The Killer Department: Detective Viktor Burakov's Eight-Year Hunt for the Most Savage Serial Killer in Russian History is a non-fiction book detailing the manhunt, capture and subsequent conviction of Russian serial killer Andrei Chikatilo. Written by Robert Cullen (at the time a foreign reporter covering issues relating to the Soviet Union and Russia for The New Yorker magazine), the book was released in 1993. [1]
The Killer Department was made into a feature film titled Citizen X in 1995.
The hardcover overview from amazon.com says: "obsessed with finding the killer, faced formidable odds-among them the maze of the Soviet system". [2]
Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo was a Soviet serial killer nicknamed The Butcher of Rostov, The Rostov Ripper, and The Red Ripper who sexually assaulted, murdered, and mutilated at least fifty-two women and children between 1978 and 1990 in the Russian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, and the Uzbek SSR. Chikatilo confessed to fifty-six murders and was tried for fifty-three of them in April 1992. He was convicted and sentenced to death for fifty-two of these murders in October 1992, although the Supreme Court of Russia ruled in 1993 that insufficient evidence existed to prove his guilt in nine of those killings. Chikatilo was executed by gunshot in February 1994.
Gary Leon Ridgway, also known as the Green River Killer, is an American serial killer. He was initially convicted of 48 separate murders. As part of his plea bargain, another conviction was added, bringing the total number of convictions to 49, making him the second most prolific serial killer in United States history according to confirmed murders. He killed many teenage girls and women in the U.S. state of Washington during the 1980s and 1990s.
Harold Schechter is an American true crime writer who specializes in serial killers. He is a Professor Emeritus at Queens College, City University of New York where he taught classes in American literature and myth criticism for forty-two years. Schechter's essays have appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, and the International Herald Tribune. He is the editor of the Library of America volume, True Crime: An American Anthology. His newest book, published in March 2021, is Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer.
Citizen X is a 1995 American television film which covers the efforts of detectives in the Soviet Union to capture an unknown serial killer of women and children in the 1980s, and the successive bureaucratic obstacles they consistently encounter. The film is based upon the true story of Soviet serial killer Andrei Chikatilo, who was convicted in 1992 of the murder of 52 women and children committed between 1978 and 1990. It stars Stephen Rea, Donald Sutherland, and Max Von Sydow.
Boris Starling is a British novelist, screenwriter and newspaper columnist.
Charles Edmund Cullen is an American serial killer who confessed to murdering up to forty patients during the course of his sixteen-year career as a nurse in New Jersey. However, in subsequent interviews with police, psychiatrists, and journalists, it became apparent that he had killed many more, whom he could not specifically remember by name though he could often remember details of their murders. Experts have estimated that Cullen may ultimately have been responsible for 400 deaths, which would make him the most prolific serial killer in recorded history. He has 29 confirmed victims.
Nightmare in Wichita: The Hunt for the BTK Strangler by lawyer Robert Beattie is a non-fiction book about a serial killer in Wichita, Kansas known as the BTK Strangler. The book debuted at No. 4 on The New York Times bestseller list upon its April 2005 release.
The FBI Files is an American television docudrama series that originally ran from 1998 to 2006 on the Discovery Channel and produced by New Dominion Pictures. The show was cancelled in 2006. However, Court TV Mystery, Discovery, and its sister network, Investigation Discovery, aired re-runs until October 2012. Investigation Discovery only showed episodes from seasons 5,6, and 7. As of October 2012, the network now airs episodes from the earlier seasons, with updated information about the cases at the end of most episodes. Up to late September 2012, WE tv showed episodes from seasons 1-4, but the network had removed the episode introductions by Jim Kallstrom. In the UK on Quest Red, The FBI Files airs every weeknight. It has also been shown on TV Denmark, Discovery Australia, and Netflix in Canada.
Robert Christian Hansen, known in the media as the Butcher Baker, was an American serial killer. Between 1971 and 1983, Hansen abducted, raped, and murdered at least seventeen women in and around Anchorage, Alaska; he hunted many of them down in the wilderness with a Ruger Mini-14 and a knife. He was arrested and convicted in 1983, and was sentenced to 461 years without the possibility of parole. He died in 2014 of natural causes due to lingering health conditions at age 75.
Chris Gerolmo is a Golden Globe nominated screenwriter, director, and singer-songwriter best known for writing the screenplay for the multi-Academy Award nominated film Mississippi Burning and the less successful Miles from Home starring Richard Gere.
Keith Hunter Jesperson is a Canadian-American serial killer who murdered at least eight women in the United States during the early 1990s. He was known as the "Happy Face Killer" because he drew smiley faces on his many letters to the media and authorities. Many of his victims were sex workers and transients who had no connection to him. Strangulation was Jesperson's preferred method of murdering, the same method he often used to kill animals as a child.
Robert Joseph "Bobby Joe" Long was an American serial killer and rapist who was executed by the state of Florida for the murder of Michelle Denise Simms. Long abducted, sexually assaulted, and murdered at least ten women in the Tampa Bay area in Florida during an eight-month period in 1984. He released 17-year-old Lisa McVey after 26 hours. McVey provided critical information to the police that enabled them to arrest Long. Long was also a serial rapist.
Anatoly Yemelianovich Slivko was a Soviet serial killer, sexual predator, and necrophile who was convicted of killing seven teenage boys in and around Nevinnomyssk, Stavropol Krai, Russian SFSR, between 1964 and 1985.
The smiley face murder theory is a theory advanced by retired New York City detectives Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte, as well as Dr. Lee Gilbertson, a criminal justice professor and gang expert at St. Cloud State University. It alleges that a number of young men found dead in bodies of water across several Midwestern American states from the late 1990s to the 2010s did not accidentally drown, as concluded by law enforcement agencies, but were victims of a serial killer or killers.
Relentless is a 1989 American crime thriller film directed by William Lustig and starring Judd Nelson, Robert Loggia and Leo Rossi. The film follows two LAPD officers on a hunt for a serial killer.
Hadden Irving Clark is an American veteran murderer and suspected serial killer, currently serving two 30-year sentences at Eastern Correctional Institution in Westover, Maryland for the murders of 6-year-old Michelle Dorr in 1986, and 23-year-old Laura Houghteling in 1992. He was also given a 10-year sentence for robbery after stealing from a former landlord.
Bosch is an American police procedural streaming television series produced by Amazon Studios and Fabrik Entertainment starring Titus Welliver as Los Angeles Police Department detective Harry Bosch. The show was developed for Amazon by Eric Overmyer, and the first season takes its inspiration from the Michael Connelly novels City of Bones (2002), Echo Park (2006), and The Concrete Blonde (1994). It was one of two drama pilots that Amazon streamed online in early 2014, and viewers offered their opinions on it before the studio decided whether to place a series order. The seventh and final season was released on June 25, 2021. Amazon announced another season, produced for IMDb TV as part of rebrand to Amazon Freevee, to be retitled as Bosch: Legacy, in January 2022, and it premiered on May 6, 2022, and was renewed for an ninth season prior to the season premiere.
Michael Bennett is a series of thriller books by best-selling author James Patterson. The series is the #1 new bestselling detective series of the past twenty-five years. It follows Michael Bennett, an Irish American New York City detective, as he solves terrifying crimes and raises his ten adopted children.