Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - “The Butcher of Rostov” - Andrei Chikatilo

Episode Date: November 13, 2017

One of the most prolific serial killers ever to live, Andrei Chikatilo murdered 53 people between 1978 and 1990. Greg and Vanessa examine how Chikatilo was molded by the horrors of World War II in Ukraine and then the Soviet Union. Driven by his impotence, he could only be satisfied by killing women and children.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bed, and there was a full of blood. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 is out now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Due to the graphic nature of this killer's crimes, Listener discretion is advised. This episode includes dramatizations and discussions of murder and assault that some people may find offensive.

We advise extreme caution for children under 13. It's April 14, 1992, and Rostov courtroom number five is full. Report a shoot video. Civilians nibble free bread rolls. A giant metal cage constructed specially for this trial looms next to the judge's bench. Then a woman in the crowd begins screaming. Scoundrel, cannibal, filthy pig. In walks, Andrei Romanovich Shikitilo.

His head is shaved, his demeanor calm, as two guards lock him inside the cage. He sits on his bench, yawns, gazes out on the families of his numerous victims. Pidaras, she continues. What was it like for our children? Chiquotillo is charged with raping, murdering, and in some cases, cannibalizing 53 women and children between 1978 and 1990. He would often meet them at a bus or train station, strike up a conversation, and lead them into the woods nearby.

It wasn't difficult. To anyone before his arrest, Chiquotillo appeared a shy, listless older man, a typical Soviet clerk. Charming, harmless. But he was anything but. As part of court procedure, the judge must read detailed police reports for each murder. Multiple members of the crowd faint upon hearing them. I'll kill your wife, your children, all of them. All of them.

No one moves to stop the screaming woman. A few others join in. And as their hatred spills forth, the purpose behind Chiquetillo's cage becomes clear. It's not to keep them in. It's to keep them out. I'm Greg Poulson, and this is serial killers. Today we're going to take a deep dive into the life of André Chiquetillo, the Red Ripper. I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson. Vanessa's not a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist, but she's done a lot of research for the show. Hi, everyone. We'd like to ask a quick favor. Would you leave a five-star review of serial killers on your favorite podcast directory? it seems so simple, but it really helps us out.

And don't forget to subscribe while you're there, because a new episode comes out every Monday. You can also find us on Facebook and Instagram at Parcast. And on Twitter, at Parcast Network. A quick note. In this week's episode, all quotes will be performed by actors. However, these lines are quoted from primary research sources and presented exactly as those people stated them.

From a psych perspective, Chiquatillo is a fascinating study, not just because of his crimes, but also because he was born, raised, and in some ways created by the Soviet Union. That's right. Chiquatillo came into the world barely a decade after the USSR and was arrested only a year after its fall. That's why the media dubbed him the butcher of Rostov, or the Red Ripper. But some psychologists have given Chiquetillo another name, the pathetic monster. Throughout his life, Chichotillo, faced psychosexual urges, he seemed powerless to resist. By some accounts, his decade and a half of but butchery wasn't a choice, but an addiction. Well, still, it's hard not to see him as a

monster. The accounts of his murders are graphic. But we're left with a lot of unanswered questions. Was he the product of a toxic upbringing? Could his rampage have been stopped? And at the end of it all, was he fit to stand trial for his crimes? To understand, will have to track back to the town of Yablatsnoya, a small farming village in modern-day Ukraine. Ukraine was the breadbasket of Russia. Its fertile soil fed most of the empire, and the farmers who cultivated it became rich and powerful through centuries of monarchy. But Joseph Stalin would change all that. Riding the tide of communism, Stalin believed that urban factory workers were the heart of Russia, meaning southern farmers represented the enemy, their wealth,

tradition and local influence were horribly un-communist. So in the 1930s, Stalin established programs to redistribute food away from Ukraine. When farmers resisted, Stalin promoted famines across the land. Millions died. The soil became barren, and the spirit of Ukrainians broke. In short, Stalin won. This was the world André Chiquatillo was born into, circa, circa, His family managed a meager living on the communist collective farms, but stories of starvation and worse were common.

