for pardon, took care of his health: he did exercises and ate with appetite.

On January 4, 1994, the last request for pardon addressed to Russian President Boris Yeltsin was rejected. On February 14, Chikatilo was executed in Novocherkassk prison.

Sexual violence

Many specialists, even those who participated in the examination Chikatilo, they claim that he never raped his victims because he suffered from impotence. On the other hand, for example, Katherine Ramsland, who wrote a text about Chikatilo for crimelibrary.com, points out that at least one of his victims was found with signs of rape, and sperm was found in her anus (for the first time, it was possible to determine the blood type of the murderer from the forest belt). During Chikatilo’s first arrest in 1984 and his last arrest in 1990, a jar of Vaseline was found in his briefcase, which, as Nikolai Modestov writes in his book “ Maniacs... Blind death", along with a rope and a sharpened knife, was "prepared for his victims." When Chikatilo they asked why he needed Vaseline, he replied that he uses it as shaving cream “on long business trips.” Later, during interrogation, he admitted that he used it to rape his victims.

Sanity

Three forensic psychiatric examinations unequivocally recognized Andrei Chikatilo as sane, that is, “he did not suffer from any mental illness and retained the ability to be aware of his actions and direct them.” However, Nikolai Modestov believes that the doctors’ verdict was dictated by the desire to protect society from the killer. If Chikatilo had been declared insane, that is, mentally ill, he would have avoided execution and ended up in a special hospital. Therefore, theoretically, after some time he could be free.

Alexander Bukhanovsky claims that, in his opinion, Andrei Chikatilo was sick, and after the adoption of the new Criminal Code he could be recognized as “of limited sanity,” which would also mean a special-purpose psychiatric hospital.

The recognition of Chikatilo as sane means that he was aware of the illegal nature of his actions and could purposefully control his behavior. But sanity does not imply recognizing a person as mentally healthy and his behavior as normal.

"Paradoxical Selection"

Main article: Paradoxical highlighting

In the verdict of the Rostov Regional Court in the case Chikatilo his long-term non-disclosure was explained not by the mistakes of experts and the flaws of investigators in general, but precisely by the “paradoxical isolation” of the culprit: the discrepancy between his secretions (sperm) and blood according to the A0 antigenic system. Chikatilo’s blood type was the second (A), but traces of antigen B were also found in his sperm found on one of the victims, which gave reason to believe that the killer from the forest belt had blood of the fourth group (AB). Chikatilo turned out to have the wrong blood type, and therefore, after being detained in September 1984, he was released.

However, it has now been proven that no “paradoxical selection” exists, since this phenomenon would contradict the genetic basis of the AB0 system. The phenomena of discrepancy between the group of body secretions and blood are due to bacterial contamination of the biological objects under study. The use of appropriate techniques and high-quality reagents would have made it possible to avoid incorrect analytical results, but this was not done in the case of Chikatilo.

Yuri Dubyagin, a criminologist “with 27 years of experience in internal affairs bodies”, co-author of the book “School of Survival, or 56 Ways to Protect Your Child from Crime,” believes that “paradoxical isolation” was invented in order to justify the negligence of a forensic expert, who conducted a blood test on Chikatilo in 1984.

Issa Kostoev directly says that “there was an inaccuracy in the analysis.”

"Organized" or "disorganized" serial killer

The well-known classification developed by FBI special agents Robert Hazelwood and John Douglas (article “The Lust Murderer”, 1980) divides all serial killers according to the method of murder into two types: organized non-social and disorganized asocial.

Organized killers characterized by the ability to control their desires, they have a clear plan to track down and seduce the victim. If the plan fails, the killer is able to postpone its implementation. Accordingly, the intelligence of an organized killer is normal or even above average, and they often have a higher education.

In contrast to organized serial killers, disorganized ones are not able to control their emotions and commit murders in a fit of rage (in a state of passion), often they literally kill the “first” person they come across. Their intelligence is usually reduced, even to the point of mental retardation, or they have a mental illness. Unlike organized killers, they are socially maladjusted (they don’t have a job, they don’t have a family, they live alone, they don’t take care of themselves and their homes), that is, they don’t wear a “mask of normality.” Chikatilo he committed his murders in a state of passion, but consciously, systematically prepared the conditions for their commission (he could so lull the vigilance of his victims that some walked with him in the forest for up to five kilometers). If the victim refused to go with him, then he never put pressure on her, fearing to attract witnesses, but immediately went in search of a new one.

The domestic textbook of forensic psychology by Obraztsov and Bogomolova clearly classifies Chikatilo as a “disorganized asocial type.” However, Andrei Chikatilo is not a pure representative of it. For example, according to the Hazelwood-Douglas criteria, a disorganized killer usually lives near the murder sites - Andrei Chikatilo committed his murders throughout the Rostov region and throughout the Soviet Union. On the other hand, an organized killer tries not to leave evidence at the crime scene, tries to get rid of the corpse - Chikatilo left a “chaotic picture of the crime”, with a lot of evidence, and did not try to hide the body.

