Editing Andrei Chikatilo (section)

==Initial murders==
===Murder of Yelena Zakotnova===
In September 1978, Chikatilo moved to Shakhty, where he committed his first documented murder. On the evening of 22 December, he lured a 9-year-old girl named Yelena Zakotnova to an old, dilapidated hut which he had secretly purchased that year; he attempted to rape her but failed to achieve an erection. When the girl struggled, he choked her and stabbed her three times in the abdomen, ejaculating while stabbing the child. In an interview after his 1990 arrest, Chikatilo later recalled that immediately after he stabbed Zakotnova, the girl had "said something very hoarsely", whereupon he strangled her into unconsciousness before throwing her body into the nearby Grushevka River.{{sfn|Conradi|1992|p=43}} Her body was found beneath a nearby bridge two days later.{{sfn|Conradi|1992|p=43}}{{refn|group=n|Chikatilo ostensibly purchased this hut as a retirement home for his ageing father, although he soon began using the residence as a location to instead bring young female vagrants he typically encountered at Shakhty's train station for sexual encounters. Due to his impotence, he typically offered to perform oral sex on these women.}}
[[File:Грушевский мост.JPG|thumb|Bridge overlooking the Grushevka River. The body of Yelena Zakotnova was found at this location on 24 December 1978.]]

Numerous pieces of evidence linked Chikatilo to Zakotnova's murder: spots of blood had been found in the snow close to a fence facing the house Chikatilo had purchased; neighbours had noted that Chikatilo had been present in the house on the evening of 22 December; Zakotnova's school backpack had been found upon the opposite bank of the river at the end of the street (indicating the girl had been thrown into the river at this location); and a witness had given police a detailed description of a man closely resembling Chikatilo, whom she had seen talking with Zakotnova at the bus stop where the girl had last been seen alive.{{sfn|Conradi|1992|p=44}} Despite these facts, a 25-year-old labourer named Aleksandr Kravchenko, who had previously served a prison sentence for the rape and murder of a teenage girl,{{sfn|Cavendish|1996|p=3}} was arrested for the crime. A search of Kravchenko's home revealed spots of blood on his wife's jumper: the [[blood type]] was determined to match both Zakotnova and Kravchenko's wife.

Kravchenko had a very strong alibi for the afternoon of 22 December 1978: he had been at home with his wife and a friend of hers the entire afternoon, and neighbours of the couple were able to verify this.{{sfn|Cavendish|1996|p=3}} Nonetheless, the police, having threatened Kravchenko's wife with being an [[accomplice|accomplice to murder]] and her friend with [[perjury]], obtained new statements in which the women claimed Kravchenko had not returned home until late in the evening on the day of the murder.{{sfn|Cavendish|1996|p=3}} Confronted with these altered testimonies, Kravchenko confessed to the killing.{{sfn|Cavendish|1996|p=5}} He was tried for the murder in 1979. At his trial, Kravchenko retracted his confession and maintained his innocence, stating his confession had been obtained under extreme [[duress]]. Despite his retraction, Kravchenko was convicted of the murder and [[Capital punishment in the Soviet Union|sentenced to death]].{{sfn|Philbin|2009|p=265}} This sentence was [[Commutation (law)|commuted]] to fifteen years' imprisonment (the maximum possible length of imprisonment at the time) by the [[Supreme Court of Russia|Supreme Court]] in December 1980.{{sfn|Cavendish|1996|p=6}} Under pressure from the victim's relatives, Kravchenko was retried, erroneously convicted, and eventually executed by [[firing squad]] for Zakotnova's murder in July 1983.{{sfn|Krivich|1993|p=246}}<ref>{{cite news|last=Womack|first=Helen|title=Russian Teacher Admits to Killing 55 Youths |date=17 April 1992 |url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/122410347?searchTerm=andrei%20chikatilo |access-date=27 January 2019|newspaper=[[The Canberra Times]]|publisher=[[Fairfax Media]]}}</ref>

Following Zakotnova's murder, Chikatilo was able to achieve [[sexual arousal]] and orgasm only through stabbing and slashing women and children to death, and he later claimed that the urge to relive the experience had overwhelmed him. Nonetheless, Chikatilo did stress that, initially, he had struggled to resist these urges, often cutting short business trips to return home rather than face the temptation to search for a victim.{{sfn|Cullen|1994|p=198}}