In fact, Chiquatila later recalled a warning his mother gave him. I was from Ukraine. Soviets organized hunger during those years. 20 million people dead. My older brother Stepan was caught by cannibals and eaten during the mass starvation. My mom always told me, don't get it. out of our yard. Stepan was eaten and they will eat you too. While it's known that cannibalism took place across Ukraine, it's impossible to confirm if Andre really had a cannibalized brother. It could have been a boogeyman's story to keep him from leaving the yard. But a five-year-old

doesn't forget details like that. In fact, five decades later, Chiquotillo would recall his mother's words to prosecutors, still convinced his brother had been eaten. Then came the war. 1941 would bring Hitler and his German troops into Ukraine, dragging Andre's father into the army. Here appears a story that, if true, would explain much of Chiquitila's later behavior. In 1943, Andre's mother gave birth to a girl, Tatiana, while his father was locked in a German POW camp. In these years, rape by German soldiers was common for Ukrainian women, and some historians suggest that Tatiana could have been the product of such an assault. since their house only had one room,

is it possible that six-year-old Andre witnessed his mother's rape? Possible, but the evidence is slim. When it comes to serial killers, people search for these clear-cut traumas that tell us what went wrong. It's harder to understand the impact of a childhood where rape and murder was merely the backdrop, part of everyday life. For developing brains, it normalizes the idea of violence and death.

Consider how Andre felt walking to school and frequently seeing body parts on the side of the road. And school was bad enough as it was. Though Chiquetillo was bright, he had crippling shyness. He was paranoid of his chronic bedwetting and believed his classmates made fun of him. The bedwetting was a problem at home, since Andre, Tatiana, and their mother shared a single mattress. His embarrassment and his mother's punishments caused more stress leading to more bedwetting. As he grew into a teenager, all this stress made Andre incredibly anti-social, especially with girls. He simply could not interact with women. In some instances, he could barely

say his own name when talking with them. Teenage awkwardness or something else? Oh, there's something deeper there. Author Peter Conradi suggests that growing up in wartime had two effects on Chiquatillo. One, obviously, was his proximity to death and blood, but the other was his concept of masculinity. Chiquotillo absorbed stories of Red Army soldiers like comic books, imagining himself in dramatic battles or interrogating German soldiers. And those interrogations tended to be pretty brutal, right? In Andre's mind, absolutely.

But the key here is Andre's love of fantasy. His visions of these war heroes didn't match his reality. His father was a disgraced POW. His mother would punish and belittle him. him. Even at a prepubescent age, Chiquatillo had severe emasculation issues. He didn't see himself as a man. How could he expect women to respect him, let alone like him? So he preferred his dream world. He'd masturbate frequently, shunned the other kids and stress deeply over what his classmates thought of him. Throughout his childhood, Andre obsessed over his inadequacy. The time bomb had started ticking,

and as other boys flirted, Andre found another passion to throw himself. into communism. Andre became a model Soviet student, equal parts book smart and devoted to government propaganda. In his mind, the Communist Party would be a worthy substitute for attracting girls. So he set a sights as high as they could go. The Moscow University Law Program, doorway to top USSR politics. This was the Soviet dream that one could rise to greatness from the humblest of beginnings,

since communism didn't prioritize wealth or business. and prioritize wealth or background. And this dream wasn't entirely untrue. Another poor Ukrainian boy applied to the Moscow law program five years prior to Andrei and was accepted, future president Mikhail Gorbachev. But Andre was not so fortunate. He took the placement tests and was rejected. Andre blamed his father's tarnished war record.

He was now 19, nearly friendless, and had his entire self-esteem riding on his intelligence. intelligence. He couldn't accept that it too was insufficient. Well, either way, Chiquatillo had to settle for a two-year trade school program in engineering. The work was remedial, but something significant did come from this time. Andre found his first girlfriend, Tatyana Narajana. For anyone keeping track, yes, Tatiana is also the name of Andre's sister. In fact, the two Tatyanas were friends, which is how the former met Andre.

