Andrei Chickatilo

“I am a mistake of nature, a mad beast.” (Andrei Chikatilo), in 1936 Yablochnoye Ukraine, the most brutal serial killer of Russia was born. The Red Ripper, The Butcher of Rostov; Andrei Chikatilo is a man of disturbing psychology and carnage. Andrei had a biological factor; sexual impotence that formed his rage, yet societal influences produced the monster that one hears about today. He was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and sadism, as well as brain defects. Chikatilo’s psychopathologies and biological factors lead to his crimes and the nature of how he carried out the crimes.

Andrei Chikatilo is a serial killer who murdered fifty-two women and adolescents between December 22, 1978 and November 6, 1990. Andrei mutilated, assaulted, and cannibalised his victims, “Educational and mental health problems in childhood, inpatient mental health contacts, self-destructiveness, and schizophrenia were significantly more frequent in offenders guilty of mutilation.” (Hakkanen-Nyholm, Weizmann-Henelius, Salenius, Lindberg, and Repo-Tiihonen, 2009) which Andrei exemplified in his life, with his mental health issues and biological issues that lead to his crimes. Andrei’s modus operandi (MO) was to go to bus or train stations and offer women the promise of drugs, alcohol, money, and promised adolescents’ toys as well as candy, and it worked. They would follow him out to the woods where Andrei would commit his atrocities “he produced a knife from his pocket and began to stab and cut her in different parts of her body.” (Conradi, 2016). His signature was gauging his victim’s eyes out; due to an old Russian wives’ tale, disembowelment, chewing off noses and nipples, and cutting out the tongues and genitals. Due to this Andrei Chikatilo would be branded Russian’s most brutal serial killer.

Andrei’s biggest factor in his crimes was his sadism, “sexual sadism refers to causing pain, humiliation, fear, or some form of physical or mental harm to another person to achieve sexual gratification. Sadistic acts include restraint (such as with ropes, chains, or handcuffs), imprisonment, biting, spanking, whipping, or beating.” (No Author, 2019). He would only be gratified through the torture he inflicted on his victims and once he realized that his impotence could be subsided, the acts got worse and more frequent. He first was sexually impotent at the age of fifteen, and along with that he experienced mockery and bullying from his peers. The anger he felt from the humiliation of being impotent was there from the age of fifteen and followed him through the rest of his life.

Looking into Andrei’s earlier life there are many societal influences that aided in the psychopathy that engulfed Andrei Chikatilo. For Andrei, growing up in the Ukraine at the time is one of the plethora of hardships he would have to face, it was filled with crime, famine, and neglect. Stalin made sure that the Ukraine was empty and used to fill the needs of Russia, as well they entered world war two against Germany. His father was a prisoner of war, as Andrei suffered at home “his severe short-sightedness as a boy was one of the factors, so too was the long absence of his father at a crucial stage in his development.” (Conradi, 2016) he also suffered without his father to help him. Andrei would also hear stories of cannibalism, including how his neighbour ate his brother, he would walk down the street seeing body parts, and death everyday due to bombings. Needless to say, it would be expected for Andrei to have issues as he grew up, but not to the extent of what came.

There may have been traits that were overlooked in Andrei’s childhood. There are three traits that are common in serial killers that are exhibited in childhood, “J. M. MacDonald (1963) observed in his most sadistic patients a triad of childhood cruelty to animals, fire-starting, and frequent bed-wetting.” (Sacco, 2020). Andrei had frequently bed-wetting due to his hydrocephalus, he may have also exhibited animal cruelty, yet it may have been unnoticed due to the happenings in his life during this time, such as the bombings in Ukraine. It is expected that with the atrocities of his crimes, Andrei would have abused animals in his adolescence.

With the crimes Andrei has committed and the obvious lack of guilt, remorse, and empathy clearly, he is a psychopathic killer. “Psychopathy is an intriguing mental health disorder that is often associated with antisocial personality disorder.” (Sacco, 2020), displaying a lack of a conscious, empathy, and remorse for examples, Andrei fits the mould. Along with his nurture influences, he had some nature influences “Chikatilo is believed to have suffered from hydrocephalus (water on the brain) at birth, which caused him genital-urinary tract problems later in life, including bed-wetting into his late adolescence and, later, the inability to sustain an erection…” (No Author, 2020). He also had lesions on his brain that nearly blinded him. Altogether it created an unimaginable monster, in which societal issues had a grave impact.

