In what year was Andrei Chikatilo tried? Andrei Chikatilo: “I pray to God that there will be no more people like me on earth! Arrest of Andrei Chikatilo

Andrei Chikatilo was born in 1936 in the village of Yablochnoye, Ukrainian SSR. Times were difficult, just a few years after the Holodomor in Ukraine (in 1932-1933). Chikatilo said that as a child he had to eat grass and leaves to survive. Perhaps this was not the only psychological test of his childhood, because in the end he turned into a monster for whom there was no other punishment except a bullet in the back of the head.

When Chikatilo's trial was completed in October 1992, he was found guilty of 53 proven murders and sentenced to death for each of them. This man was executed on February 14, 1994, but the thought of him still makes me shudder.

15. He believed that his brother was kidnapped and eaten by neighbors

There is no confirmation of this story, since there is no document that Andrei Chikatilo ever had a brother, but, according to him, his mother told him that his older brother Styopa was kidnapped and eaten by neighbors. She said that this happened when the child was four years old - and, knowing that such cases were indeed not uncommon during the famine of 1932-1933, this is quite believable. “On the one hand, this frightened and horrified him, and on the other, he developed an unhealthy interest in the topic of cannibalism, and his fantasies have been constantly connected with it since then,” a psychiatrist who examined Chikatilo said on this occasion.

14. He chewed out body parts of his victims with his teeth

Chikatilo received many nicknames: the Mad Beast, the Red Partisan, the Rostov Ripper, the Red Ripper, the Woodland Killer, Citizen X, Satan, the Soviet Jack the Ripper. Although he is known as a cannibal, he cannot be said to have actually eaten the bodies of his victims - or, more importantly, to have enjoyed it like other famous cannibals - but rather to have chewed off parts of their bodies. Men have genitals, women have nipples, victims of both sexes have tongues.

13. His mother may have been raped in front of him.

When the Soviet Union entered World War II, Andrei Chikatilo's father was drafted and went to war. The Nazis occupied Ukraine in 1941 and over the next few years drove away more than 5 million prisoners of war, with many more starving or dying at the hands of the Nazis. Chikatilo talked about what he remembers from his childhood as “horrors.” In 1943, Chikatilo's sister was born - which means that with a high degree of probability his mother was raped by a Nazi soldier (poor village, absolutely unprotected residents, lonely woman). If this happened, then little Chikatilo could even have witnessed the rape, since the family lived in the same room and mother and son slept in the same bed.

12. He was a brilliant and versatile student

The most shocking thing about stories about serial killers is that many of them, up to a certain point in their lives, looked and acted completely normal. Andrei Chikatilo was just as outwardly normal in his younger years. He was an excellent student, at the age of 14 he was the editor of the school newspaper, he was modest and inconspicuous, and his teachers could not get enough of him. They say that Chikatilo had a certain superiority complex and considered himself smarter than his classmates. After graduating from school, he wanted to go to law school at Moscow State University, but failed the exam. He himself believed that he was not taken because his father was repressed (as a “traitor” and “traitor to the Motherland” who had been captured). Instead of Moscow State University, Chikatilo graduated from the Akhtyrka Technical School of Communications, went to work laying power lines, then served, became interested in writing articles for regional newspapers and eventually entered Rostov University at the Faculty of Philology, from which he graduated in 1970 with a degree in Russian Language and Literature. .

11. His first sexual experience was dominance.

There are suggestions that Chikatilo was born with signs of hydrocephalus, which later led to bedwetting (which he suffered until he was 12 years old) and impotence. He was an incredibly shy child and grew into an even shyer teenager (partly because his classmates looked at him as the son of a "traitor to the Motherland" captured during the war, and said that his father was a coward). At the age of 15, Chikatilo had his first sexual experience during a playful fight with his younger sister's girlfriend - and in the process he accidentally ejaculated. When the news of this reached the ears of their classmates, they became completely unable to live. Perhaps this was the beginning of psychological impotence, which Chikatilo later struggled with throughout his life.

10. He was impotent, but got sexual release from killing people.

After a humiliating situation with involuntary ejaculation on a girl at the age of 15, Chikatilo began to have problems with erection. When he was about 20 years old, he had a girlfriend and they tried to have sex three times - but he never succeeded. After a year and a half, the girl left him. After finishing his military service, Chikatilo met another lady, already divorced, but nothing worked out with her either. This lady decided to consult with her friends about the problem - and as a result, Chikatilo was extremely hurt by the fact that now her friends had learned that he was impotent. “They whispered about it behind my back, I was so ashamed. I tried to hang myself, my mother pulled me out of the noose. I thought that no one needed such a loser. And I had to leave there, from my native place,” he later said.

9. He became the father of two children

However, someone willing to marry him was soon found. In 1963, Chikatilo married his sister's friend Faina Odncheva. His wife gradually came to terms with the problems in her sex life, especially since they still managed to have two children. Lyudmila Chikatilo was born in 1963, and son Yuri in 1969. When Andrei Chikatilo committed his first murder in 1978, the victim of which was a 9-year-old girl, his son was about the same age. Chikatilo was a pedophile and his victims were mainly children. 36 of the 53 known victims were children between the ages of 8 and 17. And Chikatilo began sexually harassing students at the school where he taught when his youngest son was 4 years old.

8. He was a school teacher and educator

Yes, this is creepy, but Chikatilo was not only the father of two children, but also worked for several years as a school teacher at a boarding school. He was fired for sexually harassing female students with the wording “at his own request.” Then he was a teacher at the State Technical University, where he molested a sleeping 15-year-old boy, for which his students called him “onanist” and “blue.” As can be seen from these cases, he was unable to win the love and respect of his students anywhere. The students rebelled against him, mocked him and gave him offensive nicknames like “Goose.”

7. He harassed female students, which got him fired.

It is believed that children were attracted to Chikatilo as weaker and more vulnerable creatures who could be manipulated. The first case of harassment occurred in 1973 - the teacher asked the student to stay in class after class, then began to hit her with a ruler, which excited him with all the ensuing consequences. There was also a time when he grabbed a student in the pool and drowned her until he could cum. After these episodes became known, Chikatilo was fired from school. However, no one made a fuss, the matter was hushed up, and Chikatilo moved to another city and continued to behave as if nothing had happened.

6. He was a murder suspect long before his arrest, but got away with it

One of the most unpleasant facts about Chikatilo’s “career” is that he was investigated for the murder of his very first victim, was a suspect, but was released. Chikatilo lured 9-year-old Lena to his secret hideout with the promise of chewing gum. He was not the main suspect, but blood stains were found not far from that same house. But Chikatilo’s track record (an exemplary family man, husband, father, communist) helped him create a positive image. After this incident, the maniac hid for two years. The next time he encountered the police was in 1984 (and by that time he had already killed 23 people). But despite the fact that he was detained with a suitcase containing Vaseline, rope and a knife, investigators released him because he did not look like a typical sexual predator.