Despite his shyness, she found him charming and good-looking, tall and broad-shouldered. The relationship stalled, however, when it came to sex. Andre and Tatiana tried intercourse twice, but both times Andre failed to sustain an erection. The question of Chiquatillo's impotence is central to the chaos within him. On one hand, it's possible his performance issues were physiological, meaning strictly physical. But considering Chiquetillo's nerves around women, not to mention his frequent masturbation, it's far more likely that his troubles were mental. Andre's problems with Tatiana confirmed everything he feared.

He wanted to please women and couldn't. His manliness had failed him, quite literally. After 18 months, Tatiana called off the relationship. This cycle, interest, intimacy, sex, and embarrassment would repeat throughout Andre's 20s. He was drafted into the army, where his comrades noticed he would, never take girls home at the end of a party. For Andre, it was because he knew he would fail to perform, but the other men made fun of his impotence and accused him of homosexuality.

And when he did end up in a girl's bed, she would frequently make fun of his inability or spread rumors about him. In 1993, he looked back on this time with an interviewer. Girls were going behind my back, whispering that I was impotent. I was so ashamed. I tried to hang myself. My mother and some neighbors pulled me out of the noose. At one point in his trial, a judge asked Chiquitillo

why he hadn't simply killed himself to avoid his crimes. Imagine hearing that as a response. Can we trust his testimony about the suicide, though? After all, he was on trial for murder, possibly trying to gain sympathy. We'll be digging deep into Andre's testimony in the next episode. But you're right, the Chiquetillo family didn't document a suicide attempt. few traditional Ukrainian families would, but either way, we're talking about decades of severe depression and self-hatred here. And there's vast documentation on the relationship between impotence and depression.

Had Chiquotillo spent his 20s in America, he might have read Alfred Kinsey's behavior in the human male, the landmark text on sexology, which was in its sixth year of circulation. It showed that man's sexuality wasn't a personality defect. It was a biological phenomenon. and scientists' understanding of it was advancing month by month. But Soviet society was more conservative when it came to sex, and this research wasn't accessible to someone like Chiquatillo. To him, he was simply broken.

He had some successes during this period, graduating trade school, becoming a communist party member, but his impotence became his obsession. After the army, he returned briefly to Yablajnoia, then rightly decided he had no professional. future there. He decided to move to Russia proper, the town of Rodionova Nesveteeski, just north of a major city, Rostov Nadano. The butcher of Rostov had come home. Andre's sister was worried about him. Between his shyness and depression, he ran the real risk of

never finding a wife. So Tatiana invited her brother out to lunch and, accidentally on purpose, introduced him to Faina O'Donacheva, Fena for short. Feña was also on the tail end of her marrying years, her late 20s, and needed a husband fast. She looked past Andre's shyness and considered him a good match. After all, he wasn't an alcoholic or a domestic abuser. In Russia, that put him ahead of most eligible bachelors. Faina said of their relationship, We were never really even in love anyway.

Not even when we got married. I only really married him because he was shy and modest and didn't drink or smoke. By 1963, the two married. Of course, Andre's sexual problems remained, but he and Fenya worked around them. Their marriage was for convenience on both sides, so they were willing to try alternative routes to a normal life, especially sexually. For instance, to impregnate Fenya, Andre would masturbate onto her stomach and use his fingers to push the semen into her vagina. Many would later question how Fenya possibly overlooked his bizarre sexual behavior, But it seems things were bizarre from the beginning, and Fenya accepted it.

She knew she did not sexually arouse her husband. She also knew that Andre had a stable job and moderate social influence. To keep that, she was willing to bear some bedroom oddities. By this unorthodox method, Fenya gave birth to two children, Ludmila, in 1967 and Yuri in 1969. Andre Chiquitillo was a father. At this point, he hadn't committed any crimes. He was a quiet, sexually frustrated, chronically depressed man.

