Moses Sithole: South African Serial Killer (part 1)

By Martin Ströhm

Graveyard

African continent with South Africa

On Sept. 17, 1995, Dr. Mervyn Mansell was asked by police to assist them in determining the time of death of a body discovered in a field at the Van Dyk Mine near Boksburg, South Africa. Dr. Mansell, an entomologist at the Agricultural Research Council in Pretoria, had been contacted two weeks earlier by Inspector Vivian Bieldt, who had read about maggots being used to estimate the post-mortem interval fairly accurately. He wanted Dr. Mansell to assist police in determining the time since death in certain murder cases.

Dr. Mervyn Mansell

On Sept. 17, Insp. Bieldt called Dr. Mansell again. A body had been found. This would be the entomologist’s first forensic case, and he had no idea what to expect. While he was trying to prepare himself during the drive to Boksburg, he was told that there was actually not just the one body, but five. By the time they arrived at the site, more bodies had been discovered.

Inspector Vivian Bieldt

It was, in fact, a mass grave. By the next day, police found a total of 10 women in varying degrees of decomposition, which meant the killer had returned again and again to leave his victims here.
Dr. Mansell decided not to view the bodies as people, but simply as organic remains. This helped him concentrate on his work rather than being overwhelmed by the horror of what he was seeing. As he told Ruda Landman in an interview on Carte Blanche, aired on April 13, 2003, ”When we examined the bodies it turned into a very interesting scientific scenario because there were bodies in all stages of decomposition, so we got a huge amount of baseline information, in one overdose on the first day.”
The first body had been discovered on Saturday evening, Sept. 16, when a police reservist took his dog to hunt some rabbits in the veld. More than 30 members of the police, including detectives from the East Rand Murder and Robbery Unit as well as forensic experts, searched the area for evidence during the next couple of days. A helicopter and dogs were brought in as well.

Book cover: Catch Me a Killer

Micki Pistorius, police psychologist, was also on the scene. In her first book, Catch Me a Killer, she describes it as “one of the most horrific crime scenes I had ever seen. Decomposed bodies were strewn over the veld, some only metres away from others. Maggots were feasting and the stench penetrated our nostrils and clung to our clothing.” In fact, all 10 bodies lay within a radius of about 300 yards. They seemed to be everywhere.

It was possible to tell that the more recent victims had been killed at the scene. Micki Pistorius didn’t find it hard to imagine the killer leading his victim into the field amongst the rotting bodies, paralyzing her with fear before he raped and killed her. As if to affirm the profiler’s thoughts, one victim had a stain on her jeans where she had wet herself in terror.

Even worse, however, was that she recognized the familiar hand of a killer the police had been tracking, without much success, since the beginning of the year.

Ghost Arisen

While police were still trying to defend the death of another serial killer, David Selepe, by stating that there was evidence linking him to at least six of the bodies found in Cleveland during 1994, about 40 miles away young black women were being found strangled and probably raped in Atteridgeville, just west of Pretoria.
The first body was found on Jan. 4, 1995, half nude in a field. She was severely decomposed and was never identified.
A second body was found on Feb. 9. She was completely naked, but her clothes had been placed on top of her chest and weighted down with rocks. Her fingerprints were later used to confirm her identity as 27-year-old Beauty Nuku Soko. She had gone missing in Jan., on her way to her sister in Klipgat.
On the morning of March 6, construction workers digging a ditch in Atteridgeville arrived to find a woman’s breasts protruding from the soil. They uncovered the body of Sara Matlakala Mokono. She was 25, and had disappeared three days earlier, on her way to meet someone who had promised her work.
On April 12, another body was discovered in Atteridgeville. This woman’s hands had been tied behind her back with a bra. She had been strangled with a ligature. Although her clothes were recovered in the surrounding area, her panties were gone. She was later identified as Letta Nomthandazo Ndlangamandla, age 25.
On April 17, Beeld carried the story of the four bodies found, and concluded that the modus operandi was similar to the one used by the Cleveland serial killer, believed to have been David Selepe. On April 19, police admitted the possibility of a new serial killer, operating in the Atteridgeville area. They suspected a copycat of the Cleveland killer.

A New Serial Killer

The next day, the body of a boy was discovered close to where Letta Ndlangamandla had been found. It was later learned that the boy’s name was Sibusiso. He was Letta’s 2-year-old son, and was found 65 feet from his mother’s body. Letta had left earlier in April to meet a man in Pretoria North about a job offer. Having no one to leave Sibusiso with, she took him along. The pathologist was unable to determine the boy’s manner of death—although there was an injury to his head—nor whether mother or child had been the first to die. It was possible that Sibusiso died of exposure, which seems much worse: Imagine this little boy walking around the field, staying near his mother’s corpse because he was only 2 years old and didn’t know what else to do.
On May 13, 29-year-old Esther Moshibudi Mainetja’s body was found in a corn field near Hercules in Pretoria West. Her lower body was nude and she had been strangled with clothing. She had last been seen the previous evening as she left a café for home.
The next body was found exactly one month later, although five women had gone missing in the interval. Francina Nomsa Sithebe, age 25, was found sitting against a tree on June 13. Although she was wearing a dress, closer examination revealed that her panties and handbag strap had been tied around her neck and then around the tree.
Three days later, on June 16, Elizabeth Granny Mathetsa’s naked body was discovered in Rosslyn, an industrial area about 9 miles to the northwest of Pretoria. She was 19 years old, and had last been seen alive on May 25.
On June 22, a body was found in Rosherville, raped and strangled. This woman’s identity document was found nearby. She was 30-year-old Ernestina Mohadi Mosebo.
Two days later, on June 24, Nikiwe Diko’s body was found in Atteridgeville. She had been missing since April 7, when she went to meet someone about an employment opportunity. Wild dogs had gotten to her, and her body lay in pieces. Her hands had been tied together with her panties. Police only managed to find her skull the following day, 130 feet from her torso. Her pantyhose had been tied around her neck and wound so tightly with a stick that bone fragments were embedded in the material. A stick had also been shoved into her vagina. Her wedding ring was still on her finger, and was identified by her husband.

Near Miss

Absalom Sangweni lived in a caravan in Beyers Park, Boksburg. On July 17, 1995, he watched a man and a woman walk into the veld some distance from his home. He called out to them, since he knew that there was a fence around this patch of field and they could not continue far. But the man responded that he knew the area. After a while, they disappeared from view. Absalom, however, kept on watching.
Some time later, the man reemerged. Alone. Absalom thought he saw something bright in the man’s hand, and he was looking around furtively, “ as if he had been caught doing something and wanted to get away fast,” he would tell the court more than a year later according to The Star of Nov. 7, 1996. The man ran.

South Africa police badge

Absalom went into the veld, and found the woman, assaulted and still. He went to a nearby supermarket and called the police.
Sgt. Gideon O’Neil responded. He climbed through the fence and found the woman. She was still warm, but Sgt. O’Neil could find no pulse. His partner arrived with a first aid kit, but they were unable to resuscitate her. She had been strangled with the belt of her dress. Of the killer, however, there was no sign.
Absalom regretfully admitted that he had been too far away and was unable to provide a proper description of the man he had seen.
The woman was identified as Josephine Mantsali Mlangeni. She was 25 years old and a mother of four. She had gone to meet someone about a potential job offer.
On this same day, a special investigating team was established under Capt. Vinol Viljoen of the Pretoria Murder and Robbery Unit. He had been investigating the last couple of murders in the series and now collected all the dockets of victims with a similar MO. Micki Pistorius, the police psychologist, was also brought in. They went through the dockets, but felt uncertain about the confusing array of differences. Some victims had been bound, but others had not. Of those who had been bound, some had their hands tied in front and others behind them. It all seemed very haphazard, and they were unsure whether all the victims had been killed by the same man.
The next day, Granny Dimakatso Ramela was found in Pretoria West. Lying face down, she was clothed and the garrotte used to strangle her was still around her neck. A mere 21 years old, she had disappeared on May 23.
Mildred Ntiya Lepule, age 28, was taken to Pretoria by her husband a week after Granny Ramela disappeared, to meet a man about a job offer. He never saw his wife alive again. Her body was found on July 26 in a canal near the Bon Accord Dam near Onderstepoort, which is about 9 miles north of Pretoria. In the coming weeks, detectives would come to know this area well. Her pantyhose had been used to strangle her, and her panties had been drawn over her face.
In the meantime, detectives were busy setting up an operations room. As Micki Pistorius was affixing the crime scene photos to a board, arranging them in the order in which the victims had been killed, she saw a pattern. Earlier, they had been studying the dockets in the order in which the bodies had been found. Now that the victims had been identified, and the sequence of the murders was known, she could vividly see how the killer’s strategy had evolved and improved over time. Clearly, he was refining his technique with each murder.
Initially, the victims were not bound. Then their hands were tied in front with a piece of their clothing. Then, their hands were secured behind their backs. Similarly, the first victims had been throttled. Then, the killer had begun to use a ligature to strangle them, usually a bra or some other piece of clothing. Then he had progressed to a garrotte, where he would use a stick to wind up their clothing around their necks, a method providing increased control to the killer. The evolution of his cruel and sadistic tendencies was both disturbing and alarming.
On Aug. 8, another body was found at Onderstepoort. She was identified from items found in her handbag as Elsie Khoti Masango, age 25. She had been missing since July 14.
The next day another body was discovered in the same area. This woman had been burnt beyond recognition, most likely due to a veld fire. She has never been identified, and it is not known how long she had been there.
Two weeks later, on Aug. 23, 30-year-old Oscarina Vuyokazi Jakalase’s body was found near Boksburg. She had disappeared on the same day that Elsie Masango’s body had been found, Aug. 8.
On Aug. 28 and 30, two more bodies were found at the Bon Accord Dam near Onderstepoort. The second body seemed to have been there for some months. Neither has been identified.
Due to the increased police presence at Onderstepoort, the killer returned to the Cleveland area, where yet another unidentified body was found on Sept. 12.
Four days later, the first body was discovered at the Van Dyk Mine near Boksburg. Nine more would be found during the next two days.

