Andrei Chikatilo

(Citizen X, Mad Beast, Rostov Ripper, Red Ripper)

This guy has been referred to as, "The Soviet Unions answer to Hannibal Lecher". As a kid growing up in the Soviet Union, times were tough. As a child, Andrei's brother was taken by the villagers and eaten during times of famine. As an adult, while living a double life as a married man, Communist Party member and a teacher, Andrei, enjoyed killing children with impunity.

Chikatilo lived in Rostov, 500 miles from Moscow. He preyed mostly on children, stalking many of his victims in local train and bus stations. A cannibal and a sadist, Chikatilo had a fetish for disembowelments and mutilations.

His 12-year killing spree was finally uncovered in 1992. Chikatilo was not too good at hiding his crimes. Investigators were hindered by the fact that he was a Party member. In addition, the investigation of his crimes was used to flush out many known homosexuals in an attempt at moral cleansing. Many blame the incompetence of Soviet authorities and their refusal to admit the existence of a serial killer in their socialist society for his 10-year reign of terror.

Years before his arrest he was brought in for questioning and let go when police found that his blood did not match the semen found in one of the victims. It is a little known fact that in some rare cases, where Chikatilo being one, the blood and semen of a person does not necessarily have to match. Free again, Chikatilo continued on his path of destruction with reckless abandon. Eventually he was arrested because of the determination of 2 investigators involved in his previous arrest that remembered his name after he was seen coming out of a forest near a train station.
 

While on trial, Chikatilo’s gory descriptions, psychotic behavior and litany of horrors gave the Soviet public their first taste of serial mayhem. "I am a mistake of nature, a mad beast," he said at his 1994 trial where people fainted when they heard how he boiled and ate the sawn-off testicles or nipples of his victims. On February 14, 1994, Andrei Chikatilo was executed by firing squad.