Andrei Romanowitsch Tschikatilo

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Andrei Chikatilo ( Russian Андрей Романович Чикатило , scientific. Transliteration Andrej Romanovic Čikatilo * 16th October 1936 in Jablotschnoje , Sumy , Ukrainian SSR , Soviet Union ; † 14. February 1994 in Novocherkassk , Russia ) was a Soviet serial killer , which between 1978 and in 1990 at least 53 people were killed. He himself stated that he killed at least 56 people. His victims were both male and female, the majority of whom were children and adolescents. The Chikatilos case led to appalling reactions both within the Soviet Union and internationally. Tschikatilo was also referred to in media reports as The Ripper of Rostov or the Beast of Rostov , as he committed a large part of his deeds within the southern Russian Oblast of Rostov .

prehistory

Andrei Tschikatilo was born in 1936 in Yablutschne (Velyka Pyssariwka Rajon), a small village in the Ukrainian SSR. Three years earlier there was a famine ( Holodomor ) in Ukraine , which is said to have led to cannibalism among the population. According to his mother's story, his brother was also kidnapped and killed for consumption by starving people. When the Second World War broke out, his father fought on the side of the Red Army and was taken prisoner by Germany in 1941 . His mother gave birth to a daughter, Tatjana, in 1943. Since her husband had been in captivity for a long time at the time of conception, it was repeatedly speculated that Tschikatilo's mother had been raped by German soldiers. During the German occupation, the young Andrei repeatedly witnessed bombings, shootings and other atrocities. After the end of the war, the father was sentenced as a deserter and was interned in a labor camp for years . Chikatilo's sister later described the mother as tough and unforgiving, while she called the father a kind man.

Andrei was a frail child with a severe visual impairment. He was considered an ambitious and good student, but was repeatedly teased by other children without being able to defend himself in any way. He was a bed-wetter until he was twelve . In school, Tschikatilo excelled through good performance and also identified himself as a communist . As he grew up, he found that he was impotent . His stimulus and arousal threshold was so high that it, combined with chronic erectile dysfunction, made normal intercourse almost impossible. He later described his attitude towards life as having been born without genitals or eyes . As a result, Tschikatilo's battered self-esteem and his social seclusion intensified.

In order to offset his father's reputation as a traitor, he tried diligently to serve the Soviet Union. He applied to study law at Moscow University , but was refused. He then went to Nizhny Tagil in the Urals for two years , worked on large construction sites and attended lectures in engineering. He wrote patriotic articles for newspapers, joined the CPSU and was recruited as an informant for the police. After his military service from 1957 to 1960, some of which he spent as a communications engineer in Berlin , Andrei Tschikatilo returned to his home village. There he began a relationship with a young woman who had recently been divorced. Attempts to have sexual intercourse always failed due to Chikatilo's inability to get an erection, so the woman asked a friend for advice. As a result, rumors of Chikatilo's impotence quickly spread in the small village. Badly humiliated and ashamed, he tried to hang himself, but was found and saved in time. After the incident, he left his homeland and moved to the Rostov-on-Don area , where he found a job as a communications engineer. His mother and sister came a little later.

In 1963 he married his wife Feodosija, whom he had met through his sister Tatiana. Tschikatilo later described the marriage as arranged by his sister and her husband. In 1965 his daughter was born and in 1969 his son. It is alleged that the conception of his two children was arguably the only sexual act with his wife during the entire marriage. His wife had come to terms with Chikatilo's impotence and stayed with him. In 1965 he began studying Russian literature and language at the University of Rostov parallel to his job , which he successfully completed in 1970.

In the same year, Tschikatilo took up a teaching post in nearby Novoschachtinsk , an industrial city with then about 100,000 inhabitants north of Rostov.

