The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (15 page)

way ride to the motel.

Robin Gecht (Author’s collection)

Andrew Kokoraleis\ (Author’s collection)

Edward Spreitzer (Author’s collection)

39

CHIKATILO, Andrei Romanovich

Police had heard enough. Armed with search and
CHIKATILO, Andrei Romanovich

arrest warrants, they swept up Robin Gecht, Ed Spreitzer, A native of the Ukraine, born October 16, 1936, Andrei and 20-year-old Andrew Kokoraleis on November 5, Chikatiko was a late-blooming serial killer who traced lodging them in jail under $1 million bond. A search of his crimes back to early childhood. His family had suf-Gecht’s apartment revealed the satanic chapel described fered greatly during Joseph Stalin’s forced collectiviza-by Tom Kokoraleis, and lawmen came away with a rifle tion in the 1930s, Chikatilo said. Apart from knowing matched to the recent Torado shooting. Satanic literature poverty and hunger, he had lost an older brother, was also retrieved from the apartment occupied by allegedly murdered and cannibalized by neighbors dur-Andrew Kokoraleis. With their suspects in custody, ing the famine that claimed millions of Russian lives.

authorities speculated that the gang might have murdered Whether the tale was true or not, young Andrei’s 18 women in as many months.

mother drilled it into him with frequent repetition, and Tom Kokoraleis was charged with the slaying of his later deeds would replicate the act.

Linda Borowski on November 12 and formally indicted While most serial murderers kill for the first time in by a grand jury two days later. Brother Andrew and their teens or early twenties, Chikatilo was a slow Edward Spreitzer were charged on November 14 with starter. With a university degree, a wife and two chil-the rape and murder of victim Rose Davis. When the dren, he presented the appearance of a meek family mangled body of 22-year-old Susan Baker was found man, but dark urges were brewing behind that pacific on November 16 at a site where previous victims had facade. Employed as a school dormitory supervisor, been discarded, police worried that other cult members Chikatilo was fired over allegations that he had might still be at large. No charges were filed in that molested male students. A new job, as a factory supply case, however, and authorities now connect Baker’s clerk in Rostov-on-Don, required frequent travel by bus death to her background of drug and prostitution or train, and Chikatilo turned the circumstance to his arrests in several states.

advantage, trolling for victims in bus depots and rail-Facing multiple charges of rape, attempted murder, way stations.

and aggravated battery, Robin Gecht was found men-The self-described “mad beast” and “mistake of tally competent for trial on March 2, 1983. His trial nature” committed his first murder on December 22, opened on September 20, and Gecht took the witness 1978, in the town of Shakhty. The body of his victim, a stand next day, confessing the attack on Beverly Wash-nine-year-old girl whom Chikatilo strangled, raped, and ington. Convicted on all counts, he received a sentence stabbed repeatedly, was pulled from the Grushevka River of 120 years in prison.

days later. Chikatilo was one of many suspects ques-Tom Kokoraleis had suffered a change of heart since tioned in the case, but police soon focused on 25-year-confessing to murder, attorneys seeking to block the old Alexander Kravchenko, an ex-convict who had reading of his statements at forthcoming trials, but on served time for murder and rape. In custody, Kravchenko December 4, 1983, the confessions were admitted as was beaten by police until he confessed, whereupon he evidence. Four months later, on April 2, 1984, Ed Spre-was sentenced to death and shot by a firing squad. The itzer pled guilty on four counts of murder, including vic-

“solution” looked good on paper, but it naturally failed tims Davis, Delaware, Mak, and Torado. Sentenced to to deter the real killer from striking again.

life on each count, he received additional time on con-The terror began in earnest nearly three years later, viction for charges of rape, deviant sexual assault, and in September 1981. Over the next nine years, dozens of attempted murder.

corpses would be found in wooded areas adjacent to On February 6, 1985, a statement from Andrew

train or bus depots, grossly mutilated by a phantom Kokoraleis was read to jury in his trial for the Rose Davis who was quickly dubbed the “Rostov Ripper.” The vic-murder. In his confession, the defendant admitted he was tims included young women and children of both sexes,

“cruising” with fellow cultists Gecht and Spreitzer when raped and stabbed repeatedly in a pattern of grisly they kidnapped Davis, with Andrew stabbing her several overkill. Some victims had their tongues bitten off; oth-times in the process. Convicted on February 11, he ers were disemboweled, sometimes with organs missing received a death sentence on March 18, 1985. Kokoraleis that suggested the killer might be indulging in CANNI-was executed by lethal injection on March 16, 1999.

BALISM. (Chikatilo later confessed to occasionally nib-On March 4, 1986, Edward Spreitzer was convicted bling on internal organs but denied consuming human of murdering Linda Sutton and formally sentenced to flesh.) Repeated stab wounds to the face were a specific death on March 20. Authorities declared that Spreitzer trademark of the killer, but the mutilations he inflicted had agreed to testify against Gecht in that case, but no otherwise appeared to follow no set pattern.

further charges have been filed to date in Chicago’s Chikatilo may have come late to the murder game, grim series of cannibal murders.

but he was making up for lost time. At the peak of his
40

CHILDHOOD Trauma as Precursor of Serial Murder Chikatilo finally ran out of luck in November 1990, when he was spotted in a Rostov railway station, sporting bloodstains on his face and hand. While he was not arrested at the time, his name was taken down, and the discovery of another victim near the depot two weeks later prompted his arrest on November 20. After eight days of interrogation, Chikatilo confessed a total of 55

murders, leading police to several corpses they had not discovered yet. His recitation of atrocities—illustrated by demonstration on mannequins—included sadistic mutilation of several victims while they were still alive.

