The Rostov Ripper: A Portrait of Unmitigated Evil.

You’ve likely never heard of him, but Russia’s ‘Rostov Ripper’, Andrei Chikatilo is arguably the most brutal serial killer in the annals of criminal history. Examining just how a meek, scared little boy turned into one of the most gruesome and bloodthirsty psychopaths of all time is fascinating, repulsive, and necessary all at once if we don’t want this kind of history repeated.

The prime catalysts of that transformation included famine, warped fairy tales, ideological and political hubris, staggering indifference to human life, gross miscarriages of justice which cost the life of 2 innocent men, and old fashioned ineptitude of big bureaucracies.

This portrait has been divided into 2 parts — both of which are on this page — because of the sheer amount of pertinent information necessary to understand just how one of the worst serial killers in history came to be.

Listen to the Real Monsters’ podcast of this, Part I of the Rostov Ripper here.

…Yelena’s head propelled through the wall of the decrepit house’s front room with a powerful thud.

The man who initiated the blow removed his hand from the knocked out girl for a second. His reptilian tongue lapping up the small trail of his blood left from a stray nail in the wall that nicked him, breaking the skin.

His free hand went from fingering the butcher’s blade in his pocket to positioning it against her flesh.