he Graveyard Kept Growing

Although Capt. Frans van Niekerk of the East Rand Murder and Robbery Unit was the investigating officer at the scene in Boksburg, he had no qualms about contacting Capt. Viljoen, and they decided to join forces and share information.
This crime scene received an immense amount of attention. The media was present in full force, ensuring that the killer would seek out a new dump site. Commissioner George Fivaz, head of the South African Police, surveyed the area from a helicopter. Even President Nelson Mandela came out to the site and met all the detectives and other forensic experts at the scene.
There were two interesting aspects about the site itself. It was located more than three miles from Boksburg Prison, a proximity that seemed more than coincidence, although no one was sure what it meant. The other was the discovery of numerous items of ritualistic significance in the seemingly endless array of ant heaps scattered across the adjacent stretch of veld. These items included black and red candles, mirrors, feathers, knives, lingerie, et cetera—believed to be related to traditional healing.

Sangomas with divination tablets

Traditional healers or sangomas are prevalent in South Africa. According to Ingo Lamprecht,   “sangomas (male or female) play many different social and political roles in the community. They are involved in divination, healing, directing rituals, finding lost cattle, protecting ’warriors’ (Sangomas offered protective medicine [muti] to freedom fighters during South Africa’s political struggles), and ’smelling out’ witches, as well as narrating the history, cosmology, and myths of his/her tradition.” Muti, in particular, is a problematic area, since it can be prepared using anything from roots to animal pieces to human body parts, especially the eyes, organs and genitals. Which ingredients are used probably depends on the conscience of the healer. There have been numerous accounts of ”muti murders,” frequently involving babies or young children.
For example, on Dec. 13, 2004, a 43-year-old traditional healer appeared in the Wynberg magistrates’ court in Cape Town. He was accused of raping a 30-year-old woman, leaving her naked, stabbed and with her throat cut underneath a bed. She somehow survived, but her 9-month-old son did not. The suspect took police officers to a ditch where he had left the boy’s body. Apparently, the murder was committed after an influential sangoma told him that it would assist him in amassing great wealth.
Although the possibility that the women at the Van Dyk Mine may have been murdered by the same person or group responsible for the paraphernalia in the ant heaps—whether for muti or other reasons—was investigated, Micki Pistorius saw the Atteridgeville killer’s signature on every victim. The typical railway line was nearby, as well. She was certain that he had walked where she was walking now.
In addition, there was an alarming discovery at this scene. With the four latest victims found at the Van Dyk Mine, the killer had combined his methods of binding and strangling. The most recent women had had their hands tied to their necks, so that they would essentially strangle themselves the more they struggled.
These are the women who were found at Boksburg:
Makoba Tryphina Mogotsi, 26 years old, went missing on Aug. 15.
Nelisiwe Nontobeko Zulu was also 26 years old. She was last seen on Sept. 4, on her way to search for a job.
Amelia Dikamakatso Rapodile, age 43, disappeared on Sept. 7, after she left her place of employment, Johannesburg International Airport, in the company of a man who had promised her a better job. She was found with her hands tied behind her back to her neck with her pantyhose. Her bank card had been used to withdraw money three times later on the night of her disappearance in Germiston.
Monica Gabisile Vilakazi left her grandmother’s house on Sept. 12 to look for work, leaving her 4-year-old son in the older woman’s care. She was 31 years old.
Hazel Nozipho Madikizela, 21 years old, was found with her hands tied to her neck with underwear. She was last seen by her parents in Germiston.
Tsidi Malekoae Matela was identified more than a year later, in Nov. 1996. Originally from neighbouring Lesotho, she was 45 years old when she died.
The other four women only received numbers, allocated by the mortuary as they were entered into the Death Register. All we know about them is how they died.
Commissioner Fivaz told the press that there was no connection between this site and the Cleveland murders, because David Selepe had been killed. He admitted that it was possible that the killings may be linked to those in Atteridgeville, however. He also revealed that a reward of $82,000 would be available to anyone who had information that may lead to the arrest of the killer.

Dr. Robert K. Ressler

Because of the exponentially growing list of victims and the tremendous pace at which they were being killed, it was decided to contact some international experts. Micki Pistorius had attended a conference in Scotland in June, where she met Robert Ressler and Roy Hazelwood, both retired FBI profilers. She had actually consulted with Robert Ressler telephonically during an earlier case in 1994, but in Scotland they became properly acquainted. In fact, they had discussed the Cleveland and Atteridgeville murders. She contacted him now, and he immediately agreed to fly to South Africa.
The ex-FBI man arrived on Sept. 23. Two days later, while a prayer service was being organized for that evening at the Boksburg site, they began visiting crime scenes and studying dockets.

Profile

Micki Pistorius had already drawn up a profile, and together she and Robert Ressler worked to refine it.
There had been three discrete locations where bodies had been found: Eight women were found in or near Atteridgeville (along with the 2-year-old boy); six women were found in the area surrounding Onderstepoort; and 12 women were found in the Boksburg area. There was also one woman found near Cleveland. The profilers believed that the murders of these 27 women were related. In addition, they believed that more than one killer may have been involved, working together on at least some of the murders.
The locations seemed to have been carefully chosen, and the killer(s) quite familiar with them. Although the sites were remote and relatively safe in terms of being discovered in the act, they were still easily accessible by means of rail and road. Despite indications that the women were assaulted and killed at the scenes where they were found, there was very little evidence. This indicated an organized, intelligent offender. He was also growing in both confidence and arrogance—whereas the original Atteridgeville victims had been scattered, the Onderstepoort victims had been left closer together, and the Boksburg victims almost on top of each other. There was also no attempt at concealment.
Victimology revealed middle-class women in their twenties and early thirties, who looked after their appearance. Most of them had been unemployed or looking for better employment. This seemed to be the killer’s approach, since many victims’ relatives, friends or coworkers told of appointments with a man about a job offer. He had probably been affronted and hurt by a woman who was now represented by the victims. He was raping and killing her over and over again, which was why the victims were very similar to each other.

Book cover: Strangers on the Street

In her book, Strangers on the Street, Micki Pistorius lists the following characteristics of the killer(s) contained in the profile: (1) a black male in his late 20s or early 30s; (2) he would be self-employed with access to money; (3) he would drive an expensive car; (4) he would wear flashy clothes and jewellery; (5) he would be competent socially, charming and a ladies’ man; (6) he would probably be married, separated or divorced; (7) he would visit places where alcohol is sold and enjoy socialising; (8) there would likely be or have been some involvement in fraud and theft; (9) he might tell someone that he is the killer—although he would use the third person—and he might taunt the police; (10) he would follow reports of the murders and the police investigation in the press; (11) he would detest women, despite being very charming to them; (12) he would masturbate after the crimes, collect mementoes and later dispose thereof; (13) he would have a high sex drive and peruse pornography; (14) there was some kind of exposure to sexual violence in his past, perhaps as a juvenile; (15) he would be very intelligent and streetwise.