Tschikatilo was a Russian and PE teacher. But it quickly became apparent that he was not a person of authority for his students. He could not really assert himself, was humiliated and even physically attacked by students and was subjected to daily ridicule. This meant that he had to change jobs several times. He committed his first sexual abuse in 1973 when he touched a 15-year-old student's breasts and genitals while taking swimming lessons. After other similar cases became known, Tschikatilo was released. In 1978 Tschikatilo finally moved to the neighboring town of Shakhty and tried his hand at teaching at a mining school. He finally gave up his teaching profession in 1981 after accusations were again raised that Tschikatilo had sexually abused boys and girls. In 1981 he took up a position as a warehouse manager in a factory in Rostov. Because of his new job, he often had to go on long business trips throughout the Soviet Union.

The house in Shakhty where Chikatilo committed his first murder, 2015

Since his wife could not give him the satisfaction he wanted, Chikatilo bought a half-ruined house in Shakhty in September 1978, where he had sexual contacts with prostitutes, homeless women and strays. It was in this house that he committed his first murder shortly afterwards.

Chronicle of Tschikatilo's murders from 1978 to 1990

1978

  • December 22nd: After some students had physically abused, kicked and beaten him, Tschikatilo went to a department store and bought a jackknife - his first murder weapon. He himself stated that he needed it for self-defense. Schoolchildren had previously attacked the weak Tschikatilo unhindered, as he had made himself vulnerable to blackmail when he had broken into the students' dormitory at night and intruded on a boy. Tschikatilo resolved to drink, to have fun with a woman, and so vent his anger. He bought alcohol and went to his dacha . On the way there he happened to meet the nine-year-old girl Jelena Sakotnowa, whom he spoke to and lured them to his dacha. There he sexually abused her in an extremely brutal manner, inflicting severe internal injuries on her, stabbing her several times in the abdomen with his knife and finally strangling her. He then dressed the child again and threw it into a nearby river. The body wasn't found until two days later.

Tschikatilo was quickly suspected of having committed the murder of Jelena Sakotnowa and was interrogated several times. Traces of blood were found in the snow near his dachas and the child's school bag at a distance. He was also seen by a witness near the scene of the murder on the day of the murder, and neighbors confirmed that Chikatilo was at his dacha on December 22nd. Shortly afterwards, however, the 25-year-old worker Alexander Kravchenko, who had a criminal record, was targeted by the police. The police found clothes with blood splatters in his apartment, the blood type of which matched those of Sakotnova and Kravchenko's wife. As a teenager, Kravchenko served a prison sentence for rape and murder of a child of his own age and made contradicting statements during the interrogation. Kravchenko's wife repeatedly stated to the police that her husband had been in her apartment with her at the time of the crime, which was also confirmed by neighbors, but retracted her testimony after the police put pressure on her and threatened that she was complicit in the murder to accuse Sakotnowa. Alexander Kravchenko was eventually sentenced for the murder, initially to life imprisonment. Under pressure from relatives of the child, the trial was reopened, Kravchenko sentenced to death and executed in 1983.

Tschikatilo later stated that after this murder he could only achieve orgasm by brutally killing his victims. However, he also claimed that after his first murder, he initially tried to suppress his urges.

1981

  • September 3: Tschikatilo met 17-year-old Larissa Tkachenko at a bus stop in front of the library in Rostov, lured her to a nearby, deserted forest and killed her there. He bit pieces of skin and a nipple out of the corpse. She was found on September 4th on the banks of the Don.

1982

A memorial to Irina Karabelnikova, erected by her father at the site of her murder, 2015
  • June 6th: His next victim was 13-year-old Ljuba Biryuk. The body was found on June 27 on a forest path in the Rostov region.
  • July 25: During a trip to Krasnodar he killed Lyuba Volobueva. The body was found on August 7th.
  • August 13: Tschikatilo killed nine-year-old Oleg Poschidjew, his body has not yet been found.
  • August 16: 16-year-old Olga Kuprina was murdered on this day. The body was discovered on October 27th.
  • September 8: He murdered 19-year-old Irina Karabelnikova. The body was found on September 20 in the countryside near Shakhty.
  • September 15: Tschikatilo killed 15-year-old Sergei Kuzmin. The body was found on January 12, 1983.
  • December 11th: He killed ten-year-old Olja Stalmatschenok in Novocherkassk , her remains were found five months after the crime on April 11, 1983.

