The red ripper, p.16
The Red Ripper, page 16
‘I wanted to see this man who could rip open my son’s stomach and then stuff mud in his mouth so that he would not cry out. I wanted to know what he looked like, to know which mother could bear such an animal.
‘And now I see him.’
The next year, 1988, that animal crept back across the border, and again, he killed three times. On 6 April police found the body of an unknown woman who appeared to have been killed two to five days before. On 14 May he killed nine-year-old Lyosha Voronko and then, exactly two months later, fifteen-year-old Zhenya Muratov.
For the police, it was the resumption of a nightmare. If the lull in the killings had left them puzzled and preoccupied, then their sudden resumption made life far worse. It was back to the bruising routine of twelve- and fifteen-hour days and long evenings at work with nothing to keep them going but cigarettes and glasses of strong, black tea. And again the telephone call which would summon them to a piece of deserted woodland to see the body of a child ripped and slashed almost beyond recognition.
As time went on, those horrific wounds were also changing. Chikatilo was becoming more skilled as far as his killing was concerned. The objects of his attention were the same—the tips of tongues, nipples and genitals. But while in the early years he used to slice off huge chunks of flesh, by the late 1980s he was becoming more precise. By his own admission, later, he was also getting more skilled in dodging the spurts of blood as he stabbed and slashed. He was changing from a crazed butcher into a cool, calculating surgeon.
None of which, of course, made the process any less terrible for his victims. In some cases, some of the most horrible ‘surgery’ was done on the victims while they were still alive. In other cases it was once they were dead, or even some hours after—a piece of evidence which gave the investigators one more piece of information about the man that they were seeking: namely that he often hung around at the scene of the crime. It was all part of the ritual that he had followed, almost religiously, for each murder. It was not just the suffering and the killing which gave him the pleasure. It was what he did with the bodies afterwards. Even the act of ripping off the victims’ clothes and taking them from one place to another seemed to give him pleasure. There was a special way in which he had to do it.
The killer still held many mysteries for police, especially as far as his younger victims were concerned. It was not difficult to fathom why the prostitutes and tramps would go off with him. Many of them were so desperate that they would have gone off with anyone. The behaviour of the young boys, particularly those from happy, well-adjusted homes was more difficult to rationalise.
If they had been homosexual, then it might have been easier to explain. But there was no evidence that any of them was. What strange powers did this man exercise in order to lure them to their death? What did he say? Did he order them to follow or did he beg them? And if he promised them something, what was it?
There was no single answer. Chikatilo’s deadly success lay rather in the extent to which he had a different approach ready for every one of his victims, the children and young people included. In some cases, the victims themselves would make first contact even if it was only a matter of asking directions or requesting change for a drinks machine. In those cases, it was relatively simple for him to begin a conversation. And if he learned in the course of the conversation that they had run away from home or were otherwise unhappy or troubled, then it was not difficult for him to go further. Maybe they were hungry or thirsty, he would ask. If so, he could offer them something to eat or drink at his house, which was nearby. And even if they were happy and well-fed, then he knew how to lure them with the offer of a chance to watch some videos or to look at rare stamps.
Regardless of how the initial approach was made, Chikatilo also took advantage of other factors, in particular his appearance: it was difficult for any of his victims to believe that this educated, well-dressed man could be a killer. In a way, this was his secret weapon. Children who would not have dreamed of going off with a younger, more threatening-looking man simply lowered their guard when they came into contact with this soft-spoken uncle or grandfather figure.
Equally important was the naivety of his victims, which was itself again a product of society. Years of trying to sweep crime, particularly that of a violent and sexual nature, under the carpet had made its mark. Certainly, Soviet parents used to warn their children against the danger of going off with strangers, just as their Western counterparts have always done. But there was rarely the same intensity about it, for the simple reason that the risks seemed smaller. Chikatilo could also play on a certain sense of solidarity between strangers, found not just in the Soviet Union but also elsewhere in the former Eastern bloc.
The very way Soviet society was organised—or not organised—also presented a wealth of opportunities to make contact with strangers. The country did not have a monopoly on queues for buses, but in the Soviet Union they were often longer and slower moving. To them should also be added the inevitable lines in shops, cafés and other public buildings. In any queue, there is a feeling of comradeship. People who would not talk to each other if they met by chance in any other circumstances behave very differently if they find themselves standing one behind the other waiting for a bus or a loaf of bread.
The extent of this willingness, especially on the part of children, to go off with complete strangers, was graphically demonstrated after Chikatilo’s capture by an experiment carried out by the Rostov psychiatrist Bukhanovsky. A solidly built, middle-aged man, he cruised the streets of Rostov in his car one evening, trying to pick up children with promises of food and drink. To his surprise—and horror—he found many accepted apparently without fear, climbing into the passenger seat and happily going off with him to an unknown destination. In fact the only place he took them was the local police station, where they were given a ticking off by police for their lack of caution. Such children made easy victims.
