Andrei Chikatilo: The Rostov Ripper
A serial killer in southern Russia
Andrei Chikatilo was born on 16th October 1936, in Yablochnoye, a village in the heart of the Ukraine. It was a tough time in a tough place — an older brother had vanished five years earlier, and Andrei’s parents feared that he had been eaten by starving neighbours.
Such fears may well have had a profound psychological effect on young Andrei. In 1941 the Nazi invasion of the USSR and the Ukraine led to Andrei’s village being overrun by German troops. It is thought that the little boy may well have witnessed appalling atrocities. He was a weak youth, short-sighted, a chronic bedwetter, lonely and painfully shy.
For a while he coped with life — serving in the Red Army, getting a job as a telephone engineer, marrying and raising two children. Then he got a job as a schoolteacher in Rostov and began to abuse both boys and girls. He was forced to resign, but no other action was taken, so it was not until Andrei was in his early forties that he first killed.
This was the dreadful murder of a nine-year-old girl whom Andrei blindfolded, unsuccessfully attempted to rape, stabbed three times, and then, while she was still alive, threw into a bitterly cold river. Andrei was arrested, but was released when his wife provided him with a false alibi.