1983

  • Between June 15 and 20, Chikatilo murdered 15-year-old Laura Sarkisjan. Her body has not been found to this day.
  • In July he killed 2 more people, but Tschikatilo could not remember the exact dates. First he murdered 13-year-old Ira Dunenkova, whose older sister was briefly Chikatilo's lover. Her body was found near Rostov Airport in the Aviator's Park on August 8th. Later he also killed the 24-year-old Lyuda Kutsjuba, whose remains were found on March 12, 1984 outside of Shakhty.
  • August 8: His next victim was seven-year-old Igor Gudkov. The body was also discovered 20 days later in the aviator's park in Rostov.
  • September 19: He killed the 22-year-old Valya Tschutschulina, her remains were found outside of Shakhty on November 27.
  • In the autumn of 1983 Tschikatilo murdered an 18 to 25-year-old woman whose identity could not be clearly established. Her body was found near Novocherkassk in October.
  • October 27th: In a mining town near Shakhty, he killed 19-year-old Vera Schewkun. The body was found on October 30th.
  • December 27th: On his way home, 14-year-old Sergei Markov disappeared. His body was found on January 4, 1984.

1984

  • January 9th: 17-year-old Natalja Schalapinina was murdered. The body was found on January 10th in the Aviator Park in Rostov.
  • February 21: Marta Ryabenko was murdered in Shakhty and found the same day.
  • March 24: Dima Ptashnikov (13) was murdered. The body was found on March 27 in the Novoshakhtinsk suburb of Atx.
  • May 25: Tschikatilo killed two people in one day: 32-year-old Tanja Petosjan, found on June 27, and her 11-year-old daughter, Sweta, found on June 5.
  • June / July: Jelena Bakulina (27) was murdered - the exact date of death cannot be determined.
  • July 10: 13-year-old Dima Illarionov was killed in Rostov and found on August 12.
  • July 19: Anna Lemeschewa (19) was murdered, the body was found 6 days later near Shakhty.
  • End of July: Tschikatilo murdered the 20-year-old Swetlana Tschana.
  • August 2: 16-year-old Natasha Golosovskaya was murdered in the aviator's park in Rostov.
  • August 7: 17-year-old Lyudmila Aleksejewa was killed. The location of the body on August 10th was on the banks of the Don.
  • 8-11 August: Chikatilo murdered an unknown woman while on business in Uzbekistan .
  • August 13: Still in Uzbekistan, he kills 12-year-old Akmarala Sejdaliewa.
  • August 28: After he was back home, he killed Alexander Tschepel (11). The scene was close to that of the Alekseeva murder three weeks earlier.
  • September 6: The 24-year-old Irina Luchinskaya was murdered in the aviator's park in Rostov, and the body was found a day later.

1985

On September 13, 1984, Chikatilo was seen by a plainclothes officer trying to lure young women away from a bus stop. He was arrested, but the series of murders could not be proven. Instead, he was sentenced to one year imprisonment for stealing from his employer, but was released on December 12, 1984 after three months. He accepted a new job in Novocherkassk and from then on held back from doing any further deeds. In 1985 there were two proven acts, in 1986 none at all.

  • August 27: Irina Gulyayeva (18) was killed in a grove of trees near a bus stop in Shakhty. Her body was found the following day.

1987

  • May 16: Oleg Makarenkov (13) was a victim of Chikatilo in Sverdlovsk , what is now Ukraine . He led the investigators to the boy’s remains after his arrest.
  • July 29th: During a business trip he killed Ivan Bilovetschki (12) in Zaporizhia . The body was found the following day.
  • September 15: Yuri Tereschonok (16) was lured off a train in Leningrad Oblast . His body could only be found by Tschikatilo after his arrest.

