With that said, this is a research paper on Ukranian born serial killer Andrei Chikalito, who killed over fifty men and women, mostly children, by mutilating them with a knife to achieve sexual gratification. This essay aims to outline his life and why he did what he did. Originally a school project for Sociology, but if I'm going to spend hours on something, I'm going to share it with people who might be interested in it. Again, if you are unsure, I advise you don't look at this, it likely isn't worth the discomfort you may feel from it.
The format is kinda awkward, as it is a research paper with references and stuff translated from Microsoft Word to the Weebly text editor, but it should still work as words you can read just fine.
Without further ado, I'll be back tomorrow at eight AM with something. Have a nice, peaceful, day.
The Rostov Ripper by Mackinley Clevinger, February 24, 2016
Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo, known as The Rostov Ripper and the Maniac, was a serial killer in the Ukraine, his span of murders beginning in 1978 at the age of forty-two and ending in 1990 when he was caught, ultimately being executed in Moscow, Russia, in 1994. (Jenkins, 2006). Andrei Chikatilo confessed to fifty-six murders, of which only fifty-three were confirmed, targeting primarily women and children of either gender. He would bind his victims by rope and mutilate their bodies with a knife, the acts of violence giving him the only sexual release he could obtain, often trying and failing to rape his victims before resorting to using the knife as a simulated penis, reportedly even eating parts of the sexual organs of his victims that he cut off. For twelve years he escaped justice, killing indiscriminately while the authorities scrambled to catch a perpetrator hiding in plain sight, finding himself in police custody on several occasions and being freed each time as the search swept over him, unaware that they had the man they were searching for. (The Biography.com Website). Andrei became a murderer because of hereditary and social elements that combined to make him need the excitement and satisfaction given to him from viciously murdering anyone weaker than him, a release of both the anger instilled in him by a life of being bullied and mocked for numerous character traits, chief among them his inability to maintain an erection which forced him to seek sexual pleasure by means besides regular intercourse. (Blanco).
Andrei would meet his wife, Fayina, in a marriage arranged by his sister that resulted in two children despite his inability to hold an erection or ejaculate inside of her. In 1971, Andrei began his career as a teacher, where his shyness and lack of confidence left him to the humiliation of his students and fellow teachers. On numerous occasions during his time as a teacher, he committed acts of misconduct with his students, ranging from voyeurism to indecent assaults and an attempt to fellate a sleeping student. This last occasion led senior students to beat him severely upon their catching him, making him afraid for his safety and begin to carry a knife with him everywhere he went. In 1978, he moved his family to Shakhty, taking work as a supply clerk. This would become the location of his first murder, and begin his string of murders. (Twisted Minds).
Yelena Zakotnova, a nine-year old, was his first victim. Luring her to a house he had purchased in secret, he attempted to rape her and, upon failing to achieve an erection, choked and stabbed her to death, ejaculating as a result of this action. He dumped her body in a nearby river, leaving considerable evidence and an eyewitness report to indicate him as the murderer, but a man previously convicted of rape and murder was arrested and executed for the crime instead, Andrei’s wife providing an alibi to protect him from the law. His growing obsession with the sexual release afforded to him by violence would lead him to kill again, ultimately killing over fifty people in efforts to achieve sexual arousal and orgasm through the extreme violence and mutilation that he used on his victims. He would find his targets by hanging around bus or railway stations, where he would convince young men and women to follow him into a nearby forest or other secluded area by offering to show them a shortcut or an item of interest, instead trying to rape them and always killing them, cutting out the eyes of his victims for many years due to the held superstition that the eyes of those he killed held his image. (The Biography.com Website).
During his period of killings, the police arrested him on suspicion of being the perpetrator of these crimes in 1983, but a blood test revealed that his blood type, A, did not match that of the semen and saliva found at the scenes of the crime, AB. (Jenkins, 2006). This is due to his being a ‘non-secretor’, an individual who’s blood type cannot be derived from anything besides a direct blood sample. This would stymie the efforts of the police for another seven years before heavy police activity at train and bus-stations led to his being suspected anew, a brief period of surveillance resulting in his arrest and eventual confession when a psychiatrist spoke to him, trying to understand why he had done what he did. Declared sane, the trial began in 1992 and ended in 1994, found guilty after a grueling two-year process during which each murder was described in full. Andrei earned the nickname ‘The Maniac’ due to his appearance and behavior at this time, often being removed from the court for interrupting the proceedings and looking unnatural after being shaved, a common practice by Russian prisons to deal with fleas. Charged with fifty-three counts of murder, while claiming he committed fifty-six, Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo was executed in 1994 in a Moscow Prison by a single bullet behind his right ear. (The Biography.com Website).
Andrei Chikatilo killed because of an obsession with sexual gratification that he could only get from extreme violence against his victims, attempting at first to rape them but always resorting to using his knife as a simulated penis to eviscerate their groins and bodies, these actions allowing him to ejaculate and experience sexual pleasure. A particular interest was shown in women and children of either gender, his time as a teacher one of constant sexual arousal from his students that led to his repeated sexual assaults of them. He would often use his hands and teeth to ravage the bodies of his victims, at times cutting pieces of the sexual organs or tongue off and eating them. (Twisted Minds).
