The red ripper, p.25
The Red Ripper, page 25
Other, more concrete, indicators were already evident by Chikatilo’s late teens. As Tkachenko put it, predispositions for particular patterns of behaviour often emerge before the behaviour itself. ‘All the peculiarities of Chikatilo’s heterosexual life give evidence of such predispositions,’ he said. ‘In adolescence they often manifest themselves quite conspicuously. For instance, in sadistic fantasies. Chikatilo began to have them as a child. It was not that he actually imagined what he was going to do later. It never happens like this. It’s a very gradual process. Fantasies may supersede one another, but never—and certainly not in childhood, do they take the form of what eventually is performed. These fantasies may, in fact, be more or less socially acceptable. For instance, one might imagine oneself as being a strong man dealing with evil forces, and acting quite violently. Such fantasies bear witness to sadistic tendencies in one’s character.
‘One’s subsequent behaviour only appears to be unexpected: these fantasies begin slowly but increasingly are translated into actions. Most, too, are unconscious. That is, one seldom realises beforehand that one wants to commit a murder, and more specifically, commit it the way Chikatilo did.
‘With Chikatilo everything developed little by little, gradually. First he began deviating from what is considered usual, normal sexual life: from a heterosexual partner and the usual method. While he was working at school, he suddenly realised that he was attracted to girls under twelve. His actions then became increasingly aggressive. And eventually, when the situation allowed, his gradually revealed impulses took the form of murder.’
The first of those murders, that of nine-year-old Lena Zakotnova, was in December 1978; but it was more than two and half years until the second, that of the psychiatrist’s namesake, seventeen-year-old Larisa Tkachenko. The long pause appeared to show that there was still one final stage through which Chikatilo had to pass. Inevitably, the process which he underwent was gradual, and even though he was coming to accept the actions and recognise the things and activities to which he was attracted, some kind of self-control was still working.
These elements of restraint were still evident even after Chikatilo’s second murder, as he entered the phase from 1982 onwards during which he was to kill with horrifying regularity. The murders were far from evenly spread out: he was at his most active in the summer and at his least in the winter. In some cases, there were gaps of as long as six or more months between killings which even today still baffle the investigators who were trying to track him down.
‘Despite a lengthy investigation one cannot be sure that everything has been clarified down to the last detail,’ Tkachenko said. ‘Nobody knows everything except Chikatilo himself. Yet these winter periods are evidence that he was still perfectly in control of the situation. He was still able to restrain his impulses. As for the rise in his activity, there is no unambiguous scientific explanation for that, either. But one can in principle assume that such a deviational pattern of activity may not only serve to satisfy pathological yearnings as such, but also to discharge psychic tension. If we again draw an analogy with normal sexual intercourse, it is also followed by a psychic discharge. In a person like Chikatilo with all his mental anomalies, it might have been a more acute condition which resulted in greater relaxation. In other words, whenever he felt tension due to certain anxiety or depression, he had a ready method to achieve relaxation and escape tension.’
This meant that by 1983 or 1984, the killings appear already to have begun playing the same role for Chikatilo as normal sexual relations do for others. ‘On the whole the process is clear enough,’ the psychiatrist said. ‘Gradually, he fully realised what form of sexual behaviour fully met his true motives. Of course the motivation was distorted. But many usual motivational elements were still there. Some of the motives predetermining normal behaviour likewise predetermine an abnormal one: for instance, to achieve sexual satisfaction and to relax. A normal person has a different method, and a different object. Chikatilo had his own. However, the stages were the same: establishing contact, excitement, intercourse proper, and relaxation. All those stages were present, although each of them was modified, of course. And the objective was the same.’
Among the many puzzles about Chikatilo, one of the greatest is his relationship with his wife. He was a married man who, to friends, workmates and relatives seemed to be leading a ‘normal life’. For Tkachenko, his ability to maintain this front for so long was the result of the gradual way in which his conventional sex life was pushed aside by his alternative ‘secret life’. Initially, the first was dominant, the second little more than vaguely formed fantasies. After all, despite the problems on his wedding night, Chikatilo succeeded in fathering two children in the 1960s and continued to have intercourse—if increasingly sporadically—with his wife through the 1970s.
As the years passed, the balance began to shift: the conventional side gradually declined in importance, and the perverse grew, until their respective weights had been reversed. ‘These are two different processes,’ Tkachenko said. ‘One gradually appears and the other gradually disappears. It does not happen overnight. It is not as if he saw a child, got satisfaction from it, and cut off all other possibilities. He had sex with his wife less and less. In the later stages she began asking him why he did not sleep with her, and he responded by causing a row. Since he did not want to have sex with her, and anyway no longer could, he tried to keep the spheres strictly separate.
‘The family, and the man-woman relations in general were a taboo for him. Constrained by his own inadequacy and social rules, he was hardly likely to mix the two spheres. Other people, even those with sadistic tendencies, often do. They can have sadistic fantasies during sexual intercourse, or resort to certain actions, but for him those were two different spheres. He might have such fantasies when he masturbated, deliberately fantasised or dreamed. In fact he has the same sadistic fantasies to this day. At any rate that was what he told me during the latest examination.
