Free Extreme Evil - Taking Crime to the Next Level (True Crime) by Phil Clarke, Kate Briggs, Tom Briggs

married Feodosya Semyovna, a friend of his sister’s who was three years his junior and, despite his impotence, they managed to conceive two children. Still unable to sustain an erection he reportedly had to push his seed into his wife by hand.
    As the seventies rolled in Chikatilo acquired a degree in literature and philology at Rostov University and became a teacher. He hoped this role would bring him the respect he had missed out on in his youth, but within a short space of time history began to repeat itself. The students mocked his appearance, belittling him to such an extent he resorted to carrying a knife for protection.
    His fear quickly turned to thoughts of revenge and he responded to their taunts by secretly molesting the students. In April 1973 he held a schoolgirl in detention and beat her with a ruler causing him to ejaculate. Further deviant acts resulted in his dismissal early the following year and after similar allegations at other schools in the area, he was forced to relocate to Shakhty, a small coal-mining town to the north-east of Rostov-on-Don.
     
    S ECRET  S HACK
    Shortly after moving the family home, the disgraced teacher started to build a secret life away from his wife and children. Andrei wanted to allow himself the freedom to act on his perverted impulses. He bought a hideaway house, little more than a shack on Mezhevoy Lane, the perfect lair for a sexual deviant. His mind was focused on planning his first venture into a world of sin and suffering in a bid to relieve his sexual frustration.
    On 22 December 1978 he plucked nine-year-old Lena Zakotnova from a bus stop, luring her to his shack with a promise of candy. A vicious attempt to rape the young child brought further dismay as he was yet again unable to perform. In a fit of rage he withdrew a knife and stabbed her three times in the stomach; the work of this substitute phallus arousing the vexed and violent Andrei.
    The body was found two days later in Grushovka River but despite finding blood near Chikatilo’s lair, police dismissed him in favour of a known rapist, Aleksandr Kravchenko. The wrong man was convicted and received the death penalty. The case was closed and Andrei was free to plot a repeat performance. While this close call initially scared him into restraining his urges, the fledgling killer had discovered a means to achieve a long-yearned-for release that was impossible to ignore.
     
    I T’S  A LL  I N  T HE  E YES
    Laying low for the next two years, Chikatilo changed his job allowing him to travel widely on the Soviet rail system. Over the next three years he struck all across the Rostov area, murdering almost twenty victims, beginning with seventeen-year-old Larisa Tkachenko. A boarding school truant, she made the fatal mistake of laughing at her attacker when he failed to become erect. Angry frustration rose up once again and he stabbed her repeatedly with a stick. His rage was so great he even bit off her nipple before filling her mouth with dirt and leaves.
    By 1984 a special task force had been created to handle the series of grisly murders. Led by Major Mikhail Fetisov, they marvelled at the uniquely violent MO of the killer. Not only did he inflict multiple stab wounds, but more significantly he attacked the eyes. This Chikatilo trademark came from a popular Russian belief that the eyes of the dead held a snapshot of what they last saw before passing.
    Despite these tell-tale signs and the frequency of the murders over a comparatively small area of the Soviet Union, the police were far from catching Chikatilo. They mistook the attacks for the work of a known sex offender or someone registered insane. Even when he was caught accosting women in Rostov on 13 September 1984 and found his briefcase contained a veritable kill kit, they promptly released him. The man had no criminal record and as well as being a family man, he was a Communist party member. Surely nobody with such credentials could have committed such