===Second murder and subsequent killings===
On 3 September 1981, Chikatilo encountered a 17-year-old boarding school student, Larisa Tkachenko, standing at a bus stop as he exited a public library in Rostov city centre. According to his subsequent confession, Chikatilo lured Tkachenko to a forest near the [[Don River (Russia)|Don River]] with the pretext of drinking [[vodka]] and "relaxing".{{sfn|Conradi|1992|p=55}} When they reached a secluded area, he threw the girl to the ground before tearing off her clothes and attempting intercourse, as Tkachenko remonstrated against his actions.{{sfn|Lourie|1993|p=59}} When Chikatilo failed to achieve an erection, he forced mud inside her mouth to stifle her screams before battering and strangling her to death. As he had no knife, Chikatilo mutilated the body with his teeth and a six-foot-long stick;{{sfn|Cullen|1994|p=213}} he also tore one nipple from Tkachenko's body with his teeth before loosely covering her body with leaves, branches, and torn pages of newspaper. Tkachenko's body was found the following day.{{sfn|Lourie|1993|p=60}}

Nine months after the murder of Tkachenko, on 12 June 1982, Chikatilo travelled by bus to the [[Bagayevsky District]] of Rostov to purchase vegetables. Having to change buses in the village of [[Donskoy (inhabited locality)|Donskoi]], he decided to continue his journey on foot.{{sfn|Cullen|1994|p=199}} Walking away from the bus station, he encountered a 13-year-old girl, Lyubov Biryuk, who was walking home from a shopping trip.{{sfn|Cullen|1994|p=4}} The two walked together for approximately a quarter of a mile until their path was shielded from the view of potential witnesses by bushes,{{sfn|Cullen|1994|p=199}} whereupon Chikatilo pounced upon Biryuk, dragged her into nearby undergrowth, tore off her dress, and killed her by stabbing and slashing her to death as he imitated performing intercourse.{{sfn|Conradi|1992|p=60}} When her body was found on 27 June, the [[medical examiner]] discovered evidence of twenty-two knife wounds inflicted to the head, neck, chest, and pelvic region.{{sfn|Krivich|1993|p=89}} Further wounds found on the skull suggested the killer had attacked Biryuk from behind with the handle and blade of his knife. In addition, several striations were discovered upon Biryuk's [[Orbit (anatomy)|eye sockets]].

Following Biryuk's murder, Chikatilo no longer attempted to resist his homicidal urges: between July and September 1982, he killed a further five victims between the ages of 9 and 18. He established a pattern of approaching children, [[runaway (dependent)|runaways]], and young [[vagrancy|vagrants]] at bus or railway stations,{{sfn|Lane|1994|p=2057}} enticing them to a nearby forest or other secluded area, and killing them, usually by stabbing, slashing and [[Disembowelment|eviscerating]] the victim with a knife; although some victims, in addition to receiving a multitude of knife wounds, were also strangled or battered to death.{{sfn|Hickey|2003|p=70}}

[[File:Памятник Ирине Карабельниковой.jpg|170px|thumb|Memorial to Chikatilo's seventh victim, [[#Karabelnikova|Irina Karabelnikova]]. This memorial was erected by Karabelnikova's father at the site of her murder.{{sfn|Cavendish|1996|p=37}}]]

Many of the victims' bodies bore evidence of mutilation to the eye sockets. [[Forensic pathology|Pathologists]] concluded these injuries had been caused by a knife, leading investigators to the conclusion the killer had gouged out the eyes of his victims.{{sfn|Cullen|1994|p=30}} Chikatilo's adult female victims were often [[prostitute]]s or homeless women whom he would lure to secluded areas with promises of alcohol or money. He would typically attempt intercourse with these victims, but he would usually be unable to achieve or maintain an erection; this would send him into a murderous fury, particularly if the woman mocked his impotence. He would achieve orgasm only when he stabbed and slashed the victim to death.{{sfn|Hall|1993|p=84}} Chikatilo's child and adolescent victims were of both sexes; he would lure these victims to secluded areas using a variety of ruses, usually formed in the initial conversation with the victim,{{sfn|Conradi|1992|p=178}} such as promising them assistance, company or offering to show them a shortcut,{{sfn|Conradi|1992|p=98}} a bus stop, a chance to view rare stamps, films or coins, or with an offer of food or candy.{{sfn|Lane|Gregg|1992|p=96}} He would usually overpower these victims once they were alone, often tying their hands behind their backs with a length of rope before stuffing mud or [[loam]] into the victims' mouths to silence their screams, and then proceed to kill them.{{sfn|Cullen|1994|p=202}} After the killing, Chikatilo would make rudimentary—though seldom serious—efforts to conceal the body{{sfn|Conradi|1992|p=146}} before leaving the crime scene.