Book cover: I Have Lived in the Monster

Robert Ressler, in I Have Lived in the Monster, predicted that he “has a high sex drive and reads pornography. His fantasies, to which he masturbates, are aggressive, and he believes women are merely objects to be abused. He enjoys charming and controlling women. When he approaches a victim, it is done in a very calculating way, and he is very conscious that he is eventually going to kill the victim, and savours the thought while he softens her up.”
The profile bore a striking resemblance to the one on the Cleveland series. Ordinarily, this isn’t of much concern, because a profile describes a type of person rather than a particular one. And although every killer is different, some do share many characteristics. Still, in this case it was somewhat disconcerting, with the crime scenes overlapping, the MO being so similar, the time frames so close together, and most problematic of all, David Selepe being killed before he could be tried for the Cleveland murders.
The National Commissioner of the Police did, in fact, ask Robert Ressler to look into the case against David Selepe. Together with Micki Pistorius, he pored over the dockets and the evidence, and concluded that Selepe did appear to have been involved in the Cleveland killings.

Apartheid: Biological and Chemical Warfare Program

By John Boston

Death Flights

During the first week of May 2000, Judge Willie Hartzenberg and the crowded courtroom of Pretoria’s High Court heard the grizzly confession of Johan Theron, a former information officer of South Africa’s apartheid government’s Special Forces. The small, balding, 57-year-old man told the court that he was involved in the deaths of more than 200 anti-apartheid political prisoners between 1979 and 1987. The deaths, he claimed, were merely a part of his job.

South African High Court in Pretoria (Associated Press)

  
According to Theron, the executions of hundreds of prisoners were a solution to the increasing prison inmate population of several defense force camps. In fact, he told the court that the disposal of the prisoners was primarily his idea, one that he initially proposed to his superiors in 1979. Theron stated that he used various methods to kill the prisoners, including burning, beating, poisoning and strangulation.One of Theron’s acts took place in 1983 in northern Kwazulu-Natal, Africa. According to LoBaido’s article The Secrets of Project Coast, Theron claimed to have been instructed by his superior, Dr. Wouter Basson, to tie up three prisoners to a tree overnight and smear their bodies with jelly-like lethal toxins. The primary aim was to test the toxic agent to see if it was capable of causing death. To Theron’s dismay, the men did not die as easily as he expected.
The next day, Theron found the men still clinging to life. He decided to get rid of the men in another way. He loaded them into a small plane and flew off towards the ocean. According to an article by South Africa’s Sunday Times, during the flight Theron claimed that he injected the three men with lethal muscle relaxants before dumping their bodies into the sea.  Theron further stated to the court that a majority of his victims were disposed of in a similar manner, by dumping them into the water some 100 miles off the coast.  
Poisoning was the preferred method used by Theron when he killed many of the political prisoners. They were injected with lethal drug cocktails, often administered into the heart, before being tossed into the water. Theron claimed that Dr. Wouter Basson, the former head of South Africa’s chemical and biological warfare (CBW) program, readily supplied him with the lethal drugs, which he used on a majority of his victims.
Theron’s testimony and confession was a critical part of the trial of South Africa’s Wouter Basson for alleged human rights abuses. Dr. Basson was implicated not only in supplying the drugs used to kill anti-apartheid political prisoners, but also in administering them himself.   In October 1999, Chris Pessarra, a retired French Foreign Legionnaire claimed he witnessed Basson injecting political prisoners with poison in their stomach during a flight over Mozambique territory. He said that these men were then thrown alive from an airplane in 1979. The victims were five guerrilla rebels believed to have been from the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army.

Chris Pessarra (on the ground) with plane (trial evidence)

 
Pessarra said that before the poisoned, unconscious men were thrown from the plane, they were dressed in camouflage uniforms and supplied with guns and false papers. They were then sprinkled with an unknown powdery substance, which he believed was poison or some kind of lethal chemical agent. He believed the powdery agent was meant to contaminate other rebel soldiers who may happen upon the bodies.It was not believed to have been Basson’s first or last death flight. In fact, according to Michael Schmidt’s article for South Africa’s Sunday Times, Basson was thought to have been involved in around 24 “death flights” between 1979 and 1987. In October 1999, Basson was put on trial for the attempted murder of the three men thrown from the plane, as described by Theron. He also faced trial for 63 more charges including, murder, fraud, embezzlement, drug possession and trafficking.

Wouter Basson before trial (Associated Press)

 
Most of the charges brought against Basson were in connection with his activities while heading South Africa’s secretive chemical and biological warfare program. The CBW program became one of the first CBW government programs to have been publicly exposed to a worldwide audience. It was also considered to be one of the most deadly government-sponsored CBW programs in recent times.

Project Coast

South Africa has been developing chemical weapons since the beginning of World War I. The development of such weapons was South Africa’s response to the increasing threat of chemical and biological weapons (CBW) use from other countries. The establishment of the 1925 Geneva Convention, which banned the use of such weapons in warfare, temporarily decreased tensions concerning the threat. However, South Africa did not entirely cease production and research of CBW following the Geneva Convention. In fact, during World War II, South Africa sidestepped the convention protocol and began planning a more extensive CBW program, to protect the country from the threat of the Nazi regime.
Following the war, the South African Defense Force (SADF) continued with CBW research and development, but on a much smaller scale. Much of the CBW produced during that time was tear gas, CX powder and mustard gas. The non-lethal agents were utilized mostly to control crowds.
It was not until the 1970’s that South Africa’s CBW program began stepping up production of more destructive agents, despite the ratification of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction (BTWC) in 1975. The reasoning behind the increased production of more aggressive biological and chemical agents was to prevent a total Communist onslaught from the Soviet Union and Cuban-backed regimes, which threatened a complete takeover of Mozambique and Angola during the mid to late 1970’s. It was believed that the Cuban troops deployed in those regions at the time had chemical weapons, which the South African government feared they would use.

Bacteria for biowarfare

  
The apartheid government’s largest opponent was the Soviet-sponsored Marxist African National Congress (ANC), which was first established in the 1920’s. In order to gain control of the region, the Russians sent masses of arms to the Angolans to use in their fight against white Afrikaners and the apartheid government. According to Anthony LoBaido, the Russians hoped to take control of South Africa’s mineral treasures, which included diamonds, titanium and zirconium oxide.Much like South Africa’s right-wing apartheid regime, the crimes committed by the ANC were vast and brutal. Many civilians and government officials were ruthlessly murdered in the name of liberation. ANC soldiers who refused to fight were physically and psychologically tortured and murdered in death camps located in Angola. The ANC’s primary goal was to wage a campaign against the white-led regime that threatened to suppress them at any means. 

Remembrance of the Johannesburg uprising

  
In 1976, the black residents of a large township in Johannesburg rose up against the white Afrikaners’ police and the apartheid regime after black students were gunned down while protesting the compulsory teaching of the Afrikaans language. The incident, known as the Soweto uprising, led to the alleged further production and use of the CBW by the SADF. Moreover, between 1976 and 1979 a war in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) caused increasing political and racial tensions within South Africa.Such tensions were believed to have also led to the use of CBW by the SADF and the continued enhancement and extension of the ongoing CBW program. According to Gould and Folb’s article, The South African Chemical and Biological Warfare Program: An Overview, South Africa’s Prime Minister P.W. Botha called on the country’s security forces to devise a more efficient method in which to deal with internal, as well as external conflicts. The SADF’s response to Botha’s request was the implementation of a new and highly secretive CBW program in April 1981, code-named Project Coast.

Prime Minister P.W. Botha

 
At that time, Wouter Basson, a 30-year-old cardiologist and personal physician to Prime Minister Botha, was hired by South Africa’s Surgeon General, Major N.J. Nieuwoudt, to work for the SADF’s medical military unit known as the 7^th SAMS Battalion. His first duties were to travel to the west and collect information about other countries’ CBW capabilities, as well as to make contacts in the international scientific and medical community for intelligence purposes. That same year Basson traveled to several European countries and returned with important information from his fact-finding trip, which he promptly reported to the SADF.Basson learned that the CBW programs in Western Europe were not defensive, but rather offensive in nature, which caused concern for the South African government. In order to keep pace with other western countries, the SADF put plans for Project Coast in full gear. Basson became the project officer of Project Coast and was given the task of bringing South Africa’s CBW program up to date.
The aim of the new program was primarily to conduct highly secretive research into the various aspects of CBW warfare, including offensive and defensive capabilities. Moreover, the program aimed to develop CBW, as well as provide conventional and covert support of CBW production, technology and industrial operations. In short, Project Coast included the research and production of offensive and defensive CBW weapons, which explicitly violated the BTWC agreement.
According to a paper by Burgess and Purkitt, The Rollback of South Africa’s Chemical and Biological Warfare Program, Basson managed all aspects of Project Coast. His duties included the recruitment of approximately 200 medical and scientific researchers from around the world, management of annual funds of $10 million and the establishment and supervision of the program and related companies. Basson’s activities remained largely unsupervised because those people above him in the chain of command lacked the scientific experience and knowledge essential for the operation and management of the project.

