Biography - Beast of the Ukraine Review

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(More customer reviews)In a world full of sick puppies, Andrei Chikatilo is the biggest and baddest dog of them all. As many as 56 victims (he was found guilty on only 52), males and females ranging from 9 to 45 years old, died at his hands during a 12-year killing spree (1978 - 1990), their bodies molested, butchered, and even partially cannibalized. Dubbed the Butcher of Rostov, the Red Ripper, and the Rostov Ripper, Chikatilo more than earned those ignominious nicknames. His name may be unfamiliar with much of the general population in the West, but Andrei Chikatilo may well be the most sadistic and prolific serial killer of all time. The obvious questions are: How can a human being do something this awful? and How could he get away with it for 12 long years? For the second question, one is tempted to say it could only have happened in the Soviet Union.
Like many a child born in the Ukraine in the 1930s, where the people were starving to death in droves following the end of World War II, Chikatilo had a difficult childhood. Psychologists and profilers interviewed here make several suppositions about his childhood, but they beat the drum loudest when pointing to Chikatilo's sexual impotence. This, they declare, was the seed that fueled his uncontrollable rage, for it led to numerous humiliations which in turn made him feel incredibly powerless. (Yes, he did have two children, but the pregnancies were not achieved via standard rules of sexual engagement, and that's about as far as I want to go on that subject.) Only through the act of killing could he shake free of his bonds of powerlessness, exercising complete control over his victim as he tortured, molested, and killed him/her (invariably a child or prostitute he could lure into a remote area and overpower). He would savor each kill, ripping off body parts with his own teeth on occasion and oftentimes chewing on if not eating the uterus of his female victims.
Why did he get away with such hideous deeds for so long? For one thing, police assumed the murderer would be a young man with a criminal record, not a mid-50s grandfather. Chikatilo experienced a couple of close calls over the years, but the fact that he had a wife and family and, perhaps more importantly, was a loyal member of the Communist party helped him avoid trouble on those occasions (even after he was caught with a briefcase containing Vaseline, rope, and knives). Chikatilo was also aided by the totalitarian nature of the Soviet regime. Loath to acknowledge the fact that the Soviet Union could give birth to such a sadistic killer, the government refused to release any information about it, never informing their comrades in and around Rostov that a serial killer was in their midst - thus, the general population weren't even warned to be careful. So how was he finally caught? Well, one day an undercover cop saw him emerge from the woods near a remote train station, noticed blood stains on his face and a serious cut on his finger, and watched him wash his shoes and coat. Luckily, he took down his information - the next day, another body was discovered in the area Chikatilo had emerged from.
Apart from the subject himself, the strangest thing about this documentary is the fact that it features video footage of Chikatilo's arrest, reenactments of his murder techniques to investigators, and the trial itself (which was a spirited affair to say the least). We're talking about the Soviet Union here - even though the USSR was already falling apart at the time, I never would have thought this type of video footage would emerge. It goes to show just how significant this case was and is. For the first time, the Soviets had resorted to American-style profiling in their seemingly endless pursuit of the killer's identity - and Chikatilo ended up shattering the mold of the stereotypical serial killer. From an historical standpoint, the details of the investigation - covered quite well in this presentation - reveal the dysfunctionality of Soviet law enforcement and government control (a number of innocent women and children died just because the government refused to warn its own citizens that a serial killer was on the loose). Psychology is also a major player in this presentation, as it seriously examines the mind of this killer and his claims that sexual humiliation was the main catalyst that drove him to kill and kill again. Basically, this documentary covers all of the major angles to this sickeningly fascinating story, making it one of the best of the A&E Biography titles.

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