On 11 December 1982, Chikatilo encountered a 10-year-old girl named Olga Stalmachenok riding a bus to her parents' home in Novoshakhtinsk and persuaded the child to leave the bus with him. She was last seen by a fellow passenger, who reported that a middle-aged man had led the girl away firmly by the hand.{{sfn|Conradi|1992|p=65}} Chikatilo lured the girl to a cornfield on the outskirts of the city, stabbed her in excess of fifty times around the head and body, ripped open her chest and excised her lower bowel and [[uterus]].{{sfn|Cullen|1994|p=30}}

===Investigation===
By January 1983, four victims thus far killed had been tentatively linked to the same killer.{{sfn|Cullen|1994|p=24}} A [[Moscow]] police team, headed by Major [[Mikhail Fetisov]], was sent to Rostov to direct the investigation, which gradually became known among investigators as ''Operation Forest Path''.{{sfn|Conradi|1992|p=61}}<ref name="Goldstein">{{cite news|last=Goldstein|first=Steven|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/22734194/the-philadelphia-inquirer/|title=The Long, and Flawed, Hunt for a Russian Serial Killer|newspaper=[[The Philadelphia Inquirer]]|date=23 May 1993|access-date=23 August 2021}}</ref> Fetisov established a team of ten investigators based in Rostov, charged with solving all four cases. In March, Fetisov assigned a newly appointed [[forensic science|forensic analyst]], Viktor Burakov, to head the investigation.<ref name="Goldstein"/> The following month, Stalmachenok's body was found. Burakov was summoned to the crime scene, where he examined the numerous knife wounds and eviscerations conducted upon the child and the striations on her eye sockets. Burakov later stated that, as he noted the striations upon Stalmachenok's eye sockets, any doubts about the presence of a [[serial killer]] evaporated.{{sfn|Cullen|1994|p=30}}

Chikatilo did not kill again until June 1983, when he murdered a 15-year-old Armenian girl named Laura Sarkisyan; her body was found close to an unmarked railway platform near Shakhty.{{sfn|Krivich|1993|p=92}} By September, he had killed a further five victims. The accumulation of bodies found and the similarities between the pattern of wounds inflicted on the victims forced the Soviet authorities to acknowledge that a serial killer was on the loose.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://newspaperarchive.com/us/utah/logan/logan-herald-journal/1992/10-15/page-6|title=Russian Serial Killer Given Death Sentence|newspaper=[[The Herald Journal|Logan Herald Journal]]|agency=[[Associated Press]]|date=15 October 1992|access-date=4 May 2025}}</ref> On 6 September 1983, the public prosecutor of the Soviet Union formally linked six of the murders thus far attributed to the same killer.{{sfn|Conradi|1992|p=253}}{{refn|group=n|The six murder victims attributed to the manhunt for Chikatilo on this date were Biryuk, Kuprina, Karabelnikova, Stalmachenok, Dunenkova and Gudkov.{{sfn|Conradi|1992|p=73}}}}

Due to the sheer savagery of the murders and the precision of the eviscerations upon the victims' bodies, police theorized that the killings had been conducted by either a group harvesting organs to sell for [[organ transplant|transplant]], the work of a [[Satanism|Satanic]] cult,<ref name="330 page">{{cite news|first=Tony|last=Barber|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russian-mad-beast-who-butchered-52-faces-the-firing-squad-1557509.html|title=Russian 'Mad Beast' who Butchered 52 Faces the Firing Squad|access-date=11 August 2016|newspaper=[[The Independent]]|publisher=Independent Print Ltd.|date=14 October 1992|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160827033544/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russian-mad-beast-who-butchered-52-faces-the-firing-squad-1557509.html|archive-date=27 August 2016|url-status=live}}</ref> or a mentally ill individual. Much of the police effort concentrated upon the theory that the killer must be mentally ill, [[homosexual]],<ref>{{cite news|last=Hustak|first=Alana|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/100030122/the-gazette/|title=Rot in Rostov: Serial Killer Went Undetected in Crumbling System|newspaper=[[Montreal Gazette]]|date=3 April 1993|access-date=9 July 2022}}</ref> or a [[paedophile]], and the alibis of all individuals who had either spent time in [[psychiatric ward]]s or had been convicted of homosexuality or paedophilia were checked{{sfn|Krivich|1993|p=98}} and logged in a [[Index card|card filing system]]. Registered [[sex offender]]s were also investigated and, if their alibi was [[Corroborating evidence|corroborated]], eliminated from the inquiry.{{sfn|Krivich|1993|pp=98–99}}

Beginning in September 1983, several young men confessed to the murders, although these individuals were often [[intellectual disability|intellectually disabled]] youths who admitted to the crimes only under prolonged and often brutal interrogation. Three known homosexuals and a convicted sex offender committed [[suicide]] as a result of the investigators' heavy-handed tactics.{{sfn|Cullen|1994|p=251}}<ref>{{cite news|title=Tracking Russia's Savage Serial Killer|url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/127224500 |newspaper=[[The Canberra Times]]|publisher=[[Fairfax Media]]|date=7 August 1993|access-date=1 April 2019}}</ref> As a result of the investigation, more than 1,000 unrelated crimes, including ninety-five murders,{{sfn|Mariner|1992|p=244}} 140 [[aggravated assault#Aggravated assault|aggravated assaults]], and 245 rapes, were solved.{{sfn|Krivich|1993|p=33}}