5. The group of sperm found on the victim did not match Chikatilo’s DNA due to an error in the analysis

When Chikatilo came to the attention of the police in 1984 (with his suspicious suitcase), they took his blood for analysis. The blood group turned out to be the second. And they were looking for the suspect from the fourth group, since the victim’s corpse had semen discharge from the fourth group. Later, this circumstance was explained by the fact that Chikatilo allegedly had a “paradoxical discharge” - blood of the second group, and discharge of the fourth. But in reality, the analysis of the detected sperm was carried out with errors and gave an incorrect result.

4. Until he was forty, he led an almost normal life.

Typically, serial killers show their sadistic tendencies in early childhood by torturing or killing pets or bullying classmates. Andrei Chikatilo was a modest introvert, but led an almost normal life until 1978. There was an assumption that if he had lived somewhere in the US or Canada, with easy access to pornography, he would have started killing much earlier. But in the USSR, pornography was not easy to get. At his trial in 1992, Chikatilo pulled out a pornographic publication and, waving it, told the astonished audience that it was “the source of his problems.”

3. His first victim was 9 years old

After the body of nine-year-old Elena Zakotnova was found in the Grushevka River in 1978, a criminal previously convicted of rape was accused of her murder and executed (and school teacher Chikatilo managed to get away with it). Chikatilo met a little girl Lena Zakotnova at a bus stop, which, by the way, later became his favorite way to choose a victim. He lured the girl to his secret hideout by offering to buy her gum, then stabbed her to death, tried to have sex with her corpse - unsuccessfully - and eventually threw the corpse and the girl's school backpack into a river. After 12 years, he killed two more nine-year-olds: the boys Oleg Pozhidaev and Alexey Voronko.

2. He gouged out the victims' eyes

There is a superstition that before death, the image of the killer remains in the eyes of the victim forever, and Chikatilo mentioned this more than once. When he first began his bloody harvest, he often gouged out the eyes of his victims. Subsequently, he stopped doing this, but later started again - when he decided that he did not like the way dying people looked at him.

1. At the trial he put on a whole show

Chikatilo's trial began on April 14, 1992. When the defendant was given the floor, he spent two hours talking about how he was a victim of circumstances, blaming his parents, the Holodomor, and generally anything but himself. He talked about how hard it is to be impotent and how it puts pressure on the psyche. He said that he was helpless and weak. During the trial, the defendant was in a cage, which, on the one hand, made him look like an animal behind bars, and on the other, protected him from the relatives of the murdered who were present in the courtroom. By the way, many of them lost consciousness right there. All his behavior at the trial was aimed at appearing crazy in order to avoid capital punishment. He even tried to show his genitals with the words that it was a useless appendage and he could not do anything with it.

It is safe to say that not a single criminal in the entire history of criminology had such fame, and even during his lifetime. Even before the sentence was carried out (the court decided to shoot Chikatilo), six books were written about him, films and television films were made, police museums gave the maniac a prominent place in their exhibitions, and newspaper journalists... Heaps of articles and notes were written about him, and on At the court hearing in Rostov-on-Don, there were almost more reporters in the room than witnesses and relatives of the victims.

He fought for his life to the end and took care of his health. In the solitary cell of the pre-trial detention center of the Rostov KGB, where he was kept for greater safety, Chikatilo began the morning with gymnastic exercises: he did push-ups, stretched his muscles, jumped on the spot, and did a bridge. And he endlessly wrote complaints against the investigators and the judge, demanded justice and asked for leniency, taking into account the severe shocks suffered during his wartime childhood and which subsequently affected his psyche.

Here is a fragment of the original document - one of the many messages to higher organizations, where Chikatilo explains his actions:

“I followed the commands of the commander of a partisan detachment. When I saw a lonely person standing alone, I imagined him as a “tongue” who needed to be taken to the forest, tied him up and struck him like a partisan. If I saw a naked body (male or female - for me it was indifferent), I tore and tossed like an animal. It was not sexual passion, but an animal mental release, despair and anger because nature had deprived me of the happiness of a sublime normal sexual life, from excitement to complete satisfaction.

Of course, I could become an alcoholic, drowning out my vital needs. But this is not why I studied the philosophical views of all times and peoples, I went through universities - life and education - in order to bait my consciousness. I did not have normal sexual intercourse with any of the victims. It was a pathetic imitation. I didn’t specifically catch or look for victims. I just happened to come across people like me. Many of them are hungry, unsettled in life, and unfavorable in life situations. And they stuck to me..."

What happened next? How did the “partisan” Chikatilo satisfy his sexual passion, which he refers to as a “pathetic imitation”?

He noticed ten-year-old Olya S. when the girl was returning from evening classes at a music school. Later it turned out that the bus broke down and there was a big break in traffic. It was December, and you couldn’t walk from the school to Novoshakhtinsk, where the child lived. The girl was left at the bus stop waiting for transport and was freezing. Then the good uncle came up:

“Come on, you can warm up with me, it’s nearby.” And then she was completely frozen.

Random witnesses saw from a distance how a man and a girl were moving across the field towards state farm No. 6. The child cried, trying to pull his hand away, but the man did not let go and said something excitedly.

From the materials of the criminal case:

“Chikatilo fraudulently took the girl to an arable field on a state farm one and a half kilometers from Novoshakhtinsk. Here he attacked her, threw her to the ground, tore off her clothes, exposed her penis and, threatening her with a knife, tried to rape her. When he failed due to physiological inferiority, Chikatilo stabbed the child numerous times in the head, chest, cut out the stomach, heart, uterus, and intestines. The girl died on the spot from more than fifty stab wounds.”

I didn't choose an example. In any of the 200 volumes of criminal case 18/59639-85 you can find bloodier, more terrible episodes. The maniac inflicted several dozen wounds on almost each of the victims, gouged out the eyes of almost all of them, bit off and swallowed the nipples of the breasts and the tips of the tongues, cut out the genitals and, as he himself admitted, gnawed with satisfaction on the female uterus - “it is red and elastic.”

Each of Chikatilo’s crimes is characterized by extreme cruelty, not so much in the criminal legal sense, which involves causing suffering to the victim, but, so to speak, in the universal sense.

