The Soviet Ripper - How Police Caught This Evil Serial Killer

The psychiatrist, a man named Bukhanovsky, sits opposite chief investigator Burakov. Burakov hands him a photograph. “It’s him,” says Bukhanovsky, “You can put that down as kill number 40.” The photo glistens under a lamp as he lay sit on the table. The victim is partly exposed... both her eyes are missing. Bukhanovsky knows the police are dealing witha man filled with an indescribable rage. He’s as cruel as they come. Maybe the worst ever, and he won’t stop.

This man is married to murder. When that scene we’ve just described took place the police had almost given up hope of finding who they believed was Russia’s first serial killer. Not only was his kill count incredibly high, but he did things to his victims that cops couldn’t even bring themselves to tell love dones when they got home. The term “monster” was certainly deserved. That’s the reason they brought in a psychiatrist, someone who understood sexual rage, who could explain why a person would mutilate someone and derive carnal satisfaction from it.

These were dark times indeed in Rostov, a place which gained the unfortunate epithet of “the serial killer capital of the world”. Moscow wasn’t happy about bringing in an egg head to solve the crimes, and the cops themselves for the most part were a bit embarrassed, but what could they do? This killer needed to be stopped. And then they were shocked, almost appalled, when Bukhanovsky handed in his profiling report.

It said, you’re not exactly looking for Hannibal Lecter, but your maniac is very well-educated and getting on in years...and yes, he could definitely be cannibalizing his victims. It was only then that police started looking in some of the right places. It’s an assumption, mostly a faulty assumption that serial killers should look like people on the edge and live like people on the edge. That they should stand out, and not ever be the guy next door who plays with his dogs and pushes his kids on the swings in the park.

On the outside, Andrei Chikatilo looked like he lived a normal kind of life and didn’t pose a danger to people, but he was in fact one of the most demented, deranged, and dangerous people that’s ever walked the Earth. We’ll get around to some of his crimes soon, but what happened in this man’s childhood needs to be talked about.

He was born in 1936 in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. This was a time of famine when Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had introduced collective farming policies that had disastrous consequences. Chikatilo, along with his father and mother, were literally starving. When there was no bread to eat, they ate leaves and grass. When he was old enough to understand, his mother told him that before he was born his brother Stepan had been kidnapped and eaten by starving neighbors.

When his father went off to war and the Nazis occupied Ukraine, Chikatilo shared a single bed with his mother in what can only be described as a wretched hut. Many nights he wet the bed, after which his mother would teach him a lesson. It’s a grim story, and it doesn’t get much better after the war since in Ukraine there was a post-war famine. In fact, young Chikatilo was so starved he often passed out at school.

He was bullied for his meager size, and since he’d spent much of his life being humiliated by his mother, he wasn’t exactly sociable with girls. His shyness became even worse when he discovered that even though he liked the opposite sex, he was impotent. He passed the entrance exam for Moscow State University. He dated...He remained impotent and so that relationship didn’t last long. This happened again after he joined the army. In fact, after his arrest, he said, “Girls were going behind my back, whispering that I was impotent.

I was so ashamed…I thought no one would want such a shamed man. So, I had to run away from there, away from my homeland.” Away he went, to Rostov-on-Don, and there he landed a job as an engineer. He even married, but to conceive a child he and his wife were forced to inseminate in a way that didn’t involve penetration. Soon after, he obtained a degree in Russian literature and philology, and not long after that, he got a job teaching Russian literature. So yes, to onlookers this man might have looked harmless, but of course, he had some serious issues.

Those issues were soon understood when students complained that Chikatilo had groped them. Other students complained that they’d seen him fondling himself in class. He was removed from one teaching position, only to get other teaching positions elsewhere. This man should have been on the radar of police of course, and it’s surprising he hadn’t been sent to prison already, never mind leave one school and be able to gain employment at another.

We don’t know the reasons why he was able to do this, but it was likely because exposure to a teacher’s wrongdoings would have reflected badly on the school, which in turn would have reflected badly on the entire education system and Soviet-style education in general. But the students, or at least some of them, weren’t putting up with it.

Some of the boys beat him up while the parents complained on several occasions. Chikatilo was eventually pushed out of the schools, but he landed the perfect job for a killer, a purchaser for a company whose job required a lot of travel. This way he could commit murders in various places as he was on the move. Prior to finding this job he’d already murdered a girl. Her backpack was found close to a house that he’d bought.

The Soviet Ripper - How Police Caught This Evil Serial Killer

A witness had said she’d seen a man fitting his description talking with the girl. Even blood spots were found near his house, but as would happen later in his life, police looked right through him. As an upstanding Communist Party member, he simply didn’t fit the profile of a deranged killer. Another man was later arrested for the crime, who himself had a history of violence.