Charged with 53 counts of murder, Chikatilo went on trial in June 1992; four months later, on October 15, he was convicted on all but one count and sentenced to death. A last-minute appeal for clemency was rejected by President Boris Yeltsin in February 15, 1994, and Chikatilo was executed that same day, with a pistol shot to the back of his head. Alexander Kravchenko, meanwhile, was posthumously pardoned for the slaying of Chikatilo’s original victim.

CHILDHOOD Trauma as Precursor of

Serial Murder

Before physicians can eradicate a plague, the sources of contagion must be recognized and understood. The same is true of aberrant behavior on the part of human beings. There can be no cure without a recognition of the cause. What prompts a man or woman to adopt a predatory lifestyle, stalking human prey for motives that Andrei Chikatilo at trial (Author’s collection) may be incomprehensible to others? Are such monsters born complete with killer instincts, “BAD SEEDS” with an insatiable genetic taste for blood, or are they shaped and homicidal frenzy, in 1984, eight victims were found in educated over time? If we determine how such predators the month of August alone. Chikatilo was held for ques-are made, can we disrupt the process soon enough to tioning again that year and released for lack of evidence save their lives and those they will eventually destroy?

after Communist officials intervened on his behalf, It is unusual for psychiatric “experts” to agree on lamenting the “persecution” of a loyal party member.

anything beyond vague generalities, but a review of curIt would take another six years, with some 25,000

rent literature suggests resounding unanimity on the suspects interrogated, before police came back to significance of early childhood to the physical and men-Chikatilo a third time and finally bagged their killer.

tal health of an adult. The crucial element is variously Part of the problem was communist mythology, main-labeled “bonding” or “attachment” and refers to the taining that such “decadent Western crimes” as serial emotional connection formed between an infant and its murder never occurred in a “people’s republic.” State parents, starting virtually from the moment of its birth.

censorship forbade police from broadcasting descrip-That bonding is achieved by stages, and while experts tions of their suspect—or even admitting his crimes had disagree on how much time is needed to complete the occurred—and homicide investigators were thus

process—published estimates range from two weeks to reduced to the same cloak-and-dagger routine that had six years—all agree that disruption of bonding may retarded investigation of earlier, similar cases. Propa-produce a child (or an adult) incapable of feeling sym-ganda aside, however, there seemed to be mayhem pathy, affection, or remorse. As pediatrician Selma aplenty in Rostov-on-Don: before it ended, the Ripper Fraiberg writes in
Every Child’s Birthright
(1977), “If investigation would disclose 95 additional murders and we take the evidence seriously, we must look upon a 245 rapes committed by
other
human predators in the baby deprived of human partners as a baby in deadly district.

peril. These are babies being robbed of their humanity.”

41

CHRISTIE, John Reginald Halliday

In the worst-case scenario, detachment may produce factors in the killers’ early lives, including: (1) trauma, an individual suffering from antisocial personality dis-often in the form of physical or sexual abuse; (2) devel-order (APD). Once commonly described as “psy-

opmental failure stemming from that trauma; and (3) chopaths,” such individuals are now more often labeled interpersonal failure on the part of caretaking adults to

“sociopaths,” to distinguish their affliction from the serve as positive role models for the child.

separate—and more severe—condition of psychosis. In Some childhood trauma may be accidental, and vari-essence, while there are degrees of relative severity in ous serial killers report childhood histories of severe APD, its victims are essentially devoid of conscience: head injury. More often than not, however, the damage they are chronic liars, cheats, and thieves, self-centered, suffered by future criminals is deliberately inflicted dur-frequently incapable of empathy with other human ing their formative years. When the FBI quizzed its sam-beings. Some “adjust” and manage to live out their lives pling of captive murderers, 42 percent reported behind what one psychiatrist has called a “MASK OF

incidents of physical abuse in childhood, while 74 perSANITY”—as “crafty” businessmen, “slick” politicians, cent harbored memories of psychological abuse; 43 perand the like. For others, though, the lies and petty thefts cent of those surveyed reported incidents of sexual of childhood lead to lifelong criminal careers, and some abuse; and 28 percent had medical histories of sexual of those are little more than brutal predators in human injury or disease. An overwhelming 73 percent reported form.

childhood involvement in unspecified “sexually stress-In some cases, trauma begins in the womb, with crit-ful events.” In that context, it is curious—perhaps ical damage incurred by a fetus from the moment of instructive—to note that at least seven male serial conception. Malnutrition during pregnancy, for killers are known to have been dressed as girls during instance, may result in abnormal brain development, childhood by their parents or adult caretakers. Two of with teenage mothers especially at risk. Likewise, those—HENRY LUCAS and CHARLES MANSON—were

maternal alcoholism or drug abuse is another hazard to actually sent to school in dresses as a bizarre form of fetal development; recent studies suggest that habitual

“lesson” or punishment.

used of cocaine may also damage the genetic code of Childhood abuse frequently results in social isola-sperm. Physical birth defects aside, the children of alco-tion, learning disabilities (47 percent of the FBI’s sur-holics and addicts are likely to enter the world with veyed killers were high-school dropouts), symptoms of damaged brains or nervous systems, limiting the neurological impairment (29 percent suffered persistent child’s—and future adult’s—ability to control violent, headaches; 19 percent were subject to seizures), prob-impulsive behavior. Indeed, it appears from modern lems with authority or self-control, precocious or studies that even an unwanted or unhappy pregnancy, bizarre sexual activity, substance abuse, even self-without physical damage, may jeopardize the future of destructive behavior. Overall, the recurring theme of an unborn child, as maternal anxiety results in secretion childhood abuse and trauma among criminals—and of hormones detrimental to the fetus.

“recreational killers” in particular—serves as persua-Environment kicks in at the moment of delivery, and sive evidence that serial murderers are made, not born.

nothing breaks the childhood bonding cycle quite like parental abandonment. As noted by author John