Andrei Chikatilo was a Russian serial killer who frequently dismembered or ate parts of his victims who ranged in age from 7-45. His victims largely consisted of runaways who weren’t being reported missing and that no one was looking for and this (among other things) helped him evade capture for years.
The Final Victim
On November 6, 1990, in the Ukraine, 22-year-old Svetlana (or “Sveta”) Korostik had been lured by a stranger to the forests around a local train station, Donleskhoz Station. It isn’t clear how she was convinced to follow the man, but if he kept with his pattern, he promised her food or treats or occasionally there were times when sexual favors were promised by one or the other in exchange for something. However she was lured, she didn’t leave the forest alive.
Once they were in the forest, Sveta was beaten and stabbed to death before she was mutilated. The stranger cut off the tip of her tongue and both or her nipples and ate them right there at the scene. He then covered her naked body with leaves and branches and headed back to the train station.
Once he was at the station, the man was spotted when an undercover officer noticed him washing his hands and shoes in a well. When the man passed the officer he was wiping sweat from his forehead and the officer noticed a small smear of what appeared to be blood on the man’s cheek. The officer saw that the man’s coat had grass and soil stains on the elbows. The officer decided this man was suspicious enough to approach. The officer stopped the man and checked his identification and took down his details for a report that he would later submit.
Andrei Chikatilo. 54-years-old.
On November 13th, Sveta’s body was found and police checked all the reports from the officers at that train station from the past few weeks and the men they had questioned. Chikatilo’s name came up. He was on the 1984 and 1987 suspect lists. Then they were able to place him in the areas of other murders throughout the years, and they learned about his checkered job history. Chikatilo was placed under surveillance on November 14th.
On November 20th, 1990, Andrei Chikatilo left work early because his finger was killing him. He had been bitten by a victim and the bandage on his finger wasn’t helping. So he went to a clinic and got an x-ray. It was broken. He returned home and shortly after that, left to get some booze. However, while he was out, Chikatilo had other errands to run. He made a few attempts to approach some young boys, but he was seen by 3 undercover officers. Chikatilo was arrested. He, oddly, had his briefcase with him on his trip out to get alcohol. Inside the briefcase were a knife, rope, and vaseline. He was arrested and would eventually confess to murdering over 50 people: boys, girls, and women from ages 9-45.
Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo
Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo was born on October 16, 1936, in Yablochnoye in the USSR. This was a hard place and time to live in. At this time, Ukraine was known as the “Breadbasket” of the Soviet Union. This wasn’t because they had plenty of bread and food. It was actually kind of the opposite. This area was right in the middle of rural Ukraine and farmers were plentiful, but Stalin’s agricultural collectivization created hardship. This agricultural collectivization basically meant that all of the farmers were forced to hand over their entire crop for statewide distribution.
This created famine and took out millions of people who starved to death. In an attempt to survive, many people turned to cannibalism. In fact, when he was a young boy, Chikatilo’s mom told him that his older brother Stephan had disappeared years earlier and was eaten by neighbors. While this can’t be verified, it’s a piece of information that Chikatilo held onto and likely referenced in his later extracurricular activities.
When he was born, the effects of this were still being felt meaning that his childhood was one of deprivation. It was also reported that he was born with hydrocephalus (water on the brain) which caused genital and urinary tract issues. Chikatilo wet the bed well into his adolescence. Young Andrei loved to read. His favorite topic to read about was German prisoners that were captured and tortured by the Soviet Union during World War II.
This topic was probably of particular interest after his father’s military service that didn’t go well. Poppa Chikatilo was enlisted in the military during World War II and was captured as a prisoner of war. This was seen as a cowardly and traitorous move by his countrymen, and his dad was criticized heavily. This trickled down to little Andrei who was bullied about his father’s cowardice for allowing himself to be captured.
Chikatilo was painfully shy already, so being bullied added to his meekness.
When he was a teenager (some reports say 15, some say into his 20s), Chikatilo finally got the chance to be with a girl! But just like everything else in his life, it didn’t go well. When the girl indicated that she wasn’t really interested in sex, Chikatilo overpowered her and held her down. However, during the struggle, Chikatilo…blew his load in his pants…and when the girl saw it, he let her go. It was reported that this was another thing he got bullied over.