Andrei Chikatilo had a seemingly normal life “Being discreet in nature, psychopaths can form loving relationships with others and even have families, although the relationships are typically manipulative in nature.” (Sacco, 2020), he was married with two children throughout his criminal activity. He also worked as a schoolteacher but moved from school to school because of complaints of his inappropriate actions towards the children. He ended up working as a clerk in a factory which allowed him to “prey[ing] on young victims whom he met at rail stations and bus depots around Rostov-na-Donu and other cities…” (Jenkins, 2020). Andrei was one of the many killers that blend into society and “Because many serial murderers can blend in so effortlessly, they are oftentimes overlooked by law enforcement and the public.” (Morton, 2005).

In order to track down such an atrocity, previous predispositions would have to be broken. In soviet Russia, their close-minded ways of thinking and inability to broaden their prospects made the investigation stall. Once Viktor Burakov was introduced into the investigation progress was made when he secretly went to psychiatrist Alexandr Bukhanovsky, who aided in the profile for Andrei “his sexual perversions are fully developed so he is older; 45 maybe 50. He likely has problems with impotence that can only be satisfied by his killings, but that doesn’t mean he is alone. He can have a wife, children even. He doesn’t appear to be crazy or retarded and yet he is mentally deranged.” (Polcyn, and Richardson, 2017) Bukhanovsky was exceedingly close to the actuality of Andrei Chikatilo, it helped Viktor expand his way of looking at criminals and help eliminate suspects. They went down to only people who are homosexuals and car owners.

Andrei was arrested in 1984 for molesting a girl at a bus station and his murder kit that he carried around was sifted through and they found a knife, rope, and Vaseline. He was let go due to his blood type not matching the fluid the police previously gotten from a victim. He was released and went on to commit further murders, but on November 6, 1990 he murdered his final victim to which a police officer seemed suspicious of the actions and noticed his murder kit again, leading to Chikatilo’s arrest. He was now a prime suspect in the murders, fitting Bukhanovsky’s profile to a tee, the psychiatrist got Chikatilo to confess to his crimes by pretending to be there just to talk and for a pretend novel they were going to write about Chikatilo.

The Russian media was on this case for a lengthy time, they pressured the police into working harder to locating and figuring out who the perpetrator was and deemed him The Red Ripper, and The Butcher of Rostov. Once the police had apprehended Chikatilo the nerves were still around because for 12 years there was a ripper running around killing innocent people. Nevers would not be subsided till he was dead. When Andrei was on trial, he stayed in a metal cage to separate the victim’s families and him, during the trial people threw things at his cage, screamed profanities at Andrei, and some fainted while hearing him speak of his actions. Once he showed the court his genitalia in mockery to the victims and to further his act proving he was ‘crazy’. They had cameras on him the whole trial and at the end of his trial when the judge handed out his life sentence “For a few minutes bedlam erupted. Spectators mounted benches and craned forward while television cameramen jostled with uniformed guards outside Mr. Chikatilo's cage.” (Schmemann, 1992). There was relief when the media presented that he would be condemned to death.

After Chikatilo’s arrest he “…was transferred to the Serbsky Institute in Moscow for a six-day psychiatric evaluation to determine whether he was mentally competent to stand trial. Chikatilo was analysed by a senior psychiatrist, Dr. Andrei Tkachenko, who declared him legally sane on October 18.” (No Author) He was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, and sadism, but was not found legally insane. Bukhanovsky opposed this determination but the state went with Tkachenko’s evaluation. Andrei was not given any treatment options nor were any discussed as well as no methods were used to dive deeper into his psyche. Russia is a different country where “before 1991, clinical psychology as we know it in the West didn't exist in Russia.” (Daw, 2002) they were not concerned or accepting of treatments and just wanted to produce punishment.

Borderline personality disorder is similar to antisocial personality “Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) and borderline personality disorder (BPD) have a number of points of overlap: in symptoms, in personality dimensions that underlie their phenomenology, in community prevalence, in risk factors, and in outcome and response to treatment.” (Paris, 1997) but there are some differences “however, the causes of these conditions and the ways in which they manifest can be strikingly different” (Salters-Pedneault, 2020), causes like childhood experiences and BPD may also be genetic “Certain events during childhood may also play a role in the development of the disorder, such as those involving emotional, physical and sexual abuse. Loss, neglect and bullying may also contribute. The current theory is that some people are more likely to develop BPD due to their biology or genetics and harmful childhood experiences can further increase the risk” (No Author, 2020). Andrei being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder is accurate, but he also exhibits traits of antisocial personality disorder such as failure to conform to social norms, lack of remorse, and deceitfulness.

