ANDREI CHIKATILO: BIOGRAPHY, MURDERS AND PROFILE - ARTE - 2025

Andrei Chikatilo, known as the Butcher of Rostov (1936-1994), was a serial killer for the Soviet Union. Considered the most bloodthirsty psychopath in Eastern Europe, he confessed to murdering 52 people, most of them children and adolescents.

He was nicknamed as the Rostov Butcher, the Rostov Ripper and the Red Ripper, since in addition to murdering his victims, he used to mutilate them in different ways after beating and sexually assaulting them.

The criminal was active from 1978 to 1990 when he was finally caught. He committed his crimes in Russia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan at the time these countries were part of the Soviet Union.

During the years in which he committed his misdeeds he led a double life, since he appeared to be a family man and very educated. What few knew was that behind his seemingly gentle personality was a complete monster.

Andréi Chikatilo's family life

Andréi Románovich Chikatilo was born on October 16, 1936 in a Ukrainian village called Yáblochnoye. Her parents were Román and Anna Chikatilo. He was born in the time of the Holodomor, also known as the Genocide or the Ukrainian Holoscaust.

In those years the process of collectivization undertaken by the Soviet Union took place and Andrei's father became a prisoner of war of the Nazis.

Andrei's mother had to take care of him and his 7-year-old little sister, without anyone's help. Many things are said about his upbringing, one of them is that his mother used to tell a terrible story to her children that would traumatize them forever.

Ckikatilo and his family.

According to that story someone had kidnapped the older brother named Stepan to eat him. But although the story seems to have been a tale to scare children, in reality that was not a strange situation at the time.

In the Ukraine of those years, famine invaded the streets and the dead were everywhere. Indeed, as a child Andrei used to see numerous butchered corpses, as people were forced to eat human flesh to survive.

However, it is worth noting that the brother's story was never confirmed, since there was no document certifying the birth or death of Stepan.

Despite the problems that plagued him, Andrei tried to lead a life like that of all children his age. The problem is that he did not do too well in school, not precisely because of his studies but because of living with his classmates.

Personality and physical problems

He had an introverted personality and didn't seem to have much character. He was marginalized and humiliated by his peers.

Besides this, he used to have other physical problems. He suffered from myopia but took years to come to terms with his condition. In fact, it is said that he wore his first glasses at the age of thirty. She also suffered from nocturnal enuresis (bed-wetting) until she was 12 years old.

As he got older he became much more shy, especially with women. From a young age he was frustrated in the sexual realm. In adolescence he had a love affair with a girl from the village, but this was cut short due to his impotence problems.

Military service

After finishing school, Andrei served in the military for the Soviet Army. There he decided to pursue studies, so he prepared to obtain various degrees, including engineering, Russian literature and the so-called "Marxism-Leninism." After finishing his studies he became an active communist.

In 1963 Andréi married a woman named Fayinay and despite their sexual problems the couple had two children. Although he could not maintain an erection, he could ejaculate.

Chikatilo used to think of himself as a mistake of nature, someone who had been punished by life with castration since he was born. He was described as a hardworking, loving, stable and even submissive husband. As a father he never raised his voice in front of his children and also became a respected member of the communist party.

Teaching

In 1971 he entered the world of teaching. Taking advantage of how well he had done in professional studies, he decided to become a teacher. It was from that time that he began to obsess over minors.

He felt a growing attraction to girls under the age of twelve, so he began spying on them. She used to walk through the bedrooms to see them in their underwear and while she looked at them she masturbated with her hand inside her pocket.

But little by little his life as a teacher began to look more and more like his time at school. His students did not respect him, refused to behave, and constantly made fun of him. They used to call him "the goose" because he supposedly had very long shoulders and curvatures, as well as a long neck.

The aggressions became so many and he was so afraid that he began to carry a knife to class. He never used it and finally years later he was fired because some students accused him of sexual harassment.

Chikatilo's crimes

First victim

Chikatilo committed his first crime in December 1978; She was 42 when she decided to approach a 9-year-old girl on the street. Her name was Yelena Zakotnova and he convinced her to accompany him to a cabin he had on the outskirts of the city.

His years as a teacher and as a father had taught him to talk to children, so he could easily manage to take her away voluntarily.

Once in the cabin, the psychopath undressed her and due to the violence with which he did it, he scratched her. As the blood gushed out, she had an immediate erection. That excited situation made him associate sex with blood. And so finally the monster that had been in her head for years began to emerge.

He stabbed her with a knife until she reached orgasm and ejaculated. In this way she realized that she had found a way to satisfy her sexual needs.