Evgeny Samovichev, a scientist already mentioned in connection with the Dzhumagaliev case, studying the behavior of the killer at the time of the death of his victims, makes an unusual assumption. It is so interesting that it is worth quoting it verbatim:

“The Chikatilo case belongs to the category of very rare phenomena. An attempt to cover the totality of its circumstances involuntarily leads to legends about people who have the ability to turn into wild predatory animals (werewolves), displaying exceptional ferocity and bloodthirstiness in this state. The centuries-old experience of people's encounters with this phenomenon even took shape in ideas about a very rare hereditary disease - lycanthropy (or porphyria), when affected, a person changes his appearance and begins to resemble an animal. At the same time, his mind and behavior change. It is difficult to say how reliable the information about changes in a person’s appearance is. But the fact that his internal state can become similar to the state of an angry beast is very similar to the truth.”

It is difficult to say whether Chikatilo changed his appearance at the time of the attacks. He never allowed any breakdowns - not a single victim managed to escape. But the actions of a maniac are fully consistent with logic - the bestial, inhuman logic of a predator. This is confirmed by his typical behavior pattern.

From the analytical operational documents of the Department of Internal Affairs of the Rostov Region for lettering “Lesopolosa”:

“To contact the victim, Chikatilo chose the most crowded places: train stations, streets, electric trains, so that his search activity would not be noticeable. He never created conflict situations and tried not to attract the attention of others. If contact took place, Chikatilo always left first, and the victim followed him. To commit the murder, he chose places located close to public transport stops in order to quickly leave the crime scene. Before attacking the victim, Chikatilo walked with her for a distance of one and a half to five kilometers. This made it possible to assess the situation and check for surveillance or other danger. He never left witnesses. After the criminal “switched on” to murder mode, the victim had no chance - no one was able to escape. More than half of Chikatilo’s attacks were carried out on the territory adjacent to the railway, and the victims’ cries for help were drowned out by the noise of passing freight trains and electric trains. Other places are significantly removed from populated areas and crowds of people. In 1988-1990, feeling the special attention of law enforcement agencies, he tries to avoid traditional places to search for victims and often changes the attack pattern. When committing the last murder of the series, twenty-two-year-old S. Korostik, the maniac leaves on the “Forest-Steppe” platform, and returns home by train from another “Leskhoz” platform. All this allows psychiatrists to make a reasonable conclusion about the criminal’s fully preserved intelligence.”

Since the early eighties, when murders were repeated year after year with terrifying consistency, people involved in the Forest Belt often had a feeling of complete hopelessness in successfully completing the search. The whole vast country was looking for him: the police, agents, non-staff law enforcement officers, vigilantes, the still powerful apparatus of the KGB of the USSR in those years was involved in the work more than once, but there was no result.

The importance attached to the disclosure of the bloody series is evidenced by this fact. 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 RSFR I. Zemlyanushin. And it opened with the words (I quote from the protocol): “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 head of the investigative and operational group was Issa Kostoev, who held the position of deputy head of the investigative unit of the RSFSR Prosecutor's Office. The appointment turned out to be successful. It was Kostoev who had the opportunity to sign the indictment of the man whom many consider the super-murderer of the twentieth century.

But the investigator's finest hour was ahead.

In 1987, having taken charge of the investigation, Kostoev was in the same predicament as the others. Having exhausted the usual methods of searching and analyzing materials, the head of the investigative team turned for advice to the maniac Slivko, who was sentenced by the court to death. Issa Kostoev spent the whole day with the killer on death row. He, having listened to the prosecutor’s employee and familiarized himself with the circumstances of the case, just threw up his hands: “It’s useless. This is impossible to calculate. I know it from myself.” Let me remind you that the sadist Slivko could not be caught for more than twenty years...

In the case of Chikatilo, the nightmare lasted twelve years. When he was detained and charged with 36 premeditated murders with extreme cruelty, he confessed to... 53! Women, girls and boys. He recalled in detail where, under what circumstances he met, where he took him, what he did. According to his testimony, police officers opened more than one “burial ground” and discovered the places of death of dozens of wanted children: in the forest, on the outskirts of the cemetery, near railway, next to the river floodplain.

Outwardly, the man who committed 53 murders looked like an inconspicuous, bald, club-footed man. He was fifty-four years old. Andrei Chikatilo had a higher education - he graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Rostov University, was well-read and erudite. He was well versed in literature, knew history, and knew the biographies of many American presidents.

Chikatilo’s marital status was no different from others. Married, caring father of two children - a daughter and a son. He managed to become a grandfather, according to his relatives, caring and gentle. In everyday life, Chikatilo was the same as everyone else. He wore a suit with a bib, wore a hat, and held an ordinary accounting briefcase in his hands. If you meet someone like that in a crowd, you’ll never be able to pick him out. Who would think that in the briefcase of this inconspicuous, gray man there is a sharply sharpened knife, rope and Vaseline, prepared for the next victim?

Studying the case materials, I couldn’t help but be surprised: 53 murders, and not a single witness! What is this - luck, fate, miscalculation of operational services? After all, more than 200 thousand people were checked for involvement in crimes. And how many people were interviewed on trains, at train stations, in villages, convoys, airports, schools, residential buildings...

According to criminal investigation officers, Chikatilo had an exceptional, almost animal instinct. In a heterogeneous crowd waiting for a bus or train, he carefully selected a suitable object (as a rule, they were women or children), preferring to deal with mentally disabled or degenerate people. It’s easier to get in touch with them, and Chikatilo already had a similar experience, having worked for several years at a school for mentally retarded teenagers. Last years he worked as an engineer in the supply department of the Rostov Electric Locomotive Repair Plant. A specialty that requires the ability to easily find a common language with any person and provides great freedom of action and a lot of uncontrolled time. Chikatilo used all this for his own purposes. He was constantly searching and selecting victims.

According to the testimony of Alexander Bukhanovsky, a psychiatrist at the Rostov Medical Institute (his talent and knowledge provided invaluable assistance in solving the crime), those with whom the maniac came into contact were tens, hundreds of times larger. Subsequently, Bukhanovsky managed to find an approach to the detainee and even approximately recreate his manner of communication with the object of interest. Having struck up a conversation with the future victim, Chikatilo transformed, becoming an interesting interlocutor, a responsive and gallant man. The killer offered to help carry the bags to a kind, beautiful girl from a good family. Her naked corpse with numerous stab wounds was discovered the next day in a grove of the Aviator Park in Rostov.

He "worked" with a potential victim. I found a personal approach to each one. He promised booze to some, money to others, and captivated others with stories. If a boy collected stamps, he promised to give valuable items from his collection. Someone was lured by the prospect of watching a video film. He had tricks ready for all occasions. One day he asked the guy to show him the place where hazelnuts grew. But he did not forcibly take anyone away; he felt that it was not working - he turned around and began searching for a new object. This probably explains the lack of witnesses.