‘In the end, his whole sex life became deformed. He had found a different object, and a different method of realisation which satisfied him better. Therefore, a heterosexual relationship could no longer satisfy him. He wanted something quite different.’
Given the increasing number of young boys among his later victims, it might seem obvious to conclude that, by the end of the 1980s, Chikatilo should be classified as homosexual or—more accurately—as bisexual. Tkachenko disagreed. ‘In essence, Chikatilo, like so many other sadists, was deviating from a heterosexual object in his activity. The normal object is heterosexual and mature. Every deviation, every sexual abnormality is specifically characterised by a deviation from the normal object. More often than not sadists gradually switch over to homosexual objects, to homosexual paedophilic objects. And so, as with other serial killers, boys began predominating at later stages.
‘It wasn’t because women were beginning to turn him down, it was the consequence of certain biological regularities underlying the process. Such abnormal sexual behaviour is due to the transformation of all structures, of distorted sex-role behaviour and stereotypes. He is unable to perform his male role to the end, and his sexual self-awareness is distorted so much as to include a change, an inversion of the sex object.
‘Even by the end, you could not call him a regular homosexual. Moreover, sadists like him deny homosexuality and homosexuals as having anything to do with them. They detest homosexuals because they fall short of the acceptability standards I have mentioned earlier. Inwardly they begin gradually approaching the homosexual object, but their mode of realisation is different. It is violence. It is sometimes said that the actual sex of their object is insignificant to them. In fact, it is insignificant on the conscious level, and yet the tendency is there, most definitely. As a result, if the process is well advanced, as in Chikatilo’s case, homosexual and paedophilic objects are invariably found at later stages.
‘It is difficult to reveal the exact personal significance of each element of his behaviour. Because more often than not he behaved automatically, although there was a certain consistency and repetitiveness about his actions. According to him, he derived pleasure from performing this or that act. Another sadist might derive pleasure from different actions. It is extremely individual.’
Slivkov, another Russian serial killer with whom Tkachenko had worked, used specifically to select his victims only from the Young Pioneers, the Soviet equivalent of the cub scouts. He derived sexual satisfaction only if the children were wearing their uniforms, with their red ties and well-polished shoes. Another serial killer named Kulik used to thrust objects such as sticks or broken bottles into his female victims’ genitalia. Chikatilo’s particular obsession was cutting.
‘He said he liked the uterus, it was so elastic he felt like chewing it. Thus, his behavioural patterns became fixed once he found them satisfying. Once he derived pleasure from this or that action he tried to repeat it again so that he could get satisfaction. Just as every person’s sex life is individual, so every sadist has his own individual range, which may gradually expand, as he tries other actions and finds them satisfying.
‘Cannibalism and vampirism are modifications of sadism. They could also be accidental, because bites and blood-letting are common in normal sexual intercourse, too. Therefore I don’t think he actually swallowed flesh. You must instead imagine him in this highly agitated condition, manipulating the dead body, often chaotically, with his hands and his teeth. Suppose, when he bites, he bites the dead woman’s nipple off. But this happens at the height of sexual excitement, when all sorts of actions are possible as long as they lead to sexual satisfaction.
‘After normal intercourse, a person might complain to his or her partner, “You hurt me.” And he or she would say, “Sorry, I did not mean to, I was carried away by passion.” Something similar, though more complicated, happened in Chikatilo’s case. He was carried away by his perverse passion.’
It is difficult to conceive of anyone who kills more than fifty people as sane. Yet this was precisely the conclusion at which Tkachenko and his colleagues arrived. For the experts at the Serbsky Institute, the decisive issue was one of responsibility: did Chikatilo know what he was doing when he killed and was he in full control of his actions? As far as they were concerned, the answer to both was ‘yes’.
‘What is responsibility?’ Tkachenko asked. ‘Responsibility is a concept determining a person’s ability to be aware of his behaviour and control it while performing a crime or a criminal act. The concept of responsibility comprises two criteria, the legal and the medical. The legal criterion stipulates that one is aware of one’s actions, and has the ability to control them. There are four medical criteria covering practically the entire field of psychic pathology: chronic psychic diseases, feeblemindedness, a temporarily diseased state, and other diseased states.
‘Thus, the acknowledgement of a certain psychic disorder does not automatically lead to irresponsibility. To pronounce a person irresponsible, it must be proved that his psychic disorder has prevented him from being aware of his actions and being able to control them. Therefore, a forensic psychiatrist’s examination always consists of two stages: first, doctors diagnose psychic disorders as such, and then they try to determine how bad they are, how pronounced, and whether or not they can prevent the person under examination from being aware of his actions and controlling them, in particular in relation to the criminal act in question.
‘A person might suffer from a psychic disorder and yet commit a robbery, a burglary or multiple murders, like Chikatilo. Even if the disorder is identical, the medical verdict for each of these criminal offences will be different, absolutely different, because each of them puts different demands on the person’s resources, and involves a different degree of awareness of misdoing and possibility of restraint.