On the surface, his was a typical Soviet life. All this would change when he decided to become a teacher. We'll return to our story in just a moment. And now, back to serial killers. I don't believe that the Yugoslavians consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don't believe that the Romanians consider themselves dominated by, the Soviet Union. I don't believe that the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. And the United States does not conceive that those countries are under the domination

of the Soviet Union. This bold statement issued by President Gerald Ford articulated the mood between the U.S. and Soviet relations through the 70s. The Cold War was a period of detente, French for release of tension, and the Soviet economy had entered its infantry era of stagnation. The Soviets' hold was loosening, and the U.S. was free to take pot shots. But just as his country began to unravel, so did André Chiquatillo. When we left him last, he had just gained employment as a teacher. It's uncertain why Chichotillo wanted to teach.

He didn't like children when he was younger, nor did he like them now. He was smart, but uninspiring, and aloof intellectual. So as one could guess, the job went poorly. Chiquotillo's students mocked him openly in class. They called him goose, a common Russian insult, and smoked cigarettes openly in class. Each night, he came home exhausted and humiliated. He had once hoped to be a Soviet leader, part of communism's innermost circle. Now, even children refused to show him respect. It was the lowest point in Chiquetil's life. So, he decided to take respect by force.

The incident started slowly. Chiquotillo would barge into the girls' dormitory rooms while they were undressed. He'd fondle himself during class. He'd lean a little too close to criticize a paper. Then it got worse. Much worse. On one occasion, Chiquotillo kept a misbehaving student after class. When they were alone, he held her down and beat her with a ruler until he suddenly ejaculated.

The incident shocked him. He locked her in the classroom and fled. She had to climb out the window to get home. On another day, he swam up to a teenager in a river near the school and grabbed her, feeling her breasts and genitals. Her screaming and thrashing gave him immense pleasure. But as soon as he orgasm, he let her go. After 30 years of frustration, Chiquatillo had found a release.

He wanted to dominate. Remember those early fantasies about tying up German soldiers? It wasn't about patriotic pride for Chiquatillo. It was about control. He'd gone his entire life fretting over whether or not he was worthy of sex. But worth didn't matter if his partner didn't have a choice. And children were perfect targets. They were smaller and weaker, and their testimonies to parents were often ignored. Or never shared. Stranger danger didn't exist in Soviet life. In fact, kids were taught to address unknown adults as auntie or uncle. They were supposed to trust all adults, not to speak out against them. Through this system, Chiquatillo found himself

in the perfect position to abuse. The molestations continued until 1974, when rumors in the school became too numerous to ignore, not wanting to face backlash from higher-ups. The school director quietly asked Chiquita to resign. No report would go on his record. Which allowed him to get another teaching job in the nearby town of Shakti. There, the molestations resumed. Life in the Soviet Union was founded on secrecy. Rape and murder were supposedly crimes of capitalism and therefore didn't happen in the USSR. It was dangerous for civilians to suggest otherwise. Still, Chiquotillo needed more privacy to explore his tastes. He bought a shack on a street called Mejaveoi Piede-Uluck for his experiments. Here, he would

bring home drunks, sex workers, and teenage girls. Rostov was a city of transients. It wasn't hard to find a girl who'd have intercourse for a hot meal or a shot of vodka, but their willingness did nothing for Chiquatillo. Once again, he failed to perform. His solution came on December 22nd, 1978, the night he committed his first murder. Her name was Lena Zaccultneva, and she was only nine years old. Chiquotillo found her walking home from school and offered to let her use the shack's restroom.

As soon as they were inside, everything went wrong. Chiquotillo tried to rape her but couldn't keep an erection. Furious and desperate, he took out a pocket knife and began stabbing Lena in the stomach. The motion aroused him. He continued stabbing, eventually ejaculating onto her. And as he pushed the semen into the girl's vagina, Lena spoke. She was still alive. So Chiquotillo strangled her until she expired completely.

