Chikatilo confessed to fifty-six murders; he was tried for fifty-three murders in April He was convicted and sentenced to death for fifty-two of these murders in October , although the Supreme Court of Russia ruled in that insufficient evidence existed to prove his guilt in nine of those killings. Chikatilo was executed by gunshot in February At the time of his birth, Ukraine was recovering from a severe famine caused by Joseph Stalin 's forced collectivization of agriculture.
The family rarely had sufficient food; Chikatilo himself later claimed not to have eaten bread until the age of 12, [ 8 ] adding that he and his family often had to eat grass and leaves in an effort to stave off hunger. He would later be taken prisoner after being wounded in combat.
He was a chronic bed wetter , and his mother berated and beat him for each offence. In , Chikatilo's mother gave birth to a baby girl, Tatyana.
Because Chikatilo's father had been conscripted in , he could not have fathered this child. As many Ukrainian women were raped by German soldiers during the war, it has been speculated Tatyana was conceived as a result of a rape committed by a German soldier. As Chikatilo and his mother lived in a one-room hut, this rape may have been committed in Chikatilo's presence.
In September , [ 9 ] Chikatilo began his schooling. Although shy and ardently studious as a child, he was physically weak and regularly attended school in homespun clothing. His stomach was often swollen from hunger resulting from the post-war famine which plagued much of the Soviet Union.
