Businessman detains another Chikatilo maniac trying to save his little daughter

The Russian city of Rostov has become the place where the world's biggest number of series crimes has been committed

Businessman Vitaly Shvalev from the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don detained a man suspected of a terrible killing of a 10-year-old girl. Vitaly Shvalev told Interfax that he alarmed all of his friends and started patrolling streets in that part of the city where the family lives after his 8-year-old daughter said some man had talked to her in the street and offered to have a ride on his bicycle.

Once, he noticed a man whose identikit was posted on leaflets circulated by the Rostov Central Department for Internal Affairs. “I hailed a man talking to an underage girl, and the suspected escaped. I managed to catch up with him just after I ran several streets. I threw the fugitive down and called the police,” Vitaly Shvalev said.

Earlier, the management of the regional department for internal affairs promised a 100,000 rubles reward for providing information about the man suspected of killing a girl. The businessman says he does not care who will get the money; he is happy to know that his daughter is safe now.

It is said that during an interrogation the suspect confessed the killing of a girl. Evidence revealing the man's connection with the crime was discovered during searches in his apartment.

Mass media reported that at the end of March 2005, a mutilated dead body of a ten-year-old girl was found in the Zheleznodorozhny District of Rostov-on-Don. Rostov newspaper reported terrible details of the killing: the dead body was dismembered of ears, the chest and abdominal cavity were cut, the heart was cut out and part of the liver was found in the victim's mouth. The girl was found naked, her pants were found close to the body.

The police instituted criminal proceedings in connection with the crime. The Prosecutor's Office of the Rostov Region confirms that the suspect of the crime has been detained. It is stated the man looks like the identikit drawn with the help of eyewitnesses. For the time being, the police are identifying connection of the suspect with a similar crime committed in 2001.

Researchers are making attempts to explain why the number of maniacs in Russia's Rostov Region is so high. Within the past 10-12 years, the Russian city of Rostov has become the place where the world's biggest number of series crimes has been committed. Within the period, about 30 maniacs have been detained in the city; the names of maniacs Chikatilo and Mukhankin known to many people. Chikatilo slew 58 people within 1979-1990. Vladimir Mukhankin killed over ten people within a rather short period of time; there were no series killings in the region within some period after the maniac was detained.

Researchers name several reasons of the high number of series crimes committed in the Rostov Region; peculiar weather conditions and unfavorable social atmosphere are the leading reasons among them. What is more, experts state that actions of a maniac in the city provoke others to behave like maniacs. It is known that there are people who want to kill but do not dare.

However, some experts believe that the number of maniacs in the Rostov Region is the same that in other cities or regions of Russia. Crimes of this kind are oftener uncovered in the region than elsewhere, that is why it seems there are many maniacs in Rostov.

In the Rostov Region, relatives of victims actively draw attention of the society and the police to the problem in case some of their family is lost. It often happens in other parts of the country that the police do not register crimes of this kind at all.