Andrei Chikatilo was born with hydrocephalus, a urinary-tract disorder that caused him to be unable to maintain an erection, incapable of having proper intercourse but able to ejaculate. This inability to maintain an erection caused him immense ridicule by his peers and the women he attempted to have sex with, instilling within him feelings of shame and anger towards others. Alongside this, early in his life Andrei experienced sexual pleasure when he ejaculated while struggling with a much younger girl, impressing the idea in his head of sexual gratification through violence. After a life of being ridiculed and feeling shame, the sexual pleasure he experienced coupled with the feeling of power he had over his victims when he sexually assaulted them began to express itself in his interactions with others, his time teaching marked by numerous occasions of molestation of his students. His first murder was both the culmination of these feelings and the realization that it was in the violence and mutilation of his victims that he found sexual pleasure, the ultimate goal of each of his murders. He initially attempted to rape nine-year old Yelena Zakotnova, and upon failing at that, experienced his sexual satisfaction from choking and stabbing her, solidifying in his mind that this was the only way for him to feel as such. His second murder was a similar case, an attempt at sex that ended in his achieving sexual pleasure from harming and, ultimately, killing his victim. After this second victim, there was no further doubt in his mind, his obsession with gruesome death to achieve orgasm leading him to continue his killing, typically picking younger, weaker, and un-expecting victims that he could tie up and kill in private, mutilating their bodies and leaving them partially hidden. (Blanco).
He would kill his victims in a mad rage, born of the years of humiliation and shame he had felt for his impotence with women. He resented others for their being able to have the kinds of sexual encounters he was incapable of having, and this resentment expressed itself in the severe mutilation of his victims; the genital region destroyed and bodies eviscerated with his knife and, at times, teeth and nails. An early obsession with cannibalism, due to the Ukrainian famine and the story his mother would tell of his brother who had been eaten, was an attributing factor to his tendency to eat parts of his victims, much of the time he spent alone as a child, as a product of the nigh-constant bullying from his peers, spent imagining grisly scenes that only grew worse as he became more resentful and more deviant in the methods that brought him to sexual ecstasy. (Jenkins, 2006). Unable to feel sexual pleasure without violence, and the resentment he felt towards the world for their ability to feel pleasure that he could not, for which he was mocked and ridiculed, led him to become extreme in his methods to achieve the pleasure that he obtained from hurting others. On several occasions he assaulted and attempted to rape women, the violence in these methods being the exciting factor that gave him sexual release, culminating in his first murder after the frustration of failing to rape his target and his attempts to silence her violently led him to stab her repeatedly, the brutality of the event affording him the pleasure he became obsessed with, leading him to kill at least another fifty times before the police force finally caught on to his methods and caught him. (Twisted Minds).
Though the police force of Russia were hesitant to believe in the presence of a serial killer due to inexperience and the regime of that time refusing to believe that such crimes were a possibility, in 1985 they enlisted the aid of a psychiatrist by the name of Dr. Alexander Bukhanovsky to better understand the mind of a man who had, by now, killed dozens in the same, horrific manner. The profile Dr. Bukhanovsky created, going so far as to interview another serial killer before he was executed, described the killer “– as a man aged between 45 and 50 years old who was of average intelligence, was likely to be married or had previously been married, but who was also a sadist who could only achieve sexual arousal by seeing his victims suffer.” (Blanco). The profile also made mention of the kind of schedule the killer would have been expected to follow, links made between the closeness of these murders and the train stations, as well as the schedule the killer seemed to follow, suggesting he traveled for work and was killing when opportunity arose. The presence of a psychiatrist trying to understand the criminal mind is what led Andrei Chikatilo to open up to the police about his crimes when caught, admitting to fifty-six murders and describing in-full how he killed each one. The psychiatrist’s findings were accurate, Andrei’s murders being indiscriminate against any target he was able to acquire from his traveling for work, and always purposed to cause anguish on his victims so that he could be sexually aroused. (Blanco).
Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo was born into abuse and starvation, with a condition that would hound him throughout his life as the source of his sexual frustration and humiliation at the hands of his peers and early sexual partners. It was because of his hydrocephalus that didn’t allow him the same sexual experience as others and the resentment that developed throughout his early life from ridicule, which, coupled with early experiences that attributed sexual excitement with violence, created the serial killer that he finally became at the age of forty-two. For twelve years he evaded justice and continued killing, the fact that his blood type didn’t match that of the semen found at the killing sites freeing him from custody until he was seen by an officer of the law leaving the same forest a body would soon be found in. Declared sane and tried for fifty-three murders, Andrei Chikalito would meet his end in 1994, the killing spree, at last, put to rest by a bullet behind his right ear in a Moscow prison. (Twisted Minds).
Works Cited:
Biography.com Editors. “Andrei Chikatilo Biography.” The Biography.com website. 23 Feb, 2016 < http://www.biography.com/people/andrei-chikatilo-17169648>
Blanco, Juan. “Andrei Romanovich CHIKATILO.” Murderpedia. 23 Feb, 2016 <http://murderpedia.org/male.C/c/chikatilo.htm>
Jenkins, John. “Andrei Chikatilo.” The Encyclopedia Britannica. 2 Nov, 2006. 23 Feb, 2016 <http://www.britannica.com/biography/Andrei-Romanovich-Chikatilo/article-history>
Unknown Author. “Andrei Chikatilo’s Childhood.” Twisted Minds. 23 Feb, 2016 <http://twistedminds.creativescapism.com/most-notorious/andrei-chikatilo/>