Andrei Chikatilo

From the beginning, Andrei was a scholarly child who spent more time reading than playing with friends. He was particularly attracted to any books about the Russian partisans who fought the Germans. One in particular told the story of how the partisans had captured several German prisoners and had taken them to a forest and tortured them.

Because of his quiet ways and an almost effeminate demeanour, Chikatilo had few friends and was constantly teased. He was extremely near-sighted, but because he feared that wearing glasses would lead to more teasing, he refused to admit that he needed them. It would be nearly twenty years before he wore his first pair. One other fact that he took great pains to hide was that he was a chronic bed-wetter.

When he reached his teens, much of the teasing stopped. He grew taller and stronger and became known as an avid reader with an excellent memory. By the time he was sixteen, he was the editor of the school newspaper and the political information officer, a role that gave him additional prestige. While his political life developed, his social skills were virtually non-existent, especially with females.

When he turned eighteen, Chikatilo applied to Moscow University to study law. He failed the entrance exam, but blamed his rejection on his father's humiliating war record. As he matured he became more confident with women, but several early attempts at sex failed when he was unable to achieve an erection. Convinced that he was impotent, he became obsessed with masturbation. Sometime later, while on national service, he attempted to have sex with a woman who was not interested in his advances. As the woman struggled, Chikatilo overpowered her only to release her shortly after when he realised that he had ejaculated inside his pants. Inadvertently he had discovered that fear and violence excited him more than the sexual act itself.

Some years after completing his national service, he moved to Russia in search of work. He quickly found a job as a telephone engineer in a small town called Rodionovo-Nesvetayevsky, just north of Rostov. When he had saved enough money, he sent for his parents and his sister and moved them into his new home. Some years later his sister Tatyana introduced him to a woman called Fayina. A relationship developed and they were married in 1963. Fayina quickly learned that her new husband was not only unable to consummate the marriage, he had no real interest in sex. She saw this as nothing more than intense shyness and finally managed to coax him into having intercourse with her. Eventually they had two children, a girl Lyudmilla, born in 1965 and a boy Yuri in 1969.

Not long after his marriage, Chikatilo successfully enrolled in a correspondence course with Rostov Liberal Arts University and in 1971, gained degrees in Russian Literature, Engineering and Marxism-Leninism. With his newfound skills, Chikatilo became a teacher at Vocational school No. 32 in Novoshakhtinsk. Almost from the beginning, his teaching career was a disaster. His abject shyness made it almost impossible for him to teach or control his pupils. He was constantly humiliated and ridiculed, not only by his students but also by other staff members who considered him "odd."

Chikatilo - the teacher

Despite his lack of success, Chikatilo stayed in his teaching job. He later admitted that he found that the company of young children sexually aroused him. In the following years, what began as simple voyeurism outside the school toilets had degenerated into indecent assaults on both male and female students. When parents began to complain, Chikatilo was forced to resign and move on to other schools. At one such school, Chikatilo was put in charge of a boy's dormitory. As usual, his charges ignored him or openly teased him. Some months later, after he was caught trying to fellate a sleeping boy, he was attacked and beaten by several senior students.

From that moment on, Chikatilo carried a knife. At no time was he reported to the proper authorities, perhaps because under the Soviet regime of the time, an indiscretion by a single teacher could reflect on the entire faculty.

In 1978, Chikatilo moved his family to Shakhty. Soon after, he bought the shack near the river and lured his first victim. After being cleared of the murder of Lena Zakotnova, Andrei Chikatilo continued teaching until he was made redundant in 1981. Unable to get another teaching job he found employment as a supply clerk for the Rostovnerud, a local industrial complex. The job entailed travel to other parts of the country to locate and purchase supplies for the factory. He found that the periods away from home gave him ample time to search for new victims. Six months later he killed again.

Larisa Tkachenko was completely different from the girls that Chikatilo was used to dealing with. At seventeen she was older than the others and was also experienced in sexual matters. A runaway from boarding school, Larisa had met her killer at a bus stop outside of the Rostov public library. She was used to dating young soldiers and didn't mind swapping sexual favours for a meal and a few drinks, so when Andrei Chikatilo approached her with a similar offer, she went with him without hesitation. He took her to a deserted stretch of woodland and, unable to contain himself, began tearing her clothes off. As experienced as she was, Larisa panicked and tried to fend him off. Chikatilo quickly overpowered her and beat her about the head with his fists.

As she screamed, he filled her mouth with dirt and strangled her. He then bit off one of her nipples and ejaculated over her corpse. He would later tell police that he had "danced with joy" around the body until he had settled down enough to cover the body with branches and hide her clothes. She was found the next day.

Chikatilo was elated. While his first victim had left him frustrated and confused, the second had given him an appetite that he found hard to satisfy. In June 1982, while on another "business trip" to the town of Zaplavskaya, he killed thirteen-year-old Lyuba Biryuk after following her from a bus stop. After a failed attempt at rape he produced a knife and stabbed her repeatedly, including several wounds to her eyes. Because of the warm summer conditions, her body was almost a skeleton when it was found just two weeks later.

Over the next year, Chikatilo claimed six more victims, one in July, two in September and one in December. The newest killings were slightly different, Two of the victims were young males, a fact that was to cause great confusion for the investigating police. With virtually no experience in serial murder, and serving under a regime that refused to admit that such crimes were possible in the Soviet Union, the police began looking for two separate offenders. What further confused the issue was that two of the victims had been killed outside of the Rostov area. Even though the crime scenes and the manner of death were strikingly similar, no links were established.

After killing another ten-year-old girl in December, Chikatilo did not kill for another six months. His next victim was Laura Sarkisyan, a fifteen-year-old Armenian girl whose body was never recovered until years later when Chikatilo confessed and directed police to her grave. This shy and impotent man quickly learned how to choose his victims carefully. His travels took him to many railway and bus stations where he was able to coerce young vagrants of both sexes to go with him. Mostly it was a promise of food or similar treats that lured them into the isolated tracts of forest that bordered most Russian towns. On some occasions, the victims offered sexual favours in advance. Either way, once they went with him they were doomed. An added advantage of preying on vagrants in Russia was that nobody reported them missing because, officially, they did not exist. They only became known when their bodies were found.