Andrei Chikatilo - all victims

Number	Last name and first name	Floor	Age	Date and place of murder	Notes
1	Elena Zakotnova	AND	9	December 22, 1978 in Shakhty	The body was found on December 24, 1978 in the Grushevka River. For the first murder of Chikatilo, on July 5, 1983, 29-year-old Alexander Kravchenko, who was not guilty of it, was shot.
2	Larisa Tkachenko	AND	17	September 3, 1981, Rostov-on-Don, in a forest belt on the left bank of the Don	The body was found on September 4, 1981. Tkachenko was a prostitute and usually dated soldiers. Chikatilo met her at a bus stop near the Rostov Public Library. Taking her into a forest belt, he tried to have sex with her, but he couldn’t get aroused. When Tkachenko began to ridicule him, he stabbed her several times and strangled her with his hands. He stuffed his mouth with earth and cut off his left nipple.
3	Lyubov Biryuk	AND	13	June 12, 1982	The body was found on June 27, 1982. Chikatilo inflicted at least 40 stab wounds on her.
4	Lyubov Volobueva	AND	14	July 25, 1982, Krasnodar	The body was found on August 7, 1982.
5	Oleg Pozhidaev	M	9	August 13, 1982	The body was never found. Chikatilo cut off his genitals and took him with him.
6	Olga Kuprina	AND	16	August 16, 1982	The body was found on October 27, 1982 near the village of Cossack camps.
7	Irina Korabelnikova	AND	19	September 8, 1982, a kilometer from the Shakhty railway station	The body was found on September 20, 1982 in a forest belt a kilometer from the Shakhty railway station. She left home after a scandal with her parents and did not return.
8	Sergey Kuzmin	M	15	September 15, 1982, forest belt between the Shakhty and Kirpichnaya railway stations	The body was found on January 12, 1983 in a forest belt between the Shakhty and Kirpichnaya railway stations. He escaped from the boarding school because high school students bullied him and did not return.
9	Olga Stalmachenok	AND	10	December 11, 1982, field of state farm No. 6 near Novoshakhtinsk	The body was found on April 14, 1983 in the arable field of state farm No. 6 near Novoshakhtinsk. She went to classes at a music school and did not return home. Chikatilo cut out her heart and took it with him. It is with the scene of a tractor driver discovering a corpse in a field that the film “Citizen X” begins.
10	Laura (Laura) Sarkisyan	AND	15	after June 18, 1983	The body was not found.
11	Irina Dunenkova	AND	13	Killed in July 1983	The body was found on August 8, 1983. She was the younger sister of Chikatilo’s mistress and suffered from mental retardation.
12	Lyudmila Kushuba	AND	24	July 1983	The body was found on March 12, 1984. She was a disabled person from childhood, a tramp, and the mother of two children.
13	Igor Gudkov	M	7	August 9, 1983	The body was found on August 28, 1983 in Rostov-on-Don. The youngest victim was Chikatilo.
14	Valentina Chuchulina	AND	22	After September 19, 1983	The body was found on November 27, 1983.
15	Unidentified woman	AND	18-25	summer or autumn 1983	The body was found on October 28, 1983.
16	Vera Shevkun	AND	19	October 27, 1983	The body was found on October 30, 1983 in a forest belt near the city of Shakhty. Chikatilo amputated both breasts.
17	Sergey Markov	M	14	December 27, 1983	The body was found on January 1, 1984. Chikatilo stabbed him up to 70 times and amputated his genitals. Sperm of the fourth group was found in Markov's anus.
18	Natalia Shalapinina	AND	17	January 9, 1984	The body was found on January 10, 1984 in Rostov-on-Don. Chikatilo inflicted 28 knife wounds on her.
19	Marta Ryabenko	AND	45	February 21, 1984, in Rostov Aviator Park	The body was found on February 22, 1984 in Rostov Aviator Park. The oldest victim was Chikatilo. She was a tramp and an alcoholic.
20	Dmitry Ptashnikov	M	10	March 24, 1984	The body was found on March 27, 1984 in Novoshakhtinsk. Chikatilo bit off his tongue and penis. Near his body, the police discovered evidence for the first time - a shoe print from the killer.
21	Tatyana Petrosyan	AND	32	May 25, 1984	The body was found on July 27, 1984. She was the mistress (according to other sources, just an employee) of Chikatilo. Killed along with her daughter Svetlana.
22	Svetlana Petrosyan	AND	11	May 25, 1984	The body was found on July 5, 1984. Chikatilo killed her by hitting her in the head with a hammer. She was killed along with her mother Tatyana Petrosyan.
23	Elena Bakulina	AND	22	June 1984	The body was found on August 27, 1984.
24	Dmitry Illarionov	M	13	July 10, 1984, Rostov-on-Don	The body was found on August 12, 1984 in Rostov-on-Don.
25	Anna Lemesheva	AND	19	July 19, 1984	The body was found on July 25, 1984.
26	Svetlana Tsana	AND	20	July 1984	The body was found on September 9, 1984.
27	Natalia Golosovskaya	AND	16	August 2, 1984
28	Lyudmila Alekseeva	AND	17	August 7, 1984, Rostov-on-Don	The body was found on August 10, 1984 in Rostov-on-Don. Chikatilo stabbed her 39 times.
29	Unknown woman	AND	20-25	between 8 and 11 August 1984, Tashkent	The date of discovery of the body is unknown.
30	Akmaral Seydalieva	AND	12	August 13, 1984, Tashkent	The date of discovery of the body is unknown.
31	Alexander Chepel	M	11	August 28, 1984, Rostov-on-Don	The body was found on September 2, 1984 in Rostov-on-Don in a forest belt on the left bank of the Don. Chikatilo met him near the Burevestnik cinema on Voroshilovsky Prospekt and lured him into the forest with promises of “showing a video.” Killed him by cutting his stomach.
32	Irina Luchinskaya	AND	24	September 6, 1984, Rostov-on-Don	The body was found on September 7, 1984 in Rostov-on-Don.
33	Natalya Pokhlistova	AND	18	July 31, 1985, near Domodedovo airport, Moscow region	The body was found on August 3, 1985 in the forest near Domodedovo airport, Moscow region.
