Notorious Ukrainian cannibalistic serial killer Andrei Chikatilo was arrested on November 20, 1990.
Chikatilo was convicted of sexually molesting and killing 52 women and children. His final words were, "Don’t blow my brains out! The Japanese want to buy them!" 
Over the following 12 years, Chikatilo committed over 50 known murders. Because reports of crimes like serial murder and rape were greatly suppressed by Soviet authorities in the state-controlled media, stories began taking a life of their own; among the rumors that circulated was that the victims were killed and mutilated by a werewolf.
On one occasion, he actually bit a nipple off of a young female victim and swallowed it, causing him to ejaculate. Sometimes, he stuffed his victims' mouths with mud and leaves to muffle their screams (similar to fellow serial killer Arthur Shawcross). He often cannibalized their remains and sometimes drank their blood.
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The murders weren’t publicized until August 1984, by which time Chikatilo had killed at least 30 people. He was suspected of killing Yelena Zabotnova and had been seen with her, but because another man confessed to the murder under torture and was consequently executed, Chikatilo was able to continue killing. In September 1984, he was arrested after soliciting a prostitute, having been seen approaching a number of women at the Rostov bus station. His briefcase was searched and found to contain a kitchen knife, a towel, a rope and a jar of petroleum jelly. Unfortunately, his blood type did not come back a match to the semen found on the bodies, forcing the investigators to release him.
This has never been fully explained and is sometimes believed to have been the result of a clerical error. Other sources claim that it was because he was a non-secretor, which meant his blood type wouldn't be determinable from his semen. Weeks after his arrest, he was expelled from the Communist party after being convicted of stealing from his workplace and sentenced to three months in jail. In November 1990, Chikatilo was stopped and questioned when coming out of the area in which his final victim, Svetlana Korostik, was found. On November 14, the day after the remains were discovered, he was formally arrested and interrogated. Over the following two weeks, he confessed to as many as 57 murders, of which the investigators had only attributed 36 to him. The case went to trial on April 14, 1992.
Chikatilo had to be placed inside an iron cage when on the stand to protect him from the family members of his victims. His behavior during the proceedings was bizarre, to say the least; twice he pulled down his pants, exposed himself and shouted that he was not a homosexual, he claimed to be pregnant and lactating at some points and alternated between boredom and anger.
He also denied being guilty of several murders to which he had already confessed while confessing to unknown ones. When the prosecutor was about to deliver the final argument, Chikatilo broke into song and had to be removed from the courtroom. When he was brought in and offered a moment to speak, he said nothing. Though the defense tried to claim he was insane, a group of court-appointed psychiatrists disagreed. On October 14, 1992, Chikatilo was found guilty of 52 murders; 21 males and 31 females. On February 14, 1994, he was executed with a single shot to the head, his last words apparently being "Don't blow my brains out! The Japanese want to buy them!"
Chikatilo targeted children and teenagers of both genders, and also young-to-middle-aged women. He would usually approach them at train and bus stations using some simple ruse, such as promising them money, drugs, alcohol, or (in the case of his child victims) toys and candy, lure them to a nearby forest, tie them up with rope, and kill them by stabbing them with a knife in order to gain sexual release.
He often mutilated them, such as gouging their eyes out because he believed they contained a snapshot of the last thing they saw (he stopped doing this after he learned that it wasn't true), eviscerating their stomachs, chewing off their noses, and cutting out tongues and genitals. When he tortured his male victims, he often fantasized that they were his prisoners and that his actions made him a hero.
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