Analysing Andrei’s crimes with psychology theories two are the most accurate. Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis theory has aspects that help one understand the psychology behind Chikatilo. One “Freud believed that it divided into parts that were perpetually at war with one another—the id, ego, and superego.” (Sacco, 2020) the psyche of Andrei was at war with each other to satisfy his sexually violent wants. As well as “Freud thought that the early relationships we establish, the way we are treated by our parents, and many other experiences in our childhood have a big impact on the structure of the psyche and the personality we display as adults.” (Sacco, 2020), which stated previously Andrei had various hardships growing up. Lastly, Andrei did not have his father during his phallic stage of development “The child becomes aware of anatomical sex differences, which sets in motion the conflict between erotic attraction, resentment, rivalry, jealousy and fear which Freud called the Oedipus complex (in boys) and the Electra complex (in girls). This is resolved through the process of identification, which involves the child adopting the characteristics of the same sex parent.” (McLeod, 2019), which could have affected how Andrei’s sexual impotence led to frustrations and his sadism.

The second psychology theory that can help analyse Andrei’s psychology is Albert Bandura’s social learning theory. “Bandura suggested that we learn how to interact with the world and each other by modeling our behaviour after those we see around us.” (Sacco, 2020) Andrei had nothing but crime, violence, and hate. How would he learn anything different if his society was what he exemplified during his criminal activities? Andrei took it to the extreme, but he learned the basis of the anger, frustration, crime, and hate towards someone who has nothing to do with the main issue from his society “Children pay attention to some of these people (models) and encode their behavior. At a later time they may imitate (i.e., copy) the behavior they have observed.” (McLeod, 2016). Society can blame killers for making their own choices, yet society creates these monsters and are still shocked when the atrocities are committed.

There were many unusual aspects to this case, starting in the country he was raised in; Russia is a vastly different country than Canada. For starters they have a very close-minded society which did not aid in the ability to catch Andrei. Another unusual aspect to this case was that “Andrei Chikatilo had a condition that caused his blood type to be unidentifiable unless there was an actual sample of blood. Because of this, the only DNA collected from the crime scenes was semen that was believed to be blood type AB. However, Andrei kept escaping police detection because he had blood type A.” (Harring, 2018) this condition was unbeknownst to every detective until Dr. Svetlana Gurova studied and founded the difference. Another unusual factor was the metal cage Andrei was kept in; he was unable to talk to his lawyers like the western trials. Andrei Chikatilo’s psychological profile was unusual as he was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, and sadism yet no other treatment or evaluation was taken, Bukhanovsky’s was prominent in his profile but the state did not consider his opinion on Chikatilo’s state of mind. Lastly, during the investigation many other criminals were found, and cases were closed “From 1985-1987, a special operation was conducted in the USSR to capture the criminal ‘Lesopolos’, which had never been similar in scope before. From the treasury, about 10 million rubles were spent on it. The maniac was searched for in all possible forests. During this time, hundreds of people with sexual deviations were found, dozens of murders and rapes were solved.” (No Author, 2018). This was unusual because while looking in the completely wrong direction they captured many other criminals.

Before concluding, there are questions to think of brought forth by Peter Conradi who wrote the novel The Red Ripper; Inside the Mind of Russia’s Most Brutal Serial Killer “What if Chikatilo had been treated earlier, in the 1970s or even in the 1960s? Could the feelings of inadequacy and inferiority which were with him almost from birth have been handled effectively enough to stop them exploding into pure violence? Would he still have turned into the monster that he became if he had lived in a more liberal Western society, where it was possible to speak openly of such sexual problems and obtain treatment for them?” (Conradi, 2016). Such questions should make one realize how important psychology is for everyday people and extreme criminals. All factors are extremely important for any criminal profile and makes one think hard about the nature vs. nurture debate; concluding that nurture factors may contribute greater to one’s psyche and pushing them to their criminal activity.

In the final analysis one can conclude that Andrei Chikatilo’s borderline personality and sadism is largely due to the societal influences that have surround him from day one. His crimes came from the anger and need for power he lacked through his adolescences, being the son of a ‘coward’ who got captured, a brain defect, shyness, and impotence. Andrei ruthlessly murdered fifty-two people without the slightest feeling of remorse, empathy, or conscious and very well deserved the death penalty. Andrei was a mistake of nature and a mad beast, he was not incorrect in stating this, yet there are reasonable theories (Freud’s and Bundura’s) to help analyse Andrei’s psychological issues. Society created this monster, and it should be responsible for the prevention of further people in a situation like Andrei’s. Andrei is evil and no one can argue that the lethal shot was not deserving. Chikatilo’s psychopathologies and biological factors lead to his crimes and the nature of how he carried out the crimes.