He hadn’t killed the girl, though, and only confessed to the crime after some heavy-handed police interrogations. He had a watertight alibi for the night of the crime but was eventually executed by firing squad for the murder that Chikatilo had committed. There is a gaping problem of course when police pacify the public and relatives of the victim when they announce they got their man, and they know they likely don’t.

It means the real killer is still on the loose and they have closed the case. The next murders involved killing women when he was away on business. He hadn’t planned the murders but when the urge took him, his monstrous side overwhelmed any amount of decency he had someone deep inside of him. Each time he’d find a woman, or girl, less so a young man or boy, walking in the streets. He’d initiate a conversation and lure them to a quiet place such as a forest.

There he’d achieve his state of arousal by mutilating them with a knife, and sometimes with his teeth. Police discovered bodies that had been ripped almost from head to toe, hence the killer would later become known as the Rostov Ripper. Some of the victims were prostitutes or were runaways, which is one of the reasons why Chikatilo got away with the crimes for so long.

Much has been written about the so-called “less-dead” people, who are usually poor folks whose death may not be a pressing concern for cops. Even so, Russian police were finding bodies in such a terrible state they knew they had something monstrous on their hands. Locals who knew about the cases started talking about a werewolf being on the loose.

At the time, though, strict state-controlled media didn’t talk about serial killers. In fact, they weren’t supposed to be a thing in the Soviet Union. Moscow at first played down the possibility of a serial killer being among the people, saying that kind of thing is a western phenomenon. This is one reason why information about Chikatilo’s crimes was suppressed, but in the end, Moscow had to admit that a terrible person was repeatedly killing and taking apart bodies bit by bit.

An investigation ensued, even though the news media for the most part kept quiet about the madman on the loose. The forensic analyst, Viktor Burakov, whose name we mentioned at the start of the show, was tasked with heading the investigation. After seeing an eyeless, eviscerated body of a girl lying in the undergrowth, he understood that he was dealing with no ordinary killer.

The Soviet Ripper - How Police Caught This Evil Serial Killer

Nonetheless, the cops thought that such savagery had to be the work of something darker than one man with a warped mind. They wondered if some group wasn’t harvesting people’s organs and that’s why the bodies were mutilated. Or maybe, they thought, a satanic cult was to blame. At the very least they said that the killer had to have a history of serious mental illness. But as you know, this line of investigation didn’t lead anywhere.

As they looked into Satan worshipper’s and folks released from psychiatric wards with a history of violence, the bodies piled up. They also employed their heavy-handed tactics once more to interrogate suspects, some of whom were mentally disabled. Sure, they got confessions, but more bodies were found while they were in custody. Those confessions were only scrubbed from the record a year later.

They just weren’t looking for an educated traveling businessman, which was unfortunate because Chikatilo was tearing people apart at an astonishing frequency. Then on September 13, 1984, he was spotted by police talking to a woman outside Rostov bus station. He looked suspicious and so when he left, they followed him. After talking to more women and rubbing himself against some of them, they stopped him. In his bag was a knife and lengths of rope, as well as a tub of Vaseline.

Not only did police discover his crimes as a teacher, but his description also matched the man last seen with one male victim. The cops took some of Chikatilo’s blood, but on being told it didn’t match the type found on some of the victims, he spent some time in jail for a theft he’d committed but then was once again a free man. He killed twice more just a few months after his release from jail, each murder displaying the hallmarks of the ripper.

It was about this time that police stepped up their investigation, now stationing undercover female officers at areas where it was thought victims were being picked up. It was then when Russian authorities did something they’d never done before. They brought in a psychiatrist, Dr. Alexandr Bukhanovsky, a man that was able to produce a criminal profile. This was some report, too, at 65 pages into tal. In it, he explained that police were looking for what’s called a “necro-sadist”, meaning someone who is aroused by other people’s pain and death.

He surprised cops by saying this guy is well-educated and unlike they assumed, in his autumn years, possibly around 50. Bukhanovsky called this person, “CitizenX”, and so now police put together a Citizen X investigation team. This is what Bukhanovsky told them about serial killers: “Many think that serial killers get pleasure from killing. This is not so. Their urge to kill is like breathing. It is irresistible. They want desperately to stop.

Some are even relieved when they are finally caught.” He told police they were looking for someone who had had a very difficult childhood and had struggled to form meaningful relationships throughout his life. He also said the killer was likely impotent. The knife he used in the killings was there placement for his penis. Bukhanovsky added that even though this man might have had strained relationships with women, he was probably living with a family of his own.

Not only that, because of the times and places where the murders had happened, police should be looking for someone with a job that involves traveling and one with a tight production schedule. Meanwhile, the murders were now all over the press. Chikatilo read about them, which is why he slowed down somewhat. Still, he couldn’t stop, just as Bukhanovsky had warned. In 1986, the body of a woman was found. She’d been mutilated and her eyes had been removed.

