Andrei Chikatilo - The Snare

The Snare

The discovery of more victims sparked a massive operation by the police. Because several victims had been found at stations on one rail route through the Rostov Oblast, Viktor Burakov — who had been involved in the hunt for the killer since 1982 — suggested a plan to saturate all larger stations in the Rostov Oblast with an obvious uniformed police presence which the killer could not fail to notice. The intention was to discourage the killer from attempting to strike at any of these locations, and to have undercover agents patrol smaller and less busy stations, where the murderer's activities would be more likely to be noticed. The plan was approved, and both the uniformed and undercover officers were instructed to question any adult man in the company of a young woman or child, and note his name and passport number. Police deployed a total of 360 men at all the stations in the Rostov Oblast, but only undercover officers were posted at the three smallest stations on the route through the oblast where the killer had struck most frequently — Kirpichnaya, Donleskhoz and Lesostep — in an effort to force the killer to strike at one of those three stations. The operation was implemented on 27 October 1990.

On 30 October, police found the body of a 16-year-old boy named Vadim Gromov at Donleskhoz Station. Gromov had been killed on 17 October, 10 days before the start of the initiative. The same day Gromov's body was found, Chikatilo lured another 16-year-old boy, Viktor Tishchenko, off a train at Kirpichnaya Station, another station under surveillance from undercover police, and killed him in a nearby forest.