There were two occasions when people saw him walking with a future victim. But everything seemed so natural, it never occurred to anyone to remember the signs of the “gray monster.” And the identikit photographs created from the fragmentary and vague memories of random passers-by bore little resemblance to the original. Chikatilo acted calmly and cautiously. With his good-natured appearance and prudence, he fascinated the victim. It’s hard to believe, but there were cases when children voluntarily walked with him several kilometers to a suitable place.

... In 1978, a girl was brutally murdered in Shakhty. A certain Kravchenko is detained on suspicion. Why? A few years earlier, he committed a similar crime - he raped and killed a child. Then, given Kravchenko’s age, the court considered it possible to commute the sentence. After serving several years, he was released on parole and worked in chemistry. The crime in Shakhty was committed not far from his place of residence.

In hindsight, we can talk about the glaring mistakes of the investigation and the bias of the court. Now we know who the real killer was. And then, in 1978, Kravchenko himself admitted to the murder and gave a “full account.” Was there any reason to doubt his confessions? Were. Moreover, the suspect himself changed his testimony more than once. Three times the case was returned for further investigation, three times prosecutors and court officials studied the materials. And yet, Kravchenko was sentenced to an exceptional punishment. When did it become clear that a terrible mistake had occurred? Twelve years later, when Chikatilo detailed the details of the episode, which became the first in a string of rapes and bloody murders.

The series began to be viewed in 1982. On the afternoon of June 12, her parents sent thirteen-year-old Lyuba B. to a store in the neighboring village of Donskoy. The child’s body was found 16 days later in a forest belt.

A month later, there were two murders at once - sixteen-year-old K. and twenty-year-old N. Both girls were found in the area of ​​​​the forest belt. On December 11, the already mentioned ten-year-old Olya S. finished classes at the Novoshakhtinsk music school and went home. Since then, no one has seen her alive. The girl's body was found in a field only four months later. Nearby there is the same forest belt.

Terrible rumors spread across the Rostov region. But they could not reflect the horror of what was happening. The victims usually have up to seventy stab wounds on their bodies, and almost all of them have eye injuries. The first version is that a morgue worker is acting. How else can we explain that the criminal disembowelled the dead like an experienced pathologist? Moreover, the excised organs could not be found at the crime scene. Why did Chikatilo perform monstrous operations? His wife’s testimony once flashed: “He always took a saucepan with him. He said that he boils tea in it at work...”

The case was put under control by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Union and received the symbol “Forest Belt”. They worked on people convicted of similar crimes, previously convicted, prone to violence, and registered with a psychiatrist. Drivers of vehicles were checked, as doubts arose that the victims could independently travel such distances with the killer. Any signal or evidence that would relate to the murders committed was checked.

And suddenly an ominous postcard arrived at the Main Post Office of Novoshakhtinsk. On the same day, she lay on the table of the criminal investigation officers working on “Forest Belt”. Here is her text:

“To the parents of the missing girl. Hello parents. Don't be upset. Not your first - not your last. We need 10 of these by New Year. If you want to bury it, look for it in the leaves of the Darovskaya planting. Sadist Black Cat."

The operatives tried to extract as much information as possible from the text. It was clear that the postcard was written by a person who knew the area - the name “Darovskaya Landing” is used only by residents of nearby villages. Detectives went to the place, interviewed people, talked with postal workers several times: who wrote, what did the person look like, did they take a pencil? Unfortunately, the surveys did not yield anything significant, and time passed. The search for the “Black Cat” was given special attention also because the killer, who had always acted with particular cruelty, this time surpassed himself. They cut out the child's heart...

Great hopes were placed on the analysis of the handwriting of the person writing the postcard. Specialists from the operational and technical department of the USSR KGB in the Rostov region carefully studied the writing style and identified the main characteristic details of the handwriting. A special table was compiled in which “keys” are marked for identifying handwriting on a postcard with other handwritten texts.

Tens of thousands of applications were checked in the personnel departments of Rostov enterprises, institutions, collective farms, and state farms. The handwritings of those hired for work in Novocherkassk, Shakhty, Novoshakhtinsk, and Rostov were compared. Anonymous letters, letters from “well-wishers,” and unidentified correspondents were studied. It was not possible to trace the “cat” using any of them.

They searched for the girl's body in the landing area - they dug up all the ground in the area until they were convinced that she was not there. The child's body was found in the opposite direction. Accident? Looking ahead, I will say: and later, four years later, without establishing the authorship of the postcard, they again worked with its text and tried to determine the identity of the writer. They never managed to do this.

Chikatilo himself denied his involvement in the “Black Cat”. It is still unknown who the author of the cynical and ruthless “joke” is. Frankly, I was skeptical about this story. Why would the criminal investigation department engage in unpromising work and divert powerful forces? Then they told me that it was the comparison of handwriting that helped to find the Vitebsk murderer Mikhasevich, whose victims were 36 women. This means that the “cat” was not practiced in vain. Moreover, his prediction of ten victims tragically came true. In 1983, exactly ten corpses were found in the Rostov region. By all indications, the crime belonged to the “Forest Belt” series.

What happened in 1984, and today, many years later, makes the employees involved in the Rostov series gloomy. Twelve people. He cut, raped, and killed indiscriminately: a mother and daughter, a schoolboy who went to the Chess Olympiad, a tramp who decided to drink at someone else’s expense. Same way. Monthly. And in July and August - three people at a time.

Viktor Burakov, who headed the special task force (now with the rank of general, he heads the criminal police of the Rostov Central Internal Affairs Directorate), turns to psychiatrists and sex therapists: you need to understand the motivation of the criminal’s behavior - where does such sadism come from? Is there a way to predict his actions? Is it possible to create a psychological portrait of him based on the meager data available?

Based on the case materials, a psychological portrait of the criminal was compiled. Now you can see how close it is to the original. This is the orientation: physically well developed, perhaps possessing virtues and manners attractive to women. By nature he is closed, keeps himself apart, is unsociable, lives alone or with close relatives, and perhaps has his own vehicle. When the victim is identified, the criminal turns from a closed and uncommunicative person into a talkative, charming, personable person.

Experts carefully studied everything related to the crimes - the time of day the crime was committed, the place where the victims met, their height, appearance, eye color, hair color, manner of dressing and speaking. It was found that the killer prefers people with brown hair and avoids those with curly hair. Doctors even took into account such a parameter as electrical discharges in the atmosphere. It seemed that everything that could be done had been done...

