Andrei Chikatilo's Sacrificial Killing

In October 16, 1936, one of the most notorious heinous serial killers was born. This killer brutally murdered over fifty-two helpless victims and ruined lives with no remorse. This horrible murderer was Andrei Chikatilo. The purpose of this paper is to analyze Chikatilo and determine, to our best knowledge, why and what pushed him to commit these acts. An examination of his early life, the history of Chikatilo himself, his murder victims, and a general theory and famous criminologist that could possibly explain this behavior will be analyzed. It will be broken apart into four different segments: History of Andrei Chikatilo, Murder Spree, The Final Discovery, The Theory of These Actions, and Concluding Evidence. Andrei Chikatilo, born on October

16, 1936, grew up in the town of Yablochnoye, Ukraine. During this time, the Ukraine state was under the USSR and this affected his family personally. In the time of the 1930s, the “Breadbasket” of the USSR was located in Ukraine. This meant individual farms and labor induced would be forced into collective farms. These were mainly “kolkhozy” and “sovkhozy” meaning they were now state-own farms (The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, 1998). These drastic changes began a harsh famine that annihilated a majority of the population. When most believed that the situation could not get worse, the USSR went into World War II which resulted in multiple bombing raids on Ukraine. This affected Chikatilo’s home life and social life growing up.
Roman Chikatilo, Andrei’s father, served in World War II against Germany.

While this was an honorable deed, if a soldier was captured, they became dishonored due to their coward actions. This affected Chikatilo in his school life. Because of the consequences of his father’s capture, Chikatilo was bullied throughout his schooling time due to his father being a “cowardice.” (Banco, n.d.) In addition to bullying about his father, Andrei also suffered from hydrocephalus, water on the brain, at birth. This caused genital-urinary tract problems. These caused issues such as bed-wetting in the later adolescent period of his life and also the issue of being able to ejaculate but not sustain an erection. Due to these issues, Andrei refrained from sexual interaction in fear of ridicule. His only known sexual experience during his adolescence was when he overpowered a young girl. However, during the struggle, he ejaculated immediately and was humiliated. This interaction created the stimulation between sexual interaction and

violence.
Andrei Chikatilo, not only had struggles in social environments, had some setbacks in his school success. In the 1960s, Chikatilo applied to Moscow State University. After failing his entrance exam, he moved to the town of Rodionovo-Nesvetayevsky, a town near Rostov. His first job was as a telephone engineer. This was the first of many jobs. He soon moved onto being a school teacher, however, after many complaints at different schools of “indecent assaults on young children (Robinson, 2016),” Chickatilo finally ended in a mining school in a town near Rostov. Tatyana Chickatilo, Andrei’s younger sister, was concerned with his success with relationships and decided to take the matter into her own hands. Setting him up with Fayina Odnacheva, Andrei grew an attachment and married her in 1963. They ended up having two children, Yuri and Lyudmila, even with his genital problems with sustaining an erection. They ended up having a family that seemed to be “normal.” Seven years later, Chikatilo took his first victim. In total, Andrei Chikatilo is the offender to 53 known murders, ranging in victims from age nine to forty-four. The first victim, Lena Zokotnova, was a nine year old girl who was lured by Chikatilo into a second house he owned. Soon, she had been raped, strangled, and stabbed three times before being thrown into a nearby frozen over stream. Following this murder, after the body was found, Chikatilo was taken into custody as a suspect (Goss, Gray, & Villalvazo, n.d.). A bystander had seen Chikatilo with the victim before their disappearance, however, another man was charged and convicted for the crime after a pushed confession. Chikatilo was released from police custody after his wife provided him with a strong alibi. Alexsandr Kravchenko, convicted of this murder, was executed in 1984 after his trial.
For the next three years, no victims were documented causing the uproar of the murder to settle. In 1981, Chikatilo killed again. Throughout the next eight years, the rest of his victims were murdered. Andrei sought out prostitutes, young women, those who were mentally-ill, teenagers, and alcoholics, promising them a return of alcoholic beverages (Blanco, n.d.). With most, except for the few who were strangled, Chikatilo preferred the method of stabbing for his victims. With some, he would attempt or successfully rape the victims. Usually, the lifeless bodies would be thrown into the woods or rivers in the nearby area. As Chikatilo began murdering more and more, he began cutting off parts of the victims’ bodies, such as sexual organs and the tips of tongues. He would chew on these parts of flesh and then spit them out (Goss, Gray, & Villzlvazo, n.d.). Unlike a usual cannibal, Chikatilo would not swallow the flesh. One distinguishing factor about Chikatilo’s actions was, with certain victims, he would gouge out their eyes or blindfold them. His reasoning behind this was because he believed that eyes of victims would leave an imprint of those who killed them. Also, he did not want to look at certain victims in the eyes while killing them.After multiple times of being arrested for suspicious activity and released due to no convicting evidence, Andrei Chikatilo was arrested for the final time. Police had placed him under surveillance after being told by many of his previous colleagues about his past complaints of sexual assault against students. After six days of surveillance, he was arrested following police watching him wander around the town making contact with children along the way. Once arrested, a strip search was performed revealing a finger with a severe flesh wound. It was concluded by medical examiners that the only way to explain the wound was a human bite. Also, Chikatilo was in possession of a folding knife. During questioning the following day, he refused to admit to any murders repeatedly. There seemed to be no progress until Dr. Aleksandr Bukhanovsky was invited to question Chikatilo. By using the approach of convincing Andrei that he was mentally ill and needed help, within two hours, he had confessed to thirty-six murders that were originally linked to him. However, he denied two more murdered that were believed to be linked to him by police. Soon, he admitted to twenty additional murders that had not been discovered yet. It was soon found out that Alexsandr Kravchenko, the man convicted and executed for Chikatilo’s first victim, was innocent.
Just before the trial, a six-day psychiatric evaluation was done and concluded that Chikatilo was legally sane and could be tried for the crimes.

Throughout the trial, Chikatilo was placed in an iron cage, which was kept in the corner of the courtroom, for protection from the families of the victims. Many had no idea what had happened to their relatives until it was gruesomely described. Chikatilo, throughout the entire trial, interrupted by exposing himself, refusing to answer any questions asked by the court, or singing over those talking. He had to be removed from the courtroom multiple times. On the last day of the trial, one of the victim’s brothers would not handle the pain anymore and threw a large, heavy chunk of metal at Chikatilo. After this hit him in the chest, security attempted to arrest the man but the families of the survivors blocked them so he would not be prosecuted (Robinson, 2016) On October 15, Andrei Chikatilo was finally sentenced to 52 counts of murder. This was one less than the 53 he was tried for. Each count was given the death penalty. When given the chance at a final speech before the verdict, Chikatilo refused. The judge, Leonid Akhobzyanov, once the verdict was announced stated: “Taking into consideration the monstrous crimes he committed, this court has no alternative but to impose the only sentence that he deserves. I therefore sentence him to death” (Blanco, n.d.). Three months later, Andrei Chikatilo was executed by a single gunshot to the

head. The purpose of this paper was to outline Andrei Chikatilo’s life, sort through the many murder victims he left behind, analyze what factors had to do with his lifestyle, and explain what theorists would believe was the explanation of his criminal behavior. Throughout his life, Andrei Chikatilo committed over fifty murders and was finally, in the end, sentenced to fifty-two counts of murder resulting in the death penalty. While he was diagnosed as mentally sane just before his trial, many would think he was far from sane (Robinson, 2016). Theorists would use psychological and biological factors to explain his crimes but many would simply consider Chikatilo an insane serial killer.