1988

  • 1st - 4th April: An unknown woman, whose body was found on April 6, was killed near the Krasny Sulin train station . Their ages were estimated at 18-25.
  • May 15: 9-year-old Aleksei Voronko was killed near the train station in Ilovajsk (now Ukraine).
  • July 14th: For the first time since 1985 there was another victim in the Rostov area. The body of Yevgeny Muratov (15) was found nine months later, on April 10, 1989.

1989

  • March 8: Tatiana Ruschowa, a 16-year-old runaway from Krasny Sulin, was murdered in the apartment of Chikatilo's own daughter.
  • May 11: One day after his eighth birthday, Alexander Djakonov was murdered in the city center of Rostov. His body was found on July 14th.
  • June 20: Aleksey Moiseyev (10) was killed east of Moscow in Vladimir Oblast . Tschikatilo later confessed to this murder.
  • August 19: The Hungarian student and young mother Elena Warga (19) was lured from a bus and killed in a village near Rostov.
  • August 28: Alexey Chobotov (10) was last seen outside a theater in Shakhty. Tschikatilo later led the police to his remains.

1990

  • January 14th: Andrei Kravchenko (11) was lured out of a cinema and murdered in Shakhty. His body was found on February 19.
  • March 7th: The young Yaroslow Makarow (10) was lured away from the Rostov train station and killed in the local botanical garden.
  • April 4: Lyubov Zujewa (31) was lured away from a train station near Shakhty. Her remains were found on August 24th.
  • July 28th: ​​A few meters from the place where Yaroslow Makarov was killed in the Rostov Botanical Garden in March, Viktor Petrov (13) also died.
  • August 14: Ivan Fomin (11) was murdered on the beach in Novocherkassk . His body was found three days later.
  • October 16: Vadim Gromov (16) came from Shakhty and disappeared during a train ride to Taganrog .
  • October 30: His penultimate victim Viktor Tischenko (16) killed Chikatilo in Shakhty near a small train station. During the fight, this chikatilo bit on the finger. This injury could be determined after the arrest and assigned to this murder.
  • November 6th: Swetlana Korostik (22) was the last victim of the series of murders. Her body was found on November 13 in a wooded area near a train station.

Investigations before 1990

In the case of the Tschikatilo murders, the police have been investigating with increasing intensity since the first murder in 1978. However, the militia only realized late that the crimes could be attributed to a single perpetrator, as Tschikatilo, unlike other serial perpetrators, was not fixated on a specific type of victim. He killed girls, boys, women and also mothers, in one case a mother and her daughter, he only left men out. Either they did not correspond to his sexual preference or he was too afraid of possible resistance.

In 1984 it was even considered at times to evacuate Shakhty completely and to distribute the 200,000 residents throughout the USSR. However, the plans failed because the killer would have moved with them and probably would have continued to kill in another location.

Tschikatilo was suspected twice before his arrest and was even taken into custody and interrogated. The first time after the murder of Elena Sakotnowa in 1978, then again in 1984. Nevertheless, he could not be linked to the murders.

Exposure and arrest

Gorbachev's reform policy ( perestroika and glasnost ) opened up more and more opportunities for the media to report. There was an increasing number of public searches for the murderer, who had already killed more than 40 people. According to the militia, educational campaigns were carried out in all schools in Rostov and Shakhty. More than 600 militia officers patrolled every railway line around Rostov around the clock.

At a small station, an officer on watch discovered Tschikatilo, who came out of the forest 200 meters from the train station. It had red spots and was heavily soiled with mud, which he tried to wash off with water from a hydrant. The militia officers were instructed to check the identity of every passerby at the station. Tschikatilo's documents were flawless, which is why he was able to board the arriving train unhindered. However, this encounter was recorded in a report that was sent to the Rostov police station.