Magnus Malan, Minister of Defense

  
In an effort to maintain secrecy, Basson created four front companies that served various purposes. Gould and Folb claim the front companies were created for three primary reasons: 1) to maintain secrecy by making it difficult to link the production of CBW facilities to the military, 2) to procure chemical and biological related substances, which normally would have been difficult for the military to obtain, 3) to discreetly channel funds from defense accounts to the research facilities. The four front companies were Delta G Scientific Company, Roodeplaat Research Laboratories (RRL), Protechnik and Infadel, which divided into two companies in 1989, D. John Truter Financial Consultants and Sefmed Information Services.  

Front Companies

The first of the four front companies established by Basson was Delta G Scientific Company in November 1982. Delta G. was primarily responsible for the research, production and development of biological and chemical agents that ranged from irritating to lethal. Philip Mijburgh headed Delta G. and reported directly to Basson. A majority of the products developed at the company were tested at Roodeplaat Research Laboratories (RRL) which was established in November of that same year.
RRL, initially headed by Daan Goosen, was primarily responsible for the research, development and production of a range of biological and chemical pathogens to be used for defensive and allegedly offensive purposes. Some of the agents produced and tested at RRL during the 1980’s included, anthrax, botulinum, cholera, plague, ricin, E. coli, Ebola and Marburg virus. Burgess and Purkitt state that genetic engineering research was also a component of Project Coast and led to the research of lethal bacterial agents which would affect only non-white people.

Bacteria for biowarfare

Protechnik was a large and highly secretive nuclear, biological and chemical warfare plant. Although it researched and produced many agents, it primarily developed defensive equipment for use against chemical weapons. The fourth front company, Infadel, dealt to a smaller degree with the research and development of the CBW. The company dealt mostly with the financial and administrative management related to RRL and Delta G. It is believed that Infadel, in particular was established in order to secretly channel money between military and research facilities.According to Gould and Folb, not all of the scientists and medical staff employed by the front companies were aware of their role in the development and utilization of the CBW they researched and produced. The reason that many of the employees knew little about the Project Coast’s objectives was primarily because of the intense secrecy surrounding the program. Moreover, many of them believed that the country was in a state of war and they were merely performing their patriotic duty to protect their country.
Allegedly, a large portion of the research and development of the CBW produced by the front companies under the direction of Basson was used in the assassination and destruction of anti-apartheid leaders, militants and other regime enemies. Basson was purportedly involved in several lethal covert operations that were believed to have led to the elimination of hundreds of regime enemies by use of various deadly toxins. The operations that were claimed to have occurred in the early to mid 1980’s were “Operation Barnacle” and “Operation Duel.” Both operations were said to have resulted in the deaths of several hundred military prisoners and enemies of the state. Many of the bodies were allegedly disposed of by dumping them into the ocean.
There were also claims by black leaders in South Africa, Namibia and Angola that chemical weapons were used in an effort to control protesting crowds and against guerilla militants. The military and police were said to have frequently used substances believed to be more dangerous than standard tear gas on crowds, which supposedly caused long term health damage to their recipients. However, the South African government of the time repeatedly denied such accusations and even claimed that it was the black troops who used chemical weapons against them.

Assassination for God, Country & Money

During the late 1980’s, Basson was hired to work for the Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB), which was established in order to prevent popular black military leaders from taking control of the government. It was believed that Basson supplied the CCB with lethal CBW to use against any possible threats to the South African apartheid regime. It was believed that Basson was connected with several assassination attempts ordered by the CCB to eliminate such threats.

Rev. Frank Chikane and Justice Minister Dullah Omar (Associated Press)

  
In 1989, there was an assassination attempt on Rev. Frank Chikane, General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches and anti-apartheid activist. Rev. Chikane’s clothes were saturated with a lethal nerve poison, purportedly produced at one of the front companies controlled by Basson.  According to reports later made by Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), it was believed that Basson was directly behind the attempted assassination. It was the first of three such attempts to poison Rev. Chikane. Basson was believed to be the mastermind behind a similar assassination attempt against Justice Minister of the ANC government Dullah Omar, another anti-apartheid leader.During the 1980’s Basson continued to travel to many countries in an effort to obtain information and make contacts about foreign chemical and biological weapons programs. Basson was known to have traveled to countries, such as Denmark, Switzerland, Iraq, Israel, North Korea, Iran, Columbia, the Philippines, U.S., U.K., Germany and other European countries. It is believed that he was able to obtain a substantial amount of information that could be utilized in South Africa’s CBW program. In fact, it has been suggested that many of the countries Basson visited could have assisted in the development of South Africa’s CBW program, although there is little substantiating evidence.
While visiting many of the countries, Basson set up several other front companies. In actuality, the companies mostly existed on paper. According to Burgess and Purkitt, it was suspected that Basson and some of his colleagues created the shell companies in an effort to launder millions of dollars, allegedly skimmed from activities related to Project Coast.

Reinventing the Devil

President F. W. de Klerk (Associated Press)

 
After assuming office in 1990, President F.W. de Klerk began a series of politically-motivated changes within the structure of the country. In February of that year, de Klerk lifted a ban on the African National Congress and the South African Communist Party, as well as several other organizations that were previously deemed as enemies of the state. The lifting of the ban eventually led to the release of Nelson Mandela from prison. Less than two months after the ban was lifted, de Klerk ordered a stop to the production and the beginning of destruction of deadly agents produced by the CBW program. This posed a serious threat to Project Coast.The SADF and Basson’s focus turned towards a different area, that of non-lethal chemical substances, and began the production of four agents not banned by the government. Gould and Folb list the chemicals produced by the CBW program:
Ecstasy
Mandrax or Quaaludes (sedatives)
CR (a potent and irritating riot control agent)
BZ (psychoactive incapacitant)
Some of these substances were produced in extremely large quantities.
Between 1992 and 1993 more than 900 hundred kilos of a crystalline form of Ecstasy was produced under Project Coast. Years later it would be counted among missing items produced under Basson’s leadership. The CBW program not only produced Ecstasy, as well as other substances, but also imported some of them. For example, in 1991 Basson asked then Surgeon General Neils Knobel for $2.4 million so that he could import 500 kg’s of Ecstasy into South Africa from Croatia, which was approved.

South African Surgeon General Neils Knobel

  
Initially, it was unclear why such vast amounts of Ecstasy were imported and eventually produced. Many believed it was created for two primary purposes, to be used in a new form to temporarily incapacitate rioting crowds and to be distributed among the black townships to promote drug usage and dependency. According to Sunday Times writers Breda and Trench, scientists working on the drug claimed that it was used primarily in experiments to create drug-laced tear gas.In January 1992, Mozambican government forces were purportedly attacked with CBW by the South African apartheid regime. Several hundred commando soldiers claimed to see a plane flying in the area above them, which was thought to have released a lethal substance. Within a half an hour, many of the troops began to get sick. Four soldiers died and many were hospitalized.
The incident was investigated by the U.S., U.K. and UN, which found that the symptoms experienced by the soldiers were consistent with that related to BZ agent exposure. However, the results could not be confirmed because too much time elapsed between the alleged attack and the investigation. It was suspected that the front company Protechnik was the most likely source of the lethal agent and that Basson and some of his colleagues were possibly behind the attack.
The U.S. and U.K. began to become concerned about Project Coast and its leadership following the Mozambique incident. The two countries pressured South Africa on Project Coast. It was feared that the products developed by the program and related top-secret information might fall into the wrong hands and become an even greater threat to the world than initially believed.  
In January of 1993, following a high-level government investigation into South Africa’s secret programs, Project Coast was decelerated. Eventually in March 1993 Basson was given an early retirement from his position as head of Project Coast. There were several suspected reasons behind the project’s deceleration and Basson’s release from his position. It was believed that Basson was released allegedly due to misappropriation of funds and the concern that he could sell secrets to other countries.
Basson was given a one-year contract to dissolve the remnants of Project Coast. He was ordered by de Klerk to destroy all CBW research and stop all related research. To date, there are still concerns whether all the CBW agents were destroyed or merely relocated by Basson. What is known is that hundreds of kilos worth of chemicals and agents were unaccounted for when inventory was taken during a government investigation.
Following the disintegration of Project Coast, Basson and his colleagues were believed to have made a considerable fortune from the privatization of some of the South African-based front companies in1993. Many of the scientists were released from their positions and many of the shareholders were paid off by the SADF. During this time, the Office of Serious Economic Offenses began an investigation into Basson’s business dealings and rapid accumulation of wealth.
Basson was not out of a job for long after he left Project Coast. Immediately after his retirement, the government rehired him to work for a state-run transportation and infrastructure corporation called Transnet. It was suspected that Basson was also involved in other, more secretive work at the same time. Between October of 1993 and October 1995 he made five trips to Libya for reasons that were unclear. The U.S. and U.K. governments were suspicious of Basson’s activities and believed he traveled to Libya specifically to sell CBW secrets, although their concerns remained unsubstantiated. 