34	Irina (Inessa) Gulyaeva	AND	18	August 25 (according to other sources - 27) August 1985, forest belt near the city of Shakhty	The body was found on August 28, 1985 in a forest belt near the city of Shakhty. She was a tramp and an alcoholic. Red and blue threads were found under her nails, and gray hair was found between her fingers. Sweat was found on her body, which was of the fourth group, while Gulyaeva’s blood was of the first group. Undigested food was found in her stomach - this could mean that the killer lured her into the forest belt by offering food.
35	Oleg Makarenkov	M	13	May 16, 1987	Chikatilo returned home for a shovel and buried Makarenkov’s corpse in the forest belt. The body was found only in 1991, after Chikatilo's arrest.
36	Ivan Bilovetsky	M	12	July 29, 1987, Zaporozhye	The body was found on July 31, 1987 in Zaporozhye.
37	Yuri Tereshonok	M	16	September 15, 1987, Leningrad region	The remains were found in early 1991 near the floodplain of the Gruzinka River, Leningrad Region. From September 7 to September 27, 1987, Chikatilo was on a business trip in Leningrad. He met Tereshonok in the buffet of the Finlyandsky Station and suggested they go to his “dacha” in Lembolovo. Naturally, Chikatilo did not have any dacha there, but he named Lembolovo because this settlement was the first on the board of departing trains. Arriving there with Tereshonok, Chikatilo walked with him only 200 meters deep into the forest, then pushed him off the path, hit him several times, threw him to the ground, tied his hands with twine and began to beat him with a knife. The body was covered with earth. For details, see the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets in St. Petersburg” No. 32/61 of August 10, 2005.
38	Unidentified woman	AND	18-25	April 1988, Krasny Sulin	The body was found on April 8, 1988 in a vacant lot near the town of Krasny Sulin.
39	Alexey Voronko	M	9	May 15, 1988	The body was found on May 17, 1988 in a forest belt near Rostov-on-Don. He went to visit his grandmother and did not return. Chikatilo cut off his genitals and opened his stomach. Voronko’s classmate told the police that he saw a tall, middle-aged man with a mustache, gold teeth and a sports bag with him.
40	Evgeniy Muratov	M	15	July 14, 1988	The body was found on April 11, 1989. He was a technical school student. Chikatilo cut off his genitals and took a pocket watch with a dedicatory inscription from his aunt and uncle.
41	Tatyana Ryzhova	AND	16	March 8, 1989, Shakhty	The body was found on March 9, 1989 in a sewer manhole in the city of Shakhty. Chikatilo brought her to his daughter’s apartment (it was empty after her daughter’s divorce from her husband). There he got Ryzhova drunk, killed her and dismembered the corpse, cutting off the legs and head with an ordinary kitchen knife. The remains were wrapped in Ryzhova’s tracksuit and newspapers. He transported the remains on a sled to a vacant lot and dumped them into a sewer hatch. According to one version, he borrowed the sled from a neighbor, according to another, he simply took it from an elderly woman on the street. When Chikatilo was transporting a sled across the railroad tracks, a man offered to help him. At first Chikatilo was scared and confused, but he agreed, and the man helped him move the sled over the rails.
42	Alexander Dyakonov	M	8	May 11, 1989	Killed on his eighth birthday. The body was found on July 14, 1989. He went for a walk and did not return home.
43	Alexey Moiseev	M	10	June 20, 1989	The body was found on September 6, 1989.
44	Elena Varga	AND	19	August 19, 1989	Body found on September 1, 1989. She was a student from Hungary, the mother of a small child. Chikatilo met her at a bus stop and offered to carry her bags home. Taking her into a forest belt under the pretext of a “shortcut,” he killed her, cut off her breasts, cut out her uterus, and cut off the soft tissue of her face. Wrapping his “trophies” in scraps of her clothes, he went with them straight to his father’s birthday.
45	Alexey Khobotov	M	10	August 28, 1989	The body was found on December 12, 1990 in the Shakhty cemetery. Chikatilo buried him in a grave that he dug for himself in the Shakhty city cemetery in 1987 (allegedly he was planning suicide). This was the first corpse shown to investigators by Chikatilo. The victim’s mother, Lyudmila Khobotova, walked around Rostov stations and trains for almost a year, showing everyone a photograph of Alexei in the hope that someone had seen him. Once she showed a photograph on the train... to Chikatilo himself! During the investigation, she recognized him by the characteristic gesture with which he adjusted his glasses.
46	Andrey Kravchenko	M	11	January 14, 1990	The body was found on February 19, 1990.
47	Yaroslav Makarov	M	10	March 7, 1990	The body was found on March 8, 1990. Chikatilo tore out his rectum.
48	Lyubov Zueva	AND	31	April 4, 1990	The body was found on August 24, 1990.
49	Victor Petrov	M	13	July 28, 1990	The body was found at the end of July 1990 on the territory of the Rostov Botanical Garden. He was at the Rostov station with his mother, went to drink water and did not return.
50	Ivan Fomin	M	11	August 14, 1990, on the territory of the city beach in Novocherkassk	The body was found on August 17, 1990 on the territory of the city beach in Novocherkassk. Chikatilo inflicted 42 knife wounds on him and castrated him while he was still alive. A tuft of gray hair was found in Fomin’s hand.
51	Vadim Gromov	M	16	October 16, 1990	The body was found on October 31, 1990. He suffered from mental retardation. Chikatilo inflicted 27 knife wounds on him, biting off his tongue and testicles.
52	Victor Tishchenko	M	16	October 30, 1990	The body was found on November 3, 1990 in a forest belt near the city of Shakhty. Tishchenko bit Chikatilo’s middle finger on his left hand.
53	Svetlana Korostik	AND	22	November 6, 1990	The body was found on November 13, 1990 in a forest belt near the Donleskhoz railway station. Korostik was a prostitute. Chikatilo bit off her tongue, cut out her breasts and took her with him.

