On November 20, 1990, Ukrainian serial killer Andriy Chikatilo was arrested. He became known with the ugly nicknames the Rostov Butcher and the Red Ripper because of the brutal murders of at least 53 women and children in the period 1978-1990. The maniac was captured with great difficulty by the Soviet militia, after which he was tried and executed.
Chikatilo has a difficult childhood during the war, which affects his psyche – rumors that his older brother had starved to death and then been eaten by his neighbors left an incurable imprint on his mind. He is a good student, but fails to enter Moscow State University and starts working as a telephone technician.
The pervert committed his first proven murder on December 22, 1978, in a small mining town near Rostov-on-Don, when he attempted to rape a nine-year-old girl. It tries to escape and the enraged Chikatilo stabs it to death. During the bloody act, the maniac becomes sexually aroused and ejaculates, and from that moment on he is only able to experience sexual pleasure if he beats and kills women or children. Chikatilo was not revealed, and instead another man was arrested and executed for the murder of the little girl.
The perverse killer's next crime was not until four years later, but after that the flow did not stop until his capture in 1990. The tally for 1982 was seven victims, most of them vagrants and fugitives whom he lured into the woods. In 1983, Chikatilo attacked, raped and killed women – mostly prostitutes and homeless people, as well as children, regardless of gender. The scheme of the crime has already been built and gives the killer's handwriting – he fails to rape the victim, as a result of which he goes berserk and stabs her until she dies, before climaxing. A number of mentally ill and criminal men were arrested for Chikatilo's crimes, and some of them committed suicide after the “interrogations” in custody. The militia also interrogated homosexual suspects, as most of the victims were boys. However, the efforts of law enforcement were in vain, and the Rostov Butcher took another 15 victims in 1984. All this horror was kept secret from society, because sexual assaults on children and serial murders only happen in “satisfied capitalist societies”.
In the same 1984, Andrey Chikatilo spent three months in prison on charges of petty theft. However, despite his suspicious behavior, he cannot be charged with the serial murders because his blood type does not match that determined by the killer's sperm samples. Despite the coroner's assumption that he was a unique individual whose blood type was different in the blood and in the semen, no other physician at the time was inclined to accept such an unusual hypothesis.
In the following years, Chikatilo tried to stay out of sight. In 1985, he killed two women, but then struggled to keep his urge under control and did not strike again until 1987, when he attacked a small boy in Revda, Ukraine, and then claimed two more victims – in Zaporozhye and in Leningrad. In 1988, the maniac gutted nine people while trying to avoid Rostov, which was under police surveillance. The butcher last went on a rampage in 1990, when he killed seven boys and two women. In the wake of the new series of brutal attacks, law enforcement has tightened security measures and is building a wide network of patrols and undercover agents covering train and bus stations in the Rostov region. The goal is to trick the killer into attacking an undercover agent and thus get caught at the scene of the crime.
This strategy is crowned with success. On November 6, Chikatilo killed and disfigured Saint Korostik and dumped her in the forest. The maniac emerges from the trees dressed in a business suit and covered in bloodstains and mud. He was then stopped for a background check by an undercover agent who found such behavior suspicious. Due to negligence on the part of the agent, however, the Butcher of Rostov escaped again and was only later placed under 24-hour surveillance in connection with circumstantial information associating him with some of the victims. On November 20, 1990, Andrei Chikatilo was nevertheless arrested because of his suspicious contacts with children. With limited time and insufficient evidence for most murders, the police have no choice but to get the criminal to confess.
The forces of law apply unprecedented cunning – they succeed in making the maniac believe that he is mentally ill and needs treatment. A psychiatrist was sent to speak with him and confirm that the mentally ill patient could not be tried. The maneuver is successful – Chikatilo makes full confessions. Since this was not enough to file a case, the investigators managed to convince him to provide evidence as well. The Red Ripper takes them to some of the corpses he has buried that have so far not been found. He confessed to 56 murders, of which only 36 were known to the militia so far.
Before the trial begins, the maniac is placed under special security measures to protect him from self-harm by other inmates who have no mercy for child abusers, as well as by relatives of the victims who work in the prison. The trial began on April 14, 1992. The Rostov Butcher was found sane and fit to stand trial. Even in the courtroom, the maniac must be kept in a cage, lest he be lynched by the relatives of the victims. On October 15, he was found guilty of 52 of the 53 proven murders and sentenced to death for every one of them. On February 14, 1994, Andrei Chikatilo was executed by firing squad after President Boris Yeltsin refused him a pardon.