According to the head of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate of the Rostov Region, Mikhail Fetisov, the operatives tried to be proactive, calculate the criminal’s next move and lure him into a trap. The entire multi-kilometer Taganrog-Donetsk-Rostov-Salsk highway was controlled by police officers, and operational cover was provided for suburban trains, buses, and stations.

Accompanied by operatives, the search officers, dressed “in the style” of the maniac, rode on night trains and walked in forested areas as bait. Hidden police posts were set up, helicopters regularly flew over the controlled territory, and in the Aviator Park in Rostov, where five corpses were found, detectives disguised as cyclists were constantly on duty. They tried to create “pockets”: they openly showed where the posts were located and lured them into traps. And what? During the day, in the center of the city, on a small island of greenery next to a highway overpass, he killed the next child.

Having visited Rostov-on-Don, I took a special look at this place. Next to the lawn, where stunted bushes and birch trees stick out, cars rush by, city buses drive by, pedestrians scurry about. At a distance there are residential multi-storey buildings and shops. How could the tragedy happen? Why again, not a single witness, eyewitness? Mikhail Fetisov, recalling that terrible summer, admitted that every time he returned home, the first thing he did was go into his sleeping son’s room - he wanted to personally make sure that everything was okay with him.

Chikatilo was arrested for the first time in the fall of 1984. It was that year that criminal investigation officer Alexander Zanosovsky, who was on duty at the bus station, detained a suspicious man. The instincts of an experienced operative worked flawlessly. He took Chikatilo under his wing, noticing that he was interested in lonely tramps.

In the materials of "Forest Belt" there is a unique report - an explanation of police captain Zanosovsky, who, together with his partner Akhmatkhanov, detained Chikatilo six years before he was officially charged! I intend to quote the report in full. After all, it is nothing more than a documentary story about the search for the bloodiest maniac of our days for his next victim:

“I was on duty at the bus station with Akhmatkhanov. They were dressed in civilian uniform. Being near a public transport stop, I noticed a tall, about 180 centimeters, thin man of about forty-five. His facial features resembled a man wanted from an identikit. He was wearing glasses, without a headdress , had a brown briefcase with him. He had behaved suspiciously before, and we decided to watch him. Bus No. 7 approached from the railway station towards the airport. The observed one twirled among the passengers and boarded the bus. We followed him in. What immediately caught our eye his strange behavior.He behaved restlessly, constantly turning his head, as if he was checking if he was being followed.

Not noticing anything suspicious, the observed person tried to make contact with the girl standing next to him. She was wearing a dress with a slit across the chest. He didn't take his eyes off her body. On the way, the citizen touched one of the women’s legs, a conflict began, and he was forced to leave the salon. He crossed to the other side and stood with the passengers waiting for the regular bus in the other direction. The bus arrived, let's go back... He stood in front of the women in the cabin, looked at them closely, pressed himself against them. I sat down next to a lonely girl and tried to talk to her, but she got up and got off at the nearest stop. The observed hurried after her, but the girl quickly left. The citizen moved towards the store, near which a group of women was standing. He approached them and then walked away. This went on for 15-20 minutes. Then he walked to the next stop, and from there he arrived at the train station. I sat for about twenty minutes looking around next to the sleeping woman and went to the main bus station. I approached groups of women, listened, and went up to the waiting room.

He sat down next to a girl who was reading a book and spoke affectionately about something. When the girl went down to the first floor, we learned from her that a citizen was interested in where she was going. Having learned that the girl was going to the village of Morozovsk, the observed person was happy and said that he was going there too. He said about himself that he works as a teacher. When the first girl left, a young woman sat down next to the citizen. They started talking. The observed person first hugged her, and then put the girl’s head on his lap, covered her with a jacket and began manipulations of an obviously sexual nature. After that, they left the bus station building separately. From there the observed person went to the Central Market, where he was detained by us.”

Alexander Zanosovsky told me about that incident with the chagrin of a professional detective:

“When I grabbed him by the collar, I realized that I was not mistaken. Sweat poured down his face like a hail, he became nervous, and visibly turned pale. We opened the briefcase - there was a sharp knife, rope, a towel, Vaseline... Isn't it enough to seriously work with it? But for some reason no one did this. It turned out that citizen Chikatilo had an inappropriate second blood type. Still not: I can forgive myself for not interrogating him personally at the police department, handing him over to the prosecutor’s office investigator...”

A clarification is necessary here. Traces of group IV sperm were found on many victims. It is generally accepted (at least until recently) that all human secretions belong to the same group. And therefore the search for the criminal was concentrated on people with the fourth blood group.

From the materials of the criminal case: “... it should be noted that an extremely rare phenomenon characteristic of Chikatilo is a paradoxical discharge: blood is of the second group, and other discharges are of the fourth group. Provided that the criminal was searched for by blood group, this phenomenon provided Chikatilo with a kind of alibi... Knowing that the investigation was looking for a person with the fourth excretion group for the murders he committed, Chikatilo, in order to prevent the detection of his biological secretions in his next victims, pushed earth into their rectums , and from the teenager he killed, Yaroslav M., he completely tore out and threw away the rectum.”

To this day, in the criminal investigation department of the Rostov Municipal Department of Internal Affairs there is a cabinet with a file cabinet “Forest Belt”. It contains twenty-five thousand cards where information about those who came to the attention of the police was recorded. Persons who were delayed in the forest belt or had sexual deviations were automatically included in the card index; data about drivers of vehicles who found themselves in the crime area were also entered there. People with the fourth blood group were especially carefully processed, regardless of their alibi or place of work.

Suspect Chikatilo, detained by Zanosovsky and Akhmatkhanov, was taken to the police department at his place of residence. His case was handled by a member of the team of the RSFSR Prosecutor's Office, prosecutor-criminologist of the Saratov region, Yu. Moiseev. The detainee turned out to have the second blood type, which means he could not have anything to do with the murders in the forest belt. True, Chikatilo still had minor sins. He was sent to jail for the theft of linoleum and a battery. The sentence he received was trivial, considering that by that time the sadist had killed more than a dozen people.

From the case materials: “Chikatilo was initially tested for involvement in a series of murders in Rostov-on-Don, and then was transferred to Novoshakhtinsk to be tested for involvement in the murder of minor P., whose case was investigated separately. These formal checks, carried out without taking into account all investigative and operational materials, as in 1978 after the murder of Z., allowed Chikatilo to evade responsibility for the second time. Moreover, the loss of the seized knife, which, according to his confession, was used to commit several murders, and some other items that were material evidence in the case, significantly complicated the course of the investigation”...

Chikatilo was not behind bars for long. Having been released in December 1984, already in January he got a job as an engineer and then head of the metals department of the Novocherkassk Electric Locomotive Plant. And, taking his irreplaceable briefcase in his hands, he set off to wander around Rostov in search of his next victim.