Unwelcome Scrutiny

Nelson Mandela

In mid-1993 to 1994 South Africa was in the midst of a new era and began a historical transition from white Afrikaans pro-apartheid government to black majority ANC rule. This followed after a yearlong peace negotiation between the two regimes for national unity. In April 1994, Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s new president, an event that would greatly change Dr. Basson’s fate.In 1995, at the urging of the U.S. and U.K. governments, Basson was re-employed by the ANC government as a defense force surgeon. The U.S. and U.K. believed that Mandela would have better control over Basson’s activities if he remained under the watchful eye and employment of the South African government. According to an article by Desmond Bolw, Basson was rehired because it was feared that he would give up sensitive governmental secrets, especially those concerning worldwide terrorist organizations connected with South Africa. Moreover, it was also feared that Basson might reveal highly secretive information concerning other countries CBW programs and their working relationship with South Africa’s apartheid regime.
South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), established in 1995 to investigate crimes related to the apartheid era government and the ANC, began an exploration of the SADF’s chemical and biological warfare program in 1996. It was determined by the TRC after a yearlong investigation that it was highly probable that the pro-apartheid South African government’s CBW program used lethal toxins in an offensive show of force against black guerilla militants.
Upon further investigation, it was revealed that Basson was connected with many of the alleged atrocities committed by the government at the time. In January 1997, the CIA tipped off the South African government that Basson was attempting to flee the country. That same month he was arrested in a sting operation in Pretoria and caught in possession of one thousand Ecstasy pills and four trunks full of secretive documents related to Project Coast. Investigators also found in the trunks suspicious letters from contacts around the world.
One of the more interesting items found at the time of Basson’s arrest was a “Verkope Lys” or sales list (view the list on page 97 of “The Rollback of South Africa” pdf document) that were believed to contain items produced by RRL purportedly for use as murder weapons. Some of the deadly items mentioned on the list included: cigarettes with anthrax, botulinum laced milk, poisoned whiskey and chocolates. Investigators believed that the list could be the “smoking gun” they were looking for, connecting the CBW program with the illegal and offensive use of lethal agents.
The discovery of other documents found in Basson’s possession led TRC investigators to suspect that he might have been involved in transferring his vast knowledge about South Africa’s CBW program to other countries such as Iraq and Libya.  Furthermore, it was also suspected that Basson could have traded information he obtained from foreign CBW programs with other governments around the world. Following the arrest, the TRC began an investigation into Project Coast and Basson.
In November 1997, the TRC enlisted the help of the Netherlands Institute for Southern Africa (NIZA) to investigate the activities related to Project Coast and those involved in the CBW program, specifically Wouter Basson. A Dutch researcher who worked for the institute, Klaas de Jonge, led the investigation. His report concerning the involvement of South Africa’s apartheid regime in activities including CBW, hit squads and other operations were listed in The Truth Commission Files and kept highly secret throughout its development. The information obtained by de Jong helped the TRC to build its case against Basson.
According to de Jong, those who worked for the apartheid regime were not forthcoming with information concerning the CBW program. Despite the limited cooperation, enough information was obtained through a multitude of other sources, which led to the conclusion that regime operations had one primary goal in mind, “the elimination of black opposition and its political allies.” Moreover, de Jong suggested that the program’s activities led by Basson and his team either directly or indirectly resulted in, at least, a gross violation of human rights, fraud and theft and, at most, mass murder.
During the time the TRC was investigating Basson, he was also being investigated by three other parties including: the Office for Serious Economic Offences (OSEO), The National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and the Gauteng Attorney-General’s Special Investigation Team. There were fears by the other parties that the TRC’s case would interfere with the other ongoing cases, which led to a slow down in the Commission’s investigation. However, with the help of the OSEO, the TRC’s was able to obtain enough vital information that enabled them to continue with legal proceedings against Basson.
On July 31, 1998 after months of wrangling between Basson’s attorneys and state representatives, he appeared before the TRC and gave evidence for approximately 12 hours. To the state’s dismay, very little evidence was actually revealed because much of the questioning was cut short by Basson’s attorneys who consistently argued the legal technicalities of the case. Yet, the TRC was able to establish some important facts.
According to a report into the investigation released by the TRC, the Commission learned that Basson was the primary decision maker and coordinator of the activities conducted under Project Coast. Moreover, much of his activities remained unquestioned by his superiors, who repeatedly allocated large sums of money for projects, for which they seemed to have little interest or knowledge. In short, the evidence provided by Basson showed that he virtually had free reign to conduct Project Coast operations as he saw fit. Thus, if charges of illegal conduct were discovered during a trial, Basson would bear the brunt of any sentence imposed.   

Basson on Trial

On October 4, 1999, the criminal trial of Dr. Wouter Basson commenced in Pretoria’s High Court.
Judge Willie Hartzenberg presided over the case. Anton Ackerman led the prosecution team and Basson’s lawyer Jaap Cilliers led the defense team.

Cilliers and Basson after the trial

  
According to an article by Anton La Guardia, Basson, nicknamed “Dr. Death” by the media, initially faced 67 charges, which were listed on a 270-page indictment. The indictment had charges ranging from fraud, theft and drug possession and trafficking to murder and conspiracy to murder, which purportedly occurred while working on Project Coast. However, after a little more than one week into the trial, the judge dismissed six critical charges, including four charges of conspiracy to murder and two charges of murder. Basson denied any guilt and refused to seek amnesty from the TRC, which could protect him from any wrongdoing.According to the BBC News, the charges were dismissed because the judge ruled that South African courts could not allow prosecution of crimes committed in other countries. Moreover, it was ruled that Basson was protected by the 1989 Namibian amnesty. Burgess and Purkitt stated that the judge’s decision severely damaged the state’s case because the dismissed murder charges were “the only ones that placed Basson at the scene of the crime.”         
During the proceeding months of the trial many witnesses were heard including, Theron, Pessarra and Basson’s superiors and colleagues. In March 2000, a forensic auditor named Hennie Bruwer gave testimony concerning OSEO’s investigation into Basson’s financial dealings and alleged theft and fraud. To the prosecution’s shock, Judge Hartzenberg exclaimed during their presentation of the evidence that he was, “bored to death” with the financial documents.
After suffering more harsh criticism handed down by the judge and being denied the opportunity to show important evidence, the prosecution adjourned for several weeks to deliberate. The incident opened considerable controversy over Judge Hartzenberg’s objectivity. Ackerman was so enraged by the judge’s behavior and apparent bias in favor of the defense that he frequently remained absent from the proceedings and handed his duty to another prosecution attorney. It was rumored that the judge had already made his decision during the first few months of the trial. One and a half years after the trial began, the charges against Basson were dropped from 67 to 46
Although the prosecution’s case was weakening over time, Professor Shandrack Gutto at the Center for Applied Legal Studies at the University of Witwaterstrand stated that the trial showed that there was little doubt that the apartheid government, “went to great lengths to put drugs on the street, to try to poison innocent black people and infect them with all sorts of chemicals and diseases (Itano, July 2001).” However there was uncertainty whether Basson would be found guilty for his alleged involvement in the unconventional methods utilized by the government. According to an article by Joel Pollack, even the judge claimed during the trial that it would not take much to convince him of Basson’s innocence on some of the charges. After the testimony of nearly 200 witnesses, the prosecutors feared that the cards were stacked against them.

Wouter Basson in court

  
In July 2001, Basson presented his evidence to the court for the first time. He was the only witness to act in his own defense. According to Tim Butcher’s article South African “Dr. Death” learned from Saddam, Basson claimed he learned about weapons of mass destruction from Saddam Hussein’s regime.Basson admitted that he was given free reign by his superiors while leading Project Coast. Moreover, he stated to the court that he traded information with whomever he chose and was financially assisted by people from around the world to acquire any materials he needed for his numerous projects. However, Basson stated to the court that he did nothing illegal as chief of Project Coast, further denying any guilt concerning the remaining 46 charges of theft, fraud and murder. In total, Basson spent 40 days on the stand giving testimony.
On April 11, 2002 cameras were allowed for the first time into the court to witness a surprising and unexpected twist in the case. The judge decided that all the 46 remaining charges against Basson be dropped. Gould and Burger’s Trial Report stated that the defense team successfully argued that under the Namibia constitution, Basson must be granted indemnity from prosecution for any and all activities that took place in Namibia. In 1920 South Africa was given a mandate over the area by the League of Nations. When the United Nations came into being, it tried to have South Africa continue its administration under a UN trusteeship -- instead, South Africa annexed South-West Africa, which is now called Namibia.
Judge Hartzenberg accepted the defense plea and Basson’s version of events, thus granting him amnesty. Hartzenberg then rejected the testimony of all of the prosecution’s 153 witnesses. He stated that the prosecution was unable to prove beyond all doubt that Basson was guilty on every count. The decision was greeted with applause from Basson’s supporters in the courtroom. However, the general public was less enthusiastic about the judgment, specifically those who lost loved ones during the apartheid regime.