The fifteen-year-old boy, Zhenya Muratov, who went off with Chikatilo on 14 July 1988 appears to have been one of them, although investigators spent a long time afterwards trying to work out why. The boy’s case was a puzzle to them. In retrospect, he seemed too bright to be tricked by a man like Chikatilo. Unlike many of the others, he was not a runaway or hooligan, neither was he too young to know what this kindly uncle wanted. Top of his class and a keen chess player, he was also extremely strong and fit; his parents recalled years later in court an occasion when he had run more than ten miles home after missing a train. He seemed to have everything going for him. It then all went terribly wrong.
His parents had last seen him the day before, when he set off early in the morning on the train to Rostov. He had passed the entrance exams to one of the city’s institutes, but had to go back to give a blood sample for his medical. He was not sure how long this was going to take. But he had an aunt in Rostov and it was agreed that he would stay with her overnight if he wasn’t able to get back in time. That he made it to his aunt’s is certain. According to her, he arrived late in the evening after staying to watch a football match. When he left her the next morning, he said that he had some more things to do in connection with his exams and would then get the train home. It was on that train home that he must have met Chikatilo.
Quite what Chikatilo said to him to persuade him to leave the train remains unclear. The murderer’s initial version after his arrest was that the boy had accepted an offer to go off to eat and drink with him at his dacha. His parents rejected the theory out of hand. He was not that kind of boy, they insisted. Nor would there have been much logic to it. Judging by where his body was found, he had already been travelling more than an hour before getting off the train just a few stops from home. If he had been driven purely by hunger or thirst, he would have had to wait just a few minutes more. And they do not think it likely that he succumbed to the other kinds of offers of stamps or coins with which Chikatilo used to tempt his young victims.
An alternative version, mentioned by Chikatilo later, during his trial, seemed more probable. He said that he had fallen into conversation with the boy after sitting down next to him on the train, and had asked him to get off the train with him at a deserted station called Lesastep, north of Shakhti, to help him carry his things to his cottage. According to Muratov’s parents, only such an appeal for help could have persuaded their son to alter his plans in that way. Nevertheless, doubts still remained over the last few hours of Muratov’s life. Nor was any more light shed by the discovery of his body by children, playing in the woods, more than eight months later. By then, it was little more than a mass of bones.
Towards the end of 1988, the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Rostov received a note from Moscow in the internal mail. It was a standard document, sent out to investigating magistrates all over the country. Quoting what it claimed was the latest Japanese research, the circular described a scientific breakthrough which it said could have very important implications for the fight against crime—albeit in a tiny minority of cases.
Until then it had been assumed that a person’s blood and sperm were always of the same group. For this reason, even when traces of sperm were found, for example, on a corpse, it was thought enough to give a suspect a simple blood test to determine if there could be a link. His sperm would necessarily be of the same group as his blood. However, the Japanese scientists had apparently found that this was not always the case. In extremely rare cases, they said, perhaps one in ten thousand, or even one in a million, the two could be of a different group.
The circular was handed around, without generating much interest and then put away in the files.
Chapter Thirteen
For anyone who lived through it, the spring of 1989 was an almost unreal time. Historians will look back on it not only as the high point of Gorbachev’s perestroika but inevitably as the beginning of its end. It was the point at which the initially controlled ‘revolution from above’ gave way to a spontaneous and far more powerful ‘revolution from below’. Certainly, the consequences were not felt immediately. From then on, however, it was possible to trace a series of events which were to culminate two and a half years later not just in the fall of Communism and of Gorbachev but also in the dissolution of the Soviet empire.
Since coming to power in 1985, the former Communist Party boss from the provinces had already made enough changes to earn himself a place in the history books. To begin with, it was largely a question of telling the truth about the past and debunking the myths and lies on which the Soviet Union had been built. Stalin, virtually deified by Gorbachev’s predecessors, was at last revealed in his true colours: as a monster who killed millions in his pursuit of power. One by one, the victims of his purges were rehabilitated and lessons drawn about the damage caused by the so-called ‘Cult of Personality’.
Gorbachev’s revolution was not only about the past. He was also interested in the present. At home, he began experiments in the economy, giving the green light to the formation of co-operatives, in reality private companies in everything but name. Abroad, he agreed deep arms cuts with the Americans and began to loosen the stranglehold on the former satellites of Eastern Europe in a process culminating in the tearing down of the Berlin Wall.
Yet it was an uphill struggle. Although Gorbachev himself seemed uncertain at times about how fast or how far he wanted to go with his reforms, it was all too much for many of his more conservative colleagues. One by one they were removed in reshuffles. Yet the speed of change was so great that many of the seemingly more enlightened men who took their places soon found that they, too, were out of step with the increasingly liberal mood.
Nor was society, as a whole, ready for the shock. Whilst the young generally welcomed change, many of the older generation remained Communists, who were proud of the achievements of the past, from the defeat of Nazi Germany to the space programme. What little they had seen of perestroika did not suit them at all. Despite Gorbachev’s rhetoric, food stores were getting emptier not fuller. More alarming was the perceived growth in lawlessness. No sooner had authorities conceded openly for the first time that serious crime existed, than they had to admit that the situation was getting worse. This was particularly the case in Rostov, whose position in the south of Russia made it easy prey for the organised ‘mafia’ groups run out of Georgia, Armenia and the other republics of the Caucasus. Many ordinary people had had enough. They wanted the clock turned back.