In August 1985, Chikatilo went on a business trip to Moscow. In a copse near the Domodedovo airport building, he attacks eighteen-year-old Pokhlistova. He kills with cruelty, surprising even for such a beast as he. He inflicts several blows with a knife, ties his hands with twine and starts stabbing again, receiving special pleasure from this. Then he completely undresses the dying girl and... bites off the nipples of her breasts.

And later that month he meets a drunken tramp near the Shakhty bus station. Her tortured corpse is found nearby in the forest plantations. The victim's mouth is filled to the stomach with dry leaves and dirt...

Criminal investigation officers are beginning to work on anyone who might have come into contact with the tramp. It was established that she was in the reception center that day. Suspicion fell on one of the police officers - the driver of the car, but after a thorough check the version was discarded. I am writing about this to remind you that everyone was tested for involvement in the “Forest Belt”, regardless of their social status and professional activities.

By the way, a police officer was suspected of being guilty of the Moscow murder (the same “forest-belt” style of the crime). After interviewing Domodedovo passengers, it turned out that a brand new police UAZ without license plates had been seen nearby. In the town of Sukhobezvodnaya, Gorky Region, ordinary UAZs are converted into police vehicles, and the route from there to Rostov-on-Don passes by Domodedovo. We checked and it was consistent: in those days, one of the employees of the Rostov Department of Internal Affairs was on a business trip. He had to drive a new car. A lot of things were the same. The suspect’s son studied at a boarding school in the Shakhtinsky district. The father often went to visit the child, and along the way he could end up in places where crimes were committed. They checked everything, calculated the route literally by meters, calculated alibis by minutes, compared blood types, interviewed acquaintances, looked for witnesses. It was not confirmed, again a dead end, the killer remained uncaught.

The launched search engine, like a huge dredge, eliminated everyone who was of interest to the investigation. Later, police officers will publish such figures. More than 200 thousand people were checked for involvement in crimes. All data was entered into the computer memory. During Operation Forest Belt, information was accumulated on 48 thousand people with any sexual deviations. Law enforcement officials had the idea that the criminal should be looked for among persons who had not previously been convicted. But work was carried out in all directions.

Over the years of the search, 5,845 people who previously had a criminal record were placed on special records. More than 10 thousand socially dangerous mentally ill people were in the field of view, 419 homosexuals were identified (at one time the version was worked out that the criminal was from among them). 163 thousand drivers of personal and state vehicles were checked for involvement in the “Forest Belt”.

During the existence of the operational-investigative group, which included up to fifty first-class specialists from the region, republic and country, 1062 crimes were solved. Among them are forty murders, 245 rapes, robberies, assaults, thefts, 91 cases of sodomy and debauchery.

Teams of specialists filmed men walking with children in order to later identify them and conduct a check. Hours of video recordings of station life were made. During the search process, they could help identify the culprit. Riot policemen with night vision devices sat in hiding places in the forest planting area in the hope of discovering someone who had been escaping the network for more than ten years.

What to call him: monster, werewolf, inhuman?

Chikatilo's wife insisted that he could not stand the sight of blood and was very worried when she had to have an abortion. But at the same time, according to her, for the last seven years he has avoided intimacy with her, rejecting any attempts with indignation: “I'm a slacker, I'm getting fat! What do you want: give me a stallion?”

Was it possible to identify the maniac earlier?

According to the head of the Main Criminal Investigation Department of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ivan Khrapov, if the murders were not on a sexual basis, they would have been solved much faster. Even if the blood type is incorrectly determined and other costs occur. But in this case, the detectives did not have any information. Such crimes are carefully hidden from others, as they are considered a disgrace even in the criminal environment, so talking about them is not only not accepted, but also dangerous. It was clear that the established operational methods were not suitable. The agents, with the help of which many crimes are solved, are unable to help here, and you can only rely on your own strength, perseverance and experience of the employees.

It is clear that Chikatilo hid his second life from others. He himself (if you believe his “confession”) tried not to think about her even at the moment when his eyes were looking for a victim. The maniac changed unexpectedly - it got stuck, and he suddenly turned from a kind guy into a brutal rapist.

And another interesting detail in the knowledge of Chikatilo’s personality. He was once asked if he was worried about what happened, did he feel sorry for those killed? He calmly answered in a dull voice: “I didn’t feel sorry for anyone. When I left the forest belt, everything was left behind, beyond some line.”

There seemed to be no end to this. They wait in Rostov, and he kills in Shakhty or Novocherkassk. They take control of these areas, but trouble happens again in another place. Dead children are found in the Botanical Garden of Rostov. Already other rapists and murderers are targeting Chikatilo, knowing his manner of dealing with his victims. They are caught, exposed, and their crimes are proven. And he still remains at large. This happened a year before the ripper was caught.

A code message came from the Salsky district: in the area of ​​the village of Novo-Manych, in a forest belt, the disfigured body of a raped woman was found. The entire task force rushes to the scene. The handwriting is the same - the wounds, the nature of the damage, the naked corpse...

It is known that in villages, where every resident is visible, it is more difficult to conceal any information than in the city. Once again, it seemed to the detectives that luck was close. They quickly created a photo identikit of the murdered woman, set up posts on the roads, questioned passing drivers: had they seen the victim on that fateful day, had they given the man a lift to that place? And soon one of the drivers remembered the man and even mentioned his last name. It turned out that he was a twenty-year-old guy who had once been convicted of rape and lived in the Salsky district after his release. The detainee confessed to his crime and spoke about another murder. But, as the audit found out, he had nothing to do with the Rostov series...

1990 brings new murders. Nine people become victims in Shakhty, the Rostov Botanical Garden and, of course, their favorite place - a forest belt stretching along the railway tracks. It was there, near the Leskhoz station, that the long bloody trail of the ripper ended. November 1990 appeared on the calendar...

Having got off at the next station, Chikatilo goes into the forest with the victim, does his job and returns to the train alone. An employee of the erected barrier, Igor Rybakov, asks to present a document. He quite calmly shows his passport: “I’m returning from a friend at the dacha.” The operative records the name. Outwardly, he was an ordinary elderly man, neat (his shoes were washed in a puddle of mud), with a tie, and a briefcase in his hands. Only on the neck is some kind of pink spot. Like crushed blood. Now it seems that the nets were so tightly placed that the killer could not avoid getting caught in them. But this time Chikatilo bypasses all the barriers.

A few days later, mushroom pickers find another corpse near the Leskhoz station. The medical examiner determines the time of death to be seven to eight days. They check the reports of the employees on duty that day. One of them mentions the name Chikatilo. Second blood group? Has it already come into view?