Wouter Basson after verdict (Associated Press)

The ANC’s spokesman Smuts Ngonyama condemned the verdict, “The justice system has let us down on this case.” Chandre Gould stated that the judgment especially surprising, considering that Basson was the only witness to act in his own defense and that no documents were ever presented by his defense that supported his testimony. Many South Africans believed the trial discredited the ANC regime, as well as the TRC because of their inability to prevent Basson’s acquittal. Others believe that the verdict proves even more the need for the TRC and ANC.The state rebuked the full acquittal granted to Basson and threatened to appeal the judgment, citing legal inaccuracies. In total, the trial lasted 30 months and was the longest running and most expensive trial in the history of South Africa. The state was responsible for paying the costs of the hearing and Basson’s legal fees, which amounted to a staggering $2 million (R20m).
During most of 2002 and the beginning of 2003, Basson spent his new found freedom traveling around the world as a guest speaker on cardiology, biological warfare and stress management. He has also restarted his private practice as a heart surgeon. Basson claimed that he plans to write several books about chemical and biological warfare.
However, it is likely that he will await the outcome of the state’s appeal before he begins a writing career. Moreover, there are rumors that there are plans to retry Basson in other African countries in connection with his activities in Project Coast. Therefore, the case against Basson may not be entirely over for quite some time.
The most recent known activities of Basson included a three-day long secret meeting with U.S. law enforcement officials at the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria in July 2003. U.S. agents questioned Basson about bio-toxins from South Africa’s CBW program that were thought to have been destroyed by Basson, but have lately resurfaced. There was concern that the potentially harmful agents had fallen into the wrong hands.
The U.S. obtained information that many of the CBW agents were indeed not eliminated, as the South African government claimed in the late 1990’s. Instead, it has been suggested that unknown or unidentified individuals sold many of the deadly toxins once produced by the now extinct Project Coast to private buyers around the world.  According to an article by Joby Warrick, Basson was unable to guarantee U.S. officials that all the lethal agents or secret government documents left over from the project he worked on were accounted for. Moreover, he suggested that there was a possibility that scientists working for Project Coast could have smuggled out some of the products developed in the front company labs once controlled by Basson.
During the interview, Basson was believed to have struck a deal with the officials that none of the information he revealed could be used against him in the future in a court of law. There was a real possibility that he could be retried by the state for activities conducted under Project Coast and he did not want the information to be used against him. Warrick stated that Basson’s reason for allowing the interview to proceed was to once and for all “clear his record” with the United States government.
Whether his record will ever be cleared with the families who lost loved ones due to Basson’s alleged activities with the CBW program during the apartheid regime is another question.

Bibliography

BBC News (October 12, 1999). “Africa mass murder judge dismisses key charges”. World Section,
Breda, Yvette van and Trench, Andrew (June 14, 1998). “What is Basson Hiding?” South Africa’s Sunday Times News Paper online. To be found at
Burgess, Stephen and Purkitt, Helen (April 2001). The Rollback of South Africa’s Chemical and Biological Warfare Program. Air War College, Alabama.

Andrei Chikatilo: The Rostov Ripper (Part 3)

 By Katherine Ramsland

Endgame

Andrei Chikatilo mugshot

Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo, 54, had been at the Donleskhoz train station on November 6. He had been questioned and cleared in 1984. He had now been placed at the scene of a victim’s disappearance. He was seen coming out of the woods and had washed his hands at a pump. He also had a red smear on his cheek and ear, a cut finger, and twigs on the back of his coat. The officer at the station had taken down his name.Burakov had the man placed under surveillance. They soon learned that he had resigned from his post as a teacher due to reports that he had molested students. He had then worked for another enterprise, but was fired when he failed to return from business trips with the supplies he was sent to get. So what had he been doing with his time? During the time he had spent in jail in 1984, there had been no murders, and his travel records coincided with other murders—including the one in Moscow. He once had been a member in good standing with the Communist Party, but had been expelled due to his incarceration.
But all the evidence was circumstantial. Investigators would need to catch him in the act or get him to confess. Keeping him under surveillance, they saw an ordinary man doing nothing unusual. It was frustrating. Kostoyev, who had finally read the earlier report on this man, ordered his arrest.
On November 20, 1990, three officers dressed in street clothes brought Chikatilo in for interrogation, and they noticed that he did not have a mouth full of gold teeth as one witness had indicated. They learned that he was married and had two children, and that he was something of an intellectual with a university degree. In his satchel they found a folding pocketknife.

Knives found in Chikatilo's possession, trial evidence

    They placed Chikatilo in a cell with a gifted informant, who was expected to get him to admit to what he had done, but failed. A search of Chikatilo’s home, which shamed his family, produced no evidence from victims, but did yield 23 knives. Two writers have claimed these weapons were used for the murders, but that was not proven.The next day, Kostoyev decided to handle the interrogation, and he did so in the presence of Chikatilo’s court-appointed lawyer. Richard Lourie based much of his book, Hunting the Devil, on the time that Kostoyev spent with Chikatilo. Contrary to other versions of this narrative that show him to be an angry and impatient interrogator, Lourie says that Kostoyev had decided to use compassion to get the suspect to talk.
He wanted the room to be spare, with only a safe inside that would hint to the prisoner of evidence against him. There was also a desk, a table, and two chairs. When Chikatilo was brought in, Kostoyev could see that he was a tall, older man with a long neck, sloping shoulders, oversized glasses, and gray hair. He used a shuffling gait, like a weary elderly person, but Kostoyev was not fooled. He believed Chikatilo was a calculating killer with plenty of energy when he needed it. Chikatilo looked easy to break, and Kostoyev had only failed to obtain a confession in three out of hundreds of interrogations. He would get inside the suspect’s head, figure out his logic, and get him to talk. All guilty men eventually confessed. They had to. Besides, he had 10 days in which to succeed, and he had bait.
Chikatilo began with a statement that the police had made a mistake, just as they had in 1984 when he’d first been investigated. He denied that he had been at a train station on November 6 and did not know why it had been reported. Kostoyev knew he was lying, and he let Chikatilo know that. The next day, Chikatilo waived his right to legal counsel.
Then Chikatilo wrote a three-page document to which he confessed to “sexual weakness”—the words he had used before—and to years of humiliation. He hinted at “perverse sexual activity” but did not name it, and said that he was out of control. He admitted to nothing specific. But he wrote another, longer essay in which he said that he did move around in the train stations and saw how young people there were the victims of homeless beggars. He also admitted that he was impotent. It appeared to be an indirect confession, feeling guilt but fending it off by fingering other suspects and also hinting at how it was best that some of these beggars had died rather than reproduce. Nevertheless, he mentioned that he had thought of suicide.

Andrei Chikatilo (police file photo)

   Kostoyev told him that his only hope would be to confess everything in a way that would show he had mental problems, so that an examination could affirm that he was legally insane and he could be treated. Otherwise the evidence they had would surely convict him without a confession and he would have no hope to save himself. That was Kostoyev’s bait, and he felt sure it would be effective.Chikatilo asked for a few days to collect himself and said he would then submit to an interrogation. Everyone expected that he would confess, but when the day arrived, he insisted he was guilty of no crimes. For each crucial time period involving a murder, he claimed that he had been at home with his wife. Clearly he had used the extra two days alone in his cell to become more resolved.
The next day, he revised his statements somewhat. In fact, he had been involved in some criminal activity—but not the murders. In 1977, he had fondled some female students who had aroused him. He had difficulty controlling himself around children, but there were only two instances in which he had lost control.
He wrote again, but again revealed nothing, and nine days elapsed with Kostoyev getting no closer to his goal. He did not know what approach to take to pressure this man to finally open up.
A medical examination indicated that Chikatilo’s blood type was A, but his semen supposedly had a weak B antibody, making it appear that his blood type was AB, though it wasn’t. He was the “paradoxical” rare case—if such an analysis could be believed.
The informant in Chikatilo’s cell, writes Cullen, eventually told Burakov that the interrogation techniques were not according to protocol and that they were rough and made Chikatilo defensive. It was unlikely they were going to work. Kostoyev brought in photographers to humiliate Chikatilo and pressure him to believe that they had witnesses to whom they were going to show these photographs. Still, he did not give any ground.
Nine days had elapsed. They were allowed only 10 before having to charge him with a specific crime, and thus far, they did not have enough proof of even one. It was looking very much like they might have to let him go. And that could be disastrous. Burakov, says Cullen, thought they should try another interrogator, and his candidate was Dr. Bukhanovsky. Cullen also says that Kostoyev initially resisted this idea, but finally had to admit he was getting nowhere. He agreed to let the psychiatrist see what he could do. Lourie, presenting things from Kostoyev’s side, says that using the psychiatrist was one of Kostoyev’s clever ploys. Lourie does not mention Burakov’s role in the decision.
Whoever thought of it, this was clearly a wise move.

