The Soviet Union Executed An Innocent Man To Hide A Serial Killer

[00:00:00]Did you know the Soviet Union executed an innocent man rather than admit a serial killer [music] was on the loose?

[00:00:06]His name was Andrei Chikatilo. Between 1978 and 1990, [music] he murdered at least 52 people across the Soviet Union. Children, women, strangers he lured from train stations.

[00:00:19]But the investigation kept collapsing.

[00:00:22]Not because [music] the evidence was weak, because of an idea. Communist ideology held that serial killers were a product of capitalism. Broken societies [music] produced broken people. The Soviet Union was perfect. Therefore, serial killers could not exist there.

[00:00:38]So, when investigators [music] got close, they looked away. When forensic evidence pointed to Chikatilo, officials buried it. [music] And when they needed someone to blame, they arrested an innocent man, beat a confession out of him, and shot him. The real killer walked free for years after that.

[00:00:56]Chikatilo was finally [music] caught in 1990. He confessed to 56 murders. He was executed in 1994. But one man died in his place because a government refused to admit the [music] truth. The ideology didn't just fail the victims, it became the weapon.