From that moment on, Chikatilo found himself under the close attention of criminal investigation officers. All his movements around the city were recorded, connections were checked, and his biography was studied. And it became increasingly clear: this is him. There can't be that many coincidences. The suspicion was confirmed by Chikatilo's behavior. He was actively searching, making acquaintances with single women, children, and appearing in “those” places.

The arrest of the maniac was carried out by Vladimir Kolesnikov, at that time the deputy head of the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Rostov Region, and now the First Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia. The detention of the most terrible criminal of this century looked routine, without chases or shootouts. Kolesnikov waited for the subject to leave the cafe: “Are you Chikatilo?” Hearing an affirmative answer, he gave the command to the detectives. The handcuffs clicked on the maniac’s wrists and he slowly, raking his legs, walked, accompanied by operatives, to the waiting car...

When Chikatilo began to testify, “debriefs” were organized - as detectives put it, these are trips to the crime scene with a video camera to consolidate the facts. In one of the districts of Shakhty, upon learning of the arrival of the killer, crowds of people surrounded the place where the child died. To prevent lynching from happening, we had to urgently call riot police and bring in soldiers from the nearest military unit to cordon off.

During the hearing of the case, which took place in the regional court for almost six months, Chikatilo tried to feign insanity. He shouted, insulted the judge and assessors, and one day he staged a “striptease” - despite the handcuffs, he managed to pull down his trousers. The maniac's efforts were in vain. Doctors declared him sane, and the court verdict - execution - was met with applause from everyone in the hall of the Rostov House of Justice. Such a conclusion to the story of a man whose name has become synonymous with fear and suffering is logical; one could not expect anything else. But the identity of the killer itself is surprising and remains a mystery.

Many have tried to decipher Chikatilo. And many managed to communicate with him. During the preliminary investigation and already awaiting execution of the sentence in the Novocherkassk death row prison, the maniac did not shy away from meetings, talked with operatives, psychiatrists, psychologists, and journalists. Everyone saw him differently. To some he seemed like an absolute schizophrenic, poorly oriented in the world around him and didn’t even understand where he would soon be taken from his prison cell. To others he seemed to be a cunning monster with a well-preserved intellect, who did not lose hope for the abolition of the death penalty and was ready to use any chance for this.

From conversations with those who saw him after his arrest, it is clear that Chikatilo never revealed himself to anyone, reflecting only a part of his “I”, a fragment of consciousness. Like a broken mirror and then glued together from the fragments.

Who was Chikatilo?

What allowed him to scour the country like an invulnerable beast for twelve years in search of new victims and commit murders of incredible cruelty? It’s impossible to explain everything by mistakes of the police and the prosecutor’s office, miscalculations of science or a coincidence of circumstances. There is no answer to the natural question: did Chikatilo himself understand who he really was?

Committed 53 proven murders (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, 14 girls aged 9 to 17 years and 17 girls and women. Before his arrest, Alexander Kravchenko was shot for the murder committed by Chikatilo. Nicknames: “Mad Beast”, “Rostov Ripper”, “Red Ripper”, “Forest Belt Killer”, “Citizen X”, “Satan”, “Soviet Jack the Ripper”

Biography before 1978

In 1943, A. Chikatilo had a sister. His father, who was at the front at that time, could hardly be the father of the girl. 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.

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

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. It is worth noting that the area where the murder took place is quite disadvantaged - the private sector, where workers of local enterprises lived who were prone to drinking.

As it turned out later, Chikatilo lured the girl into the “mud” 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.

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”).

Photo identikit of the “Rostov Ripper”

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.

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, Chikatilo was placed under surveillance. He behaved suspiciously: he tried to meet boys and girls, and appeared in places where corpses were found.

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

Sexual violence

Many experts, even those who participated in the examination of Chikatilo, claim that he never raped his victims, as 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 allowed to establish 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 was 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 Chikatilo as sane, that is, “not suffering from any mental illness and retaining the ability to be aware of and direct his actions.” 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 escaped execution and ended up in a special hospital. Therefore, theoretically, after some time he could be free.

"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.

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 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 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, 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 - 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.

List of victims

Andrey Chikatilo born on October 16, 1936 in the village of Yablochnoye, Velikopisarevsky district, Sumy region, Ukrainian SSR. Ukrainian. As the family said, at the time of his birth there was a strong thunderstorm, unusual for October at these latitudes. 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 1941, his father went to the front, was captured and was enrolled as a “traitor to the Motherland.”

In 1943, A. Chikatilo sister was born. His father, who was at the front at that time, could hardly be the father of the girl. Therefore, it is possible that at the age of 6-7 years he 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 went to first grade. When famine began in Ukraine in 1946, he did not leave the house, fearing that he might be caught and eaten: his mother told him that during the Holodomor, his older brother Stepan was allegedly kidnapped and eaten. There is also a version that the parents themselves ate the elder brother during a famine. Subsequently, no documents about the birth and death of Stepan were found.

In 1954 Andrey 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, in the troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where, according to him, he was subjected to all kinds of humiliation, including sexual.

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

In 1962, sister Chikatilo 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. That same year, Faina gave birth to a boy who died eight months later. In 1965 Chikatilo daughter Lyudmila was born, and on August 15, 1969, son Yuri was born, who later became a criminal.

In April 1965 Chikatilo got a job as chairman of the district physical education and sports committee. 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 a boarding school? 32 Novoshakhtinsk.

In 1972, he was beaten by school students when he was caught trying to have oral sex with a sleeping student. After this incident, he began to always carry a knife with him.

In 1974, he began working as a master of industrial training at the Novoshakhtinsky State Technical University-39.

In 1978, he moved with his family to Shakhty, where in September he began working as a teacher at GPTU-33, and in December he committed his first murder.

First murder

December 22, 1978 Chikatilo killed his first victim - 9-year-old Elena Zakotnova. The murder took place in house No. 26 (the so-called “muzanka”) on Mezhevoy Lane, which Chikatilo I bought it for 1,500 rubles secretly from my family and used it 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 N11, Lenochka 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. It was an emergency! The murder of a child, and even with particular cruelty associated with sexual violence, at that time 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. It is worth noting that the area where the murder took place is quite disadvantaged - the private sector, where workers of local enterprises lived, prone to drinking, quite a large number of lumpen.

As it turned out later, Chikatilo lured the girl into the “mud” 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. Afraid that the neighbors would hear her, Chikatilo he leaned on her and began to choke her. The victim's suffering aroused him and he experienced an orgasm.

The girl's body and her school bag Chikatilo threw it 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 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 he committed Chikatilo.