This unfortunate encounter did have an upside for Chikatilo. He inadvertently discovered that fear and violence were powerful aphrodisiacs to him. It got him off big time and was actually better than the actual sex. When he was 18, Chikatilo applied to Moscow State University. He failed his entrance exams and was refused admittance, but he claimed that it was due to his father’s humiliating war record. In Ukraine, it is mandatory that a person serves in the military between age 20-27 for at least 18 months. Chikatilo began his national service in 1957 and after that, he moved to Russia near Rostov.
Chikatilo became a telephone engineer, and later his younger sister moved in with him. She felt bad for how unsuccessful he was with girls so she set up a “meet-cute” with a girl named Fayina in 1962. By 1963, they were married. Fayina noticed that Chikatilo wasn’t very interested in sex and when they did have sex, he had difficulty getting an erection and consummating their marriage. Despite this, they managed to have 2 kids: a daughter named Lyudmilla in 1965 and a son named Yuri in 1969.
In 1970, Chikatilo enrolled in Rostov Liberal Arts University. He received degrees in Russian Literature, Engineering, and Marxism-Leninism and after graduation in 1971, he got a job at Vocational School No. 32 in Novoshakhtinsk.
His shyness impacted his ability to be a good teacher. He was frequently teased by students and staff alike, but (as he would later admit) he found being around the young children sexually arousing. Chikatilo as a teacher was problematic, to say the least. He would creep around the bathrooms and was accused of assaulting boy and girl students. By 1972, there were so many parent complaints that Chikatilo was forced to resign.
Chikatilo got a job at one school and was put in charge of the boys’ dorm. His charges did not listen to him and they frequently teased him. One night Chikatilo was caught trying to perform oral sex on a young boy who was sleeping. The senior students that caught him attacked him and beat him up. Chikatilo decided that instead of just not doing that anymore, he was going to start carrying a knife with him for protection.
In 1978, Chikatilo and his family moved to Shakhty, and he restarted his killing spree. On December 22, 1978, he killed Lena Zakothora who was only 9 years old. Her body was found 2 days later. Chikatilo was called in for questioning, but he was released when his wife gave him a rock-solid alibi saying that he was home all evening. However, someone had to go down for this crime and the police had quite a reputation for being able to obtain a confession by any means necessary. So the police brought in a 25-year-old man named Alexander Kravchenko who had a previous rape conviction from raping a 17-year-old girl in 1970. Kravchenko ended up confessing and was arrested. He was tried for the murder of Lena Zakothora and convicted. His sentence was death and in 1984 he was executed.
From 1978 to 1981, Chikatilo stayed off the police radar and there were no known murders during this time. In 1981, however, Chikatilo was “made redundant” from the mining school he’d been working at. Since he was unable to find another teaching job (due to the complaints against him), Chikatilo got a job as a clerk for a raw materials factory in Rostov. This new job required travel and that opened up his victim pool to a much larger selection.
On September 3, 1981, he found 17-year-old Larisa Tkachenko. He strangled and stabbed her after he gagged her with dirt and leaves so she couldn’t scream. The violence he used got him off and gave him release. Chikatilo focused on young runaways he met at bus stops and train stations and got them to come with him to the forest where he would attack them. He would attempt to rape them and in many cases, he ate the reproductive organs of his victims. Sometimes he would remove pieces of their bodies such as the tip of a nose or tongue. In the early victims, he would remove or damage their eyes in some way. Chikatilo would later claim that he did this because he believed that the victims kept an imprint of his face in their eyes even after death.
During this time in the Soviet Union, serial killers were kind of a phenomenon that wasn’t really a thing they dealt with or knew about. The Soviet Union also had a habit of suppressing information that they felt would cause the public to get out of line or frenzied. However, the eye mutilation that Chikatilo was so fond of was so distinct that the police were able to link these cases, and they had to admit to having a serial killer on their hands. Frankly, admitting to a serial killer was probably better for public control than letting the rumors that were building. The public had convinced themselves that the murders were plots by foreigners or, just as likely, werewolf attacks.
June 12, 1982, 13-year-old Lyuba Biryuk was Chikatilo’s 3rd victim. He attempted to rape her, but when he couldn’t, he stabbed her repeatedly and slashed her eyes. 2 weeks later, her body was found, but by then it was almost skeletal cue to the heat of summer and being exposed to the elements.
For the rest of the year, Chikatilo would do little else besides murder…
- July 25, 1982, 14-year-old girl, Ljoeba Voloboejeva.
- August 13, 1982, 9-year-old girl, Oleg Pozhidayev.
- August 16, 1982, 16-year-old girl, Olga Koeprina.
