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42 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Where have all the children gone?, July 23, 2000
This review is from: The Killer Department (Mass Market Paperback)
Pick up a deck of playing cards and count them. Put them down and know for a fact that this is how many people Andrei Chikatilo murdered between 1978 and 1990 before he was caught. It was a case that baffled Soviet police for over a decade, almost never solved thanks to the constrictive Soviet system that would never allow such knowledge of a `serial killer' to be known or addressed. The bureaucrats forbid the publication of the murders to alert the public, and one by one their children disappeared. `Citizen X' will convince you that true evil can and does exist, often in the worst possible places. In Russia, children are taught to respect and trust grownups to the point where it becomes second nature to them, and it is this fact that enabled Chikatilo to lure so many girls and boys, even young women, with promises of alcohol, cigarettes and candy, away from prying eyes. In the seclusion of the forests around the Rostov and Shakty Oblasts, he would rape and mutilate them, often biting off portions in order to achieve release. It became known later that he had been impotent for years, but the grisly sight of his work allowed him to achieve some sort of sexual satisfaction. Cullen's interview before his execution has enabled the author to enlighten us to Chikatilo's activities during the murders. `Citizen X' was a name penned by a psychologist who profiled Chikatilo, something unheard of in the Soviet Union, and enabled investigators to construct a pattern of events around the killer. It is a testament to the dedication of the police who worked on the case, often to exclusion of all else, including their health that Chikatilo was ever caught at all. Most notably is the man who spearheaded the case since day one, Viktor Burakov, and a more dedicated police officer has never existed. His determination, and his ability as a careful and analytical thinker enabled him to eventually piece together Chikatilo's patterns until his arrest. And while he was tried for fifty-two murders, the actual count may go as high as a hundred. Chikatilo himself was a diseased monster, incompetent at life, for though he was trained as a school teacher, he had been fired for sexually assaulting a young girl around 1976. He worked odd jobs until he found steady work at a train plant in Rostov. Cullen's book assembles all of it in stunning detail that draws the reader in until they are silently urging Burakov onward to solving the case. It is fortunate then that Chikatilo was caught and in late 1990 they put a bullet into his misbegotten brain.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting contrast to the 2008 novel "Child 44", May 21, 2008
This review is from: The Killer Department (Mass Market Paperback)
After reading Tom Rob Smith's novel Child 44, which moved the story 30 years earlier and which had an unsatisfyingly contrived ending, I wanted to turn to a "true crime" depiction of the serial child killer. For those of us accustomed to seeing CSI shows and endless TV dramatizations of serial killers, FBI profilers, etc, Killer Department provides a mind-boggling counterpoint. It's almost as if in everything we think of as useful tools, the Soviets did the opposite. It took 6 years to catch the killer, although Chikatilo's victims numbered at least 56 and stretched over 10 years.
There are heros here: Detective Burakov, a dedicated Party member who was willing to chance flaunting Party-line restrictions, and the psychiatrist Bukhanovsky, also willing to ignore directives from superiors. It quickly became apparent that there was a serial killer--from the methods of murder. Hundreds of people eventually worked on the case. But there was little coordination. Authorities (not Burakov) believed that there had to be 2 or more separate killers: they refused to countenance the idea that one person would sexually assault and kill both males and females. Psychiatry had withered under Stalin: Freud was a decadent figure. Children were not warned to be careful around strangers--quite the opposite. Almost all murders were done by family members in drunken rages or to cover up theft. Children were safe in the workers' paradise: crime was a capitalist problem. Confessions were de jure: with 400 murders a year in Rostov, careful scientific investigations were a rarity. It turns out that Soviet forensics consistently mistyped semen samples, classifying blood type A as AB. Chikatilo was type A, and since semen samples from victims were mistyped as AB, the murders perhaps continued for years longer than they should have.
You get a fascinating view of Soviet society here. It's a thoroughly chilling tale, accentuated by the appetites for most of those in authority to find convenient scapegoats, and colored by a too-prevalent disinterest in underclasses: lost youth, homosexuals, children discarded by parents, children who could vanish without anyone notifying authorities or caring at all. But in the end, the killer was caught--more by luck and by the dedicated work of Burakov. Burakov suffered breakdowns, and there were times he came close to being demoted back to coal mining or the like. Catching Chakatilo was a triumph by individuals, not by the State.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Well written story of a horrible serial killer!, October 8, 2011
This review is from: The Killer Department (Mass Market Paperback)
I heard the author speaking about his book on the radio years ago, I just had to read the book. Great insight into a serial killer reasoning. Frightening, horrible reasearch into the murder's life.
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