Instead it went forward. In March 1989, for the first time in more than 70 years, the country went to the polls to choose a parliament in genuine, contested elections. True, the procedure was far from flawless in a Western sense; in order to ensure that the Communists remained on top, they and their allies were guaranteed a substantial slice of the seats as a right. There were also numerous abuses on the ground, particularly in outlying areas, where the Party barons were unwilling to lose their grip on power. Yet, the change had come. Enough progressive-minded people had broken through the obstacles put up against them to ensure that the first Congress of People’s Deputies turned into an incredible spectacle when it met a few months later. To realise how far the country had come it was necessary only to watch former dissident Andrei Sakharov crossing swords with Gorbachev, the man who had him freed from internal exile in Gorky more than two years before.
It was as if the people had suddenly found a tongue after decades of enforced silence. And these were not battles fought out behind closed doors. The deliberations of the new parliament were watched by more than a hundred million people on live television and listened to by tens of millions more on radio. Industrial production plunged by as much as a fifth as workers stayed away from their factories to follow proceedings. The sound of the debate echoed in shops, hotels, restaurants and even taxi cabs.
It was against this backdrop that Chikatilo killed again. It had been more than seven months since he had murdered Muratov, but the boy’s body still lay undetected under the snow. It was not to be found until April. By that time, Chikatilo had already met Tatyana (Tanya) Ryzhova. It was not the first time there had been a pause. Like most serial killers, the impulse to kill appears to have been triggered by external circumstances and pressures. The end of 1988 appears, therefore, to have been a fairly stable time for him. Now it was over.
As a child, Tanya had been the kind of daughter every mother would dream of having: clever, a good helper at home and one of the best students in her class. Her mother Vera, a plump, good-natured woman who worked as a milkmaid on a collective farm, was justifiably proud. But then things began to go wrong. To her mother’s alarm, Tanya began to drink and smoke. Inevitably, she was found out. But it was only one of the sources of tension that began to emerge at home. More and more, she began to argue with her mother, and fight with her brother. Things were also going badly at the vocational boarding school where she was studying. Her grades were getting worse and she was arguing with the teachers and answering them back. Then, on 11 January 1989, the girl, now a month before her sixteenth birthday, left home and never came back.
Not that her mother realised it immediately. She assumed that her daughter was at school in the nearby town of Kamensk. But then, a couple of days later, she received a telegram from the headteacher saying that she had disappeared from there too. Vera Ryzhova was worried. Although her daughter was headstrong, she had never behaved like that before. The next day she hurried to Kamensk. After talking to teachers, she set off to visit Tanya’s friends, as well as her grandmother, to see if she was with any of them. Then, on 15 January, in despair, she went to the local police. They did a few checks with local hospitals, but when they turned up nothing, they told her to look for herself. ‘If you find anything, then give us a call,’ said one in a matter-of-fact way as she walked out of the police station.
The months that followed were a period of terrible uncertainty for her. She tried to get information about Tanya through the girl’s friends, but it was difficult. Her daughter had never really been close to anyone. Even those she called friends were little more than acquaintances. Nor did Tanya’s boyfriend Andrei, who was a friend of her son, know what had happened. Then, early in March, she received a tip-off from a friend of a friend saying that her daughter had been seen living in a town called Glubokoye, where she had been squatting in a cellar. But again the police were not interested. They told her to go and check for herself. As was established later, Tanya had met a couple of boys her age on a local train at the end of January and had gone off with them. The boys were heavy drinkers and petty criminals who were known to the police. But she liked them and they were good fun. They spent more than a week together, drinking and having sex in a squalid ménage à trois in the cellar under the house at number 8 Jubilee Street.
It didn’t last, and by the beginning of March, Ryzhova had gravitated back to Shakhti and was literally walking the streets. A single girl, she was alone and with no friends, but still too proud to go back to her home or to her school. The days spent sleeping rough were also taking their toll. There was little left now of the pretty teenager that she had been. Her drinking, too, was getting worse. By lunchtime, she had often drunk so much vodka or cheap port that she could barely stand up straight.
More than anything else, it was this unsteadiness on her feet which drew Chikatilo’s attention to her when he saw her outside the city’s railway station. He took it all in with the quick expert eye of a professional: the dirty clothes, the unkempt hair tumbling out of the winter hat and, above all, the smell of alcohol on her breath. His approach was direct but effective, his confidence bolstered by the knowledge that his daughter’s apartment in nearby Lenin Street was empty and that he had the keys in his pocket. He offered her food and drink, and, like many before her, she willingly went off with him. A few minutes later, they had reached the typical crumbling tenement block at number 206 and were inside the small ground-floor flat with the number 40 on the door.
