“But the whole thing – the cries, the blood, the agony – gave me relaxation and a certain pleasure.”

Andrei Chikatilo

He said he had an older brother, whose famine-ravaged corpse was devoured by starving peasants. He fantasised about corralling German Prisoners of War, taking them out into the forests and executing them. Murder and Cannibalism were things he could identify with, dream about, keep close and grow with. He killed fifty-three people between 1978 and 1990.

Andrei Chikatilo.

As the killings increased in number, so the killer’s signature increased in its barbarism.  The familiar, frenzied stabbing was ever present but was now accompanied by mutilation. Victims were missing nipples, tips of tongues, genitals.  Were these body parts taken as trophies to be treasured or was cannibalism now a feature, with the murderer cutting, chewing and swallowing? …