The body was found days later in the Grushovka River. Although Chikatilo was questioned by authorities, the main suspect was another sex offender named Aleksandr Krávchenko.

Second victim

His second fatality did not arrive until three years later. After losing his job as a teacher, in 1981 he began working as a factory supply officer. The job had him constantly traveling around the region, helping him search for victims in different locations.

On September 3 of that year, he attacked Larisa Tkachenko, a 17-year-old prostitute. Her goal was to have sex with the girl, however, when she couldn't get an erection, the girl made fun of her.

This made him so enraged that he lost control and savagely killed her. After strangling her, he ejaculated on her corpse, bit her throat, cut her breasts and even ate her nipples.

With that other murder, Chikatilo realized that doing this represented the supreme sexual act for him. That was the greatest source of excitement he could get. After that, little by little more and more victims would be added.

Terera victim

The third was Lyuba Biryuk, a 13-year-old girl whom he kidnapped from a town called Novorcherkassk. He stabbed her about 40 times and mutilated her eyes. Later this act became her personal hallmark.

Fourth victim

Until that moment, Chikatilo had only murdered people of the female sex. Oleg Podzhivaev would be his first male victim, a 9-year-old boy.

The boy's body was never found. However, Chikatilo claimed that he was responsible for her death and claimed to have ripped off her genitals.

The killer's modus operandi was always the same; the victims were found in the woods, had signs of violence, sadism and had generally been mutilated. They were all girls, boys and young girls.

Arrest and execution

By 1984 the number of victims was already 15 people. The case of this serial killer had become a public case.

To try to find the murderer, the Serbsky Institute in Moscow made his profile. According to the experts, it was a man who was completely normal, he was probably married and had a job. He used to leave his semen in the body of the victims and after an analysis they determined that his blood was group AB.

In September 1984 Chikatilo was arrested in the Rostov market. The man fit the killer's profile perfectly. However, after a medical test, it was determined that his blood type did not match that of the semen found.

Liberation and other crimes

Thus Chikatilo was released without any charges against him and the murders continued. The number of victims had already reached 30 and the authorities still had no leads.

In October 1990, another body was found in a forest near the Donlesjoz station. The entire police team was devoted to the case and had a riot force of about 100 men. Two weeks later another body was found and the number of policemen in the investigation rose to 600. They had mounted a guard in the forests, especially in the most isolated areas.

By that time, the end of Chikatilo was near. In November, while doing one of those watches, a detective named Igor Rybakov saw a man come out of the forest.

He was wearing a suit and tie, had a bandaged finger and a bloodstained cheek. The officer asked for his documentation but since he did not have sufficient reasons to arrest him, he let him go. However, he did make a report of the incident.

Detention

The following day the authorities found the body of a young woman in the same area. The officers put the dots together and deduced that the person responsible must be the man the detective had reported. Thus, on November 20, an arrest warrant was issued against Andréi Chikatilo. Curiously, her blood was not type AB, but her sperm was.

Following his arrest, the defendant denied being involved. He did not confess anything during the first interrogations and accused the police of persecuting him. However, a few days later, he assured that he would tell everything if the interrogations stopped. Upon meeting with one of the psychiatrists, he ended up confessing 52 murders.

Later he wrote a letter to the Attorney General in which he explained some details of his life. He assured that he was in a state of deep depression and acknowledged having "disturbed sexual urges."

He justified the acts committed due to a psychiatric problem; He said that his problems were mental and that he could not control his actions. However, for the police the objective of this statement was to seek a way out of their situation, alleging a mental illness.

Death penalty

Psychiatrists at the Serbsky Institute, who had profiled him years earlier, labeled him a cautious sadist. They indicated that he did not suffer from any mental disorder that prevented him from understanding that his actions were not correct.

It was determined that his actions were premeditated and that he was legally sane. His trial began in April 1992 and ended in October of that year. He was sentenced to the death penalty. On February 14, 1994, he was shot to the back of the head in Rostov-on-Don prison.

Psychological profile

According to the experts who outlined him, Chikatilo was an ordinary man, lonely and peaceful. However, he was really a sexual psychopath with sadistic impulses, who also practiced cannibalism.

He suffered from sexual dysfunction and this was made clear by the fact that he mutilated his victims. He did it out of frustration and because it also turned him on.

Although he was carried away by the compulsion to kill, he was not mentally retarded or suffered from schizophrenia. One evidence of this was his ability to plan his attacks.

In this video you can see real images of Chikatilo: