The Rostov Ripper aka Andrei Chikatilo

In September 1978, Chikatilo moved to Shakhty, a small coal mining town near Rostov-on-Don, where he committed his first documented murder. On December 22, he lured a 9-year-old girl named Yelena Zakotnova to an old house which he had secretly purchased; he attempted to rape her, but failed to achieve an erection. When the girl struggled, he choked her to death and stabbed her body, ejaculating in the process of knifing the child. Chikatilo then dumped Zakotnova's body in a nearby river.

Despite evidence linking Chikatilo to the girl's death (spots of the girl's blood were found in the snow near Chikatilo's house and a witness had given police a detailed description of a man closely resembling Chikatilo who she had seen talking with Zakotnova at the bus stop where the girl was last seen alive), a 25-year-old named Alexsandr Kravchenko who, as a teenager, had served a jail sentence for the rape and murder of a teenage girl, was arrested for the crime and subsequently confessed to the killing. He was tried for the murder in 1979. At his trial, Kravchenko retracted his confession and maintained his innocence, stating his confession had been obtained under extreme duress. Despite his retraction, he was convicted of the murder and sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment (the maximum possible length of imprisonment at that time). Under pressure from the victim's relatives, Kravchenko was retried and eventually executed for the murder of Lena Zakotnova in July, 1983.

Following Zakotnova's murder, Chikatilo was only able to achieve sexual arousal and orgasm through stabbing and slashing women and children to death, and he later stated the urge to relive the experience overwhelmed him.

Chikatilo committed his next murder in September 1981, when he tried to have sex with a 17-year-old boarding school student named Larisa Tkachenko in a forest near the Don river. When Chikatilo failed to achieve an erection, he became furious and battered and strangled her to death. As he had no knife, he mutilated her body with his teeth and a stick.

Following Biryuk's murder, Chikatilo no longer attempted to resist his homicidal urges: between July and December, 1982, he killed a further six victims between the ages of nine and nineteen. He established a pattern of approaching children, runaways and young vagrants at bus or railway stations, enticing them to a nearby forest or other secluded area and killing them, usually by stabbing, slashing and eviscerating the victim with a knife; although some victims, in addition to receiving a multitude of knife wounds, were also strangled or battered to death. Many of the bodies found bore striations of the eye sockets. Pathologists concluded the injuries were caused by a knife, leading investigators to the conclusion the killer had gouged out the eyes of his victims.