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In spite of all Chikatilo's cunning and efforts to minimise his risk of capture, he was aided by a degree of luck and also a degree of incompetence and laxity on the part of police which enabled him to evade capture for so long and, in the latter murders, be all-but eliminated from the inquiry due the the mis-typing of his semen as being type AB whereas Chikatilo's blood group as type A. He bit his lip so hard he tasted his own blood and felt his chest constrain to the extent he thought he was having a heart attack.Īfter Chikatilo was arrested, he recalled years of nightmares, sleepless nights, obsessive cross-checking of information and regarding any male he saw in off duty hours as a potential suspect. He was hospitalized for exhaustion in 1987 (he had believed on at least one occasion he may be experiencing a heart attack) and on one occasion, as he looked at the body of an 11-year-old boy killed by Chikatilo, he thought of his own younger son, Maxim.
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Burakov did indeed suffer emotionally more than any other investigator during the hunt for Chikatilo.
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