The world-famous maniac Chikatilo Andrei Romanovich is recognized throughout the world. He was born in the village of Yablochnoye, in the Sumy region, in 1936. According to operational services, over the 12 years of his activity he committed 65 murders, only 53 of which could be proven. Among his victims were 35 children under the age of 18.

Biography

In 1954, the future maniac Chikatilo graduated from high school and entered the Akhtyrskoye School of Communications. After successful completion, he continued his studies at the Moscow Electromechanical Institute. In 1957, he was drafted into the army by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. According to Chikatilo, there he was regularly subjected to humiliation and violence, including sexual violence. In 1964, he got married and went to study at the Rostov Institute, Faculty of Philology. In 1970, Chikatilo graduated from the Pedagogical Institute in absentia and got a job as a Russian language teacher. In 1972, he was beaten by his own students for attempting to rape a sleeping student. In 1978, he moved to the city of Shakhty and began working at GPTU-33. In December of the same year, the maniac Chikatilo committed murder for the first time.

Victims

The first victim was Elena Zakotnova, 9 years old. She was raped and brutally murdered. Chikatilo scored 3 on her and threw her near the bridge over the Grushovka River. The crime shocked the entire city. Every effort was made to find the killer. As a result, Andrei Kravchenko, previously convicted of rape, was detained. Under pressure, he confessed to the murder and was sentenced to 15 years. However, after numerous demands from the girl’s relatives, the punishment was changed, and Kravchenko was given a death sentence.

Chikatilo is a maniac (the photo of the young man did not reveal any terrible inclinations in him), who was very frightened by the noise that arose around his first victim. For the next three years he did not kill. And resumed its activities in 1981. On September 3, he killed a 17-year-old girl. In 1982, he committed seven murders. All his victims were children from 9 to 16 years old. The victims had up to 60 stab wounds. The maniac cut off various parts of their bodies and gouged out their eyes.

Fatal law enforcement mistake

In 1984, the maniac Chikatilo got a new job, where he got the opportunity to regularly travel on business trips. This year he has killed 15 people. In total, the number of his victims increased to 32. It is quite possible that this would have been the end of his criminal career if not for an accident. On September 14 that year, he was detained for suspicious behavior. During the search, the following items were found on him: rope, knife and Vaseline. The blood taken for analysis did not match that found on the victims. This was subsequently explained by the expert’s negligence. Chikatilo was released. Frightened by the consequences, he moved with his family to Novocherkassk. After that, he committed 21 more murders.

