| “ | The boy had experienced convulsions in his death throes as the smell of gasoline and fire permeated the air ... That boy looked so helpless, especially in his uniform. It reminded me of how I felt inside myself after a childhood of pain and suffering. Each time he cried out in agony, I became more excited. [By the time of the boy's death], I became oblivious to everyone else apart from that boy. | ” |
— Slivko, recalling the incident that sparked his fantasies
| ||
Anatoly Yemelianovich Slivko was a Russian hebephilic, ephebophilic, and necrophilic serial rapist, and serial killer active in Nevinnomyssk, Russia. Over a twenty year period, Slivko convinced 43 teenage boys to let him hang them until they became unconscious so he could molest them, before reviving them himself. Seven victims died during the ordeal.
Background[]
Slivko was born on December 28, 1938, in Izerbash, an oil-extracting station established just six years prior on the Caspian Sea coast. His homeland was griped by Joseph Stalin's forced collectivation of agriculture and was under the horrific effects of war and poverty at the time of his birth. The first of two children, Slivko's father was an alcoholic who argued with his wife frequently and he was a lonely child and did poorly in school (despite being very intelligent) and had numerous health problems. He also witnessed many horrors of the war during his youth (such as the sight of dead bodies and animals, and also hiding in a cemetery with other children to hide from bomb raids). He would go on to discover that he was homosexual and had erectile dysfunction in his teens and was greatly ashamed by these things.
After finishing high school, Slivko tried and failed to get into Moscow University and then joined the Soviet Army. He was regularly belittled by his collegues and was officially discharged after he was deemed "incompatible" for military life and for health issues. He returned home in 1961 and his younger half-sister introduced him to his future wife Lyudmila. The two rarely had sex due to Slivko's impotence, but still managed to have two children before ceasing sexual activity together entirely. Slivko was further humiliated by his impotence when a nurse laughed at him after he sought medical help for it. By all appearances, the Slivkos were good and respected people.
In 1961, Slivko witnessed a traffic accident in which a drunk driver swerved into a group of pedestrians, fatally injuring a boy in his early teens who was wearing the uniform of the Young Pioneers, the Soviet equivalent to the Boy Scouts. For reasons that Slivko could not explain, he found himself greatly aroused by the sight of the dying boy and the smell of burning gasoline. This event was a trigger for Slivko's later actions, having incorporated the boy's outfit and a developed shoe fetish into his fantasies and crimes. At an undetermined point, he established a children's club from where he would draw his victims. This first club was destroyed in a fire and Slivko established a second and definitive one in 1966, called Chergid. In the ensuing years, Slivko gained local celebrity status due to his activities at the club and his amateur documentaries about German attrocities in World War II.
Crimes, Arrest, and Execution[]
Beginning in 1963, Slivko began to periodically persuade boys at his club to let him hang them as part of an "experiment" that would "stretch their spine", and - Slivko claimed - make them grow taller. The boys knew that the procedure would render them unconscious, but Slivko reassured them that he would revive them. Slivko would then use the opportunity to molest the boys and maturbate, before reviving them and cautioning them into silence. Most victims resumed their lives unaware of what Slivko had done to them, but in seven cases Slivko was unable to revive the boys and he disposed of the bodies by dismembering and burning the remains with gasoline. All 'experiments' were photographed and recorded extensively in order to serve as mementos for Slivko; when his first fatal victim, Aleksei Dobryshev, died in 1964, Slivko destroyed the recordings, but he kept all the ones he made later.
Slivko shortly before his execution.
In November 1985, the prosecutor Tamara Languyeva, who was investigating the disappearance of Slivko's final victim, Sergei Pavlov, decided to take a look into Slivko and his club after she learned that Pavlov had told a neighbor that he was going to meet the leader of Chergid before he went missing. Languyeva found nothing illegal about the way the club was run, but suspicions arose when several boys who had been to the club declared that they had suffered "temporary ammesia" after Slivko performed "experiments" on them. The next month, Slivko was arrested at his Stavropol home and formally charged with seven counts of murder, sexual abuse and necrophilia. Between January and February 1986, he led investigators to the whereabouts of six bodies, but he was unable to find Dobryshev's. In June, he was sentenced to death and imprisoned at Novocherkassk, where he would remain in death row for three years.
On September 16, 1989 Slivko was interviewed by detectives investigating the murders of the then-unidentified Rostov Ripper in order to gain some insight into his possible motives and methods. The information provided by Slivko was largely useless. Only a few hours later, Slivko was executed with a single shot to the back of his head, aged 50
Modus Operandi[]
Slivko with one of his victims, during the procedure to "stretch his spine".