This would be possibly the most important moment in Chiquatillo's life. It replaced decades of self-hatred with ecstasy. His useless manhood gave way to a new tool, his knife, which he could enter into his victims as much as he wanted. But the hide didn't last. As soon as he realized what he'd done, Chiquotillo went into a panic to hide the evidence. Neighbors reported a light in the shack's window all night long.

Two days later, Lena's body was found in a nearby river. When police questioned the neighbors, many pointed to Chiquito's shack. They'd seen an older man bringing young girls in and out, and some had heard screams during the night. Chiquotillo had cleaned the shack, but not well. Even a cursory forensics probe would have ended the Red Ripper. But if you're hoping for an early demise for Chiquetillo, prepare yourself. for the first of many disappointments. This time, Fenya saved him, offering a false alibi.

She confirmed what the police already believed, that a married, employed, communist party member couldn't possibly perform such a bloody crime. Instead, the police grabbed a local pervert named Alexander Kravchenko. Kravchenko was far from innocent, a 25-year-old guilty of several rapes and murders when he was 17,

but more importantly, he matched Soviet ideas, of a dangerous criminal, repeat offender, poverty-stricken, clearly mentally deranged. Investigating Chikatilo would raise eyebrows from the higher-ups. Investigating Kravchenko would be open and shut. So Kravchenko was tried, convicted, and executed for the murder of Lina Zakotnova. Chikotilo was torn. Part of him was terrified of the police and terrified of what he'd done. But part of him knew he wouldn't be able to resist. For two and a half years, he fought the urge to kill, overwhelmed with thoughts of Lena.

But this would only last until September, 1981. It started with Chiquotilla losing his job. Molestation rumors resurfaced. The school director suggested another resignation. Again, no note on his record, but Chikatilo needed another job fast. After a brief search, he took an unlikely offer as a supply clerk. It's not what you're thinking. Back then, supply clerking was an occupation unique to the Soviet economy.

Here's how it went. The government would deliver raw materials to a factory and assign a quota. The factories were then supposed to manufacture finished products and return them to the government with no compensation. This was all supposed to run on communistic pride. Which meant frequently it didn't. Someone needed to go from factory to factory to confirm that work was actually being done. The job required people skills, which Chiquotillo lacked, but his education and social status meant, on paper, he was overqualified.

Besides, the job had a perk for Chichotillo. It demanded constant travel. He'd be living on the road for weeks at a time, away from his family, anonymous to all. It was the perfect cover as he hunted victims. Disclaimer, this next story includes graphic descriptions of rape and violence. His next victim was Larissa Kachenka, a 17-year-old boarding student known for her adventurous personality. She met Chiquatilo waiting at a bus station and agreed to accompany him into the woods. Larissa wasn't naive. Relaxing in the woods was a Russian euphemism for sex, likely in exchange for alcohol. But it had been over two years since Lena's death. Chiquatillo had plans for this new girl. In the woods nearby, Chiquotillo fell upon Larissa.

For a charming older man, he was rougher than she expected. She resisted. Exciting Chiquetilo. But as always, his lower regions failed to respond. According to Chiquotillo, Larissa started to jeer and tease him. Rage once again took hold, but this time it was familiar. Lena had been an act of pure instinct, entirely unplanned. With Larissa, he knew what he wanted.

He began to beat Larissa savagely, shoveling dirt into her mouth to mute her screams. He had no knife. Maybe it had slipped his mind, or he left it intentionally. It wouldn't matter. The dirt suffocated Larissa. The blows cracked her skull. She died slowly, painfully, just as Chiquetilla wanted.

Then, in a state of crazed inspiration, He leaned over her corpse and bit off her nipple. I understand that I have to be destroyed. I am a mistake of nature. After Lena's death, Chiquatillo had gone into a state of shock and panic. Now, he celebrated dancing around the clearing, naked and ecstatic. For the first time in his life, he knew how to make himself happy. He just needed to do it again.