The Psychiatrist and the Murderer

Bukhanovsky agreed to question Chikatilo, but out of professional interest, not for the court. Burakov agreed to these conditions. Bukhanovsky was soon in a closed room alone with the best suspect in the lesopolosa murders.

Andrei Chikatilo mugshot

   The psychiatrist saw right away, writes Cullen, that this was the type of man that he had described in his 1987 profile. So many of the indicators were there—ordinary, solitary, non-threatening. He introduced himself with a show of humility and then showed Chikatilo the profile. He sensed that this man wanted to talk about his rage and his humiliation, so it was best to show sympathy and listen. He spent two hours doing that, and then began to discuss the crimes.In the film, Citizen X, Bukhanovsky is shown asking Chikatilo to help him on some aspects of the profile that he was not quite certain about. He reads the relevant pages to him, and one sees Chikatilo listening intently, as if alert to the only person who seems ever to have understood him. Bukhanovsky’s description goes into the nature of Chikatilo's mental illness and some reasons for it. As Chikatilo hears his secret life described so clearly, he begins to tremble. Finally he affirms what the psychiatrist is saying, breaks down and admits that it’s all true. He has done those horrible things.
Bukhanovsky talked with him for hours and then went out and told police interrogators that the suspect was now ready to confess.
Kostoyev prepared a formal statement accusing Chikatilo of 36 murders. He was off by a long shot, but no one yet knew that.

Yelena Zakotnova, victim

  Chikatilo read the statement of charges and admitted that he was guilty of the crimes listed. He wanted now to tell the truth about his life and what had led him into these crimes. Among his admissions was his first murder, which had occurred not when the police had first begun to keep track with Lyubov Biryuk but years early in 1978. He had killed a little girl, Yelena Zakotnova, age 9.

The Secret House crime scene

  This was alarming, since a man had already been arrested, tried and executed for that murder. But Chikatilo said that he had moved to Shakhty that year to teach. Before his family arrived, his free time was spent watching children and feeling a strong desire to see them without their clothes on. To maintain his privacy, he purchased a hut on a dark, dirty street. When he went to it one day, he came upon the girl, was seized with urgent sexual desire, and took her to the hut to attack her.When he could not achieve an erection, he had moved in imitation of the sexual act and used his knife as a substitute. During his frenzy of strangulation and stabbing, he blindfolded her. Once she was dead, he tossed her body into a nearby river. Lourie devotes a chapter to the fact that he was a suspect, seen by a witness, and that blood was found on his doorstep, but the other man had confessed under torture, so Chikatilo was free. Chikatilo was shocked to nearly have been caught.
Kostoyev asked him to explain the blindfold, and just as they had suspected, Chikatilo admitted that he had heard that the image of a killer remains in the eyes of a victim. It was a superstition, but he had believed it. That was why he had wounded so many others in the eyes. Then he had decided it was not true, so he stopped doing that (explaining the change in pattern).   Later he admitted that he just had not liked his victims looking at him as he attacked them.
Lourie describes how Chikatilo hated to see how vagrants at train stations went off into the woods for sexual encounters that he could never emulate. His fantasies became more violent. In 1981, he repeated his manner of attack on a vagrant girl looking for money, but he also used his teeth on her to bite off a nipple and swallow it. “At the moment of cutting her and seeing the body cut open,” he said, “I involuntarily ejaculated.” He covered her with newspaper and took her sexual organs away with him, only to cast them aside in the woods.

Chikatilo re-enacts crime, evidence

He remembered the details of each of the 36 lesopolosa murders and went through them, one by one. Sometimes he acted as a predator, learning someone’s routes and habits and finding a way to get that person alone. Others were victims of opportunity who happened along at the wrong time. The stabbing almost always was a substitute for sexual intercourse that could not be performed. He had learned how to squat beside them in such a way as to avoid getting their blood on his clothing (which he demonstrated with a mannequin). At any rate, he worked in a shipping firm, so there was always an excuse for a scrape or cut. It seemed that his impotence generally triggered the rage, especially if the women made demands or ridiculed him. He soon understood that he could not get aroused without violence. “I had to see blood and wound the victims.”With the boys, it was different, although they bled just as easily as women and that’s what he needed most. Chikatilo would fantasize that these boys were his captives and that he was a hero for torturing and doing them in. He could not give a reason for cutting off their tongues and penises, although at one point he said he was taking revenge against life on the genitals of his victims. Lourie says, based on the psychiatric reports, that Chikatilo would place his semen inside a uterus that he had just removed and as he walked along, he would chew on it—“the truffle of sexual murder.” He never admitted to actually consuming these organs, but searches never turned up any discarded remains.
“But the whole thing,” Chikatilo said, “—the cries, the blood, the agony—gave me relaxation and a certain pleasure.” He liked the taste of their blood and would even tear at their mouths with his teeth. He said it gave him an “animal satisfaction” to chew or swallow nipples or testicles.
To corroborate what he was saying, he drew sketches of the crime scenes, and what he said fit the known facts. Then he confirmed what everyone had feared—he added more victims to the list. Many more.
One boy he had killed in a cemetery and placed in a shallow grave—a hole, he said, that he had dug for himself when he had contemplated suicide. He took the interrogators there and they recovered the body. Another was killed in a field, and she was located. On and on it went, murders here and there, and the bodies were always left right where they were killed, except for one. Chikatilo described a murder in an empty apartment and to get the body out, he had to dismember it and dump the parts down a sewer. The police had wondered whether this one was part of the series and had decided that there were too many dissimilarities to include it.

Andrei Chikatilo mugshot, profile

In the end, he confessed to 56 murders (Lourie counts it as 55), although there was corroboration for only 53: 31 females and 22 males. Burakov, says Cullen, believed that there might actually be more.They now had sufficient evidence to take this man to court. In the meantime, they discovered more about him.

The Roots of Perversity

He was born in 1936 into a small Ukrainian village and his head was misshapen from water on the brain. He had a sister seven years younger. His father was a POW in WWII and then was sent to a prison camp in Russia, so his mother raised him mostly on her own.
In the HBO documentary, “Cannibal” and in Moira Martingale’s book Cannibal Killers, some of Chikatilo’s background is described in a chilling context as a way to try to understand what drove him into such a bestial frenzy. In fact, Martingale sees a direct connection between those times and Chikatilo’s sexual fantasies. He was like a werewolf, changing into a ravaging animal when triggered in just the right way. Much of this information came from the confession, the assessments done later, and from investigative research.
During the early part of the twentieth century, the former Soviet Union was often subjected to famines, especially in the Ukraine after Stalin crushed out private agriculture and sent many citizens to the Siberian Gulag. Some six million people died of starvation, according to Cullen, and desperate people might remove meat from corpses to survive. Sometimes they went to a cemetery, where corpses were stacked, and sometimes (legend has it) they grabbed someone on the street. Human flesh was bought and sold, or just hoarded.
Children saw disfigured corpses and heard terrible tales of hardship. Chikatilo had grown up during several of these famines and one story that his mother told was how he once had had an older brother, Stepan, who had been killed. In a prison interview, he said, “Many people went crazy, attacked people, ate people. So they caught my brother, who was 10, and ate him.” He might simply have died and been consumed, if he even existed (which could not be corroborated in any records), but Chikatilo’s mother would warn him to stay in the yard or he might get eaten as well. It was a scary idea, but titillating.
He also saw the results of Nazi occupation and of German bombing, with bodies blown up in the streets. He said that they frightened and excited him.
Most of his childhood was spent alone, living in his fantasies. Other children mocked him for his awkwardness and sensitivity. He began to develop anger at this age, even rage. To entertain and empower himself, he devised images of torture, and these remained a fixed part of his killings later in life.
He had his first sexual experience as an adolescent when he struggled with a 10-year-old friend of his sister’s and ejaculated. That impressed itself on him, especially as he went along in life unable to get an erection but able to ejaculate. The struggle became as fixed in his mind as the images of torture.
He went into the army but when he came home and tried to have a girlfriend, he found he was still unable to perform the sexual act. The girl spread this around, humiliating him, and he dreamed about catching her and tearing her to pieces. His life, as far as he could see, was now a disaster.
He became a schoolteacher and did get married (which was arranged by his sister), but could only conceive children, according to the HBO documentary, by ejaculating outside his wife and pushing his semen inside by hand. Much like his mother, his wife was critical, which only made Chikatilo withdraw even further into his fantasy world. His mother died in 1973 when he was 37, and it wasn’t long before he found himself attracted to young girls and began to molest them. It made him feel powerful, and when incidents were reported, they were met with cover-up and denial instead of prosecution, allowing a pervert to become a killer.
For true satisfaction, he needed to get violent, and by 1978, he killed his first victim. Since he was on the road quite often as a parts supply liaison, it became easy to find vulnerable strangers, dominate them and murder them. He didn’t have to go looking for them, he said. They were always right there and they were usually willing to follow him. He had read the newspaper reports about the murders when the press was allowed to print them and had known it was only a matter of time before it would all end. Being arrested, he admitted, was a relief.
Chikatilo believed he suffered from an illness that provoked his uncontrollable transgressions. He wanted to see some specialists in sexual deviance, and said that he would answer all questions. (Lourie says this was part of Kostoyev’s plan.)
He was sent to Moscow’s Serbsky Institute for two months for psychiatric and neurological assessment, and it was determined that he had brain damage from birth. It had affected his ability to control his bladder and his seminal emissions. His mother criticized him for it repeatedly, and was often cruel. He had deviant fantasies. However, after all the reports, he was found to be sane. He knew what he was doing and he could have controlled it. That was good enough for the prosecutor.

