Andrei Chikatilo was a late bloomer in terms of the norm for serial murder. Most repeat killers begin claiming victims by their early twenties, but Chikatilo was forty-two when he killed for the first time. His chosen victim, nine- year-old Lenochka Zakotnova, was lured to a vacant house in Shakhty, where Chikatilo failed in his attempt to rape her, afterwards stabbing the child three times and dropping her body into the Grushovka River. She was found beneath a nearby bridge on Christmas Eve.

Police were quick to focus on a suspect in the case. Paroled rape-slayer Alexander Kravchenko initially denied the crime, but finally confessed in February 1979, after his wife was persuaded to testify against him. Initially sentenced to death, Kravchenko later saw his sentence commuted to fifteen years in prison, but angry complaints from the Zakotnova family prompted a higher court to reinstate the death warrant in March 1982. Kravchenko was shot by a firing squad in July 1983, thus closing the case on Andrei Chikatilos first murder.

Three years would pass before Chikatilo killed again. In the meantime, his admission of molesting students cost Andrei his teaching job, but party membership paid off with his appointment as a traveling procurement officer for a factory in Shakhty. He was often on the road--or on the rails--and traveling facilitated his search for victims in the years ahead.

Still, Chikatilo needed time to graduate from rare, sporadic murders to the frantic killing pace that marked those later years. His second victim, 17-year-old Larisa Tkachenko, was cutting class in Rostov when Chikatilo approached her and persuaded her to join him in the nearby woods for sex. She made the grave mistake of laughing at his failure to perform, whereupon Chikatilo strangled the girl, gnawing on her throat, arms, and breasts, swallowing one of her nipples in his frenzy, jamming a stick into her vagina. There were no leads in that case when Chikatilo claimed his third victim, on June 12, 1982. Twelve-year-old Lyuba Biryuk was lured from the village of Zaplavskaya, stabbed at least forty-times in the woods, her wounds including mutilation of the eyes that would become a standard Chikatilo trademark. More than a year elapsed before her skeletal remains were found, in July 1983. In the mean-time, Chikatilo would claim three more victims by years end, including his first male victim, nine-year-old Oleg Podzhidaev. While Olegs corpse was never found, we know from Chikatilos subsequent confession that the child was emasculated, his genitals carried from the murder scene in what became another signature for Andrei Chikatilos crimes.