By chance, two inspectors discovered pieces of clothing at the same place where Tschikatilo had been seen coming out of the forest. A body had been found here a few months earlier and everything had been searched, and the remains of clothing had been discovered. After an extensive search with 40 officers and dogs, a child's body was found. Tschikatilo came more and more into the crosshairs of the investigators.

He was then observed around the clock by KGB investigators on his way to work, and his behavior on the train and his private life were also observed. On November 20, 1990, police intervened and three plainclothes officers arrested Chikatilo. He neither resisted nor asked about the reason for the arrest. Investigators were concerned that Tschikatilo might have a nervous breakdown or a heart attack while being arrested because he was over 50 years old.

interrogation

Chikatilo was taken to the militia headquarters in Rostov and photographed with his coat, leather cap and large briefcase. A hair and blood sample were duly drawn. The doubt as to whether the right man had really been arrested disappeared as soon as one began to search through the briefcase he was carrying. There were no files or other documents in it, but two ropes, a pocket mirror and a kitchen knife with a blade almost 30 cm long.

During interrogations, Chikatilo sat in silence across from the officers, claiming that he was only being detained and harassed by the authorities because he had often sent complaints about corrupt officers.

November 23

On that day, Chikatilo's attitude towards prostitutes and vagabonds was made clear by the following statement:

“I often spent my time at train stations, on long-distance and local trains and on buses. There are always a lot of different vagrants there, both young and old. They beg, demand and steal. I have seen scenes from the sex life of these tramps in train stations. And then I realized how humiliating it is that I was never able to feel like a real man. He asks himself whether these degenerate elements have the right to exist at all. "(Excerpt from the interrogation protocol of the Rostov militia)

He later said he was grateful that he was caught. He no longer pleaded innocence, but did not speak about the murders. His excessive shame made it difficult for him to speak to another man about the murders and his sexual acts.

November 29th

The time for the officials was running out, a suspect could be detained for ten days under Soviet law, longer only if an indictment was brought against him. On the 30th, Tschikatilo should have been released.

The investigators therefore undertook a change of strategy. No militia officer was supposed to get Chikatilo to talk, but Alexander Buchanowski, a local psychiatrist , who was supposed to compile a detailed list of the murders together with Chikatilo. Buchanowski only consented under three conditions:

  • He faces him as a doctor and not as an investigator;
  • He wants to keep his own notes instead of taking a statement;
  • Should Tschikatilo actually confess, nothing that he has discussed with Tschikatilo should be used against him. The authorities agreed.

A confidential relationship developed between Tschikatilo and Buchanowski. Tschikatilo told of his childhood and told his life story. On the evening of November 29, Chikatilo first admitted to having committed murder.

30th of November

Chikatilo was formally charged with 36 homicides between 1982 and 1990.

The following weeks

Tschikatilo told what the authorities wanted to hear. He confessed to 34 murders, but denied two murders from 1986 and denied having had sexual intercourse with the victims. This was not possible due to his impotence. During interrogations, he rarely spoke louder than in a whisper and in retrospect even confessed to the murder of nine-year-old Elena in 1978.

His statements were vague, bearing in mind that his first murder was more than twelve years ago and he couldn't remember any details.

Ultimately, he also confessed to murders outside the city of Rostov and its immediate vicinity, such as those in Moscow in 1987, which had not been associated with him. He also reported murders that were not yet known to the militia. The corpses were only found when Chikatilo went to the places he had described. In the case of two of his confessions, the police were unable to find the bodies, despite the description by Tschikatilo, and thus could not determine their identity. These two confessions were therefore annulled.

In the end, over 50 murders were solved.

Condemnation

Chikatilo was facing the death penalty . His only way out would have been to be found insane, but after the detailed confessions it was too late for that.