Nine months later, Chiquatilo found himself walking home from the grocery store, next to 13-year-old Lubov-Berjouk. As soon as they left the main road, Chiquotillo attacked, this time with a kitchen blade. The medical examiner would identify 22 stab wounds on Lubov's body. The most notable on her eye sockets. Chiquotillo had carved out her eyes. Our story will continue in a moment. after the break.

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Tickets on sale now at Yamavatheater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. U.N.? must be 21 to enter. And now back to serial killers. After Lubov, Chiquotilo no longer tried to resist his urges. In 1982, he would kill six more times over the next six months, luring young, hungry girls into the woods with the promise of food or alcohol.

Chiquotillo would usually try to rape his victims, or in some cases have consensual sex, before failing to achieve an erection. This would send him into his animalistic rage, for which he brought rope and a knife. His preferred method remained stabbing, but he discovered new perversions with each victim. Like with Olga Stelmachanok, age 10,

Chicatilo not only stabbed her 50 times. Squeamish listeners, brace yourselves. He carved into her genitals and tore out her uterus. He would continue doing this for most victims, sometimes eating pieces of the uterus before throwing it away, as well as biting off their lips, tongue, or nipples. All this would happen while his victims were still alive. And for each of them, he made sure to gouge out their eyes.

The uterus surgery matches Andre's fear of sex. The biting goes with his mad beast behavior. However, the detail of the eyes deserves a closer look. At first, Chiquatillo explained, I had heard that the image of the murderer remains in the eyes of his victim. For that reason, I tried to wound my other victims in the eyes with my knife. Weird, huh? That's from an old Russian wives tale, something used to entertain children in horror stories.

Which certainly fits. Most of the psychology here seems to be Chiquotillo exercising his child to demons. But later in the same testimony, he returned to the detail about the eyes, describing his first killing. I covered her eyes with her scarf because it was terrible to see her gaze. Remember that nickname the Pathetic Monster? Chickatillo seems to have been both thrilled by and terrified of his victim's agony. Yes, he was aware of what he was doing, but much like an addict, he had no way of stopping himself. This would later become the crux of his legal defense, and he'd point to his two-year hiatus after Lena as proof of his resistance.

but in the city of Rostov, it was all too easy to relapse. Rostov Nadano is a medium-sized city on the exact border between Europe and Asia. It served as a stopover for millions, many of whom had no papers. So when bodies started appearing in the woods, police often had trouble identifying the victims, let alone their killer. And for all its talk of socialism, the Soviet Union did little to help its poverty-stricken class. Those without propiska... meaning identity papers. Disappeared regularly, especially in Rostov.

It wasn't uncommon for young Jane Does to go from crime scene to morgue without much policing. Of course, these murders stood out. After Lubov-Biruk, local police were referring to the bodies as the Lesopolisa killings, Russian for a forest path. But by the end of 1982, they couldn't formally link the murders to a single case. The man in charge was Major Mikhailis. Fetisov, a competent policeman frustrated by his lack of evidence. Suspecting a single killer, he decided to bring in some help.

Moscow forensic analyst Victor Burekhov. In early 1983, Boudacov was his department's leading expert in fingerprints, ballistics, footprints, and other forensics. But he'd grown wary of his repetitive work. He wanted to get out of the lab. Fetisov invited him to Rostov to test himself against the Lesopolisa killer. That summer, Chikotilo said about providing Budokov with a new set of bodies. Between June and August of 1983, he took six more victims.

And forensics would have been a nightmare. The hot summer months sped up decomposition, leaving skeletons instead of bodies for police to identify. But Budakov focused on the eye sockets. Who else would gouge out a child's eyes? For him, it was the single factor that proved which bodies were. the Lesopolisas. It would prove enough. On September 6th, Budakov and other Moscow officials were able to link six of the murders into a single case. Still, linking the murders and solving them are two different matters. We'll talk more about the police side of events in next week's episode,

but in short, 1983 turned to 84 without progress. Meanwhile, Chiquotillo picked up the pace. Over the next year, he killed 15 people, including seven-year-old Igor Dudvok, the first boy linked to the investigation. At the time, investigators thought serial killers only attacked males or females exclusively. Chiquotillo didn't seem to have a preference, which confused and divided investigators. Was this really one killer? Was it a cult? None of them seemed capable of dealing with a killer like Chiquotillo. Still, his impulses had their weaknesses. In spring of 1984, Chiquotillo, reconnected with Tatiana Petrosian, an old fling from his days as a teacher.