‘Now, let us look at the combination of Chikatilo’s psychic disorders. His diagnosis reads as follows: organic lesion of brain with certain psychopathic peculiarities and a sadistic tendency. After ascertaining these peculiarities, we must try and understand if they deprived him, in his concrete behaviour, of the ability to be aware of his actions and control them. What does this mean? It means we must understand how adequately he could assess the situation; how purposeful his behaviour was; whether or not there were certain disorders at the moment of the crime which deprived him of all control by robbing him of all willpower and making him unable to resist his passion.
‘When we analysed in detail each of Chikatilo’s killings, a very definite picture emerged. Most of his crimes were carefully thought out, his actions pre-programmed. In fact he told us he had learnt to dodge the spurts of blood from his victims’ bodies which would stain his clothing. Or, look at the way he captured his victims. These were planned and differentiated actions, depending on his object. There were also no lapses of memory which could indicate mental disorder. There was nothing of the sort. He recollected the sequence of his actions down to the smallest detail. There are known cases when epileptic patients suddenly performed abnormal sexual actions at the moment of black-out and psychic discharge. Such things happen. But it was not Chikatilo’s case. There was no situation in which his mind suddenly disconnected itself.
‘After performing his actions he also set out methodically to cover his tracks. He buried the victim’s clothes, and destroyed all evidence of his having been there in order to prevent identification. After analysing every episode we came to the conclusion that there was no question of irresponsibility in the given case. He is a responsible individual.
‘Maybe we would have found differently if Russian law had the category of limited responsibility, as is the case in several other countries. As we stated in our report, his diagnosed disorders were certainly linked with his deeds and predetermined his motivation. We have written about that. But as long as there is no category of limited responsibility in Russia, it is not worth speculating about it. In any case, the category is normally used for people committing less grave offences.
‘Homicide is a very grave offence, socially. And it takes very serious disorders of psychic activity for you to fully forget what you are doing. One must be very deeply deranged to commit murder unconsciously, totally without control—and Chikatilo was not.’
The claim of sanity has been disputed by some experts, among them by Aleksandr Bukhanovsky, the Rostov psychiatrist who worked with Chikatilo after his arrest. In other respects, though, Tkachenko’s analysis appears less controversial, and what is more, it appears to fit in with research that has been carried out in the United States by a special FBI unit which has examined dozens if not hundreds of serial killers across the world. At the time of writing, the unit, situated in Quantico, Virginia, had not yet carried out a formal analysis of Chikatilo. However, initial observations by Gregg McCrary, one of their leading experts, put the Russian killer into context. He also agreed with Tkachenko in judging Chikatilo sane, albeit suffering from what he called a ‘severe antisocial personality disorder’.
According to McCrary, Chikatilo fits the pattern of what the unit calls ‘organised’—as opposed to ‘disorganised’—offenders, both in the way that he picked up his victims and in the manner in which he killed them and disposed of the bodies. ‘One of the defining characteristics of an organised offender is the use of a con, ruse, ploy or subterfuge to lure the victims away to a quiet place,’ McCrary said. ‘Surviving victims often describe it as like being with two different people—initially, a rather charming, caring individual, someone who seems willing to help them or who comes to them and asks for their assistance, but who, when in an isolated area where the offender feels safe, changes without warning into an explosive, assaultive predator.’
For the FBI, the way in which Chikatilo would bring the weapon with him to the scene of the crime, use it and then take it away again was typical of ‘organised’ serial killers; so, too, was the care with which he covered up the bodies, some of which were not found for months afterwards. ‘Disorganised’ killers, by contrast, act more spontaneously when they kill and make little or no effort to hide either the murder weapon or the body of their victim: on the contrary, the body is often deliberately left in a place where it is guaranteed to be found by passers-by.
Chikatilo’s other activities were also familiar with the experts at Quantico: such as the bizarre rituals which he performed around his victims’ bodies and the way in which he achieved pleasure from their suffering: ‘It is not the offender’s infliction of pain which is arousing, but rather the victim’s reaction to the infliction of pain or torture which arouses and gratifies the offender,’ McCrary said. ‘These offenders make their victims scream and beg for mercy, beg for their lives and so on during the murder. This is why he stabbed them in a manner which would cause a slow and painful death. It was far more gratifying for him to do so.’
Nevertheless, McCrary takes issue with Tkachenko in one respect: over the reason for Chikatilo’s shift towards male victims. He saw it more in terms of the victims, themselves. As Chikatilo’s ability to relate to people declined, he was driven more and more towards children and others on the margins of society. ‘It was easier for him to lure eight- to fifteen-year-old children into going with him and it was also easier to maintain physical control over these younger victims,’ he said. ‘His primary criterion for victim selection was their vulnerability. Tramps, drunks, prostitutes, and children are all more easily manipulated and controlled than “normal” adults.’
Chapter Twenty
It was a typical Russian crowd, aggressive and ill tempered. There were more than 150 of them, both men and women, standing outside courtroom number five in the Rostov Regional Court, and the young policeman on the door was not letting anyone in. In the middle, making the most noise of all, was a little man, probably about sixty years old, in a flat cap and creased, working overalls.