Slivko targeted young teenage boys at his children's club who were short for their age. He never chose a victim who was seventeen or older because he feared the greater physical strength of a late teenager.
Once or twice a year, Slivko would form a close friendship with a chosen boy. After gaining his trust, he would propose him the "experiment", and when he accepted, he would purchase a Young Pioneers uniform for him to wear, shine his shoes, and tell him not to eat for several hours before the 'experiment' in order to prevent vomiting. Once unconscious, Slivko would strip the boys naked, caress and fondle them, arrange them in suggestive positions, and masturbate before reviving them. If the victim died, he would dismember and burn the body with gasoline, masturbate a second time, and bury the remains. Slivko would also photograph and film the experiments extensively, using the images and recordings to revive the experience and masturbate to them for months afterward, until he decided he needed to act again. He also filmed himself cutting his victims's shoes, and kept them as trophies.
Known Victims[]
Shoes of victims kept by Slivko.
- Unspecified dates in 1963-1985: 43 boys hanged and molested
The following were killed, dismembered and incinerated:
- June 2, 1964: Nikolai Dobryshev, 15 (his body was never found)
- May 17, 1965: Aleksei Kovalenko, 15
- November 14, 1973: Aleksander Nesmeyanov, 15
- May 11, 1975: Andrei Pogasyan, 11
- June 1980: Sergei Fatsiev, 13
- April 1982: Vyacheslav "Slava" Khovistik, 15
- July 23, 1985: Sergei Pavlov, 13
Notes[]
- In addition to being interviewed about his crimes before death, Slivko and Chikatilo are interestingly similar to one another - Both were Soviet ephebophilic and hebephilic serial killers who were born in the late 1930s during Stalin's forced collectivization of agriculture, they had troublesome family lives (with their childhoods both being described as being blighted by poverty, hunger, war, and ridicule), witnessed horrors during their youths (including seeing dead bodies and being forced to hide during bombings), their fathers were conscripted into the Soviet Army, they were intelligent-yet-sickly children, were bullied for their timid natures by others, and had a younger sister (half in Chikatilo's case). They developed erectile dysfunction in their adolescence (which would become known to those around them, wounding their self-esteem), tried and failed to get into Moscow University, served in the Soviet Army much like their fathers before them, found engineering jobs after their service and return home in 1961 (Slivko worked as a telephone engineer, while Chikatilo worked as a communications engineer), their sisters introduced them both to the women who would become their future wives. They had minimal sex lives due to their impotence but still managed to conceive two children, they were both considered to be good people by those who knew them, and both committed sexual assaults on minors prior to their killings. And as serial killers they targeted teenaged boys (though Chikatilo had a widely varied victimology), would bind them with rope in the woods (sometimes in Chikatilo's case) before killing them, would mutilate their bodies post-mortem, and their crimes would go unsolved for over a decade. They gave numerous confessions after their arrests, were found guilty of their crimes and sentenced to death, they made unsuccessful attempts to appeal their sentences, and were executed by gunshot behind their right ears in Rostov while in their 50s.
- He shares his place of birth with Swiss serial killer Paul Irniger.
On Criminal Minds[]
While Slivko was never directly mentioned or referenced on the show (or its spin-offs), he appears to have been an inspiration for the following unsubs:
- Season Two
- Carl Buford ("Profiler, Profiled" and "Restoration") - Both were pedophilic serial killers and preferential sex offenders who targeted young boys, molested dozens of victims, lured their victims to locations where they would molest them, made sure that they never discussed their activities with anyone else, were involved in murder investigations (Buford was involved in the investigation of his own murders. while Slivko was investigated for the murders being committed by Chikatilo), killed their murder victims by asphyxiation, got away with his crimes for decades before finally being apprehended, and both died while incarcerated (though Slivko was executed while Buford was murdered in prison). Buford also appeared in Season Eight.
- Season Five
- Will Summers ("Risky Business") - Both were killers and married fathers who would trick teenage boys into hanging themselves, and would then revive their unconscious victims (Summers only revived his own son due to logistic impossibilities, but he was among the first to see the other victims because of his job as a paramedic), and both also recorded their crimes and kept the films of victims who did not survive the ordeal. Though Slivko was active before the invention of the Internet, the boy scouts troop he created for the purpose of drawing in new victims is similar to Summer's website, which had the same function.
On Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders[]
- Season Two
- Oleg Antakov ("The Ripper of Riga") - Both were Russian serial killers who dismembered their victims and were interviewed in prison about an unrelated offender assumed to be similar to them.