Rival Chikatilo

The trial of the most elusive maniac of the Soviet Union, who has about 100 victims, will soon begin in Ukraine.

“I’m not a man, I’m a beast!”

He is clean-shaven, combed, and dressed well for a prisoner. He is always ready to meet with the press. He has an overly correct speech, always prepared phrases both for a scandalous report: “You don’t understand, I’m not a person, I’m a beast,” and complex constructions for those visitors who want to try to find the key to the psychology of a maniac with 25 years of experience in serial murders.
- They should make a movie about me! - he tells reporters.
At the Dnepropetrovsk prosecutor's office they played one of the tapes of Sergei Tkach's interrogation. For this usual procedure, it was necessary to rent the assembly hall: one armed guard, several people plus witnesses, three investigators, a stenographer, photo and video crews. All for his sake - in the sights of the video camera is a short, gray-haired man with big eyes, a quiet voice and the measured intonation of a storyteller who is comfortable being the center of attention. He weaves a long web of words, and even through the screen one can feel how he gradually captures the attention and consciousness of all his listeners.
“There was a lush ambrosia bush on the right, and in front there was a building supposedly built in the 19th century. Nearby is a dam, which, apparently, was built to prevent flooding, based on the experience of past years - (this is verbatim) as Tkach says according to the written word. He even tries to joke: “I can’t say how tall the fence is, I didn’t jump over it.” - Nobody laughs in the hall. In the same soothing tone, Tkach continues how “with his usual grip of the elbow of his right hand,” he grabbed the victim (a random girl passing by) by the neck from behind to prevent her from running away or screaming. Strangled and raped - “as usual.”
- Why?! – Even the highly experienced investigator of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office, Anatoly Shaida, cannot withstand the transition from ambrosia.
- Don't know. Bright flash. I can't explain this. – The weaver thinks for a couple of seconds and, as if nothing had happened, begins to reason why he was not interested in the victim’s jeans, although sometimes he grabbed “souvenirs” from crime scenes for his cannibalistic collection. Tkach, like a lecturer, begins to discuss why he doesn’t like America in general and this invention of theirs in particular...

“I’ve been waiting for more than 20 years”

There was a time when 700 seconded specialists from all over came to meet with Tkach Soviet Union. They set up ambushes, prepared traps, combed every meter of Dnepropetrovsk and the region. Mothers of the Dnepropetrovsk region wrote to the Council of Ministers, the Politburo and personally to the Secretary General: “We are afraid for our children!” The weaver passed very close to the self-hunters, but each time he escaped.
“I’ve been waiting for you for too long, more than 20 years,” Sergei Tkach calmly greeted the police officers when they finally came to arrest him.
Outwardly, Tkach’s biography is the most ordinary. He did odd jobs, drank, for which he was deprived of his license to drive a tractor, then he stole something from the factory and was fired under the article. Married three times. Four children, abandoned the first child - to annoy his first wife. Growing up as the youngest, fourth son, his father, a miner, punished him often and cruelly. What of this became the “trigger” for the future killer? Criminal psychology in the territory of the former USSR is not a very popular genre. We are not America, where dozens of professors and scientists rush around with every maniac. Investigators from the prosecutor's office only note that Tkach had unique skills, thanks to which he could not be caught for 25 years. Short and downtrodden, he went in for weightlifting. He trained, apparently, with manic persistence - albeit at featherweight, but became the champion of Kuzbass (Tkach spent his childhood and youth in this Russian region). After sports, Tkach got a job in the police as a forensic expert. He was kicked out of the authorities - it seemed he was trying to forge an expert report for money, but his professional knowledge of evidence and material evidence greatly helped Tkach in the future - when he crossed over to the other side of the law. Having strangled and raped another victim, he collected from the crime scene all objects on which his prints could remain. He knew what a crime scene should look like so that investigators had nothing to latch on to.
In 1980, Tkach, on the advice of doctors, transported his father, a front-line soldier, from the cold Kuzbass to the warm Crimea. After that, he changed cities, wives and jobs several times. The police were looking for Dnepropetrovsk, Pavlodar, Pologsky maniacs. And it was all the same person.
Back in the 1980s, after another murder, Tkach himself called the police. But the duty officer decided that a crazy person was calling and rudely dismissed him. For 25 years, Tkach played a terrible game of competition with the Soviet law enforcement system. After a quarter of a century, he was either tired and set himself up, or completely lost control from impunity. Tkach strangled and raped his neighbors’ daughter, and then came to her funeral, where “the uncle who took Anya away” was recognized by the village children.
“I couldn’t not come to the funeral - neighbors, it’s inconvenient,” Tkach willingly shares his logic, inaccessible to us.
“The picture of the crime was the same in many cases,” investigator Valery Mirgorodsky told Interlocutor. – After work, he drank – almost always alone. He even holds a kind of record - he emptied a bottle of vodka from his throat in 13 seconds. After this, according to his testimony, he experienced an almost brutal desire. And he rode on his bicycle to look for a more deserted place and a more helpless victim. These were young girls, young women and adult women. There are more minor victims - he said they are easier to deal with...
The weaver changed his appearance - sometimes he grew a beard and mustache, sometimes he shaved. Repainted bicycles. One day a neighbor said to him: oh, Seryozha, the identikit looks so much like you! They laughed and went their separate ways.

Understrangled...

This terrible thing stretches from the Soviet era into ours. The investigation submitted materials to the court on 40 episodes, 29 people died at the hands of a maniac, 11 little girls survived. “They didn’t strangle them, they recovered,” they say in the prosecutor’s office. But there are many more unproven episodes. It is believed that the killer has about 100 victims. Miraculously, the survivors are very different, similar only in one thing - they refuse to meet with journalists and remember that nightmare. They are all grown women. Some got married and had children. There are those who, after meeting with Tkach, remained disabled and are still terrified of steps behind them. Half of them tried to forget everything as they grew older. Others, on the contrary, remember even more clearly and confidently identified Tkach from a photograph. There were no confrontations - even in the interests of the investigation, it would have been too cruel an experiment.
Having learned that there were surviving victims, Tkach shrugged:
- May be. The main thing for me was that they did not resist. They could have scratched their face. And so, more than 20 years - and not a single scratch!
When going on investigative experiments, he always asked for a bulletproof vest - he was afraid of revenge.
Tkach also has a group of victims that the investigative authorities are not very willing to talk about. People were wrongly convicted for his crimes. Six people - exactly. Perhaps more. Igor Ryzhkov served 10 years. He did not get rid of his reputation as an outcast in his small town even now, when it became known who the real killer was. Together with Lyudmila Svetlichnaya, he periodically travels to seek the truth in Moscow - the capital of a non-existent country that handed him an unjust sentence and distorted his life. Lyudmila Svetlichnaya is the mother of one of the murdered girls. Her husband could not stand the suspicion of raping and murdering his daughter and hanged himself in his cell. To some extent, these two are still lucky: the rest of the living “miscarriages of justice” are still in prison for Tkach’s actions! The prosecutor's office says that their cases will definitely be reviewed, but not before Tkach receives his sentence. This will happen only in a few years - there are 105 volumes in the file. But Tkach doesn’t care. He asks:
– They made a film about Chikatilo, maybe they’ll make one about me?