under surveillance on November 14. In several instances, particularly on trains or buses, he was observed approaching lone young women or children and engaging them in conversation. If the woman or child broke off the conversation, Chikatilo would wait a few minutes and then seek another conversation partner. On November 20, after six days of surveillance, Chikatilo left his house with a one-gallon flask of beer and wandered around Novocherkassk attempting to make contact with children. Upon exiting a cafe, Chikatilo was arrested by four plainclothes police officers.
After being arrested, Chikatilo gave a statement claiming that the police were mistaken, and complained that he had also been arrested in 1984 for the same series of murders. A strip search revealed that one of Chikatilo's fingers had a flesh wound, and medical examiners concluded the wound was, in fact, from a human bite. Chikatilo's second to last victim was a physically strong sixteen year-old youth. At the crime scene, the police had found numerous signs of a ferocious physical struggle between the victim and his murderer. Although a finger bone was found to be broken and his fingernail had been bitten off, Chikatilo had never sought medical treatment for the wound. A search of Chikatilo's belongings revealed that he had been in possession of a folding knife at the time of his arrest. Chikatilo was placed in a cell inside the KGB headquarters in Rostov with a police informant who was instructed to engage Chikatilo in conversation and obtain any information he could from him.
The next day, the 21 of November, formal questioning of Chikatilo was begun by Issa Kostoyev. The police’s strategy to elicit a confession from Chikatilo was to lead him to believe that he was a very sick man in need of medical help. This was done in order to give Chikatilo hope that, if he confessed, he would not be prosecuted by reason of insanity. Police knew their case against Chikatilo was largely circumstantial, and under Soviet law they had ten days in which they could legally hold a suspect before they either had to charge him or release him. Throughout the questioning, Chikatilo repeatedly denied that he had committed the murders, although he did confess to molesting his pupils during his career as a teacher.
Confession
On November 29, at the request of Burakov and Fetisov, Dr. Aleksandr Bukhanovsky, the psychiatrist who had written the 1985 psychological profile of the then-unknown killer for the investigators, was invited to assist in the questioning of the suspect. Bukhanovsky read extracts from his sixty-five page psychological profile to Chikatilo. Within two hours, Chikatilo confessed to the thirty-six murders that police had linked to the killer. On November 30, he was formally charged with each of these thirty-six murders, all of which had been committed between June of 1982 and November of 1990.
Chikatilo also confessed to a further twenty killings which had not been connected to him as the murders had been committed outside the Rostov Oblast, and the bodies had not been found. Chikatilo then led police to the body of Aleksey Khobotov, a boy he had confessed to killing in 1989, and who he had buried in woodland near a Shakhty cemetery, proving unequivocally that he was the killer. He later led investigators to the bodies of two other victims he had confessed to killing. Three of the fifty-six victims Chikatilo confessed to killing could not be found or identified, hence Chikatilo was charged with killing fifty-three women and children between 1978 and 1990.
Trial
Chikatilo stood trial in Rostov on April 14, 1992. It was necessary to keep him in an iron cage in a corner of the courtroom to protect him from attack by the many hysterical and enraged relatives of his victims. Relatives of victims regularly shouted threats and insults to Chikatilo throughout the trial, demanding that authorities release him so that they could kill him themselves. Each murder was discussed individually and, on several occasions, relatives broke down in tears when details of their relatives' murder were revealed; some even fainted.
Chikatilo regularly interrupted the trial, exposing himself, singing, and refusing to answer questions put to him by the judge. He was regularly removed from the courtroom for interrupting the proceedings. In July of 1992, Chikatilo demanded that the judge be replaced for making too many rash remarks about his guilt. His defense counsel backed the claim. The judge looked to the prosecutor, and the prosecutor backed the defense's judgment, stating that the judge had indeed made too many such remarks. The judge ruled the prosecutor be replaced instead.
Sentencing and Execution
On October 15, Chikatilo was found guilty of fifty-two of the fifty-three murders and sentenced to death for each offense. Chikatilo kicked his bench across his cage when he heard the verdict, and began shouting abuse. He was offered a final chance to make a speech in response to the verdict, but remained silent. Upon passing final sentence, Judge Leonid Akhobzyanov made the following speech: “Taking into consideration the monstrous crimes he committed, this court has no alternative but to impose the only sentence that he deserves. I therefore sentence him to death.”
On January 4, 1994, Russian President Boris Yeltsin refused a final appeal for clemency for Chikatilo, and ten days later he was taken to a soundproofed room in a Novocherkassk prison and executed with a single gunshot behind the right ear.
Ottis Toole and Henry Lee Lucas
Ottis Toole (left) – The Devil’s Child Killer (Victims 766)
Henry Lee Lucas (right) – The Confession Killer (Victims 766)
Background
Ottis Toole was born on March 5, 1947 in Jacksonville, Florida. As a child, he was a victim of sexual assault, molested by family and friends according to him. He claimed that his grandmother was a Satanist who exposed him to rituals, self-mutilation, and grave robbing, and called him the “Devil’s Child.” Now, before I begin, let me just say that this murderous duo was either composed of the two biggest exaggerators in history, or the worst serial killers the world has ever seen, with killings in the hundreds between them.
I would assume that all serial killers have some kind of mental illness. As for Toole, he was diagnosed with mild retardation: an IQ of only 75, dyslexia, illiteracy, ADHD, epilepsy, and he also suffered from grand mal seizures. Ottis Toole fits the classical marks in the making of a serial killer: he was a bed-wetter, an animal killer, an arsonist, got sexually excited by fire, and all this before he was a teenager. By the time he was thirteen years old he’d dropped out of school and was working as a male prostitute in drag. At a soup kitchen in 1976, Toole met Henry Lee Lucas and the two began a sexual relationship. They later claimed that while they were together they committed 108 murders with a cult called ‘The Hands of Death.’
Henry Lee Lucas was born on August 23, 1936 in Blacksburg, Virginia, to an alcoholic father and an alcoholic/prostitute mother. Lucas is considered by law enforcement to be