However, the investigation also had one more suspect. On January 8, 1979, in Cherkessk (Rostov region), a certain Anatoly Grigoriev, 50 years old, a native of the city of Shakhty, hanged himself. 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 “who was written about in the newspapers.” The workers knew that “Only when drunk, his imagination awakens,” and therefore no one believed him. However, Grigoriev apparently expected that these drunken revelations would still come back to haunt him. Arriving to visit his daughter in Cherkessk, he was very worried, drank a lot, cried that he had not killed anyone, but had blamed himself in vain. After waiting until his daughter went to work, Grigoriev hanged himself in the toilet. The investigation established that Anatoly learned about the murder from newspapers and committed self-incrimination, trying in such a strange way to raise his authority among his colleagues.

The beginning of a killing spree

The first murder scared me Chikatilo, and he didn’t kill anyone for 3 years. 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 stabbed her several times, filled her mouth with dirt, strangled her and bit off her nipples. 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 met future victims at bus stops and train stations, under some plausible pretext (to show a shortcut, puppies, stamps, a video recorder, etc.) lured them into a forest belt and, having gone far enough into the depths of the forest (sometimes the victims passed with killer a few kilometers - Chikatilo always walked in front), 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. He was rarely able to have sexual intercourse with the victim and achieved orgasm at the moment of murder, touching the corpse with his penis.

First arrest

1984 marks the peak of activity Chikatilo- he killed 15 people, the total number of his victims reached 32. On August 1, he assumed the position 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 and two rolls of rope were found in his briefcase (for some reason all of this was returned 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 supposedly there was a so-called “paradoxical excretion”: his blood was of the second group, and his body secretions 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 released without conducting a more detailed investigation and analysis. However, he was expelled from the CPSU, of which he had been a member since 1960, and sentenced to a year of correctional labor. But he was released on December 12, 1984. In January 1985 Chikatilo moved with his family to Novocherkassk and there 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, 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 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, he 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 his arrest Chikatilo. 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 useless,” he said. “It’s impossible to calculate this. I know it from myself.” A few hours after the interview with Kostoev, Slivko was shot.

Psychological portrait of a killer

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 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 reciprocating 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 the murders), or his work involved traveling. He might stop killing for a while if he sensed danger, but he wouldn't stop until he was caught or died.

Second arrest, trial and execution

In 1990 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 his documents. Having fixed the 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. After checking the reports of the police officers on duty at the time, Kostoev drew attention to the surname Chikatilo, who was already detained in 1984 on suspicion of involvement in murders in forest belts. November 17 for Chikatilo established constant surveillance. 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 had bitten through during the struggle. The finger turned out to be broken. Chikatilo returned home, then went to the kiosk for beer (according to other sources, for kvass, since he was categorically against drinking alcohol). Along the way, he tried to meet boys. That's when he was arrested. During a search of his house, they found 23 kitchen knives (it is still not known for sure 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.

Chikatilo They interrogated him 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 to testify. He was accused of 36 murders, and he confessed to 56.

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, 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 investigation could not prove three murders, so the official number of his victims is 53. In addition, Chikatilo several cases of child molestation were charged.

While on death row, Chikatilo wrote numerous complaints and requests for pardon, looked after his health: did exercises, ate with appetite.

On January 4, 1994, the last request for pardon addressed to Russian President Boris Yeltsin was rejected. The 14th of February 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, indicates that at least one of his victims was found with signs of rape and semen was found in her anus (for the first time allowing the Bloodline Killer's blood type to be determined). When first arrested Chikatilo in 1984 and the 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 clearly recognized Chikatilo sane, that is, “not suffering from any mental illness and retaining the ability to be aware of and direct their actions.” However, Nikolai Modestov believes that the doctors’ verdict was dictated by the desire to protect society from the killer. If he 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 states that, in his opinion, Chikatilo was ill, and after the adoption of the new Criminal Code he could be recognized as “limitedly sane,” which would also mean a special-purpose psychiatric hospital.

Confession Chikatilo 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"

But in 1958, the Italian scientist G. Morganti discovered the phenomenon of an alleged qualitative mismatch in A0 antigens of blood and secretions (for example, in a person with the second blood group, antigens of the third were found in the sperm). Morganti proposed the term “paradoxical excretion”, and he considered such a “feature” of the body to be either genetically determined or associated with a disease (for example, with a sore throat, antigen A can be found in saliva, which is not in the blood, or in semen with trichomoniasis - antigen B ).

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 shortcomings 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. Blood type Chikatilo 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). U Chikatilo turned out to be 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 caused by bacterial contamination of the biological objects under study. The use of appropriate techniques and high-quality reagents would make it possible to avoid incorrect analytical results, but in the case of Chikatilo this was not done.

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 performed a blood test in 1984 Chikatilo.

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 are 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 on forensic psychology by Obraztsov and Bogomolova clearly refers to Chikatilo to the "disorganized asocial type." However Chikatilo not a pure representative of it. For example, according to the Hazelwood-Douglas criteria, a disorganized killer usually lives near the murder sites - Chikatilo he 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 and tries to get rid of the corpse - Chikatilo he left a “chaotic picture of the crime,” with a lot of evidence, and did not try to hide the body.

Chikatilo in popular culture

In 1997, the NTV television company shot a two-part documentary film “On the Trail of Satan” from the series “Criminal Russia”.

Based on the case Chikatilo two feature films were shot - "Citizen X" (1995) and "Evilenko" (2004) with Malcolm McDowell in the title role.

Tony Urban's horror film A Pound of Flesh (2004) features a female character, Sasha. Chikatilo(as well as Eva Gein, Iva Fish, etc., named after the most famous cannibal serial killers).

In June 2000, the premiere of Mikhail Volokhov's one-man show "Tower" took place at the Paris theater-studio Rene Guerra Chikatilo".

The group "Che's Orchestra" performs the song "Yes, I am Chekatilo", which indirectly refers to the famous maniac.

Chikatilo mentioned in the song of the group "Purgen" "All people are Chikatils", dating back to the early 1990s.

The song "Ripper von Rostow" (2004) by the German dark metal band Eisregen describes a murder Chikatilo his last victim Svetlana Korostik.

In the world of alternative reality, Lev Vershinin's dilogy "Selva Doesn't Like Strangers" and "Selva Can Wait" describes a special squad " Chikatilo".

In the song "Rive Gauche" by the group Brigadny Podrak (2007), the following words are heard: "It would be better if I fell under the knife of Chikatile than to go to this damned Rive Gauche."

The song "Cold Human Cheese" by the Russian group "Lunophobia" mentions Chikatilo.

In the repertoire of the group "Malyuta Skuratov" there is "Chekatilo's Song"

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. ()