December 22, 1978, the first crime of the most famous Soviet serial killer-killer Andrei Chikatilo was committed. In total, the "Rostov Ripper", "Mad Beast", "Red Nightmare", as he managed to nickname, committed 53 proven murders, and according to operational information - more than 65.
The life of Andrei Chikatilo until the first murder in 1978 was typical for a man born in 1936 in the village of Kharkiv region. Father Roman fought at the front, during the famine did not leave the house, for fear of being eaten. Young Chikatilo received several higher educations, served in the army in the troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In 1964, the future maniac married, and a few years later - he had a daughter and son.
In one of the houses in Shakhty, where Chikatilo moved with his wife and two children in 1978, he bought an apartment that he used to meet with prostitutes. It was there, in the house No. 26 on Mezhevy Lane and the first cruel crime of Chikatilo was committed. So, even the future maniac lured the 9-year-old Elena Lawtov into the house with a promise to give a chewing gum. According to Chikatilo himself, he wanted only to "indulge" with the child. However, when the girl screamed, the maniac began to choke the child and got a great deal of pleasure from it. As a result, 9-year-old Elena was found torn apart under the bridge with numerous internal injuries, stab wounds.
For the first murder of Chikatilo, the murderer Alexander Kravchenko was wrongly executed.
The next violent crime was only three years later, on September 3, 1981. The second, and iconic for the further series of murders, the victim was 17-year-old prostitute Larisa Tkachenko, killed in a forest belt on the left bank of the Don.
Almost a year later, on June 12, 1982, 12-year-old Lyubov Biryuk, who was found with a lot of stab wounds, was killed. That year, Chikatilo, in total, killed and raped seven children aged 9 to 19 years.
Getting acquainted with the child at the bus stop or railway station, the maniac offered to help show the way, present the stamps, demonstrate the puppy or the tape recorder, thus luring in the forest belt, where he brutally mocked the boys and girls.
So, on July 25, 14-year-old Lyubov Volobuyeva was killed, and on August 13, 9-year-old Oleg Pozhidaev was killed. Three days later, Chikatilo killed a 16-year-old Olga Kuprin, and on September 8 - Irina 19-year-old Irina Korabelnikova, who had quarreled with her parents. He was killed by a 15-year-old orphan by Sergei Kuzmin, who was killed on September 15. And the last murder in 1982 was committed over the 10-year-old Olga Stalmachenok. Eight children "Rostov Ripper" killed in 1983.
A doctor and a nurse constantly on duty in the courtroom at meetings on the case of the rapist and murderer Andrei Chikatilo, as during the process cases of fainting were not uncommon.
However, the most bloody for Andrei Chikatilo was 1984, when he brutally killed 15 people. Among the 32 total victims were women, boys, girls who were mentally retarded, tramps.
The first arrest of Chikatilo took place on September 14, 1984, the same year was marked for the maniac with the bloodiest (15 victims) and successful in his career - then he entered the position of the head of the department of "Spetsenergoavtomatika".
The district inspector with his partner in the Rostov market detained an undisclosed maniac for "suspicious behavior" - he pestered the girls in public transport and persistently tried to meet them, engaged in oral sex at the bus station with a prostitute. Then the precinct officers found a "universal kit" in the portfolio of Chikatilo: a knife, a jar of petrolatum, a piece of soap and two coils of rope. However, due to an error in the analysis of sperm found on one of the victims, and taken from the detained blood, the maniac was released.
After his first arrest, Chikatilo killed 21 more people. Each crime captures the originality and sophistication of the criminal. On mutilated bodies, up to sixty stab wounds were found, many Chikatilo gouged out his eyes, bit off their noses, tongues, genitals, and breasts. In 1989, a maniac lured a 19-year-old student from Hungary to the forest belt, killed, cut off the chest, the uterus, cut off the soft tissues of her face and, wrapping the "trophies" in scraps of the deceased girl, went on his father's birthday. According to some reports, Chikatilo later used the remains of a man killed for food, as a dessert. A 10-year-old Alexei Khobotov, he buried in a grave in the city cemetery, which Andrei Chikatilo dug himself in 1987 for himself. Some maniac killings were committed not only in Shakhty's hometown, but in the Leningrad region, near Rostov-on-Don, Novocherkassk, Tashkent, and the Moscow region.
The last murder was committed on November 6, 1990, 22-year-old prostitute Svetlana Korostik.
In December 1985, under the control of the CPSU Central Committee, Operation Lesopolla, which is called the largest event of the Soviet and Russian law enforcement agencies, began. To search for the "Rostov Ripper" was spent about 10 million rubles. During this time, military helicopters were used, more than 200 thousand people were checked, 1062 crimes were uncovered, information on 48 thousand people with sexual deviations was accumulated, and 5,845 people were put on specials.
As a result, on November 20, 1990, on the road from the beer stand, Chikatilo was detained by operatives. During the search, shoes were found in his house, coinciding with a print found near the corpse of one of the victims, as well as 32 kitchen knives. Perhaps Chikatilo used the organs of the victims: the wife of the maniac said that her husband usually took a saucepan on business trips.
With the help of a psychiatrist on November 28, Chikatilo began to testify and confess to the murders. October 15, he was sentenced to death (in all, the verdict contains 232 sheets).
July 18, 1992 Andrei Chikatilo sent a final letter requesting pardon in the name of Russian President Boris Yeltsin. There Chikatilo calls himself a "victim and tool" of communism, calls himself a sick man with "psychopathy of the schizoid-mosaic circle with sexual perversions, headaches from craniocerebral pressure, insomnia, nightmares, cardiac arrhythmia." However, the request was canceled, and on February 14, 1994, Andrei Chikatilo, on the verdict of the court for 53 premeditated killings, was executed in Novocherkassk prison.