The maniac Chikatilo (photos of this man's victims are depressing and terrifying) committed his last murder in 1990, on November 6th. After observing him for a long time and comparing some facts, police officers detained Chikatilo. Only after a conversation with a psychiatrist did he begin to testify. The court sentenced the maniac to death, which took place on February 14, 1994.

One of the most famous maniacs of the Soviet Union is Andrei Chikatilo, biography, who, according to various estimates, killed more than 50 innocent people.

Andrey Chikatilo- a serial killer who killed for 12 years on the territory of the USSR. The maniac was given many nicknames, including “Soviet Jack the Ripper.”

The number of his victims ranges from 53 to 65. The criminal was caught in 1990, after which he was tried and found guilty. The court handed down the most cruel sentence - the death penalty.

The future most wanted criminal of the USSR was born in the Kharkov region in the small village of Yablochnoe. Some sources say that Chikatilo showed mild signs of hydrocephalus at the time of birth. As a child, Andrei often suffered beatings from his mother. She didn’t like the fact that the boy suffered from bedwetting. When the war was already ending in 1944, Chikatilo went to first grade. After the end of hostilities, famine began in the country, and Andrei was afraid to leave the house, because he knew that people in desperation even eat children.
The mother told the boy that during the famine in the thirties, his older brother was eaten by peasants. Psychiatrists believe that it was this childhood trauma that led to Andrei’s mental disorder and made him a maniac. Russian psychologists heard different information. During the shooting by the Germans of the inhabitants of his village, Andrei broke his head and lost consciousness. The Nazis mistook him for dead and threw him into a pit with corpses, where he lay for almost a day. This may also have contributed to his mental breakdown.
In 1954, the boy graduated from school and longed to become a lawyer, but did not enter Moscow State University due to low scores. The following year he goes to the communications school, after which he manages to enter the railway transport institute. In 1957, Andrei was drafted into the army. Until 1960, he served as a border guard in Central Asia, and then was sent to East Germany as a signalman.

Life before the first murder

After demobilization, Chikatilo moved to Rostov-on-Don, where he got a job at a telephone exchange. In 1962, he met his future wife Faina, and the following year they got married. Then Chikatilo manages to enter Rostov University, where he graduates from the Faculty of Philology. In 1965 and 1969, his daughter and son were born, respectively. In the following years, the mental instability of the killer begins to manifest itself and the following sexual crimes occur:

In 1970, he became the head teacher at a boarding school, and later became a teacher of Russian language and literature. He worked at the school for three years, once even becoming a director. He was forced to leave school for being accused of sexually harassing female students.
From 1974 to 1978 he worked as a foreman at the Novoshakhtinsky plant. Then he again works in an educational institution. Here he again harasses the students - this time the victim is a boy. Having learned about this, the students began to call Chikatilo “blue.”
The killer begins to take prostitutes and have sex with them in public places.
He pesters teenagers, flirting with them, and after they refuse, he begins to lose his temper.

First murder

In December 1978, Andrei Chikatilo kills a nine-year-old girl named Elena. After moving to Shakhty, the maniac bought himself a small daubed hut, where he secretly brought prostitutes. He also lured Elena here, and here he killed her.

Two days after the murder, the body of a girl is found with stab wounds and signs of forced sexual intercourse. The police immediately began searching for the killer and arrested another rapist, who was forced to confess to something he did not commit.

Series of murders before arrest

Over the next three years, Chikatilo controlled himself and did not kill anyone. He managed to get a job at a factory, where he became the head of a department. In September 1981, he killed another girl - this time it was a young prostitute whom he strangled. Traces of sexual assault were also found on the girl's body.

A year later, he killed a twelve-year-old girl, and then seven more children throughout 1982. He lured victims into a forest belt, where he committed brutal murders, attacking them with a knife.

Arrest

In 1984, Chikatilo kills more than a dozen people. At this point, he already had more than thirty victims. In September 1984, he was detained by a police inspector for suspicious behavior at the market.

Investigators took blood and semen samples from him, but they did not match the samples found on the victims' bodies. Due to the "paradoxical excretion" phenomenon, his blood type did not match the "excretion" (sperm) group. Due to lack of evidence, Chikatilo was released.

Second series of murders and capture

After his release, Andrei Chikatilo kills more than twenty more people. He continues to lure victims into the forest belt, where they kill and rape.
In 1990, after another murder, he is stopped by a policeman who writes down the name of a suspicious man. A week later, the police discover a body not far from the place where Chikatilo was met.
On the same day, he was put under surveillance, during which he tried to flirt with girls and boys, and also went into the forest belt. A suspicious man was detained on November 20, 1990.
After his arrest, his house was searched, where the murder weapon was found. For more than a week they could not get a confession from him until a psychologist took over the case - after the session, the criminal spoke about his crimes.
In 1992, a trial took place over him, which sentenced the criminal to death. On February 14, 1994, he was executed by a shot in the back of the head.

