Andrei Chikatilo Victims

Case background and investigation

Between December 1978 and November 1990, dozens of women, teenagers and children were murdered in and around the Rostov region of southern Russia, with further killings in Ukraine and Uzbekistan. The man eventually held responsible was Andrei Chikatilo, a former schoolteacher and Communist Party member. According to the verdict reported by The Independent, the court found that he had killed 17 women, 21 boys and 14 girls. Many of the victims were approached at railway and bus stations and led into nearby woodland.

The Los Angeles Times reported during the trial that the crimes became known as the "Forest Strip" killings and prompted a very large manhunt, including blood tests of nearly 200,000 drivers and the questioning of tens of thousands of people. The same report said Chikatilo had been detained twice before his final arrest: once in 1978 after the first killing, and again in 1984, when a detective saw him approaching young women at a bus station and found rope, wire and a knife in his briefcase. He was released after authorities said his blood test did not match the killer's.

The investigation also produced a serious miscarriage of justice. According to the Los Angeles Times and The Independent, another man was convicted and executed for the murder of a nine-year-old girl whom Chikatilo later acknowledged as his first victim. Wikipedia identifies that victim as Yelena Zakotnova, killed in Shakhty in December 1978, and the executed man as Aleksandr Kravchenko.

Chikatilo was arrested on November 20, 1990, and confessed later that month, according to Wikipedia's account of the case. He went on trial in Rostov-on-Don in April 1992, charged with 53 murders, and was held in a metal cage in the courtroom throughout the proceedings. In mid-October 1992 the court, presided over by Judge Leonid Akubzhanov, found him guilty of 52 murders, and he was sentenced to death.

UPI reported that President Boris Yeltsin rejected Chikatilo's appeal for clemency and that he was executed on February 14, 1994, by a gunshot to the back of the neck in a prison near Rostov-on-Don. Wikipedia gives the place of execution as Novocherkassk.

This record is dated by the 1992 verdict rather than by the crimes themselves, which were committed over twelve years. The case is often cited for the failures of the original investigation, including the wrongful execution and the 1984 release of Chikatilo on the basis of a blood-type comparison.