The Beast in the Cage

They brought him into the Rostov courtroom on April 14, 1992, and put him into a large iron cage painted off-white, where he could either stand or sit. The judge sat on a dais and two citizens on either side acted as jurors. There were 225 volumes of information collected about him and against him.

Chikatilo in court, caged, police file

The press wrote about “the Maniac” and spread the word about his upcoming trial, so the courtroom, which seated 250, was filled with the family of many of his alleged victims. When he entered, they began to scream at him. Bald and without his glasses, he looked slightly crazy, especially when he drooled and rolled his eyes later in the trial.Throughout, Chikatilo appeared to be bored, except when he’d show a flash of anger and yell back at the crowd. On two separate occasions, he opened his trousers and pulled them down to expose his penis, insisting he was not a homosexual. They removed him from the courtroom.
That he would be found guilty of murder was a foregone conclusion, but there was a chance that his psychological problems could save him from execution. However, his lawyer, Marat Khabibulin, did not have the right to call psychiatric experts, only to cross-examine those that the prosecution brought in, and since he had not been appointed until after Chikatilo had fully confessed, he was at a real disadvantage.
Although the prosecutors were Anatoly Zadorozhny and N. F. Gerasimenko, Judge Leonid Akubzhanov became Chikatilo’s chief enemy, asking sharp questions of the witnesses and throwing demeaning comments at the prisoner, who often did not respond. After several months, however, Chikatilo challenged the judge, claiming that he was the one in charge. “This is my funeral,” the defendant said.
At one time, he spontaneously denied doing six of the murders and at another, he added four new ones. He claimed to be a victim of the former Soviet system and called himself a “mad beast.” According to Krivich and Ol’gin, he also claimed that there should be 70 “incidents” attributed to him, not 53. At one point, they write, when he was asked whether he had kept track as he killed his victims, Chikatilo said, “I considered them to be enemy aircraft I had shot down.”
No one adequately addressed the fact that there was a discrepancy between the blood type in the semen samples and Chikatilo’s blood type. The forensic analyst explained her discovery of the rare phenomenon of a man having one blood type but secreting another, but this hypothesis was later ridiculed around the world. Yet with no forensic experts hired for the defense, there was little the defense attorney could do. The judge, with his clear bias against the defendant, accepted the unusual analysis.
The court accepted the psychiatric diagnosis of sanity. One psychiatrist examined him yet again and said that he was still of the same opinion. It was Chikatilo’s predatory behavior and ability to shift to safer locales that showed his degree of control, as well as the fact that he had stopped for over a year at one point (a year in which he said he had celebrated his 50th birthday and was in a good mood).
The trial went into August. The defense summed up its side by saying that the evidence and psychiatric analyses were flawed and the confessions had been coerced. He asked for a verdict of not guilty.
The next day, Chikatilo broke into song from his cage and then talked a string of nonsense, with accusations that he was being “radiated.” He was taken out before the prosecutor began his final argument. He reiterated what sadism meant, repeated each of the crimes, and asked for the death penalty.
Chikatilo was brought in and given a final opportunity to speak for himself. He remained mute.
The judge took two months to reach a verdict, and on October 14, six months after the trial begun, he pronounced Andrei Chikatilo guilty of five counts of molestation and 52 counts of murder. Then Chikatilo cried out incoherently, shouting “Swindlers,” spitting, throwing his bench, and demanding to see the corpses. The judge sentenced him to be executed. The people shouted for Chikatilo to be turned over to them to be torn to pieces as he had done to their loved ones. But instead he was taken back to his cell to await the results of an appeal. His lawyer claimed through official channels that the psychiatric assessment had not been objective and he wanted further analysis.
A rumor circulated that the Japanese wanted to pay $1 million for the Maniac’s brain, Lourie writes, but there was no substance to it. Yet many professionals did believe that his behavior was so aberrant that he should be studied alive.
This man with a university degree in Russian literature, a wife and children, and no apparent background of child abuse, clearly had a savage heart. As he said of himself, he was apparently “a mistake of nature.” It’s unfortunate that a better biopsychological analysis was never performed.
On February 15, 1994, when his appeal was turned down, he was taken to a special soundproof room and shot behind the right ear, ending his life.

Legacies

Chikatilo has become one of the world’s most renowned serial killers, cited in books and articles such as Dr. Louis Schlesinger’s Serial Offenders, as a man with truly perverse tastes and killing habits. Thanks to him, Russian specialists can now engage in better study of serial killers and consult with professionals like the FBI in other countries. The same can be said for Bukhanovsky.
Newsweek published a story in 1999 about the area around Rostov-on-Don to the effect that it was now a hotbed of serial crimes. “Twenty-nine multiple murderers and rapists have been caught in the area over the past ten years,” writes Owen Matthews. He claims that such a statistic makes Rostov the serial killer capital of the world. Not only that, but Dr. Bukhanovsky has become such an expert via his private clinic for sexual disorders that he claims he can now cure violent psychopaths. To prove it, he worked with an active killer still at large—a controversial decision. He feels that he cannot break a confidence and that his study will help science determine the roots of aggression. A child rapist who was caught said that Bukhanovsky had a way of getting people to tell him things they would ordinarily keep secret. That appears to have been his talent with Chikatilo.

Bibliography

Bivens, Dim. “Chikatilo Statue Causes Stir,”. Retrieved 4/6/03
Cannibal: The Real Hannibal Lecters. HBO, February 2003.
Conti, Richard P. "The Psychology of False Confessions," The Journal of Credibility    Assessment and Witness Psychology. 1999, vol. 2, No. 1, 14-36.
Citizen X, HBO Home Video, 2000. (This movie contains many adjustments for plot, as well as factual errors, but has some good moments.)
Cullen, Robert. The Killer Department: Detective Viktor Burakov’s Eight-Year Hunt for the Most Savage Serial Killer in Russian History. New York: Pantheon Books, 1993.
Krivich, Mikhail and Ol’gert Ol’gin. Comrade Chikatilo: The Psychopathology of Russia’s Notorious Serial Killer. Fort Lee, NJ: Barricade Books, 1993.
Lourie, Richard. Hunting the Devil: The Pursuit, Capture and Confession of the Most Savage Serial Killer in History. New York: HarperCollins, 1993.
Martingale, Moira. Cannibal Killers: The History of Impossible Murders. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1993.
Matthews, Owen. “A Crime-fighting MD and the Twisted Citizens of the Capital of Serial Crime: City of the Dead,” Newsweek. Jan. 25, 1999.
Ofshe, Richard. "The Consequences of False Confessions,"
Robinson, Bruce. "False Confessions by Adults," 3/26/02.
Schlesinger, Louis B. “Serial Homicide: Sadism, Fantasy, and a Compulsion to Kill,” in Serial Offenders: Current Thought, Recent Findings. L. B. Schlesinger, editor. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2000.
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