Chikatilo's victims

In total, the criminal admitted that he had killed 53 people, but the investigation linked another 12 similar cases to him that could not be solved. The majority of the victims were minor girls and boys. Chikatilo specifically chose victims who could not resist him. The maniac said that he was almost killed several times by adult victims.

Chikatilo killed women more often because they were weaker. Almost all victims died from stab wounds and suffocation. Numerous signs of sexual violence were also found on the bodies. The maniac often mutilated the bodies of girls and boys, cutting off their genitals. Having analyzed the personality of the killer, psychologists compiled a list of possible causes of manic mood:

the Holodomor and news of the eating of children (Chikatilo also ate body parts of his victims);
psychological trauma received during the execution of village residents;
impotence;
bullying by teenagers because of his non-traditional sexual orientation;
necrophilia and other sexual disorders.

conclusions

Andrei Chikatilo went down in history as one of the most dangerous serial killers in the world. Chikatilo's victims were dozens of innocent people, whom he killed with particular cruelty and abused their bodies.

What do you think about Andrei Chikatilo? We are waiting for your answers.

25 years ago, the most famous serial maniac of our time, Andrei Chikatilo, was shot - the killer of 53 people (and maybe more, they could prove so many). Employees of the prison where Chikatilo was held before the sentencing recall that until recently he did not believe in the death penalty. The bloody monster took great care of himself, always did exercises and constantly wrote letters in the hope of a life sentence.

Chikatilo project. 25 years since the execution of the “Rostov monster”

The sentence was carried out on February 14, 1994 at 20:00. This happened in the basement of one of the correctional service institutions, after the prosecutor read to the convict the Decree of President Boris Yeltsin, who did not pardon the maniac.

So, will I be shot? - not understanding what was happening, he asked again maniac.

The document was read to him a second time, and the prosecutor gave the order. Officially, the execution took place in the prison of Novocherkassk, but two decades later evidence appeared that it may have happened in one of the colonies of Rostov-on-Don. Where Chikatilo’s remains are buried is known to a very narrow circle of people; even the person who was next to him almost every day for four years does not know about it. And on the day of the execution he had to. But, by coincidence, he suffered a leg injury and went on sick leave.

Chikatilo was always calm, even, never swore, neither did we, although sometimes we really wanted to, he said several years ago "Komsomolskaya Pravda" Anatoly Evseev, who was the head of the convoy.- Chikatilo had one feature - wide wrists, and therefore the handcuffs converged on one latch. During the investigative experiment, so that no one would suspect that the accused was being “tipped off,” he was led out on a leash - a flexible, soft two-meter rope. As I remember, it was specially obtained from some civilian aircraft factory.

The lieutenant colonel recalled that during numerous investigative experiments (when criminals are returned to the scenes of murders to tell how everything happened), Andrei Chikatilo became tongue-tied and switched to cliches and official speech. He liked to copy the official style of the protocol when describing crimes (for example, “had sexual intercourse,” “felt strong arousal,” “offered to follow”). But as soon as the experiment ended, the maniac returned to normal vocabulary.

Anatoly Evseev followed Andrei Chikatilo everywhere - he was in the Leningrad region, Zaporozhye, Kazakhstan, and once saved a murderer from massacre.

“It happened in Novocherkassk,” said veteran.- We returned to the scene of the murder of Vanya Fomin, whose body was found in the reeds on the beach in 1990. Employees of the enterprise (about 30 people) noticed us from a distance and, apparently realizing what was happening, headed towards us. They were not restrained in their words and were so aggressive that they had to run away and hide Chikatilo. I went to the women with a colleague. It took a long time to persuade them to allow us to continue the investigative experiment.

Head of the analytical department for the search for the criminal: “Chikatilo was bullied by his wife”

A few years ago, Viktor Burakov, the former head of the criminal police of the Rostov region, gave an interview to Komsomolskaya Pravda. He spoke honestly about why Andrei Chikatilo was released the first time.

When Chikatilo was captured at the Main Railway Station in 1984, in addition to a loaf of bread and herring, a kitchen knife, rope and a jar of Vaseline were found in his briefcase, which aroused serious suspicion, he recalls Victor Burakov. - According to the law, we could not hold him for more than three days without bringing charges, but we did not dare to release him, since he could pose a threat. We were lucky - it became known that Chikatilo was recently given a suspended sentence for stealing a roll of linoleum and a battery. The case was urgently reviewed and he was given a new sentence - six months in prison. We had six months in reserve, but we did not find direct evidence, and Chikatilo’s blood type turned out to be second, and not fourth, which the criminal allegedly had.

- Yes, that’s exactly what I read, that Chikatilo’s sperm type did not match his blood type...

During the investigative experiment, the maniac was always on a “leash”

Sorry for being harsh, but this is all complete nonsense. Such a myth appeared to justify the mistake of the Moscow central laboratory, which incorrectly determined Chikatilo's blood type. Let me explain: at first we had no traces of the biological origin of the criminal at all - bodies were found that were already decomposed or mummified, no clues. Only when the count reached the second dozen victims did we manage to discover the traces left by the monster at the crime scene. According to the results of a study by a Rostov laboratory, they belonged to a person of the 2nd or 4th blood group. During a repeated study in Moscow, it was erroneously determined that the criminal had blood type 4.

