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 a minimum of 52 women and children between 1978 and 1990 in the Russian SFSR. 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 in the village of Yabluchne in the Sumy Oblast of the Ukrainian SSR. At the time of his birth, the Ukraine was in the grip of mass famine caused by crop failures and Joseph Stalin's forced collectivization of agriculture.[3]
Chikatilo's parents were both collective farm labourers who lived in a one-room hut[4] 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,[5] adding that he and his family often had to eat grass and leaves in an effort to stave off hunger.[6] Throughout his childhood, Chikatilo was repeatedly told by his mother, Anna, that prior to his birth, an older brother of his named Stepan had been kidnapped and cannibalized by starving neighbours, although it has never been independently established whether this incident actually occurred.[7] Nonetheless, Chikatilo recalled his childhood as being blighted by poverty, ridicule, hunger, and war.
As a child, Chikatilo was constantly berated by his mother. His sister later recalled that their father, Roman, was a kind man, whereas their mother was harsh and unforgiving toward her children.[8]