- September 8, 1982, 9-year-old boy, Ira Karabelnikova
- September 15, 1982, 15-year-old boy, Sergej Koezmin.
- December 11, 1982, 10-year-old girl, Olga Stalmachenko.
Then there was a lull in his spree, but it’s not known why. He picks back up in June of 83 when he kills 15-year-old Laura Sarkisjan.
- Summer of 1983, an unidentified woman between the ages of 18-25.
- September 1983, 22-year-old woman, Valentina Tsjoetsjoelina.
- October 27, 1983, 19-year-old girl, Vera Shevkun.
- December 27, 1983, 14-year-old boy, Sergey Markov.
By the end of 1983, Chikatilo was up to 17 victims, but only 6 bodies had been found.
The Moscow militia was getting increasingly concerned with the number of children that were disappearing. Detective Major, Mikhail Fetisov was given control of the investigation. He and his team were sent to Rostov. Fetisov took a look at everything the local police had done and HE. WAS. PISSED. Fetisov sent a scathing report to his superiors and gave his harsh criticisms of the local police and their work. He also suggested that all of the 6 murders were the work of a singular individual who was motivated by sex. Headquarters reluctantly agreed to the serial killer theory.
By 1984, Chikatilo’s victims became known as “Lesopolosa” or the “Forest Strip Killings.” The samples of semen that were taken from the crime scene were tested (as best they could be in ‘84) and found that the person who provided this specimen had type AB blood. Unfortunately, knowing a person’s blood type does not identify a specific person. And because he was still free to wreak havoc, Chikatilo was very busy in 1984. There would be a further 15 victims this year.
- January 9th, 17-year-old girl, Natalya Shalapinina.
- February 21st, 45-year-old woman, Marta Ryabenko.
- March 24th, 10-year-old boy, Dmitriy Ptachnikov. This would be the first crime scene where they found evidence of a footprint left by the murderer.
- May of 1984, a 32-year-old mother Tatyana Petrosyan, and her 11-year-old daughter, Svetlana. It was reported that Tatyana had been a mistress of Chikatilo’s.
- June 1984, 22-year-old young woman, Yelena Bakulina.
- July 10th, 13-year-old boy, Dmitriy Illarionov.
- July 19th, 19-year-old, Anna Lemesheva.
- Also in July, 20-year-old, Svetlana Tsana.
- On Augst 1st, Andrei Chikatilo began a new job and the next day on August 2nd, he killed 16-year-old, Natalya Golosovskaya.
- August 7th, 17-year-old girl, Lyudmila Alekseyeva
- Somewhere between August 8th and 11th, Chikatilo murdered a woman who has never been identified who was between the ages of 20-25.
- August 13th, 12-year-old girl, Akmaral Seydaliyeva
- August 28th, 11-year-old boy, Alexsandr “Sashja” Chepel.
- September 6th, 24-year-old young woman, Irina Luchinskaya
On September 13th, 1984, Chikatilo undercover officers patrolling a train station saw a man in a fur hat walking around the platform and approaching young women. Then, they saw him grope a sex worker. He was arrested for public lewdness, and they found that the briefcase he was carrying contained a knife. While in custody, a blood sample was taken and the police checked into his background. The police found that Chikatilo was known for having voyeuristic tendencies toward the young girls in the dormitories at schools he worked at. He also had a history of assaulting these students.
However, the police were convinced they were looking for a young sexual pervert, not some old dude. Then when the blood type came back as type A they figured they had the wrong guy since their samples said their suspect was type AB. What they didn’t know is that Andrei Chikatilo was in a minority group called non-secretors. His saliva, sperm, and other bodily fluids would test as type AB, but his blood was only A. This is because the B antigens aren’t present in the blood in large enough quantities to appear as AB on a blood test. If they had tested literally anything other than his blood, they would have gotten a type AB.
The police were able to hold Chikatilo for theft charges from his previous employer so he was sentenced to 1 year in prison but was released after serving just 3 months. So on December 12, 1984, Chikatilo was free again.
For part two, click here!
sources for this episode
Andrei Chikatilo – Quotes, Childhood & Death
Andrei Chikatilo | Soviet serial killer
Andrei Chikatilo – Butcher of Rostov | SERIAL KILLER FILES #29 — Video
Pure Evil: Andrei Chikatilo – The Red Ripper of Rostov (Serial Killer Documentary) — Video
Murderous Minds: Andrei Chikatilo “The Rostov Ripper” | Serial Killer Documentary — Video