Tatiana number three? There were a lot of Tatiana's, yes. For this one, Chiquotillo suggested they go on a picnic, try to rekindle their old flame. She could even bring her daughter, Svetlana, age 10. Taking two victims at once would be new for Chiquetillo. Still, he had waited a long time to kill Tatiana and couldn't help himself. He had to risk the danger. As he and Tatiana started relaxing, Svetlana wandered into the woods to play.

While she was gone, Chiquotilo bashed her mother's head in with a hammer. The 10-year-old girl returned to find the polite older man transformed into a naked, blood-soaked monster. She ran for her life. And Chiquotillo followed. When officials found the two bodies, Svetlana had been decapitated. Her body covered in wounds. But the girl had almost escaped. Chikotila would have to be more careful if he wanted to avoid capture.

But capture seemed less and less likely every day. The body count was climbing. Townspeople were starting to ask questions. By the summer of 1984, Major Fedizov admitted that the investigation had completely stalled. Even Detective Budakov seemed stumped. Then a lucky break. On September 13th, 1984, Inspector Alexander Zanaskowski witnessed an older man approaching multiple women at a train

station, trying to proposition them. His tactics were relentless. With each rejection, he'd go straight to the next girl and try again. Zaniskovsky followed the man for a full nine hours, becoming more and more suspicious. At five in the morning, he witnessed Chiquotillo, receive oral sex from a sex worker, and pulled him aside. Chiquotillo had a small. small briefcase. Zanaskovsky demanded to see inside. It contained a knife, a length of rope, and a tub of Vaseline. Zanaskovsky's suspicions were right. This was the Lesopolisa killer.

He arrested the man asking his name. Andre Romanovich, Chiquito. After six years and 32 murders, Chiquetillo had been caught. But history tells us that Chiquetillo's final kill count was over 50, Over 50. How could a man caught red-handed kill 20 more people before facing trial? We'll learn all that and more on the next episode of serial killers. Join us next week for the conclusion of André Chiquetillo. Don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Tune-in, SoundCloud, Stitcher, or any other podcast directory,

or through our website, parcast.com, spelled P-A-R-C-A-S-T-com. A new episode of Serial Killers comes out every Monday. please let us know what you think and join the conversation on our Parcast Facebook page. You can tweet us at Parcast Network. That's P-A-R-C-A-S-T network. As always, we thank you for listening. Have a killer week. Serial Killers was created by Max Cutler and developed by Ron Cutler. It is a production of Cutler media and is part of the Parcast Network. It is produced by Max and Ron Cutler, sound design by Ron Shapiro, with production assistance by

Joel Stein and Carrie Murphy. Additional production assistance by Carly Madden and Maggie Admeyer. Serial Killers is written by Connor Fitzgerald and stars Greg Poulson and Vanessa Richardson. Our amazing voice actor is Harris Markson. A beloved 75-year-old man washing up getting ready for bed is brutally beaten and killed. Despite an exhaustive investigation, the killer avoids arrest and then strikes again. I'm Global News crime reporter Nancy Hicks. You might listen to a lot of true crime podcasts this year, but they're not crime beat. Search for and follow the award-winning podcast Crime Beat on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

Do you want to hear something spooky? Some Monster, it reminded me of Bigfoot. Monsters Among Us is a weekly podcast featuring true stories of the paranormal. One of the boys started to exhibit demonic. Stories straight from the witnesses' mouths themselves. Something very snakelight lifted its head out of the water. Hosted by me, your guide, Derek Hayes. Somehow I lost eight whole hours.

Listen now on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.