Andrei Chikatilo

Andrei Chikatilo
Mug shot of Andrei Chikatilo, taken after his arrest in November 1990
Born	Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo (1936-10-16)16 October 1936 , Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union
Died	14 February 1994(1994-02-14) (aged 57) Novocherkassk, Russia
Cause of death	Executed by gunshot
Other names	The Butcher of Rostov The Forest Strip Killer The Red Ripper The Rostov Ripper
Criminal penalty	Death
Spouse(s)	Feodosia Odnacheva
Children	2
Conviction(s)	Murder Sexual assault
Killings
Victims	52 convicted, 53 tried, 56+ claimed
Span of killings	22 December 1978–6 November 1990
Country	Soviet Union
Date apprehended	20 November 1990

Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo (Russian: Андрей Романович Чикатило, Ukrainian: Андрій Романович Чикатило; 16 October 1936 – 14 February 1994) was a Soviet serial killer, nicknamed the Butcher of Rostov, the Red Ripper, and the Rostov Ripper, who committed the sexual assault, murder, and mutilation of at least 52 women and children between 1978 and 1990 in the Russian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Uzbek SSR. Chikatilo confessed to a total of 56 murders and was tried for 53 of these killings in April 1992. He was convicted and sentenced to death for 52 of these murders in October 1992 and subsequently executed in February 1994.

Chikatilo was known by such titles as the Rostov Ripper and the Butcher of Rostov because the majority of his murders were committed in the Rostov Oblast of the Russian SFSR.

Andrei Chikatilo was born on 16 October 1936 in the village of in the Sumy Oblast of the Ukrainian SSR. At the time of his birth, Ukraine was in the grip of mass famine caused by Joseph Stalin's forced collectivization of agriculture.

Chikatilo's parents were both collective farm labourers who lived in a one-room hut and who received no wages for their work, but instead received the right to cultivate a plot of land behind the family hut. The family seldom had sufficient food; Chikatilo himself later claimed not to have eaten bread until the age of twelve, adding that he and his family often had to eat grass and leaves in an effort to stave off hunger. Throughout his childhood, Chikatilo was repeatedly told by his mother Anna that prior to his birth, an older brother of his named Stepan had, at age 4, been kidnapped and cannibalized by starving neighbours, although it has never been independently established whether this incident actually occurred, or if a Stepan Chikatilo even existed. Nonetheless, Chikatilo recalled his childhood as being blighted by poverty, ridicule, hunger, and war.