- That’s why they released Chikatilo the first time?

- Well, what about the detective’s inner instinct?

You know, when I first saw Chikatilo, I had serious doubts that he was a killer.

- Why?

An average engineer, overwhelmed by his wife and problems. When he had to donate sperm for analysis, he was so shy, blushed... It’s hard to imagine that this man turned into a terrible beast.

- You were one of the first who interrogated Chikatilo when he was detained. What were they talking about?

When he was taken into the office, he asked: “Why do you think they brought you here?” He recognized me immediately. Chikatilo refused everything, saying that he did not know the reason for the detention.

- When did your last doubts begin to disappear?

When they began to analyze it and it turned out that the dates of Chikatilo’s business trips coincided with the time the bodies were discovered in different regions of the country.

BY THE WAY

Mayanyak's hat and knives are kept in the Don Police Museum

After the maniac was shot in 1994, for some time they did not know what to do with his personal belongings. The relatives were not supposed to give it away, but they didn’t dare throw it away. There were defenders who insisted that knives and clothes should be preserved for history. Some of the items were given to the police school, and some to the departmental museum.

We have a hat, knives, glasses, an ID card, photographs of Chikatilo,” he lists Director of the museum, Honored Worker of Culture of Russia Nadezhda Ivanova.“There’s even a jacket somewhere in the storage room.” We do not show it due to its poor condition.

The suitcase, handcuffs and rope have also been preserved - they are in the museum of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs.

OUR HELP

Andrei Chikatilo: “Maniac from the forest belt”

Perhaps one of the most famous and cruel maniac killers in history. Andrei Romanovich committed more than 53 murders (as many were proven in court) almost throughout the country. His victims were small children, girls and women. Chikatilo began his bloody march in the city of Shakhty, where he moved with his family. He committed his first murder on December 22, 1978, the victim was nine-year-old Lena Zakotonova. Chikatilo noticed her at a tram stop and called her with him, promising to treat the child to American chewing gum. Taking her into a forest belt, he throws the girl to the ground, tries to rape her, then stabs her several times. He threw the body into the river, where it was found a few days later.

Then followed a series of bloody massacres, the cruelty of the killer amazed even the operatives who had seen a lot. Bodies riddled with cuts were found buried in the forest. Before his death, Chikatilo raped his victims, and sometimes cut off pieces of flesh and ate them.

It took a very long time to get on the maniac's trail. At first, Rostov police officers believed that all the murders were committed by different people. Then a special investigative team was sent from Moscow, which found out that they were dealing with a serial killer. In December 1985, the most large-scale special operation in the history of the USSR, “Forest Belt,” was announced, within the framework of which the police, aimed at searching for the maniac, detained 1,062 criminals. During this time, Chikatilo carried out attacks in Moscow and the Urals. Andrei Romanovich pierced himself after the last murder; he did not wipe the victim’s blood from his cheek and caught the eye of the guard.

During the trial, Chikatilo was kept in a special cell-like cell. Among the victims were law enforcement officers who could have reached and dealt with the killer. Andrei Romanovich's lawyer insisted that his client was a sick person and needed treatment, but three psychiatric examinations did not confirm this. They tried to appeal the court verdict several times; Chikatilo even asked Russian President Boris Yeltsin for a pardon, but the request was rejected. On February 14, Andrei Romanovich was executed with a single shot to the back of the head.

DETAILS

Maniac Chikatilo, together with the police, searched for himself under the guise of a vigilante

Chikatilo was nondescript. A kind of kind uncle from next door. Intelligent (his favorite reading was the magazine "Communist"), polite, courteous, well built. At work (he worked as a senior supply engineer for a convoy), divorced women stared at him. Of course, he doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, and does physical exercise. But he ignored all the hints of the opposite sex. Later, during interrogations, he admitted to male inferiority. Chikatilo was excited by something completely different - the torment and screams of the victims. ()

Rapist and murderer Andrei Chikatilo during a court hearing.

The life of Andrei Chikatilo before his first murder in 1978 was typical for a man born in 1936 in a village in the Kharkov region. Father Roman fought at the front, and during the famine he did not leave the house for fear of being eaten. Young Chikatilo received several higher educations and served in the army in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In 1964, the future maniac got married, and a few years later, he had a daughter and a son.

In one of the houses in the city of Shakhty, where Chikatilo moved with his wife and two children in 1978, he purchased an apartment, which he used to meet with prostitutes. It was there, in house number 26 on Mezhevoy Lane, that Chikatilo’s first brutal crime was committed. So, the future maniac lured 9-year-old Elena Kontova into the house with the promise of giving him chewing gum. According to Chikatilo himself, he only wanted to “play around” with the child. However, when the girl screamed, the maniac began to strangle the child and took great pleasure from it. As a result, 9-year-old Elena was found tortured under a bridge with numerous internal injuries and stab wounds.

