Andrei Chikatilo - Chikatilo's Confession

Chikatilo's Confession

On 29 November, at the request of Burakov and Fetisov, Dr. Alexandr Bukhanovsky, the psychiatrist who had written the 1985 psychological profile of the then-unknown killer, was invited to assist in the questioning of the suspect. Bukhanovsky read extracts from his 65-page psychological profile to Chikatilo. Within two hours, Chikatilo confessed to Bukhanovsky that he was indeed guilty of the crimes for which he had been arrested. After conversing into the evening, Bukhanovsky reported to Burakov and Fetisov that Chikatilo was ready to confess.

Armed with the handwritten notes Bukhanovsky had prepared, Issa Kostoyev prepared a formal accusation of murder dated 29 November — the eve of the expiration of the ten-day period of time during which Chikatilo could legally be held before being charged.

The following morning, 30 November, Issa Kostoyev resumed the interrogation. According to the official protocol, Chikatilo confessed to 36 of the murders police had linked to him, although he denied two additional murders committed in 1986 the police had initially believed he had committed. He gave a full, detailed description of each murder on the list of charges, all of which were consistent with known facts regarding each killing. When prompted, he could draw a rough sketch of various crime scenes, indicating the position of the victim's body and various landmarks in the vicinity of the crime scene. Additional details provided further proof of his guilt: one victim on the list of charges was a 19-year-old student named Anna Lemesheva. Chikatilo recalled that as he fought to overpower her, she had stated that a man named 'Bars' would retaliate for his attacking her. Lemesheva's fiancé had the nickname Bars tattooed on his hand.

In describing his victims, Chikatilo falsely referred to them as "déclassé elements", and told Kostoyev he had often tasted the blood of his victims. Although he admitted he had chewed upon the excised sexual organs of several victims of both sexes, he stated he had later discarded these body parts. On 30 November, Chikatilo was formally charged with each of the 36 murders he had confessed to, all of which had been committed between June 1982 and November 1990.

Over the following days, Chikatilo confessed to a further 20 killings which had not been connected to the case, either because the murders had been committed outside the Rostov Oblast, because the bodies had not been found, or, in the case of Yelena Zakotnova, because an innocent man had been convicted and executed for the murder. (Aleksandr Kravchenko received a posthumous pardon for Yelena Zakotnova's murder.)

In December 1990, Chikatilo led police to the body of Aleksey Khobotov, a boy he had confessed to killing in August 1989 and whom he had buried in woodland near a Shakhty cemetery, proving unequivocally that he was the killer. He later led investigators to the bodies of two other victims he had confessed to killing. Three of the 56 victims Chikatilo confessed to killing could not be found or identified, but Chikatilo was charged with killing 53 women and children between 1978 and 1990. He was held in the same cell in Rostov-on-Don where he had been detained on 20 November, to await trial.