In April 1992, the trial of Chikatilo began in the Rostov District Court. A cage had been placed for him for his own protection from the court onlookers. So far, the population, including the relatives of the victims, neither knew Tschikatilo by name, nor were there any photos of him. It was only released an identikit, where Chikatilo only by the pseudonym citizen T. was called. The jury and numerous onlookers harbored a strong hatred of Chikatilo, so that the judge Leonid Akubschanow had to make every effort to keep the courtroom quiet.

Finally, on October 14, 1992, Andrei Romanowitsch Tschikatilo was sentenced in three stages under current law:

  • Death penalty and 56 years imprisonment for murders in Russia
  • Death penalty and 5 years imprisonment for murders in Ukraine
  • Death penalty and 25 years in prison for murders in Uzbekistan
  • Total: triple death penalty and 86 years imprisonment.

Under Russian law, he had seven days to appeal to the Supreme Court , but an appeal would have little chance of success. After the verdict, he was sent to death row prison of Novocherkassk, where on 14 February 1994 by shot in the neck executed .

Film and music

Andrei Tschikatilos life story forms the basis for the 1995 released film Citizen X . The film describes the murders and the search for the serial killer from the investigators' point of view. In the script, however, another thesis is taken up for the long search for the perpetrator. Allegedly for political reasons, a costly and image-damaging large-scale operation was prevented for a long time. After the blood test when Chikatilo was first arrested showed a blood type other than the one he was looking for, he was released under political pressure. This is justified with the murderer's membership in the CPSU. In the film, a critical position seems to be taken on the possibility of the different blood groups. It is noted in the credits that this thesis is ridiculed by scientists all over the world. However, no explicit position is taken on this controversy. Another film, Evilenko (2004), is also based on this case, but some facts have been changed. The character of Chikatilo was named Andrei Evilenko. Malcolm McDowell plays the role of the psychopathic killer. In 2015, the film Kind 44 was released, in which the investigation into the Chikatilo case is described based on the novel of the same name, which, however, takes place in the time of Stalinism.

In 2002 the German deathgrind band Kadath released the second album Chasing the Devil , a concept album in which the life and actions of Andrei Romanowitsch Tschikatilo is thematized.
In 2004 the German metal band Eisregen released the song Ripper von Rostow on their album Wundwasser , in which the murder of Tschikatilos of Sweta Tschana (1984) and his arrest are dealt with, although the group did not exactly follow the actual processes. In 2009, the American thrash metal band Slayer released the song Psychopathy Red , which is about the deeds of Tschikatilos, on their tenth album World Painted Blood .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.tv.com/shows/biography/beast-of-the-ukraine-andrei-chikatilo-1592631/ Documentary film: The Beast of Ukraine: Andrei Chikatilo. Sent on A&E : November 3, 2004. According to tv.com, accessed February 7, 2016.
  2. ^ Cullen, Robert (1993). The Killer Department: Detective Viktor Burakov's Eight-Year Hunt for the Most Savage Serial Killer of Our Times. Orion Media. ISBN 1-85797-210-4 . P. 213
  3. ↑ Archive link ( Memento from February 21, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ^ Cullen, Robert (1993). The Killer Department: Detective Viktor Burakov's Eight-Year Hunt for the Most Savage Serial Killer of Our Times. Orion Media. ISBN 1-85797-210-4 . P. 219
  5. ↑ Кривич М., Ольгин О. Товарищ убийца. Ростовское дело: Андрей Чикатило и его жертвы. - М .: Текст, 1992. - 352 с. - ISBN 5-87106-071-4 .
personal data
SURNAME Tschikatilo, Andrei Romanowitsch
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Чикатило, Андрей Романович (Russian spelling); Ripper from Rostov
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Soviet serial killer
DATE OF BIRTH October 16, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Yablochnoye , Sumy Oblast, Soviet Union
DATE OF DEATH February 14, 1994
Place of death Novocherkassk , Russia