For the first murder of Chikatilo, the murderer Alexander Kravchenko was mistakenly executed.

The next brutal crime occurred only three years later – on September 3, 1981. The second, and significant for a further series of murders, victim was 17-year-old prostitute Larisa Tkachenko, killed in a forest belt on the left bank of the Don.

Almost a year later, on June 12, 1982, 12-year-old Lyubov Biryuk was killed and found with many stab wounds. That year, Chikatilo killed and raped a total of seven children ranging in age from 9 to 19 years old.

A doctor and a nurse who were constantly on duty in the courtroom at the hearings in the case of the rapist and murderer Andrei Chikatilo, as there were frequent cases of fainting during the trial.

Leonid Akubzhanov, member of the Rostov Regional Court, presiding over the case of rapist and murderer Andrei Chikatilo.

When meeting a child at a bus stop or train station, the maniac offered to help show the way, give him stamps, demonstrate a puppy or a tape recorder, thereby luring him into a forest belt, where he cruelly abused boys and girls.

Thus, on July 25, 14-year-old Lyubov Volobueva was killed, and on August 13, 9-year-old Oleg Pozhidaev. Three days later, Chikatilo killed 16-year-old Olga Kuprina, and on September 8, 19-year-old Irina Korabelnikova, who had quarreled with her parents. Chikatilo killed 15-year-old orphan Sergei Kuzmin, who escaped from a boarding school, on September 15. And the last murder in 1982 was committed against 10-year-old Olga Stalmachenok. The “Rostov Ripper” killed eight children in 1983.

A relative of the victim of Andrei Chikatilo, the rapist and murderer, became ill in the courtroom during the hearing.

However, the bloodiest year for Andrei Chikatilo was 1984 - then he brutally killed 15 people. Among the 32 total victims were women, boys, girls, who were mentally retarded, and tramps.

Chikatilo's first arrest took place on September 14, 1984, the same year marked the bloodiest (15 victims) and successful in his career for the maniac - then he accepted the position of head of the Spetsenergoavtomatika department.

A district inspector and his partner at the Rostov market detained an unsolved maniac for “suspicious behavior” - he pestered girls on public transport and persistently tried to get to know them, and had oral sex at a bus station with a prostitute. Then the local police officers found a “universal set” in Chikatilo’s briefcase: a knife, a jar of Vaseline, a bar of soap and two rolls of rope. However, due to an error in the analysis of sperm found on one of the victims and blood taken from the detainee, the maniac was released.

After his first arrest, Chikatilo killed 21 more people. Each crime captures the originality and sophistication of the criminal. Up to sixty stab wounds were found on the mutilated bodies; Chikatilo gouged out the eyes of many and bit off their noses, tongues, genitals, and breasts. In 1989, a maniac lured a 19-year-old student from Hungary into a forest belt, killed her, cut off her breasts, uterus, cut off the soft tissue of her face and, wrapping the “trophies” in scraps of the dead girl, went to his father’s birthday party. According to some reports, Chikatilo later consumed the remains of the murdered meat as a dessert. And he buried 10-year-old Alexei Khobotov in a grave in the city cemetery, which Andrei Chikatilo personally dug for himself in 1987. The maniac committed some murders not only in his hometown of Shakhty, but in the Leningrad region, near Rostov-on-Don, Novocherkassk, Tashkent, and the Moscow region.

The last identified murder was committed on November 6, 1990, of 22-year-old prostitute Svetlana Korostik.

In December 1985, under the control of the CPSU Central Committee, Operation Forest Belt began, called the largest event of Soviet and Russian law enforcement agencies. Approximately 10 million rubles were spent on the search for the “Rostov Ripper”. During this time, military helicopters were used, more than 200 thousand people were checked, 1062 crimes were solved, information was accumulated on 48 thousand people with sexual deviations, and 5845 people were placed on special registration.

As a result, on November 20, 1990, on the way from the beer stall, Chikatilo was detained by operatives. During a search of his home, shoes were found that matched a print found near the body of one of the victims, as well as 32 kitchen knives. It is possible that Chikatilo used the victims’ organs: the maniac’s wife said that her husband usually took a saucepan on business trips.

With the help of a psychiatrist, on November 28, Chikatilo began to testify and confess to the murders. On October 15, he was sentenced to death (the verdict document contains 232 pages in total).

On July 18, 1992, Andrei Chikatilo sent his last letter asking for a pardon to Russian President Boris Yeltsin. There, Chikatilo calls himself a “victim and instrument” of communism, calls himself a sick person with “psychopathy of the schizoid-mosaic circle with sexual perversions, headaches from cranial pressure, insomnia, nightmares, cardiac arrhythmia.” However, the request was canceled, and on February 14, 1994, Andrei Chikatilo was executed in Novocherkassk prison by a court verdict for 53 premeditated murders.