A 350-officer manhunt across the Rostov region had already failed once to stop him, and on this day in 1990 Andrei Chikatilo killed again, murdering Svetlana Korostik in woodland near a rural train station. It was his last victim.
Days later a plainclothes officer, part of the same exhausted operation, spotted a dishevelled man emerging from the trees near the station, wiping his face and straightening his clothes. Something about him seemed wrong enough to stop him and take his details. A records check turned up a prior arrest from 1984, and surveillance was quietly placed on him. Weeks later, Chikatilo, dubbed the Rostov Ripper and found to have killed and in some cases cannibalised dozens of victims over more than a decade, was arrested.