Things went quiet again. In 1987, he killed three times, committing each murder only when he was on a business trip far from Rostov. All three victims were boys. The following year, he killed a young woman, and later two boys. In each case, the people had been violently mutilated in the same ways the other victims had. Chikatilo’s signature was unmistakable. No other murder victims in the country had been sliced up and had parts cut off them.

The Soviet Ripper - How Police Caught This Evil Serial Killer

They knew it was the same guy who killed in1988, 1989, and 1990, but how could a team of 100s not get this man? Cameras were secretly fixed on train’s and around train stations. Undercover cops hung around bus stations. The government demanded answers. The public, now quite aware of the horrors, demanded justice. How had this gone on for so long?

Then came the plan. It had been known that the killer found many of his victims at train stations on the route from Rostov Oblast. There were a lot of stations, but detective Burakov said there should be a major police presence at some of the larger stations and undercover cops posted at smaller stations. This way the killer would likely strike next where he saw no police presence.

The three smaller stations chosen were Kirpichnaya, Donleskhoz, and Leso step. This operation started on 27 October 1990, and on October 30 a body of a boy was found near Donleskhoz station. He’d been stabbed numerous times and was missing his tongue and an eye. He’d been killed 16 days prior to the beginning of the operation. Nonetheless, during the operation, Chikatilo had lured another young male victim from a train at Kirpichnaya station and killed him in a forest close by.

The trap hadn’t exactly worked, but some days later Chikatilo killed a woman he’d met at Donleskhoz station. The undercover cops hadn’t noticed anything suspicious when he left the station with her, but on his return, an officer noted how a man was covered in grass stains and one of his fingers seemed to be injured. It also looked as if blood was smeared on his cheek.

The cop who noticed this immediately recognized that this well-dressed man was certainly no mushroom scavenger, and that was usually why people went off into the woods near the station. On top of that, the guy was carrying a duffel bag, not the kind of thing scavengers used. Chikatilo was stopped and his papers were checked, after which he was told to move on.

After another body was found, police asked to look at all reports from the observed stations. Chikatilo’s name popped up, and that setoff light bulbs in some officer’s heads who recognized his name from the 1984 arrest. His name also appeared on a separate suspect list. This guy was a dead-ringer for the criminal profile and when officers spoke to his employers over the years in his various jobs they could put Chikatilo where the crimes had happened.

Not only was that, after speaking to the school she’d been kicked out of, his history of molestation again apparent. For the first time in his life, Chikatilo was put under some serious surveillance. He was followed to bus stations, around markets, to train stations, and elsewhere, and what cops saw was that he spent much of his time stopping and talking to young men and women. On November 20 he went to a park and drank some beer.

There he talked to local kids, and that’s when police swooped in and arrested him. He denied any wrongdoing, saying cops had already questioned him about the murders years back. Medical examiners then looked at the wound on his finger. It was no small deal. A bone was broken, some flesh was missing, and the nail was missing.

Even so, Chikatilo had not sought any treatment for it. A police report also noted how the last murder victim was a strong youth and it looked as though a violent struggle had happened. It was obvious to police and the medical examiner that someone had bitten Chikatilo’s finger. They put him in a cell, knowing that under the law they only had ten days to get something before they had to let him go. It wasn’t as easy as it might seem, with most of the evidence they had likely not enough to charge him with the murders.

To get him to confess, they told him if he did so he’d receive psychological help and deemed not sane enough to stand trial. This was a lie, of course. But even under some serious questioning, he didn’t crack. Police put an informant in his cell, and he hadn’t managed to get anything out of Chikatilo, either. Time was running out.

Police then turned to someone who’d been right in the past. Maybe the psychiatrist Bukhanovsky could make him talk, seeing as he seemed to know the mind of the killer even before he’d met him. In a matter of just two hours after Bukhanovsky had read from his 65-page report on the man sitting opposite him, he confessed.

With tears running down his cheeks, he said, “It was me, I did it. I killed them all.” Chikatilo could describe in detail where he’d killed and how he’d done it and it matched what the cops had on file. He admitted to murders that police had never linked him with and he denied a couple too that the cops thought he’d done.

He explained how he slowly eviscerated his victims to fulfill his urges, and how he had perfected this so as not to get covered intheir blood. He told the police how the “cries, the blood, and the agony gave me relaxation and a certain pleasure.” As for the eyes, he explained an old wives’ tale which said the image of a murderer shall always be imprinted on the victim’s eyes.

There was more, but we think you’ve heard enough. On October 15, 1992, Chikatilo was sentenced to death for the 52 murders he’d been convicted of. On February 14, 1994, a bullet to the back of the head put that sentence to rest. He was buried in an unmarked grave in the prison. If you liked that, you’ll love this, “Most Evil Russian Serial Killer - The Chessboard Killer.” Or, have a look at...

The Soviet Ripper - How Police Caught This Evil Serial Killer