VIDEO: Cannibal Andrei Chikatilo’s Courtroom Behavior

Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo was a Soviet serial killer, nicknamed the Butcher of Rostov, the Red Ripper and the Rostov Ripper, who sexually assaulted, murdered and mutilated at least 52 women and children between 1978 and 1990 in the Russian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Uzbek SSR.

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He 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.

According to Wikipedia, 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.

When the Soviet Union entered World War II, Chikatilo’s father was drafted into the Red Army and subsequently taken prisoner after being wounded in combat. Between 1941 and 1944, Chikatilo witnessed some of the effects of the Nazi occupation of Ukraine, which he described as “horrors”, adding he witnessed bombings, fires, and shootings from which he and his mother would hide in cellars and ditches.

On one occasion, Chikatilo and his mother were forced to watch their own hut burn to the ground. With his father at war, Chikatilo and his mother slept sharing a single bed. He was a chronic bed wetter and was berated and beaten by his mother for each offense.

In 1943 Chikatilo’s mother gave birth to a baby girl, Tatyana. Because Chikatilo’s father had been conscripted in 1941, he could not have fathered this child.

As many Ukrainian women were raped by German soldiers in World War II, it has been speculated Tatyana was conceived as a result of a rape committed by a German soldier. As Chikatilo and his mother lived in a one-room hut, this rape may have been committed in Chikatilo’s presence.

In September 1944, Chikatilo began his schooling. Although shy and ardently studious as a child, he was physically weak and regularly attended school in homespun clothing and, by 1946, with his stomach swollen from hunger resulting from the post-war famine which plagued much of the Soviet Union.

On several occasions, this hunger caused Chikatilo to faint both at home and at school, and he was consistently targeted by bullies who regularly mocked him over his physical stature and timid nature. At home, Chikatilo and his sister were constantly berated by their mother.

Tatyana later recalled that in spite of the hardships endured by her parents, their father, Roman, was a kind man, whereas their mother was harsh and unforgiving toward her children.

Chikatilo developed a passion for reading and memorizing data, and often studied at home, both to increase his sense of self-worth and to compensate for his myopia, which often prevented him from reading the classroom blackboard. To his teachers, Chikatilo was an excellent student upon whom they would regularly bestow praise and commendation.