However, as police obtained confessions from suspects, bodies continued to be discovered, proving that the suspects who had confessed could not be the killer they were seeking. On 30 October 1983, the eviscerated body of a 19-year-old prostitute, Vera Shevkun, was found in Shakhty.{{sfn|Cullen|1994|p=48}} Shevkun had been killed on 27 October. Although the mutilations inflicted upon Shevkun's body were otherwise characteristic of those found upon other victims linked to the unknown murderer, the victim's eyes had not been [[Enucleation of the eye|enucleated]] or otherwise wounded.{{sfn|Cullen|1994|p=48}} Two months later, on 27 December, a 14-year-old [[Gukovo]] schoolboy, Sergey Markov, was lured off a train and murdered at a rural station near Novocherkassk.{{sfn|Conradi|1992|p=76}} Markov was [[emasculation|emasculated]] and suffered over seventy knife wounds to his neck and upper torso before being eviscerated.{{sfn|Cullen|1994|p=50}}

===1984===
[[File:Rostov Ripper.jpg|170px|thumb|[[Facial composite|Composite drawing]] of the man seen with [[#Ptashnikov|Dmitry Ptashnikov]] on the evening of the boy's murder.]]

In January and February 1984, Chikatilo killed two women in Rostov's [[Park of Aviators]]. On 24 March, he lured a 10-year-old boy, Dmitry Ptashnikov, away from a stamp kiosk in Novoshakhtinsk. While walking with the boy, Chikatilo was seen by several witnesses who were able to give investigators a detailed description of the killer. When Ptashnikov's body was found three days later, police also found a footprint of the killer and both semen and [[saliva]] samples on the victim's clothing.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.crimeandinvestigation.co.uk/crime-files/andre-chikatilo-the-rostov-ripper |title=Andrei Chikatilo: The Rostov Ripper Crime Files|publisher=crimeandinvestigation.co.uk|access-date=12 February 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140519080735/http://www.crimeandinvestigation.co.uk/crime-files/andre-chikatilo-the-rostov-ripper |archive-date=19 May 2014 |url-status=live}}</ref>{{sfn|Wynn|1996|p=52}} On 25 May, Chikatilo killed a young woman named Tatyana Petrosyan and her 10-year-old daughter, Svetlana, in a wooded area outside Shakhty; Petrosyan had known Chikatilo for several years prior to her murder.{{sfn|Conradi|1992|pp=85–87}} By the end of July, he had killed three additional young women between the ages of 19 and 21, and a 13-year-old boy.{{sfn|Conradi|1992|p=254}}

In the summer of 1984, Chikatilo was fired from his work as a supply clerk for the theft of two rolls of linoleum. The accusation had been filed against him the previous February, and he had been asked to resign quietly but had refused to do so, as he had denied the charges.{{sfn|Conradi|1992|p=79}} Chikatilo found another job as a supply clerk in Rostov on 1 August.{{sfn|Conradi|1992|p=254}}

On 2 August, Chikatilo killed a 16-year-old girl, Natalya Golosovskaya, in the Park of Aviators. On 7 August, he lured a 17-year-old girl, Lyudmila Alekseyeva, to the banks of the Don River on the pretence of showing her a shortcut to a bus terminal. Alekseyeva suffered thirty-nine slash wounds to her body before Chikatilo mutilated and disembowelled her, intentionally inflicting wounds he knew would not be immediately fatal.{{sfn|Conradi|1992|p=94}} Her body was found the following morning; her excised upper lip inside her mouth.{{sfn|Krivich|1993|p=200}}

Hours after Alekseyeva's murder, Chikatilo flew to the [[Uzbek SSR|Uzbek]] capital of [[Tashkent]] on a business trip to purchase electrical switches. By the time he returned to Rostov on 15 August, he had killed an unidentified young woman and a 10-year-old girl, Akmaral Seydaliyeva.{{sfn|Krivich|1993|p=200}} Within two weeks, the nude body of an 11-year-old boy named Aleksandr Chepel was discovered on the banks of the Don River, strangled and castrated, with his eyes gouged out, just yards from where Alexeyeva's body had earlier been found{{sfn|Krivich|1993|p=200}} and on 6 September, Chikatilo killed a young librarian, 24-year-old Irina Luchinskaya, in the Park of Aviators.{{sfn|Conradi|1992|p=101}}